‘I bet it’s a bloody PA,’ Erin said, ‘or a receptionist. This is a midlife crisis and he’ll be back with his tail between his legs within weeks, I’m telling you now. But the question is, would you have him back?’
‘I really don’t think that is the question. I think he’s gone. For good.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Awful.’
The women looked at each other, so many unanswered questions between them. Kate knew that Erin was itching to probe – to ask about the state of their marriage, were they happy, how were things in the bedroom? But now was not the time and they both knew it. That would all come, in the days and weeks to follow.
‘What have you told the girls?’ Erin asked.
‘Nothing, they didn’t ask where he was: they’re used to him being away sometimes in the week. I sent them off to school as usual.’
‘What are you going to tell them? Are you going to say he’s away on business like he asked you to?’
‘I think so – not for him but for them. They’ll be upset that he didn’t say goodbye before he left but then they’ll forget about it and it gives me some time to plan what I’m going to do next.’
‘Which is?’
‘I have no fucking idea.’
2
Pete
Pete looked at the French countryside stretching out before him and sighed deeply. He felt at once both utter contentment and nagging guilt over what he was doing. He took a sip of his ice-cold white wine and turned to look at Claire who was lying on the wooden recliner next to him. Her dark eyes were covered by a large pair of black designer sunglasses and she had wrapped a thin blanket around her like a cocoon to keep her warm in the unseasonably cool sunshine. She had never looked more beautiful.
The B&B they were staying at in the South of France looked like something from a picture-perfect postcard. A stone-built gîte with powder-blue shutters and ivy climbing up the walls, its cobbled veranda spilled out on to the open countryside. From their vantage point they could see endless fields and beyond that, the tops of houses from a nearby village in the valley. The place was run by a friendly French couple in their fifties who had, of course, instantly assumed they were married. Monsieur and Madame Garland, they had called them when they arrived, tired and giddy, earlier that day. He knew Claire had been thrilled by this.
On the little wrought-iron side table between them lay a pile of photos of a property not too dissimilar to the one they were staying in right now. It was going to be their new home and if you looked hard enough into the distance, you might even be able to see the top of its roof peeping out from below the hills. He glanced down again at the photos, feeling both excitement and disbelief, before catching Claire’s eye. She grinned at him and he grinned back, high on life. He felt like a lovestruck teenager embarking on his first trip away from home. But this was different because, if the plan came off, they wouldn’t be going home again.
It was Claire who had first suggested that they move to France. Her dad had passed away a couple of years ago and had left her his house, a three-bed cottage which he had bought to enjoy his retirement in. But his plans had been cut short after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the house had been untouched since he passed away. Claire told Pete that she couldn’t bring herself to return to it since the death of her beloved father. But she had spoken so fondly of holidays there while her father was still alive, describing the short walk to the bakery in the village to pick up fresh bread each morning, the summer weeks spent paddling in the nearby river, a pace of life so different to the loud, dirty, chaotic, endless relentlessness of London. If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life, wasn’t that the famous saying? Well, Pete was fucking knackered.
Even so, the idea had seemed ludicrous at the time. It was one thing that he was fooling around behind his wife’s back with another woman but quite another to abandon his family entirely and move to another country. ‘I have the girls to think of,’ he had reminded Claire when she suggested it. ‘I can’t just up and leave like that.’
‘People commute from France to London all the time,’ she had assured him. ‘It’s so easy now. You could still see them at weekends and sometimes in the week too. And think of the amazing summer holidays they could have out here. They could come for the whole six weeks. They’d absolutely love it, you know they would.’
‘What about my job?’ he’d asked, still humouring her at this stage because the idea, while alluring in theory, was unrealistic and impossible.
‘What, the job you’ve been moaning about pretty much since we met? The one you’ve been talking about leaving for months?’
‘Yeah, fair enough, but I’d still need to work. How am I going to earn money holed away in the middle of the French countryside eating baguettes? It’s a sweet idea, Claire, but come on, be realistic.’
And so of course, she had done just that. There was no denying that Claire liked to get her own way. When Kate was like this, buzzing around with a bee in her bonnet like the time she had made him buy that damn house, it annoyed him but with Claire he felt different, her gentle persuasion was somehow less offensive and more endearing. She had scoured job listings, looking for roles that could be carried out remotely with occasional travel for meetings and presented him with some frighteningly feasible options.
‘It’s becoming much more popular these
