If I look out of my window at 4pm, winter and summer, in all weathers apart from horizontal rain, there will be a group of women sitting on the bench, sometimes on two benches. There might be half a dozen of them or more, ranging in age from their 60s to their 80s, possibly older. There are always at least a couple of little dogs, very occasionally a husband. In summer, when the windows are open, I can hear their laughter, and conversations I like to think they’ve picked up every afternoon at four since they were girls. As futures go, this doesn’t look like a bad one.
We moved to this village 17 months ago, swapping a terraced house in Hackney, east London, for a long-neglected one – yes, that cliche – in Marseillan on the Étang de Thau, a saltwater lagoon in southern France that opens into the Mediterranean.
