A Year in the Château Read online

  Contents

  Part One: Winter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two: Spring

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Three: Summer

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Four: Autumn

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Part Five: Winter Again

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue: Eight Months Later

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For my dad, Ron Long

  CHAPTER ONE

  A dull night in January is the best time to start again. Just when you think the days will never get longer and you feel the heavy girdle of Christmas excess wrapped around your middle as you lie on the sofa and wonder if you can be bothered to get up to make a cup of tea.

  Nicola pulled the rug over her knees – the central heating only really kicked in when Dominic came back from the office – grabbed her phone and decided she’d play one more round of Ruzzle. She’d never thought of herself as having an addictive personality but she loved the adrenaline hit of forming words against the clock.

  Thirty-seven games later, she heard a key in the door and guiltily slipped her phone into her pocket, picking up the improving book with no narrative drive that was abandoned on the coffee table. Ruzzle was sneaky like that, the way it hooked you in, so anyone with time on their hands and a reasonable vocabulary could easily waste an entire afternoon. Still, at least it wasn’t Candy Crush. She had deleted that after one too many nights spent in its thrall.

  Dominic put his head around the door, stern-faced in his reflective jacket and bicycle helmet.

  ‘You look cosy,’ he said, managing to make it sound judgemental. ‘I need a drink – do you want one?’

  ‘Bit early for me. And you can take your helmet off now, you’re not in enemy territory.’

  ‘Says you. You’ve no idea what it’s like out there, tucked up on your snug sofa. I’m going to get changed, then we need to talk.’

  He pulled the door shut behind him; it was important to keep the heat in, now Nicola only had her pension to rely on, as he liked to remind her. Albeit a doctor’s pension, beyond the wildest dreams of anyone in the private sector, as he also liked to remind her. Like most GPs, she had taken early retirement – you only had to do the maths to see why. The reduction in income seemed worth it for the sake of no more sleepless nights over how her most fragile patients were doing. No more passing over the tissue box as she sent people she’d treated for years for tests she knew would bring no good news. No more worried patients burdening her with minor ailments or their own latest theory on what Google said was wrong with them.

  Dom said they needed to talk – that sounded heavy. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Might as well fit in another game before whatever it was. A two-minute window to calm the mind and put her opponent, bigmouth69, back in her box.

  ‘Sorry for being grumpy,’ said Dominic, reappearing in jeans and the grey jumper she had bought him for Christmas to complement what she affectionately called his Nigel Havers bouffant. ‘I just had such a shit day.’

  He sat down beside her and lifted her feet onto his lap.

  Nicola pressed pause – no point giving the round away – and gave him her attention.

  ‘Poor you. I remember how that feels.’

  In her case, a shit day might have resulted in someone’s death – a missed diagnosis, a failure of judgement. But she never played the moral superiority card; every job had its own pressures.

  ‘Which is why I said we need to talk.’ He jumped up and made his way to the fridge. ‘Is it late enough for you now?’

  ‘Go on then.’

  He filled two glasses with their favourite Chablis premier cru and moved briskly back towards her. Cock of the walk; she loved his energy. Even tired after a long day, and thirty-five years older than when they’d met, he still made her smile.

  ‘So, you’re not leaving me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you said, “we need to talk”. That’s what people say when they’re about to end their relationship.’

  ‘Not my style. If that’s what you’ve decided, there’s nothing to talk about, is there? And anyway, nothing could be further from my mind! Here’s to you, my darling, and to many more years of our loving union. Prost! ’

  He raised a toast, leaning over in mock earnestness to make exaggerated eye contact, the way a German friend had taught them years ago. She responded by staring solemnly into his face, before dissolving into laughter.

  ‘That’s enough of that nonsense,’ she said. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense. What is this serious thing we need to talk about?’

  ‘Bullshit jobs,’ said Dom, as if this was perfectly self-explanatory.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Someone wrote a book about it. Half the population work in jobs that are entirely pointless and fail to make the world a better place. I’ve just realised that mine is one of them.’

  Nicola had been of this opinion for many years, but had so far managed to keep it to herself.

  ‘But I thought you were a great believer in the value of Change Management,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. What could be more pointless than sticking your nose into how people run their businesses and telling them you know better? And now I’ve lost faith in my profession, I can’t go on. They’ll see through me soon enough and I’ve got to jump before I’m pushed. A man has his dignity. How about we finally get around to that gap year we used to talk about?’

  Nicola frowned. First he was telling her he was throwing in the towel and then he wanted them to take a ‘gap year’! Both prospects were unappealing.

  ‘What gap year?’ she asked. ‘Are we eighteen again?’

  ‘You know we’ve always discussed it. When we – sorry, when I – decide I’ve really had it with work, we would pack a rucksack and see the world.’

  ‘Have we? Sounds pretty ghastly to me.’

  She had an unwelcome vision of them waiting for a bus in some dusty country, followed by a twelve-hour bumpy ride before checking into a hostel where you shared a bathroom with entitled young travellers, probably suffering from dysentery.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’

  He squeezed her leg and took a glug of wine.

