Just Breathe - Chapter One

PART ONE

Chapter One

September

The silence is the strangest thing. Charlotte closes the door of the cottage behind her, puts her suitcase on the floor, and listens. She can hear absolutely nothing. The thick stone walls and heavy wooden door drown out what little noise there is from the singing birds and bleating sheep outside. There is no traffic noise, no chattering neighbours - a bonus, as she is definitely not in the mood for small talk over the garden fence with someone she doesn’t know - no rabble of teenagers, not even a ticking clock. She is completely alone.

The narrow, single-track road that led to the cottage had been utterly deserted, which was just as well, as Charlotte hadn’t noticed a single passing place as she drove the half mile from the main road. She has no idea where the road leads after the cottage, and has no desire to find out. Her two-year-old Audi convertible was hopelessly out of place on such a muddy, rain-soaked track; the expensive valet she’d had done in London yesterday, including an alloy polish, now seems like a complete waste of money. She wasn’t expecting wildly overgrown, unkempt hedges and huge potholes with intermittent tarmac.  Someone really should have mentioned the state of the approach when she booked the cottage. She resolves to send a strongly worded email to the booking company; it simply isn’t good enough.

But first, coffee.

She walks through a long, dark hallway and finds the kitchen at the back of the house. It is pleasant enough. The walls seem freshly painted, the colour of clotted cream. A midnight green shaggy rug sits at the back door, like a faithful dog waiting to be let outside into the garden. The right-hand wall is dominated by an enormous range oven, fitted into the chimney breast.  Charlotte decides it seems overly complicated, beauty over substance, and she won’t be using it. She skims the wooden countertops, searching for a microwave, but can’t see one. Another thing that should be mentioned in the email to the booking company.

An antique oak table sits in the middle of the room, neatly surrounded by eight ladder-back dining chairs. Charlotte tries to ignore the pang of loneliness at the quiet expectation of company. She will be fine. She is here to relax, not to party.

She opens the large window over the ceramic butler sink, allowing the noise from the sheep to fill the room. As much as she will welcome the solitude from this short break, when she gets used to it, the silence is more than a little unsettling and she feels better when the noise from the field permeates through. She isn’t used to hearing nothing. In London, there is always some kind of background noise. There is always a dog barking, a kid screaming, a door slamming, a car or a bus passing, and, very often, a siren wailing, even during the night. At work, she has become used to the constant ringing of telephones and the hum of voices from over forty other people who share the open-plan workspace. Noise is a part of her life.

She opens the Spotify playlist on her phone and allows Ed Sheeran to fill the room as she rummages through the complimentary welcome basket. She finds the coffee pods underneath a sourdough loaf, a jar of Seville orange marmalade, some homemade shortbread biscuits, and a packet of teabags. She pops one of the pods into the coffee machine, switches it on, and whilst it is warming up, hunts around for the fridge to cool the half a dozen bottles of wine she has brought with her. Built-in appliances are great until you can’t find the sodding thing. There is no reason why they couldn’t put a tiny sticker on the fridge, so that you know where it is. Is that too much to ask? You shouldn’t have to open and close all the cupboard doors looking for it. She will add that to her email, too. A little constructive criticism.

The cottage is described online as A luxury bolt hole with picture-perfect views of the beautiful Northumberland countryside. Could the view from the kitchen window be described as picture-perfect? Arguably, yes, if you like sheep and grass. Lots of grass. Charlotte, however, would have preferred to look out onto a beach with palm trees and a blue sea. Or even a decent harbour, packed with yachts and fishing boats. She would love to see pavement cafés filled with elegant people sipping coffee in the morning and cocktails in the afternoon, shaded under faded red canopies. But right now, this is a pleasant enough change from the views of built-up London that she is used to seeing from her tenth-floor apartment or from her office in Canary Wharf. She wouldn’t live here, but as a short break, this will do.

She kicks off her shoes. She can feel the underfloor heating, which is a nice touch; she will give them that. As she wanders upstairs, she decides she is pleased with her choice - the cottage is beautiful. The grey tiled floors downstairs, which give way to soft, deep carpets upstairs, complement the neutral décor. The bed linen is white and perfectly ironed; the bathroom towels are soft and fluffy; the walk-in shower has the obligatory raindrop shower head; the roll-top bath seems just the right length, and the Molton Brown toiletries are what she would have expected. There is no bathrobe hanging behind the bedroom door, which is disappointing, and she will include that in her email. The fact that she almost never wears them - they are usually huge – is immaterial. She should have been told that there wouldn’t be one.

Back downstairs, she pours her coffee – black and strong with two sugars - unzips her laptop bag, plugs her laptop in to charge, and settles on the oversized sofa in the living room. She sinks into the soft cushions and takes a deep breath. She breathes in again, slowly counting to three. She holds her breath for a count of four and breathes out to a count of five, just like her doctor told her. She closes her eyes and repeats the exercise a few times, surprised that she begins to feel slightly better. Maybe there is something in this meditation stuff after all, she thinks, as she opens her eyes and sips her hot coffee.

When her doctor advised her to do some deep breathing and maybe read up about meditation, she told him that she didn’t have time for some ‘new, trendy regime.’ Just because meditation and yoga are popular with middle-class yummy mummies doesn’t mean to say that they are a valuable use of her time, she told him. She was far too busy.  Doctor Singh tried to assure her that neither meditation nor yoga was ‘new’, but his words fell on deaf ears.

As her heart rate begins to slow and she feels a little calmer, Charlotte resolves to do her own research about it. She isn’t one to do something just because someone else has told her to, despite the medical qualification certificate clearly displayed on Doctor Singh’s wall. There is no harm in reading up on the subject. It will give her something to do this week.

