Page 57 of The Riviera House Swap
They were silent for a moment.
‘You know, I envy you,’ she said, unaware until she spoke that she’d been about to express this thought out loud.
‘Me? You are jealous?’ Sabine put a hand on her chest as if to double-check Nina understood what she was saying. ‘But this is ridiculous! Why do you say this?’
Nina shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I had the urge to travel – like you – before. And I gave up some opportunities. Gave up on too much, really. And you look back when you’re older… Well, it’s hard not to wish you’d made different choices. Been freer. Maybe if I was your age, I’d be travelling too,’ she said.
Sabine covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking slightly. For a moment, Nina thought she might be crying. Then realised she was actually laughing. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘But it is so drole, so funny.’
Nina flushed. ‘What? You don’t think I’m being honest with you? Or…?’
‘No,’ Sabine’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘I am sorry, I’m not laughing at your wishes and dreams, don’t worry. But because you think I am so very, very young.’
Nina looked into the bright-eyed face in front of her. She’s going to tell me she’s all of twenty-five, she thought, because people in their twenties think that’s ANCIENT.
‘I am not so much younger than you,’ Sabine said.
Nina smiled. ‘I suppose fifteen years or so doesn’t seem much. It’s just in terms of… well, the kind of opportunities open to you. It’s a lifetime, really.’ Sabine would probably understand more when she got to forty. How all the avenues you felt would always be open seemed somehow closed. How opportunities and chances dried up as you aged. And you found yourself – not stuck, necessarily – but fixed. You became the person you’d been working towards being. Only you hadn’t realised the chances to change your fortunes would start to disappear until it was too late.
Sabine grinned. ‘I am very flattered that you think this,’ she said. ‘Because you have told me you are forty, and this must mean you think I am very young.’ She shook her head. ‘Nina, I am thirty-seven. And I do not think that in three years, I will give up travelling because the calendar says so.’
Nina looked at Sabine’s face again. And started to see it differently. Not to imagine wrinkles that weren’t there, but to truly see her for the first time. And she realised that perhaps she and Sabine didn’t look so very different in age in terms of skin or hair or emerging crows’ feet. It was something in Sabine’s eyes that projected this aura of youthful energy. It was her spirit, not just her skin, that made her seem so much younger. She felt free, so she was free, at least from the kind of concerns that anchored Nina to the spot.
‘Wow,’ she said at last. ‘Well, you’ll have to share your skincare regime secrets with me!’
Sabine laughed. ‘I find that being happy is great for the complexion, no?’
‘Well,’ Nina said. ‘I think you’re amazing.’
‘Pah! Well, do not say this to my brother. Jean-Luc, not Antoine. He thinks that I am a catastrophe. I don’t own property. I don’t have a career. I make my money from small jobs, and from selling jewellery and besides – I do not need much. But he wants me to get married, to have a job and a house…’
Nina frowned. ‘It’s not really his business though, is it?’
Sabine smiled. ‘Oh, but do not think too badly of him. He loves me. He means the best for me. And he worries because he has so much money already and he compares us. And he thinks that one day, things will not be so good for me. But I tell him that I will be fine. I have time. Maybe one day, I will find a husband. But there is no hurry.’
Nina nodded. ‘That’s a great attitude,’ she said. ‘I always feel in such a rush about everything. I mean, I had Pierre… thenwalked away, but met Rory soon after. And he was a nice guy and it seemed to be the right time. Some of my friends were engaged… Sometimes, I think if I hadn’t been in such a rush to tick all the boxes, things might be completely different now.’
‘The boxes?’
‘Yes, I mean, to…’ Nina struggled for words. ‘To do all the things that people expect.’
Sabine nodded. ‘Yes, I know these things.’
‘Yes, and I think I saw them as… marks of success or something? Like things I should be doing. So I did them. It didn’t occur to me that… I had the time to pause and get it right.’ She smiled.
‘But you do.’ Sabine said.
‘Well, Idid.’
‘No, my friend,youdo. You have the time now to pause and do what you wish.’
‘And to date attractive men I met twenty-three years ago?’ Nina joked.
‘But of course!’ Sabine put a hand on Nina’s arm. ‘And please do not think that I am always happy. I sometimes wake in the van and I think I must be crazy. And other times, my money runs out and I am eating a stale croissant for breakfast like a dog.’
Nina wasn’t sure even French dogs ate croissants, but she kept quiet.
‘And I look at my brothers with their homes and their jobs and maybe soon wives and babies and I think there must be something wrong with me,’ she said. ‘But then I sit with myself and I think about life and I realise that I can choose to be happy or choose to be sad. And I choose to smile,’ she said, her mouth stretched wide. ‘Because life is short and I enjoy smiling.’
