There's nothing wrong with Nantes. We lived there for ten years and survived. But if you enjoy a good country ramble of the up hill and down dale variety, Nantes is of much use to you as a potter's lathe is to a beetle. Devoid of hills, bereft of dales, the countryside round Nantes is dull, muddy, and full of signs saying trespassers will be shot. To someone raised in the hills of Wales, it was like being sent to another planet, endless and desolate.
Imagine our delight, then, on moving down south. At first we lived in Montpellier - quel bonheur! Drive a few miles and you're in steep rocky terrain criss-crossed by paths that entice you in all directions. 'Oh, not another walk!' moaned our children when we set out our Sunday plans, as if we were proposing to lock them in the cupboard for the day. ''Fraid so,' I answered, 'and you know the deal by now - no one touches the picnic till we get to the furthest point.' Until you become a parent, you don't always realise how cruel you can be.
Later we moved to Aix en Provence, similarly blessed with tracks and lanes winding into scenery to die for. And one of the first walks we did, just like Magali Rousseau in One Green Bottle, was to the Roquefavour Viaduct.
When Magali arrived in Sentabour, one of the first things she did was join the Hikers’ Association. There were three advantages to this: you got fit, you discovered the surrounding countryside and you met other people. Not all the people you met were the sort you’d want to go on holiday with – nor even, to be honest, for a hike – but Antoine Pessini, the association treasurer, was an exception.
It was on their second walk, discussing their lives on the way to the Roquefavour Aqueduct, that Magali said she’d been married to Xavier Borelly, and Antoine replied, ‘Really? The cosmetic surgeon? He operated on my wife.’
The coincidence wasn’t extraordinary, given that if, like Anne Pessini, you resented the folds of flesh in your neck, you were likely to call on Xavier. But it set the two of them chatting so much that when they got back to Sentabour, they could hardly remember the view they’d trudged all that way to admire.
‘But then we don’t need to,’ she said. ‘We’ve got Cézanne.’
‘Well, reproductions,’ he reminded her. ‘Besides, he was more into viaducts.’
She wondered if, for all his charm, he might not be a little bit pedantic.
And so began a friendship which would mean a lot to them both. But a friendship which was destined not last...
