Free Out of My Depth by Emily Barr Page B

the drive, and turned left at the end of the road, taking the cross-country route towards Pau. It was hard to appreciate that one of them was a liar, and that the liar was telling outrageous lies to my face, or at least to my ear. I desperately hoped it was her.
    My old friends were arriving. I was worn out with preparations and tired of stressing about children’s bedlinen and every other mundane detail imaginable. Buying the food and planning menus had been the easy part. Getting the house ready for four adults and three children had been more complicated than I had expected. Normally, with guests, I just made up the spare bed and put some towels out. This time I had bought three sets of garish duvet covers, featuring Barbie, Action Man and the Teletubbies respectively, and I had brought in two metal bedsteads from a shed (left behind by the previous owner with specific kind instructions that we must use them when we had our own children). Izzy’s boy was having to sleep on my chaise longue, because I had been too proud to accept Izzy’s offer to bring a ‘sleepover bed’ which was apparently inflatable and bore a picture of Spiderman. There had been a rickety old wooden bed left behind in the shed, and I had earmarked this for Sam. Roman, however, had other ideas.
    ‘He’s not sleeping on this piece of shit,’ he announced, when we went to fetch it.
    I laughed. ‘Roman! He’s three years old! He doesn’t care if it’s a bit manky.’
    ‘Obviously,’ he said, rolling his eyes at me, ‘I don’t give a fuck what the child makes of it. If he’s happy to sleep in the shed then he’s most welcome. I’m talking about this woodworm. What have we spent on termite treatments?’
    I nodded. ‘Ten thousand euros.’ There were multiple certificates to prove it. I had put up with four young men clumping round my house for a fortnight, injecting every piece of wood with foul smelling chemicals and stubbing their cigarettes out in my basins.
    Reluctantly, we took the chaise longue apart, and reassembled it upstairs. My beautiful day bed, my most prized piece of furniture, looked so ludicrous dressed up in Teletubbies bedlinen that I caressed it apologetically. I couldn’t even sit on it, because the plastic undersheet was crinkly. Neither of us had a clue whether three-year-olds wore nappies at night, but if the boy wet the bed he would ruin it and I knew I would find it hard to keep my temper if that happened.
    After this visit, we were going to be left with all sorts of rubbish we would never use again.
    Maybe we would though, I mused, as I sped through villages. Perhaps, in some unimaginable way, the friendships would be rekindled, and the visits would become regular. If not, I would use the duvet covers as novelty dust sheets.
    I parked as close to the airport building as I could, and looked around the interior of the car, putting off stepping into the heat. According to my dashboard, it was forty degrees outside. The car was spotless. I had vacuumed it, and cleared out all rubbish and sundry items. All I had in the car now were three small bottles of mineral water, inside the passenger door, for my guests. There was a little booster on the back seat, which was an unfamiliar addition to my life. I glanced down at myself. This was it. I hoped I looked good enough, because my surface was all I had.
    Pau airport was tiny. It looked like a stylish shed in a field. Its roof curved, and its windows were wide and surrounded by wood. I strode in, running through my mental checklist. Menus were planned. Most of the meals were prepared. The drinks cabinet was so full that the door was not shutting properly. Each bedroom, except for the children’s room, had vases of flowers that were just about to open. I had ironed the towels, with lavender ironing water. The cleaner had been. Everything was ready.
    The only international flight from Pau was this one to Stansted, so almost everybody in the building was British. You only