The smell of coffee woke her Sunday morning from the fitful sleep she’d finally sunk into and Belinda dragged herself out of bed at eight o’clock, feeling drained. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror confirmed she looked as bad as she felt. A hot shower went someway to making her feel better and a careful application of foundation and eye make-up managed to camouflage the worst of the lack of sleep damage to her face.
Alain was in the kitchen when she went downstairs and poured her a cup of coffee. ‘Croissant?’ he said, pointing to the plate on the table.
Belinda pulled a chair out and sat at the table before helping herself to one. ‘Thanks.’ She took a mouthful of coffee. ‘Thank you for last night too,’ she said. ‘You make a mean hot chocolate.’ She smothered a yawn. ‘Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of sleep. What time can we expect the hordes to arrive?’
‘Hervé should be here any time soon and people wanting to set up in about twenty minutes.’ Alain looked at her. ‘You okay? You prefer to stay ’ere? ’Ave a day off?’
Belinda shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I prefer to be doing something.’
A car door slammed outside and a minute later Hervé knocked on the door. ‘Bonjour à vous. Ready for a fun day?’
‘Oui. Allons-y. Belinda will follow us later,’ and to Belinda’s relief, Alain ushered Hervé away before he came into the kitchen. She needed the caffeine to kick in before she was up to meeting and greeting people properly.
It was half an hour later, after two cups of coffee, before she felt ready to face the busy day ahead. Checking she had some money in her pocket and clipping BB’s lead on before locking the cottage door behind her, she ventured outside to find the campsite bustling with activity.
Alain had nailed signs to trees pointing to the parking area and also roped off the area where people could set up their tables. Belinda knew that Hervé was expecting about fifty stallholders to set up their individual tables and already most of these were in place, ahead of the official opening at ten o’clock.
As she wandered around, Belinda walked past tables selling children’s toys, clothes and games, books, bric-a-brac, plants, kitchen utensils, furniture, pictures. Everything, in fact, including the kitchen sink, was for sale. Belinda stopped by one particular seller who had simply set out her things on two large cloths on the ground. In amongst the plates, the coffee grinders, the pictures, the candles and the miscellaneous cutlery the woman had laid on the second cloth, was a battered and chipped painted plaster cast of a horse’s head. Belinda bent down and picked it up as her mind went straight back to her childhood.
For her tenth birthday, she’d received a modelling kit with several different horse moulds, a large bag of Plaster of Paris and paints. Her favourite mould had been a horse head just like this one that her dad had helped her to make. Once it was ready, she’d painted it to look as much like Lucky as she could. She’d mixed colours until she’d obtained just the right shiny chestnut colour for the head and carefully added the long white baize down the face once it was dry. She’d been so proud of herself. The finished head had sat on the shelf in her room until…
‘C’est five euros.’ The stallholder’s voice brought Belinda out of her reverie.
She smiled at the woman before pulling a five-euro note out of her pocket and handing it to her. She didn’t really want the chipped ornament but couldn’t find it in her to say so. It had brought back a precious happy memory. ‘Merci.’ Belinda turned and moved away. She’d put it on the table in her room and take it back to the UK when she left.
The car park was filling up and more people were milling around, laughing and joking as they met up with friends and family, all scanning the tables and stalls for that elusive item that could be worth a fortune, or at the very least be a bargain they couldn’t refuse.
Because the café wasn’t open, she and Alain had agreed to Yann setting up his catering van, selling coffee, cold drinks and, later in the day, there would be glasses of wine and beer for sale. She could see Alain was over there, talking to Yann and Hervé, and she wandered over to join