Page 22 of Falling for Provence

She also wasn’t about to let Liam sneak back into her thoughts. As Laura had reminded her, she was well rid of him. It was probably quite timely, mind you, to remind herself that it was physical attraction that had started that whole train wreck of a relationship.

As a distraction from thoughts she didn’t want to gain traction, Ellie attacked the floor with even more enthusiasm, holding her breath to avoid inhaling the dust, and she soon had too much mess to fit into the dustpan. On her first trip downstairs to empty it, she found that Pascal had moved from the corner of the living room. He was now lying close to the bottom of the staircase.

‘Did you have some food?’ she asked him. ‘And water?’

She checked the bowls as she went outside to empty the pan under a lemon tree, but they seemed undisturbed, and thatworried her a little. She didn’t just have a property to spruce up, she had unexpectedly gathered some other beings to care for. Even if they were only abandoned donkeys and a stray dog, she had responsibilities to think about other than purely personal ones.

Surprisingly, it didn’t feel like an unwanted burden.

Because this was a temporary situation? Because they were animals, rather than people? Or was it because they, along with this property, meant that she had to think about things other than herself?

When she came downstairs to empty the last of the mess she had scraped from the floorboards, Pascal got up and followed her, limping badly. Ellie slowed her steps, paused by the bowls and waited for the little dog to catch up.

‘Water… See?’ She stooped, wetting her fingers and then holding them out. ‘You must be thirsty by now, aren’t you?’

Pascal sniffed her fingers, and then, a heartbeat later, a pink tongue appeared and licked them. Thoroughly. While Ellie wiped her fingers on her jeans, he took another step towards the bowl, lowered his head and began to lap up the water. As she returned from the lemon orchard to find the little dog delicately extracting a single piece of kibble from the bowl and then crunching it between his teeth, she found herself smiling, a little bemused by how such a small thing could feel like a significant achievement.

That she had figured out how to work the washing machine was also very satisfying and, while the sheets were drying in the sunshine, Ellie took hot water, a scrubbing brush and a couple of old towels upstairs to finish cleaning the floor of the bedroom. By the time she was done, the linen was dry, and she climbed the stairs yet again to remake the bed. This time, Pascal followed her. He didn’t come into the bedroom but positioned himself by the door to see what was going on.

The new fitted sheet from the supermarket, with its elasticated corners, would have been easier to put over the mattress, but she knew how delicious this crisp cotton would feel against her skin tonight, especially with that faint hint of lemon that she caught as she shook out and smoothed the sheet. Folding and tucking in the ‘hospital’ corners she, along with her sisters, had been taught at a young age gave her a pang of homesickness, so she took a photo of a neat corner and texted it to her mother.

I remembered, see? Just as good as a fitted sheet.

Proud of you

But hope you’re doing more interesting things than housework all the time.

Ellie considered her reply, her gaze roaming until it caught on the small face peering around the edge of the door, a black nose resting on a bandaged paw. Should she tell her mother that she had run over a dog that she was now fostering? Or that she had had a disturbing moment of finding her less-than-friendly neighbour attractive?

It’s all good

I’ll have a glass of wine and enjoy the sunset when I’ve finished making the bed. It’s gorgeous here.

That seemed to finish the conversation, and Ellie decided later, as she fluffed up the pillows and stuffed them into their clean cases, that maybe she shouldn’t have added that last sentence. This inheritance, and the reminders of a former life, had been obviously unwelcome for her mother. Upsetting, infact. Although the catastrophic disintegration of her marriage and the struggle to raise her young daughters alone had been decades ago, so surely it should have lost its power to derail such a hard-won contentment, if not happiness?

Homesickness was laced with something that felt like a warning. A bad relationship or an inability to escape the past could really taint the rest of your life, couldn’t it? Ellie was finally realising how close she had been to letting that happen to herself. Her family had been right to be worried about her.

They’d been right about something else, too.

What had been intended as simply a two-day break in another country had unexpectedly become life-changing. And maybe Laura telling her to start standing on her own two feet had provided the motivation to dig deep and find some determination and self-discipline. Perhaps that push had been exactly what she’d needed, because it was beginning to feel as if it was at least possible to start embracing life properly again.

And, even if it was only a possibility, it felt remarkably good.

7

Ellie woke at first light the next day and lay there for a moment letting her skin remember the bliss of getting into this bed last night.

She’d had a bath, shaved her legs and then slathered them with moisturiser because she hadn’t forgotten that, while freshly laundered sheets were one of her favourite things in life, having smooth legs definitely took the experience to the next level. Well… shehadforgotten, to be honest. Or perhaps she had simply pushed pleasures like that out of her life because they seemed too irrelevant or too self-centred or something.

She moved a leg to recapture the sensation of the crisp cotton, her heart missing a beat when she encountered an unexpected obstacle in the space behind her knees. Her head jerked up from the pillow.

‘Pascal… how did you get there?’

He didn’t lift his head, or even open his eyes, but his tail thumped the bed slowly, and Ellie sank into her pillow again with a sigh.

‘Dogs aren’t supposed to sleep on beds,’ she told him. ‘Especially smelly dogs.’

Against the backdrop of a dawn chorus gathering more participants outside her open window, Ellie thought about what she was going to do with her day. It took a moment to decide what day of the week it might be.

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