Page 3 of A French Country Escape
‘At the moment, we haven’t got the money to do the necessary upgrade,’ Peter answered. ‘And we require an injection of cash right now so we can finally get the château open this summer for guests and start to get our name out there for events. The occasional wedding or maybe vintage car rally, car boot sales or…’ Peter shook his head in exasperation. ‘I don’t know what. I do know we said we’d never break up the remaining estate, but things have changed so much in the last year, selling the cottages seems to be the only avenue open to us.’
Ingrid nodded thoughtfully. ‘Everything has been so much more expensive than we expected – despite all those flow charts and spreadsheets we created.’ She gave Peter a small smile. His unexpected redundancy at sixty had given them the opportunity to change their lives and they’d seized it happily. They’d both done their ‘due diligence’ at the time of buying the château, but they’d definitely been guilty of looking at things through rose-coloured glasses with a touch of naivety thrown in.
‘This offer we have then – is it close to the asking price? Or do we have to try to negotiate for a few extra thousands?’ Peter asked.
‘Close enough. It’s eight thousand short, but we did agree that the maximum we could drop would be ten thousand euros. So,’ Ingrid shrugged, ‘Solange says the couple have really fallenin love with the place and are cash buyers, so the sale should go through quickly. The man – I forget his name, Solange did say – will be looking for work and could be interested in helping with the grounds.’ Ingrid hesitated. ‘There’s something that worries me though. What if whoever buys the cottages doesn’t fit in, doesn’t like living here, and in a few months they put the cottages back on the market? We’ll have no say then about who they sell to.’
Peter was silent for a moment. ‘We could try to put a clause in saying that if that happens, we have first refusal and the right to buy the cottages back. And then cross our fingers that if thatdoeshappen, it won’t be until the château is established and earning its keep with guests and events. I’d rather turn them into holiday rentals too, but…’ He caught hold of Ingrid’s hand. ‘The château rooms are ready for guests this year, and the money from the sale of these two cottages will give us enough to finish the chapel renovations so we can offer a full wedding package. We need to employ a gardener and general handyman to help me finish sorting out the grounds, ready for safe public access. And then we can start doing some proper publicising for thechambres d’hôtes. I know it has been a struggle getting this far.’ Peter glanced at Ingrid. ‘And the last year has been hard on both of us. I also know people thought we were mad at our age to take something like this on, especially in a foreign country. Do you regret taking it on? I know it was my idea to leave England, my dream to live in France more than yours.’ He hesitated. ‘If you feel it’s too much for us, rather than just sell the cottages, we could sell up completely. The château is in a much better state than when we bought it, so we should at least get our money back.’
Ingrid shook her head defiantly. ‘No regrets.’ Peter might be the one with the French ancestors, but she loved their life in France and felt completely at home there. ‘I love the place,and the last year, seeing it come back to life has been worth all the hard work, and I’m longing to see it filled with guests and busy with people enjoying themselves. And don’t forget Penny. She loves it here too and I’m just hoping the time will come when she…’ Ingrid paused, thinking about their daughter and weighing up her words carefully, ‘decides to join us and make a life for herself here in France.’
‘I know you and I weren’t that keen on Rory the one and only time we’ve met him after we moved over here,’ Peter said. ‘And I have to admit, I can’t quite see suave Rory giving up his job to come and live in rural France. Paris maybe, but not Brittany.’
Ingrid gripped Peter’s hand hard. ‘They aren’t even living together yet and my gut feeling is they never will. I think Penny is holding back from that commitment for some reason. Anyway, back to our current problem. I refuse to sell up and let someone else benefit from all the hard work we’ve already done. Selling the château will be our very last resort. I say we accept the offer on the cottages and continue with our dream.’
3
The next few weeks passed in a daze for Sasha. Since their offer on the Cottages du Lac in Finistère had been accepted, her life had been beyond busy. There was a never-ending list on her laptop of jobs to be done, people to be contacted, contracts for telephones, Netflix, internet, electricity – to name but four – to be cancelled, packing up her few possessions, her notice to be worked. Handing in her resignation had prompted Derek, her boss, to try to bribe her to stay with a pay rise. A pay rise she would gladly have accepted months ago, but now it was just too late to be told how valuable a member of the team she was and that they didn’t want to lose her. She had a new life waiting for her in France and nothing they said or offered was going to delay the start of it. A life that would not include spreadsheets, if she had anything to do with it. Of course, she realised that her schoolgirl knowledge of French was going to limit her choice of jobs, especially at first, but hopefully that would change once they were living there and using the language on a daily basis.
