Wide awake now and knowing further sleep would be impossible, Jodie carefully edged herself out of bed leaving Ben to sleep for at least another hour. Picking up her dressing gown from the chair and slipping it on, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Still not quite light, she could hear the gentle morning breeze rattling the roofing sheets of the lean-to sunroom attached to the kitchen. Tess, Ben’s collie dog, raised her head from her basket in the corner and thumped her tail as Jodie switched on the lights, but didn’t bother to move.
‘Silly time to get up, isn’t it?’ Jodie said, giving Tess a stroke before switching the kettle on and spooning coffee into the cafetière. Ten years of working in a busy PR firm in London had etched the early morning wake-up routine deep into her subconscious. She sighed. How many years would it take for her to lose the habit?
Now, near the end of February, and two months after her whirlwind romantic wedding, the major flaw in her new life was spending less time than she’d expected with Ben. Increasingly she was beginning to feel a tiny bit… not bored exactly, just lost. Her initial enjoyment at not having to adhere to a daily work routine was also beginning to wear off.
Jacqueline Saville had drummed the need to be her own woman into her daughter from an early age, making Jodie fiercely independent and instilling a need in her to be self-sufficient financially. With Jacqueline’s insurance money still untouched and a respectable savings account of her own, it did mean getting another job wasn’t currently high on her agenda, but she definitely needed more to do. Contributing to their joint finances and not just being ‘a kept woman’, as Tina had so succinctly put it, was an essential requirement in this new life of hers.
She was missing Tina too. Quick texts and a Skype chat at weekends just weren’t the same. Jodie couldn’t help feeling they were drifting apart as the course of their lives changed. Still, only another few weeks until the London Book Fair when she and Tina could have a good catch-up. Jodie made a mental note to ask Ben which hotel they would be staying in so she could let Tina know. Hopefully he, or his agent, had remembered to book one. Rooms in central London were like gold dust during Book Fair week.
Pushing the cafetière plunger down and inhaling the deep aroma, Jodie debated whether to take a cup up to Ben but decided to leave him sleeping. Heaven only knew what time he’d got to bed last night. When she’d gone up at eleven, tired of waiting for him to join her, he’d still been in the study, furiously typing away.
Apparently, meeting her, getting married and going on honeymoon had interfered with his normal working target of a book a year. Not that he had any regrets of course, he assured her, but it did mean meeting the deadline for his latest book was seriously under threat.
‘I’m going to have to burn the midnight oil for a few weeks,’ he’d said. Which was exactly what he’d been doing since they’d arrived back here the first week in January after spending Christmas and their honeymoon in the French Alps.
Since meeting Ben and finishing work just days before their whirlwind wedding, Jodie had relished the unfamiliar feeling of not having anyone imposing impossible deadlines on her. Spending so much time alone during the last few weeks had at least given her time to catch her breath after the frantic pace of her previous life. She knew she’d been exhausted and close to burnout when she and Ben had met. But surely her new life in France wouldn’t always be this quiet and… and if she were truthful she had to acknowledge that it was currently quite a lonely life. She needed to meet more people and find something to do.
Tess thumped her tail as a dishevelled Ben appeared. ‘Morning, ma cherie,’ he said, kissing Jodie. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Don’t think my body clock has adjusted yet,’ Jodie said, pouring him a coffee. ‘Although I’ve always been more of a lark than an owl. Unlike you,’ she added. ‘You were late to bed last night.’
Ben nodded. ‘I was on a roll. A couple more weeks and I’ll have finished. Have we got any croissants?’
Jodie lifted the lid off the breadbin and put two pains au chocolat on a plate. ‘These do you?’
‘Perfect.’
After breakfast Ben disappeared into his study for the morning, as per normal, and Jodie poured herself another coffee and sat in the sunroom enjoying the view. A view so different from her previous one, when she’d been living with Tina in one of London’s high-rise apartment blocks, she caught her breath every time she looked at it. She doubted it would ever stop amazing her.
In London the view from the flat had been all grey rooftops and skyscrapers with the noise of the traffic reaching even the ninth floor if she or Tina dared to open the double-glazed windows. Here, where the suburban buildings had been replaced by woods and green fields, windows seemed to be almost permanently open – even this early in the year – and the early morning noise was dominated by the cockerel on the farm up the lane and the mooing of the cows as they were led in for milking.
The spire of the village church where the vicar had blessed their union following the civil ceremony was just visible over the tops of the trees. Ben had told her there were often deer down there in the woods and she longed to see them. She longed, too, for the long summer days when the two of them could eat dinner out on the terrace in the cool of the evening under the pergola.
But a little niggling, negative voice had started slyly whispering in her ear: is this what you really want? A quiet life in a small French village? She might be in love with Ben but had Tina been right when she’d told her she was rushing things?
Thoughtfully, Jodie finished her coffee and walked back into the kitchen. Today, at least, she was going to be busy. She was having her second French lesson with Madame Colbert in the village. Making new friends and being accepted into the community was difficult when you couldn’t speak the language fluently, so telling Tina that brushing up on her French had to be a top priority in her new life had been the truth.
After the lesson she planned to finally investigate ‘Le Gout de la Campagne’ or The Taste of the Countryside – a shop on the main road just outside the village. The wooden, chalet-type building looked just the kind of place she’d enjoy browsing in and she’d been promising herself that she’d do that for weeks now.
Become a Stepford wife like Tina had suggested? No chance. She’d never let that happen in a million years.