Read Online Love in a Warm Climate by Helena Frith-Powell - Free Book Online

awake had not reached France – yet another good reason to move there.
    But I left the promised land with a heavy heart the following morning since there had been no call from the agent. As we boarded the plane, I wondered if I would ever walk through the vineyards at Sainte Claire again. Not only could I see myself being happy there – I couldn’t see myself being happy anywhere else.

Rule 5
It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be – Brigitte Bardot
    The French Art of Having Affairs
    â€œMummy, where’s Daddy?” There is a voice coming from somewhere asking a question I cannot answer. I know I need to react but I can’t seem to open my eyes.
    â€œMummy, Eddie took my fairy dress and says he is going to wear it to his first day at school,” another voice joins it. “Tell him he can’t; he’s a boy, and anyway it’s my dress.”
    â€œYou wear my flip-flop tops.” The first voice is back. I’m longing to see what’s going on and to know what a flip-flop top is.
    â€œYour flip-flops stupid, they’re called flip-flops,” says the disgruntled owner of the fairy dress.
    Why can’t I open my eyes? It feels like something dark is forcing them closed. Have I gone blind overnight? Is it possible to lose both one’s husband and one’s eyesight in a few short hours? Has God blinded me for visualising my husband’s mistress being publicly exposed as a home-breaker and having her head shaved by booing crowds in the Place du 14 Juillet as I am awarded the Légion d’Honneur for services to the French wine industry?
    â€œMummy, wake up and listen,” bellows a third voice. “You have to get up, it’s morning time. It’s light outside. We’re supposed to be starting school today.”
    I sit up, feeling dazed and disorientated.
    â€œMummy, why are you wearing a scarf around your eyes?” asks one of my children.
    Of course, the reason I can’t open my eyes is that I have a lavender-scented  bean-bag tied over them with a leopard-print scarf. I couldn’t sleep because of the bright moonlight forcing its way into the bedroom through the rickety old shutters. Or was it more to do with the fact that my husband of ten years and the father of the three little people currently clambering on top of me admitted to an affair last night with a French woman called Cécile?
    I unwind the leopard-print scarf and bean-bag from around my head.
    â€œMummy, you don’t look very good,” says Emily, head to one side, before putting her thumb in her mouth. I almost burst into tears at the sight of the three of them, all in their pyjamas, beautiful with blond tousled early-morning hair, looking up at me expectantly. Emily already has her cat’s ears on. She was given them for Christmas a year ago and never goes anywhere without them. I have got so used to seeing them they almost seem to be a part of her, but I wonder what the French will make of her eccentricity.
    â€œThat’s not very nice,” says Charlotte, adding with the brutal honesty of a child, “but it is true.”
    â€œMummy looks like a fairy,” says Edward, climbing closer to give me a hug. I clasp him to me greedily. Obviously this morning I am more vulnerable than most mornings, but poor Edward’s first words were ‘det away’ because I have always smothered him with hugs and kisses.
    â€œI look like a fairy too,” he continues, wriggling free from my arms. “Where’s Daddy?” he adds, looking around the room while doing an unsteady twirl on the bed to show me the fairy dress at its best. I wonder for a brief moment if I can pretend their father is hiding to avoid telling them the truth. But they would soon run out of places to look in our bedroom-cum -open-plan bathroom.
    â€œEdward,” I say looking at him and stroking his blond hair. I am about to utter my first