  ‘All that jostling. The upcoming thrusters biting at my heels. I know it’s always been this way – the old guard getting supplanted by the new hires – but what I really can’t swallow is the fact they hide their ambition in the guise of something called “wellbeing in the workplace”. The latest suggestion in my 360 appraisal was some bloke thirty years younger than me recommending I take a step down for the sake of “work–life balance”. I wish they’d just say they’ve got their eyes on my corner office and they want me out of it. Why can’t they just grow a pair of balls?’

  ‘I hope you didn’t use that expression.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘When you say gap year, do you really mean gap year or are you thinking about early retirement?’

  ‘I hate that word!’

  ‘Retirement? I love it. Look at me and my many hobbies. What about that stool I just re-upholstered? My morning Zumba classes, my midweek visits to nurser
ies to stock the garden? I couldn’t do that when I was chained to the surgery.’

  ‘It’s so final! There’s no way I’m going to shuffle off on a cruise with a bunch of coffin dodgers. You know they keep a morgue on the ships, don’t you? For when a retired CEO has a heart attack after all that fine dining. They call it Operation Rising Star. I read about it.’

  ‘Hello! Just because you stop working doesn’t mean you have to go on a cruise.’

  ‘I’m only talking about a break. Not the end of my useful working life.’

  ‘Call me a prophet of doom but I think if you leave this job, you won’t necessarily breeze into another one. Look at Will.’

  Will was Dominic’s best friend who had made a midlife stand by walking away from his partnership in a law firm, only to find that the grass wasn’t greener on the other side. After retraining as a life coach, he became enraged at his clients’ unrealistic expectations. What did they expect – happiness served up on a silver platter? He wasn’t a bloody miracle worker! He’d made attempts to go back to his old job but soon found out that nobody was interested in an expensive old lawyer. He was dead meat, to the poorly disguised disappointment of his young wife, Fizz. Her silver fox had rather lost his gleam.

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Anyway, what do you think?’

  He finished his wine and beamed at her, full of enthusiasm.

  Nicola tried not to be a wet blanket; she hated always being the sensible one, but she couldn’t help it if she was a realist.

  ‘What do I think about a gap year? I think I’m too old for hostels.’

  ‘Don’t be so middle-aged! Remember when we trekked through Thailand and you sat on the elephant’s head? You loved it.’

  ‘Not sure my joints could take that anymore. I remember it well, though; I wore my floral patterned shorts.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot about those! I haven’t seen you wearing them lately.’

  ‘There’s a reason for that,’ said Nicola. ‘I read somewhere that no woman over fifty should be seen dead in shorts.’

  ‘Nonsense, you’ve got fabulous legs. Don’t let some vacuous magazine tell you what you can and cannot wear.’

  ‘Ah, you’re lovely,’ said Nicola, blowing him a kiss. ‘My loyal and biased husband.’

  ‘I mean it. You haven’t changed a bit. Forget the hostels, though, we’ll do an upscale version. Stay in decent hotels.’

  This sounded more appealing. A carefully mapped-out tour of India, being chauffeured to the Taj Mahal at dawn where Dom could take the obligatory photo of her looking lonely on the Princess Diana bench. They could post it on Instagram and enjoy being envied. But then it would be back for a lie-down and dinner for two before moving on to the next destination with all the other tourists dutifully ticking off items on their bucket list.

  ‘I don’t know, really. There’s a terrible sense of being processed, don’t you think? Are we ready to be Saga-insured seniors in sunhats spending their kids’ inheritance playing at going off the beaten track?’

  ‘Don’t be so negative! Would you rather lie on that sofa playing Ruzzle for the rest of your life?’

  Nicola guiltily switched her phone off.

  ‘I like playing Ruzzle because at least I’m using my brain. Also, I can see those places on telly or read about them – I don’t actually need to be there.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good job you don’t work in the travel business. What a dismal perspective you have.’

  ‘No I haven’t! I’m like Dr Johnson’s Rasselas. He left the Happy Valley to go round the world looking for happiness, then realised it was pointless, he was better off staying at home.’

  ‘With your pipe and slippers.’

  ‘Better than a rucksack and espadrilles. And having to listen to dreary travellers’ tales. Machu Picchu – you can keep it.’

  ‘Come on, where is your soul? Let’s have a top-up and I’ll fix dinner. Who’s in?’

  ‘Maddie’s at John’s tonight, and Gus is out at some event. We never went to “events” when we were their age, did we? We managed to be more specific about where we were going.’

  Like many parents of adult offspring, they had failed to eject their young from the family home and lived parallel lives alongside them, witnessing their daily dramas while making sure the fridge was fully stocked. They were like benevolent older flatmates who didn’t get in on the action. Although it was beginning to wear a bit thin.

  Dominic peered into the fridge for inspiration and took out some tuna steaks.