The doctor’s advice was to take things easy for a while, slow down, and eat healthy, nutritious food. Charlotte isn’t overweight; in fact, it won’t do her any harm to put on a few pounds, but her diet is definitely not what you would call healthy. She rarely keeps to the standard five a day. Not by a long chalk. She is lucky if she manages to throw a banana down her neck for breakfast. On most days, she doesn’t eat any vegetables at all. Lunch is usually a cream cheese and smoked salmon bagel from the deli near the office, and dinner tends to be whatever ready meal she can grab from Waitrose on her way home when she pops in for a bottle of wine. Lately, after a long day at the office, she has been skipping the ready meal and settling for the wine. They do a delicious Sauvignon Blanc. But she shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about that. Everybody does it, don’t they? It is normal, right? It isn’t as though she has a problem with alcohol. People think it odd if you don’t have a glass or two in the evenings nowadays. It is practically de rigueur.

She hasn’t had a heart attack; it was nothing as serious as that. It was just a stress-induced anxiety attack. ‘A warning,’ Doctor Singh told her. This is her second chance to change her ways, slow down, and rebalance her life, he said.

‘Bollocks,’ she thought, as his words went in one ear and out the other.  She has never been as fit in her life. Or rather, she has never been as skinny. She can’t really claim the fit badge; it has been so long since she has been to the gym. She can’t remember the last time, and she has no idea where her membership card is. She keeps paying the extortionate direct debit every month, as being a member of a gym is half the battle. Maybe she should have a trip to Sweaty Betty when she gets back to London. Nothing gives you motivation like some new gym gear, especially the expensive kind.

When she gets back to work, she will be more active. Admittedly, she takes the office lift far more often than she should. On the last occasion that she was forced to take the stairs, on account of the queue for the lift being too long (well, who has time for queuing these days?), she had to stop at the top of the stairs to catch her breath, fumbling for a pretend item in her Louis Vuitton tote, to give the impression that she was standing still with a purpose, rather than because she couldn’t bear to let her colleagues see her so out of breath after just three flights of stairs.

She needs more rest, too, according to the doctor. Some time out. It’s all about balance, apparently. But she explained to Doctor Singh that she couldn’t possibly take any time off work right now. There are court deadlines to meet, client dinners to attend, and a million emails to answer each week. Now isn’t a good time to take annual leave, and she certainly wouldn’t dream of taking any time off sick. Wise and Bancroft, one of the biggest legal firms in London, is full of young, ambitious lawyers, waiting to take her place at the first sign of weakness. In the ten years she has been there, she has never taken a day off sick. A statistic that she is extremely proud of. Doctor Singh didn’t seem impressed.

‘I don’t care,’ he said, as he began to write her sick note. ‘You can’t answer emails from your grave. You need to take some time off, at least two weeks. Then I will see you again and we will reassess whether you need any more time.’

She laughed at him and said that he was being a little overly dramatic, but his stern face made her reconsider. She says she would compromise with him and take a short break, a week, rather than a fortnight.

‘I’ll find a quiet cottage. I will sit and do nothing. Except yoga and meditation,’ she had said with an ironic smile. ‘And I will drink green smoothies. I’ll even cut down on coffee and wine.’

Doctor Singh sighed and passed the two-week sick note across his desk. So, she had booked the cottage in Northumberland for six nights, Monday to Saturday. Rest and recuperation. Doctor’s orders.

Now, as she stretches her legs out in front of her, her feet resting on the low wooden coffee table next to her giant mug of coffee, she begins to flick through the visitors’ information file. She reads that Warkworth on the Northumberland coast is popular because of the beautiful beach, the historic castle, and the artisan shops she will find in the village. Retail therapy in ‘artisan shops’ should be on prescription. It is amazing how depleting her bank account by a few hundred pounds makes her feel much better. She will look forward to treating herself to something new tomorrow. She desperately needs another cashmere sweater and some boots for the autumn.

  On the last page of the visitors’ file, after reading about the local cafes, restaurants, pubs, and the suggested two-mile walk into the village, which she has no intention of undertaking, she comes across a paragraph headed Wi-Fi. She reaches for her phone, ready to insert the code.

We hope you enjoy your screen-less time at Holly Cottage.

Take some time out from social media.

Switch off from the rest of the world.

Sit back and chill – without wi-fi.

Without wi-fi!! Take some time out from social media!! Seriously, what the hell! Did they think that the only reason people want wi-fi is to post photos on Instagram or scroll through TikTok? Or have banal conversations on WhatsApp? Don’t they realise that some people have actual work to do? How is she going to check her emails without wi-fi? Her clients need her. She told her paralegal, Emily, that she would be contactable at all times, but her phone signal is nonexistent, and without wi-fi, she might as well be on the moon. This is totally unacceptable. How will it look to the partners at Wise & Bancroft if she isn’t available? She will lose her hard-earned credibility within days. She might as well write her own death warrant! A formal complaint will need to be lodged, as though she doesn’t have enough to do. She definitely can’t remember anything on the website or in the booking confirmation email about there being no wi-fi. The booking company’s reckless and irresponsible decision to give their customers ‘screen-less time’ clearly shows that they have no clue about the real world.

About having an actual job.

About life.

About targets and deadlines.

About what people have to do.

Charlotte feels her heart rate rising in line with her temper.

She hurls the visitors’ file onto the floor, stomps upstairs, and, reminiscent of her teenage self, throws herself onto the king-size bed and screams into the soft white duck-down pillow.