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by Pierrot or plotted against by the horses. According to Natalie, it was chaos there; everyone
shut up indoors with nerves being shredded. 'I don't know,' she mused, 'at times like this I
think maybe we have too many animals.'
If I had a lawyer's sharp mind I would have leapt all over that statement and got some kind
of promise out of her; but really I knew that that would be a forlorn hope, so why waste my
breath? And in any case, chaos or no chaos, I was missing every single one of them. I'd get
daily reports from home which only really made things worse. There's no way in the modern
age that you can't be in touch. Fixed telephones, mobile telephones, email, Facebook, Twit-
ter - you can communicate almost constantly, but does it always help? I'm not so sure. So-
metimes it's just a constant reminder that you're not actually where you want to be. Natalie
would post regularly on Facebook and upload photos from home, and I would look at them
late at night after work, if I'd made it there and back, and just end up feeling even more cut
off. Even Samuel was emailing on a daily basis, usually just to ask for something or to see if
I would contradict whatever edict Natalie had laid down at home.
Maybe it's because of what I do for a living, the fact that I'm usually the centre of attention,
that I find it difficult to conceive that life not only does actually go on without me but can
actually thrive. Like I say, other people have it worse I know; other people are separated in-
definitely, some permanently, I know all that. It doesn't make it easier. Thérence's vocabulary
seemed to be improving rapidly which I would only find out second-hand during phone con-
versations with Natalie, conversations which I actually found harder than not talking to her.
My mind usually wandered during these calls, I would feel suddenly even more sorry for my-
self than usual and angry too: angry at the weather, angry at the distance between me and my
family, angry at not being home more often than I was. And Natalie, unaware that my atten-
tion would usually have drifted, would still be talking.
'... and so really we're lucky to be alive,' she concluded.
'Sorry?! What?'
Natalie had been woken at five that morning, as one of the big barn shutters that cover the
lounge windows had got loose in the wind. The shutters are 12 feet high and very heavy, but
she went out to secure the one that had come loose and, thinking that was the extent of the
damage, had gone back to bed. What she hadn't seen was that the boys' trampoline had blown
away! This isn't a small thing - it is 5 metres in diameter, a heavy metal colossus and the
wind (or more likely a whirlwind) had lifted it up and thrown it 30 metres where it had hit the
corner of the house and landed on the car, smashing the windscreen and denting the roof.
A couple of years ago there had been massive storms that hit Western France and carried
on into the centre where we are. Thirty people had died in those storms as bungalows built
precariously on a flood plain were torn apart, flash floods devastated villages and trees had
fallen on cars; there were many other casualties too and Natalie and the boys, though un-
harmed, had been without electricity for three days, frightened and in the dark; I hadn't been
