In my favourite place in the world, life is pain au chocolate writ large by morons with bombs and the floured hands of boulangère who rise before dawn. The Magdelane card I pulled was Gaia, all belongs, and black smoke clouds Middle Eastern skies and the scent of baking drifts upon Mediterranean air. The jasmine is out. The jays have multiplied. We hear chaffinches and collared doves. Yesterday a buzzard lifted off from low oaks to rise carefully above the burnt woods; the blackened trunks now decorated with green, it’s been three years since the fire. Margaret and I have come out to furnish the cottage which sits sentry like at the bottom of the drive; what was once all darkness and damp has become, like its big sister, light-filled - a silence that encourages listening. Opening the door for the kitchen contractor he said, si calme and I replied, Oui, comme un monastère. My favourite place in the world has grown.

We flew out, M & I, on Saturday, an early take off that brought with it the usual fret about missing the alarm, the taxi not finding us, needing the loo mid journey. The whereabouts of passports checked fifteen times between kitchen and terminal, carefully planned 100ml fluids in clear plastic bags meeting notices to say the rules had changed. There’s not many people I can travel with, but M is one of them. On your right, on your right as we enter glorious human theatre; off the shoulder sweatshirt and click-clack nails, sculpted brows unmoving with one eye kept on a matching boyfriend in black. M & I have known each other so long that all it takes is a look. She told me about the influencers arrested in Dubai for mistakenly filming the war. There’s a Netflix film in there somewhere.

In the queue for immigration which took forever and involved much tired cursing of Farage and Johnson a pet was shunted in its box straight forward under the straps which funnelled us in snaking lines; the owner, a middle-aged woman with regulation hair kept her nose in the air and eyes forward, daring us to judge. There was confusion when a uniformed official announced an abandoned bag and we all looked at the plastic casing with holes along the side, the strange heavy quiet emanating from it, and said to each other, who would forget a cat? When its owner stood at the high perspex she spoke fluent French enough to get a laugh out of the officer and the box tipped over on its side with a weighted thump at her feet and still no sound came.

The silk kaftan from the plane who’d enjoyed every inch of our conversation wafted three rows ahead. The perfectly rounded skull as big as a basketball with features the size of a child’s hunched in slow progression, an occasional profile revealed precision beard. We huffed and shuffled and cursed Farage and Johnson and sourced the scent that had followed us all morning as coming from M’s coat; no delicious notes of Frankincense rather the sprayed message of a raggedy Tom who makes nightly visits to my kitchen. I’d heard him in my half-sleep yowing his arrival and so used to it, thought nothing, but M’s trench coat had been hung ready on the raised handle of her case and with it the scent of her own cat and whippet. Derek meet Mousey & Twig, and if perfumers could capture the pervasiveness of his musk you’d only need one dab a year. Oh how we laughed.

To happy work of getting the cottage ready, we hit the ground running with lists - market / IKEA / bring from house. Two years ago, (or was it three?) M, S & I went down to what was the wreck of a shell, the building containing half a century of another family’s life and death, the walls dark, the air musty with fever. We’d opened the door carefully and switched on our merkabas before crossing the threshold. None of us wanted to turn right along the passageway to the darkened bedrooms beyond. In the death room, shutters bolted against July heat, we placed our tools; a bowl of water, flowers, salt, a candle and incense - this witchery we worked together without speaking. As we moved we all felt it, the web of sticky plasmic staying, the stuck and not letting go. It covered our faces, swept along our skin, clung to our backs and brought the hairs up on our arms. We chanted and lit and said prayers. We left the candles burning.

What change since then, in not just the dimensions of La Petite Souer but echoing through each inch of my life. Nothing looks the same. Everything feels different and she, the little sister of the big house, is dancing. Light-filled and faces washed, rooms expansive and love bouncing from terracotta tile to the ancient oaks which still reach their arms above her, she is reborn. If anyone’s in the mood for a very pretty cottage in southern France in which to vacance, let me know…

We managed swimming and backgammon and Ramatuelle. The tennis courts market on Sunday morning brought the joy of a budget and furniture I would normally pass by. We found barrels for tables, and Buddha thrown in, a bargaining in my poor French produced Habitat chairs at a knock down rate. All this arrived and was placed, a happy dolls house play of furnishing from which we stood back and admired our work. A transformation, and not just her. Six months ago I was here alone on a writing retreat unaware that a phone call was coming that would, in New York second, change everything. Six months ago I was still living according to an eight year plan that stretched a lifetime ahead. There has been half a year of grieving since, a season of rage and sorrow. All belongs says Gaia, and these last few days that truth has settled. All belongs.

Eleanor

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