Blue Dress Hot Mess

I drink thirstily from a can of Coke Zero. It is 12:06pm, French time. We arrived in the country an hour ago, and we left home at 5:45am. I am fuelled by oats and Starbucks hazelnut coffee. It is our annual pilgrimage to the Loire Valley, the day my family drive to France — always the first Saturday of August, always the worst day to travel according to the French news websites. I hiccup. I’m not sure I like Coke Zero, but I feel more awake. 

I miss my puppy already. Last time I was in France we conquered it together. This time, my hand feels empty without his lead and I feel alone. But I am happy, so, so happy, to be in France again. There are étangs by the motorway and I am proud of the strength of my legs as I squat over the loo in the aire des source de l’orne. I do absolutely nothing in the car – listen to music, look at my phone – but watch the French harvest flit by outside the window and the clouds chase shadows over the hay bales like children playing hide and seek. I draft a text to the boy in my head saying we should keep it platonic. I feel good about my decision because I know that if I do not say it, I will be leading him on. I would like to lead him on, just a little bit. But that would be selfish and vain and entirely for my own feelings of self worth which are sickly flattered by his desire to get to know me. I think he sees me for me but does not really want me so much as want the relationship he thinks he could have with me. I think these things make better sense when said drunk. Or in French. Sadly, I am neither. I will not explain myself; will not apologise. It is the way I feel vs the way he feels. The way I feel must win. 

I miss my puppy with a dull ache which means I feel my heart like a weighted ball high up between my collarbones. 

There is a switch in my brain which I would like to switch off. It is the one with all the thoughts, all the panic, all the dreams. I want to lie in the sun and sleep for a week. And maybe after a week, I might stand up and stretch and walk slowly over to the unheated saltwater pool. I might dip in a toe before I dive. I will spend the second week deep under water, and reserve one final day for lying in the sun again, asleep. Just to dry off. 

The crickets are loud and the moon is half full. I break into a run, like I’m 5 years old and chasing fairies. I see myself as Carrie Bradshaw more and more, but have decided I want to be more like the editor of French vogue, Claire. She is my new pin-up girl. My Jane Birkin who’s still alive. 

It is hard not to do it for the plot when you’re a writer and the world is your plot. It feels personal. 

Butterflies dance at head height as I cycle through them. I turn to look back — they rejoin, fluttering. Like hearts; like wings; like drying laundry. 

I bear my blackberries home like a gift, held in a bowl between two palms, my sacramental offering thrust forward in pride. An oil lamp in the dark. The fruit has stained my fingers like a 17th century writer’s, thumb and forefingers a rich purple indigo. I pass the bowl to one hand, raise a flat palm to the setting sun, and squint at the hot air balloons which roar too-close above me. I count four of them, like lightbulbs in the sky. I hear crickets and a snake in the ditch, so I go inside. 

Lizards have long tails, I think. Then I fall asleep. 

It is one of those cold early mornings which promises baking heat come midday. I have a prompt in my journal which asks me how I feel: I write in a scrawled scribble with a hand now too-used to typing instead. It reads: like I’m cricking out the sores in my neck. I look back at it, satisfied; that is exactly how I feel. In the bathroom, a glance in the mirror shows that my eye bags are beginning to receded after our too-early start two days ago. I am glad. With them, I feel heavy and aged; a look into the future.

Later, I sit by the pool and read, mentally sending love to my friend who is going through a break up and physically sweating in the 30 degree heat of 4pm on an early August day. I love it. Lizard-like, I lie and bake. (I have no long tail).