Read The French for Christmas for Free Online

very faint light of the dawn that’s just beginning to filter in through the skylight above my head, I make out that it’s barely six. I turn over, pulling the covers back up again, reluctant to leave the warmth of my bed. Even a short trip to the bathroom entails a scramble to pull on my thick sweater and long woollen socks before shoving my feet into my slippers. The floorboards are cold enough but the bathroom tiles are positively glacial.
    It turns out that the peace and quiet of the countryside is a whole lot noisier than I’d ever have imagined. The first night I was here I turned in early, worn out after the long drive as well as all the emotion of leaving London and visiting Paris. I’d heard what I guessed must be the doctor’s car pulling up in front of the house next door, the quiet slam of the door and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel. I’d held my breath for a moment, wondering whether he and his wife, noticing the smoke rising from the chimney, would feel obliged to come and knock on my front door to say hello. But it was already on the late side for a social call, and all my lights were off, and thankfully the footsteps made their way in the opposite direction. A door opened, then closed with a firm thud. And then I lay and listened, with intrigue at first and then with increasing irritation as, from one of the outbuildings, sounds of distant sawing, then hammering, then the whirr of a drill rudely interrupted the drowsiness that had begun to soothe my frayed nerves in the pleasant aftermath of a cup of camomile tea and a hot bath. The last thing I remembered thinking was, ‘ How very inconsiderate; now I’ll never get to sleep!’ before dropping off a cliff into deep, dark oblivion. And by the time that darned screech owl woke me again in the wee small hours, the sounds from the garage had fallen silent. I suppose I should have been thankful for small mercies.
    The next morning I’d set off to call on my two sets of neighbours, thinking I should go introduce myself for politeness’ sake. There was no car outside the doctor’s house—he must already have gone to work, I guessed—but I knocked at the door hoping his wife might be in. The house was firmly locked up though, as was the garage. (Okay, I admit I tried the door, hoping to get a peek into the late-night workshop, but the panes of glass were too heavily frosted for me to be able to make out anything inside.) I passed the woodshed with its neatly stacked log pile, and stuck my head into the barn, where the white horse peered at me over the top of its stable door. ‘Well, hello there,’ I said, surprised to see it here instead of in the field at the back of the house. It must have been brought in yesterday evening, out of the frosty night air. ‘Sorry, I’ve nothing for you. I’ll bring you an apple next time, I promise.’ The horse, evidently unimpressed, snorted and turned back to pull some wisps of sweet-smelling hay from the wooden manger on the far wall.
    I crossed the lane, making my way to Eliane and Mathieu’s house, which had a promising plume of wood-smoke drifting above one of its chimneys. But, although I knocked and called at the front door, and even tentatively walked around to the back of the house and called there, there was no sign of anyone. A robin, maybe the same one from the apple tree the day before, hopped onto a clod of earth in the middle of a neat vegetable patch and then flew up to perch on the handle of a garden fork that was stuck into the rich, freshly dug soil. Dark green cabbages rested in the bed next to taller, knobbly Brussels sprouts, and leeks whose neatly braided leaves ended in fountain-like flourishes. Not wanting to trespass further, I left, resolving to call again another day—though in truth I was a little relieved too, still relishing the sense of being alone and not having to make conversational small talk with anyone for a while. My new neighbours haven’t approached me in the days