It was in the middle of the night that the worries and the fears flooded her dreams in full Technicolor, waking her with a start and leaving her catching her breath. Were they doingthe right thing? They were both aware they would have to be careful with money. Would they make friends? What were the Chevaliers like? Sasha wished that they’d had time to meet them before buying the cottages – what if they were Parisians who’d moved to Brittany for a different way of life after the pandemic? She’d been told Parisians were difficult to get on with. Full of attitude and superiority. Solange had assured them that the owners were really lovely people, but then shewouldsay that, wouldn’t she? However hard she tried, the worries of the unknown future she and Freddie were voluntarily leaping into wouldn’t be stilled.
Since her divorce from Bradley, she’d struggled to get not only her finances back on an even keel, but also her life. Her mum had been her champion there. Sasha knew that she could have spiralled into depression if it hadn’t been for her mum insisting she was not a failure and calling Bradley names, not so quietly under her breath. There hadn’t been a marital home to sell, no children, no joint account to divide – just divorce lawyers to pay. Now, two years down the line, she’d recovered from the trauma of that period and was happy enough with her life, although, if pressed, she would admit to being ready for another relationship. One that this time would lead to the family she longed for. She pushed that thought way. Her top priority was settling in and sorting out her cottage, and then finding some sort of revenue.
Her savings were reasonable, but wouldn’t last forever in France without being topped up with an income from something or other. She planned on trying to set aside some money by being as self-sufficient as possible when they got to France – growing their own vegetables, mainly tomatoes and lettuce in this first summer, and things like that. She figured that buying small plants and putting them in weed-free, freshly dug soil would give her a head start on recognising the weeds when theystarted to appear which, of course, was inevitable. Freddie was going to plant a couple of things in both the cottage gardens that they’d taken from their mum’s plot. Some cuttings of a couple of the rose bushes and some roots of the ground-covering snow-on-the-mountain to edge the paths.
Asking herself how long it would take to improve her French, find a job and settle into a new culture was a proverbial unanswerable question. But Sasha hoped it wouldn’t be as long as she feared it might be. She was determined to have room in this new existence of hers to have some fun, to spend time doing things she enjoyed and to make new friends.
As she packed sketch pads and paints into a box ready to leave England, she knew she wanted that side of her life back too. Before she and Bradley had got together, she’d built up an Etsy shop with her sketches and watercolours of horses, dogs and cats. Bradley had called it her ‘side hustle’ and made rude comments about her ‘little hobby’ whenever he got the chance. Although he hadn’t been adverse to her spending the so-called ‘pin money’ on dinners out for the two of them, or on putting the petrol in a car she rarely drove. By the time they divorced, sketching and painting had virtually disappeared because of Bradley’s insistence that she spend more time with him, and her Etsy shop had been down to merely ticking over. Recovering from the hurt Bradley had inflicted on her when he’d left her for Monica – the woman living two doors away from them – had taken time as she struggled to pick up the pieces of her existence again.
Best not think about that. It was in the past.Hewas in the past. And there was no way Sasha was going to let a man rule her life like that ever again. She took a deep breath, closed and sealed the last box, pushed her shoulders back and promised herself that her new start in France would be different and wonderful.
And then, like a bad smell, Bradley turned up again.
It was the week before they were due to move when an unsuspecting Sasha answered a knock on the door of her flat. Assuming it was one of her downstairs neighbours, she opened it without thinking. Struck dumb for a second or two from the shock of seeing him standing there, she tried to close the door in his face, but Bradley already had his foot in the way.
‘What are you doing here? And how did you get in?’ Sasha demanded.
‘Hi, Sasha. How are you? I heard about your mum, and I thought the least I could do was to come and pay my respects.’
‘There was no need, but thank you and goodbye,’ and Sasha pushed the door again to try to close it. Bradley’s foot though stayed firmly wedged in the way.
‘I’d also like to say I’m sorry for the way I behaved.’
Sasha caught her breath as she gazed at him, dumbfounded.
‘Please may I come in and we can talk?’
‘No. There is nothing to talk about,’ Sasha said. ‘Just leave. I’m expecting Freddie any moment.’
‘Of course you are.’ Bradley gave a sceptical laugh. ‘Monica and I are no longer together. I realised I’d made a mistake.’
‘Still lying your way through life,’ Sasha replied. The day she’d bumped into Monica in the local shop and been told the truth directly would stay in her mind for a long time. ‘It was Monica who realised the whole thing was a mistake and kicked you out six months ago, which quite frankly made me laugh. A bit of karma there I think.’
Bradley shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s us I want to talk about. You have no one else in your life and neitherdo I now. We could start again, give ourselves a second chance in a home of our own. Make it work this time. What do you think?’
Sasha took a deep breath as she realised what this visit was truly about. ‘What do I think? I think you are not only delusional but also a despicable human being. You heard about Mum dying, realised Freddie and I might inherit some money, and thought you’d like some of it. Now please take your foot away from my door and leave. I don’t want anything to do with you ever again.’
‘And to think I once thought you and I were soulmates.’ Bradley gave her a contemptuous look. ‘You’re nothing but a selfish cow.’
