The house is empty, everyone busy elsewhere, running errands, clearing sheds, logging wood. It’s cold in the kitchen, the glass door on the old log burner was cracked and unsafe, so now the fire smoulders inefficiently in the grate until some new glass arrives. I try various tricks every morning to force it into life, blowing on the embers, holding sheets of newspaper against the metal frame to encourage the chimney to draw and pull the flames upwards. It’s going now, but burning weakly, the flames half-heartedly licking around the logs, the bed of embers glowing gently.
I throw on another log, taken from the stack in the log store that we inherited with the house. It’s not good wood, crumbly and rotten and somehow still slightly damp despite being ancient; it’s all we have for now and it will have to do until the wood we have logged ourselves is dry enough. I hold my hands to the heat, stretching and bending my fingers to bring the back to life. My knuckles stiff from typing in the cold, tapping away at the keyboard, writing articles for magazines back in England, the only income we’ll have for a while yet.
I pull a big, chunky cardigan that my mum knitted me over the top of my jumper and find a bobble hat for extra warmth. I wrap the cardigan tightly across my chest, hugging myself against the cold. A horn beeps outside and I glance through the kitchen window to see the yellow post van sweeping around the drive towards the house. I look down at myself, flowery pyjama bottoms, thick, brightly coloured socks and slippers, a jumper, a huge cardigan and a woollen hat with a handmade pom-pom bobble on the top. I have no time to do anything about any of this, the post woman is already getting out of her van.
She is a formidable woman, small but fierce looking and always very forthright, to the point, matter of fact, there is never time for pleasantries or even a smile. Today it seems she has an agenda. I smile politely, reaching up to pull the bobble hat from my head, drawing it slowly down to my side and then thinking at the last minute that this has probably made things worse, revealing my wild, untamed hair. I see her steal a glance at me, taking in the crazy English woman before her, standing on the door step in what looks like pyjamas or perhaps they are trousers and this is just English woman style?