Gah!

Anyway, back to Virginie’s email:

We miss you here on the garden, Lonsdale Gardens seem very quiet and tidy and peaceful sans la famille Fleming. And Clare is so absorb in her new baby, honestly, it is like histoire repeating, she in your house with baby Joe remind me so much of when you had Casimir, just the same curly hair, like the little Lord Fauntleroy! And Capucine and Clementine, they always are asking me, how are Casimir, Mirabel and la petite Posy?

Now – I have a question!

Mathieu and I are very interested in a beautiful house our buying agent Catherine Faulks has seen, not too grand, only seven bedrooms, no more than 60 acres, somewhere outside Godminster. Is that near you guys?

Now the girls are starting at the Lycée, and I have sold BCBG to Bonpoint, though I am still consultant, we cannot travel to Soissons or île de Rey so easily, and we are asking ourselves, maybe we buy a country house here instead or, even, as well! So, dis-moi – the ‘inside track’ I beg of you. What is Godminster like? I have great friends there, en fait, but I would like to know from you, comme newcomers!

Bisous, Mimi, and a big embrace to Ralph and les enfants –I have a conference call with Louis Vuitton Moët-Hennessy scheduled so, I must run. But email me quick – promise?

xxx

Ana has entered the kitchen.

She came in, saw me at the laptop, and without asking me if there was anything she could do, sat down at the table opposite me, opened a diary with a furry cover and padlock, and started writing in it, with an extra-long biro which ends in a fluffy yellow chick. And instead of leaping to my feet, briskly, to say, ‘Now, Ana,’ in a cosy-but-firm way, ‘shall we go over what your duties are now?’ and then handing her a list and a schedule, like any other normal woman would, I sit there fuming. Which is utterly pathetic of me, I know.

Ana doesn’t know there’s no bread in the house, the milk is running out (Cas aged twelve is now called the ‘human bin’ and shovels his food à la Shrek). She doesn’t know where the larder is or when the children have supper. I’ve got to tell her.

Of course she hasn’t come here so I can wait on her hand and foot. Of course she doesn’t think she’s come to Home Farm for a holiday.

At least I hope she doesn’t.

So I smile at her, and say, ‘How nice that you write a diary! Most girls your age are writing explicit blogs about their colourful sex lives and posting them online.’

‘Yes?’ says Ana, her biro with its furry chick motionless.

‘Never mind,’ I say, still smiling, and realizing that if Ana had colour in her cheeks, clean hair and any expression whatsoever, she could be very pretty. ‘Can you make supper for the children? I’ll show you round the kitchen and everything later, but there’s a lasagne defrosting, and some peas in the freezer, and you could do some carrots. Why don’t you pop the lasagne into the Aga now and lay the table?’