  ‘Let’s have these with a black bean salad, as for once we’re not feeding the five thousand. Any chance of them moving out any time soon?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Nothing silly about hoping your grown-up children might finally be ready to stand on their own two feet. You’ve made it too easy for them, putting food on the table and a roof over their snowflake heads.’

  ‘We’ve got the space, and you know how expensive it is to rent in London.’

  ‘That’s the thing. If only we lived somewhere less convenient . . .’

  He stopped in his tracks and turned to her.

  ‘Of course! It’s obvious, isn’t it? That’s what we should do! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.’

  He abandoned his preparations and rushed over to sit beside her.

  ‘You are right, it’s ridiculous for me to carry on working just to feed the mortgage and my undeserving kids when we’re sitting on a fat piece of equity. Let’s downsize to the country! Let’s grow chillies in a greenhouse and be vibrant third-agers!’

  Nicola could see he was excited because he was now wielding an imaginary cricket bat, which was his way of expressing pure joy. He had done it when she agreed to marry him, and when Maddie had got into university, and when Arsenal had made it to the cup final.

  ‘Calm down,’ she said. ‘One minute you’re taking me on the hippie trail – but only for a gap year, because you’re far too young to think about retiring – and now you’re pushing us out to grass so you can wear a fleece and nurse your seedlings.’

  ‘Exactly – that’s the way decisions evolve. There’s no need to stay in London once my wage slave days are over.’

  ‘Wrong! There are many reasons to stay in London.’

  ‘Give me just one. And don’t say the theatre.’

  ‘I was just about to say the theatre.’

  ‘The last time we went was nine months ago and you agreed it was two hours of your life you’d never get back and that was a hundred quid down the drain.’

  ‘True, it was a bit shouty. And the time before that was a stultifying period piece. I only managed to stay awake by admiring their dresses.’

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘There’s always stuff to do in the city. Museums.’

  ‘Which you never visit.’

  ‘But I know they are there if the urge takes me.’

  ‘Overruled.’

  ‘It is true that I’d like to live somewhere you don’t get ex-cons knocking on the door to sell you dusters at an extortionate rate.’

  She thought of a card she kept in her bedside cabinet that Dom had sent her soon after they met. It was a romantic Victorian painting of a garden with flowers spilling out over a path leading up to the front door of a stone cottage. Inside he had written a one-line message – ‘Our future home?’ – because that was what happiness had looked like to them then, even if they had ended up in a terraced house in Clapham.

  ‘It makes so much sense,’ said Dominic, pacing the room as his plans took shape. ‘Think what we could get in exchange for this house. And there is one huge advantage: it would mean the kids would finally have to fly the nest!’

  Of course. The children. Their rooms were still stuffed with paraphernalia from their schooldays, teenage posters curling on the walls. The single beds had long been replaced with guest-friendly IKEA doubles, but otherwise their dens remained intact, cocoons from which, surely, they
would one day emerge.

  ‘It’s a bit brutal, don’t you think? It might be kinder – more organic – to wait until they’re ready. Let them fly the nest rather than shaking them out.’

  But even as she spoke the words, Nicola was coming round to the idea. A nugget of excitement was growing inside her as she imagined them skipping off to a bucolic retreat with nothing to worry about except picking the runner beans before they went to seed. It had never happened, the country cottage; common sense prevailed and they remained in London because neither of them wanted to become a grey-faced commuter ghoul. To compensate, they made weekend visits to obscure nurseries, loading up with rare plants and bags of compost to bring them on in the thin city soil, creating a tribute to Gertrude Jekyll in the narrow strip behind their townhouse.

  ‘We could actually plant a proper six-feet-deep border,’ she said.

  ‘We could! And a massive lavender hedge to nourish the bees, because obviously we’ll install hives to harvest our own honey. Grow our own vegetables and make chutney, too.’

  ‘I’ll get a copper preserving pan and make jam to tide us through the winter months.’

  She thought for a moment about long, dark nights. Curtains drawn at 3 p.m. Staring at endless pots of jam with only the two of them to eat them. They didn’t even like jam, really. It was a chilling prospect. And in the country, no one can hear you scream.

  ‘You don’t think it might get a bit lonely?’

  ‘Of course not! You’ll have me, what more do you want?’

  He wrapped his arms around her in a tight bear hug. Even after all these years, she still loved the way that made her feel, the certainty that everything was going to be just fine.

  ‘Anyway, the kids could come and stay,’ he said. ‘We’d have weekend parties, invite all our friends. It would be a riot! You love mass catering, you always say so.’

  He jumped to his feet and went over to light the gas beneath the griddle pan. She watched him bustling round the kitchen, moving with the same youthful alacrity as their son. Whenever she heard one of them running up the stairs, she could never tell whether it was Dom or Gus; they had the same tread and the habit of singing under their breath.

  ‘Slow down,’ she said, ‘let’s be rational here. It’s too easy to run away from everything you have. You hear about it all the time, people upping sticks, then finding they miss their old life, their friends . . .’