Page 84 of The Riviera House Swap

Got to revisit Cagnes-sur-Mer

Sal found love!

Cons:

Pierre turned out to be an a*hole

The terrifying electric bike rides

Put on 6 lb

Jemima will probably never forgive me

Perhaps her lists weren’t so terrible after all, she mused. Putting it all on paper, she could see that overall, the holiday hadn’t been a disaster at all. In fact, taking the risk had in many, many ways, paid off.

But enough for now. For now, she was done.

She pulled her laptop onto her lap and opened up an email.

Dear Jemima,

Just to confirm I’ll be back in the office on 5 November as agreed. Bright and early!

Thanks again for the opportunity.

Best wishes,

Nina

Her hand hovered over ‘send’ but at the last moment, she saved it to drafts. There was no need to rush into these things, after all.

She dragged out her suitcase and began to fold clean clothes into it. She had a few days, but she’d do it properly so that she could unpack at her parents’ without having to abuse their washing machine from the outset. She had the impression that Mum was quite pleased she was staying, but it didn’t shake off the additional shame she felt at moving back in with her folks at forty – like a caricature of a promising daughter gone off the rails.

Still, it was what it was.

She opened some of her drawers and began sorting through products she could pack now and others she’d need to use until the last minute. And her hand touched paper. Pierre’s letters. She drew them out, looking again at the photo of them both from all those years ago. Her smiling. Pierre grinning along too. She picked up her pen and drew a moustache on Pierre, then a beret. Then sunglasses. Then, gaining momentum, she began to scribble out his face entirely.

A few minutes later, she was in the kitchen, the photo and a pile of paper by her side, scrabbling in the drawer for the matches she’d seen a few days earlier. Her hands grabbed the packet and then she was out in the garden gathering what she could – leaves, small sticks, anything that looked potentially combustible. After four attempts, she managed to get a tiny flame glowing; it gained strength when it began to lick at a particularly dry collection of sticks she’d stacked on top and finally, she had a tiny bonfire.

‘Goodbye Pierre,’ she said, taking the first of his letters. Crouching down, she fed the corner of it to the flames and watched as the fire made its way across the cursive writing, until she was forced to drop the whole thing. Despite the tiny size of the flames, the smoke the aged paper made was impressive and spiralled skywards.

She watched, satisfied then picked up the next.

There were ten letters in all, plus the photo. And she wanted to do this slowly. To erase Pierre from her life with purpose and pleasure. But only five letters in, she heard a commotion outside. A man’s voice, raised. Then Sabine, shouting from her window, saying something she couldn’t make out. Nina debated what she should do – she oughtn’t really to leave the fire, and surely Sabine would call her if there was any real problem. Still, it was unsettling.

Not as unsettling, however, as the sight of severalpompiersarriving in the garden seconds later, their faces stony. ‘Madame,’ one of them said. ‘No!’

What were they? Some sort of letter-preserving society? It wasn’t as if these missives from the past had any value. She straightened up, confused.

Sabine rushed in front of the men, wearing a dressing gown, her hair in disarray. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Nina. It is illegal!’

‘Illegal?’

‘Yes, to burn waste in the garden. It is illegal!’

‘But these are letters. I was… it was symbolic.’

‘I do not think,’ Sabine said, nodding half-comically over her shoulder at the angry-faced men in her wake, ‘that these gentlemen will appreciate the symbolism.’

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