The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,61

at it from the outside. It was invisible, hidden in its tiny lane that straggled off the main road, so you couldn’t actually look at it from the outside unless you intended to. The off-centre chimney was extruding a scribble of smoke as I’d given in and lit the log-burner earlier that morning. I was telling myself that I did it to air the house out, whilst biting back the feeling that I was doing it to make the living room cosy for Gabriel’s visit. The kitchen light was on and the living room door was open, so a muted gleam of light shone through and onto the soggy moss and bushes, making the pellets of rain that hung on each leaf glimmer, as though someone had dusted giant glitter over the garden.

The cottage looked inviting, and less wicked witch than it had done when we’d moved in. A bit more lived in. I’d stripped the door knocker of about a century of black paint and polished it, although, in deference to the film crew, I’d held off painting the front door so it still hung, slightly askew, flaking and dusty. But now when you went through, it gave onto a hallway where the floor was polished wood – thanks to hours on my knees with graded paper and wax – and it smelled of baking, of scented candles and polish, and not of rotting vegetation.

My house. Our home.

I went in, picking up the trail of destruction that Poppy always left on her way to school. A plate that had held toast was on the stairs, there was a mug of half-drunk tea two steps further down and her uniform, which needed washing, had been carefully disentangled from the rest of the detritus in her room and left sprawled between the bannisters and the kitchen doorway. Her tie was screwed up on the table. It lacked all the niceties of the London flat – the Grade A central heating, the double glazing that blocked the outside world, the designer furniture. But it felt more like home than that flat ever had done. Probably because the flat, our jobs, and Luc’s insistence on maintaining the lifestyle he’d grown up with had meant a team of cleaners coming in every other day. The cottage just had me, and, on the other end of the scale, Poppy. No Gallic tutting, whenever he deigned to turn up, having been ‘away’ allegedly overseeing the family wine business or managing the estate, when he liked to complain about the ‘mess’, sweep Poppy off for a shopping expedition and expect me to put marking on hold to tidy up.

I felt a sudden rush of gladness that that was not my life any more.

Once the cottage was tidy, I went up and showered. I would not have admitted it to anyone, but I dressed a little more carefully than usual in black jeans that Poppy coveted and a slim knit sweater, and I even went as far as to apply a tiny amount of make-up for the first time since we’d come to Dorset. Only an almost invisible slick of lipstick, a dab of mascara and the merest hint of eyeliner, no more. I didn’t want Gabriel to think I’d made an effort for him. Then I went back downstairs and put a batch of buns in the oven, so that the house smelled of fresh baking. I cut a few sprigs of mint from the pots on the window ledge and dotted them around the kitchen worktop in jam jars, for that Good Housekeeping touch, although the rather sparse nature of them actually looked more as though I was trying to keep moths at bay.

Then I sat down at the table and tried to work on the expression I’d be wearing when he turned up. Casual, relaxed, slightly surprised to see him – after all, hadn’t I been so consumed by my hobby that I’d forgotten he was coming? I hastily put a book on the table and bent it open to look as though I’d been absorbed in reading. Then I realised that the book was Poppy’s poetry textbook and shoved it into a corner. I wanted to look spontaneous and relaxed, not as though I was planning an essay on Wordsworth. There was a half-read Wuthering Heights on the dresser and I replaced the poetry with that. Still a bit highbrow for off-the-cuff reading, but hopefully Gabriel wouldn’t think I was taking Heathcliff as romantic