Dusk

Despite extenuating circumstances we managed to break away.  The children helped us pack the car and I watched them getting smaller, waving as we wound round the ducks in the middle of the Rue du Béal.  By the other side of Foix, the ties broke less fiercely and once we were beyond Pau we were in another country.

I admit that I was in a foul mood by the time we got to St Jean de Tyrosse, biting my tongue when Nico told me I'd been flashed by a radar and spitting fire when a lorry barreled me onto the sandy edge of a narrow forest road. 

The devil on my shoulder willed me to have a full breakdown when the GPS told me we had 45 minutes to go and Nico admitted we'd left the motorway too early.

I was still het up when we arrived and had to find our little cottage amongst a bunch of identical cottages amongst the pines.

I took Bernie into the forest and then there was the sunset and I began to feel that things could get better.