Page 1 of Where Do We Go From Here?
PROLOGUE
At first, Wendy had scrolled straight past it. She’d been mindlessly scrolling, thinking about work and what to make for dinner, so the image had nearly been lost forever in the endless stream of nonsense that is Facebook.
But eventually, once the picture was out of sight, she’d realised something had registered after all – an imprint persisted in her mind’s eye. So, after reading a heavily punctuated rant from a friend, she’d paused, frowned, and scrolled back up.
The image – amemethe youngsters call them, don’t they? – was of a rustic log cabin on the banks of a misty lake. The photo looked as if it had been taken in Norway or some similarly beautiful, chilly place. The fluorescent yellow text, in a horrible cutesy font, read:
You can live here, free, for a year. You have food, water, and wood to burn, but no phones, no shops, no internet & NO OTHER PEOPLE. If you make it, you walk away with $100,000. Do you accept the challenge?
Who needs payment?That had been her first clear thought, followed closely by,How is that even a challenge, anyway?
She’d read the text again and murmured out loud the words, ‘NO OTHER PEOPLE.’Other people are hell, she’d thought.That’s the whole point!
Next, she’d read the comments below the image. Her friend Jill had written,No dosh required. Packing my bag right now.Other people, people she didn’t know, had said similar things. A woman had asked if she could bring her dog, another, a pile of books. Someone even wanted to bring a horse! The cabin, Wendy had thought with a smile, would end up pretty crowded, and that trulywouldbe hell.
But then her smile had faded and for a few time-stretched minutes she’d frozen, lost in thought, as she imagined herself in that cabin – imagined how profoundly ecstatic it would feelto be that far away from the chaos and complexity of her everyday life. A strange thing had started to happen: a long-forgotten feeling of desire had begun to rise within her, an emotion so powerful that it would drive everything that came next.
She hadn’t trulywantedanything for so long, that was the thing. None of the options ever seemed to appeal in any way. This meal or that meal? This restaurant or that one? Here, there? With, without? Who gave a damn about any of it? She feared she had lost the ability to care.
But suddenly here was something she wanted – no, it was more than that – something she needed: a break, alone, away fromallof it.
And to think she’d almost scrolled straight past!
ONE
ESCAPE
How long ago had it been, then, since she’d had the initial idea? Five months? Six? She counts the months, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel as she does so. Seven and a bit, then. And now, here she is, on the fifteenth of October, peering out at the landscape, scared to step out of the car.
She works at slowing her breathing and sits listening to the click-click-clicking of the cooling engine.So here I am, she thinks. She’s not sure how she feels about that.
In front of her, through the windscreen, is a stunning view over hilltops – the sky starting to redden – while to her right she can see the building that will be her new home for the next six months. It’s not quite the cosy cabin that sparked the whole thing, because, after all, this is France, not Norway, and the cabin is made of beautiful grey stone rather than wood. Plus, instead of looking out over a misty lake, the view is of mountains and, in the distance, about twenty miles away, the Mediterranean Sea. It would have been nicer to be at the actual seaside and she’d tried her best to find somewhere further south, but her finances just wouldn’t run to it.
Because that, of course, is the other big differencehere: no one’s paying her to do this. She’s had to fork out almost five thousand pounds to rent this place for six months – such is the chasm between internet fantasy and real life. But despite this, amidst all the other emotions of apprehension and yes, fear, she’s feeling proud. She’d realised seven months ago that she needed this escape, and now, unaided by anyone, here she is. She has actually made it happen.
Of course, as a mother, as a nurse, as a wife, she has made plenty of things happen over the years, but they’ve almost always been done for those around her. This is the first time she can think of when she has chosen, as an adult, to do something for herself without taking anyone else into consideration.
Even before the car door is fully open, she gasps at the influx of cold air.
It’s freezing up here – something she hadn’t been expecting. After all, this is meant to be the south of France, isn’t it?
At Nice airport a mere forty-five minutes ago, the temperature had been a lovely eighteen degrees, and she’d even broken out in a sweat as she dragged her three suitcases to the car hire station in the warm October sunshine.
Of course, it’s higher here, and the higher you go the cooler it gets – she knows this. But all the same… She can still see the turquoise Mediterranean in the distance. If she squints, she can just about see the landing strip of Nice airport jutting out into the sea. How can it be so much cooler here?
Because she can’t quite believe the sensations her body is giving her and wants to be able to tell best friend Jill something concrete, she leans back into the car and turns on the ignition. According to the dashboard the temperature is seven degrees. Seven! They didn’t mention that in the Airbnb advert.
She rounds the car and pops the boot, then unzips herbiggest suitcase to pull out a purple puffer jacket which she wriggles into as she crosses the scrubby lawn to the front gate.
She finds the key box as specified on the gate pillar and the code she’s been given works, too. She’s often been accused of catastrophising and it’s true she’d half expected that the code wouldn’t work, or the keys would be missing, or perhaps the house wouldn’t exist at all. She had even made a mental note of every hotel she’d driven past, just in case. But here she is, opening the creaky gate, crossing the stepping-stone path to the front door, slipping her key in the lock and – open sesame – stepping inside.
Gosh, she thinks,stunning!Truly as beautiful as the photos in the advert.Closely followed by,Wow. Freezing. Arctic! Even colder in here than outside!
The cabin consists of a huge, high-ceilinged living room with a kitchen along the rear wall. The south-facing side is all glass, showing off the view of the mountains and the sky, and when she stands on tiptoe she can still see a strip of distant sea. The decor is Scandi style – a big, grey L-shaped sofa, a curvy wooden-framed armchair and on the left a spiral staircase leading to the mezzanine – her new bedroom.
Sunlight is streaming in making it one of the brightest, most beautiful spaces she’s ever seen, but though the sunlight feels warm where it hits her skin, the air in the room is icy – cold enough that she can see her breath rising in steam-train puffs as she explores. The bathroom is tiny but beautiful and also shockingly cold.The cheapskates could have put some heating on, she thinks with a roll of the eyes and a dismissive shake of her head.
She spins on one foot, scanning the walls for radiators, boilers, thermostats – basically anything she can switch on that might improve the situation, but other than a trendy cylindrical wood burner in the middle of the room, there are no obvious signs of alternative heating options. She’d known there would be a wood burner – it had been mentioned in the advert – butshe’d pictured it as a luxury extra for special cosy nights in, rather than her only source of heat.
