Wheeler - Tout sweet: hanging up my heels for a new life in France

Chapter 1

Which Way to Portsmouth?

Oh dear God, what have I done? Somewhere on the lumbering ferry between Portsmouth and Caen, my feet are not so much turning cold as sprouting icicles in their jade-encrusted Miu Miu flip-flops. Three hours ago I closed the door on my west London life, leaving behind a broadband connection, bathtub, a fully functioning kitchen (complete with floor) and a building full of attractive neighbours who I counted as friends.

I am now a few hours away from a new life in France. Earlier, sitting in the on-board cafe surrounded by so-called emi-greys, it occurred to me that I might be moving three decades too early. After all, most people go to France to retire. But my friends have been telling me for months how envious they are and how lucky I am. They seemed so genuinely thrilled when I told them I was moving abroad that I started to feel a little paranoid. Its going to be wonderful you wont want to come back, they said. So no pressure then.

But what if its not wonderful? What if I hate it and want to come back immediately? A year ago, I was planning my wedding. Now I am planning to live alone in a remote village, where I will be half an hours drive from the nearest decent supermarket, several hours by train from the nearest Prada store and a five-hour journey (and Channel-crossing) from the nearest M&S food hall.

My new home has no indoor loo, no bathtub, no kitchen sink and no hot water. It has flowery brown wallpaper in almost every room, damp climbing up the crumbly walls and a gaping hole looking down into a dank cellar instead of a kitchen floor. Then theres the pile of rubbish the size of the Pyrenees in the rear courtyard. I dont even have the clothes for this kind of life. After a decade and a half of working in fashion, most of my wardrobe is designed for going to cocktail parties or, at the very least, breakfast at Claridges and my shoes are so high that I need a Sherpa and an oxygen tank to wear them.

Downstairs, on deck 3B, my ancient Golf is laden with the remnants of eighteen years in London. My furniture and twenty-four huge brown boxes of possessions were dispatched to the Poitou-Charentes in an enormous lorry earlier in the week. This morning with the help of my neighbour Jerome I packed up what remained after the removal lorry had gone. Unfortunately, what remained could easily have filled another van.

Between 9.00 a.m. and noon, we stuffed my remaining clothes and possessions into bin bags and plastic carriers and ferried them down four flights of stairs. Darling, this really is very last-minute, said Jerome, lips pursed disapprovingly. Even by your standards. Most people would at least have dismantled the bookshelves and packed everything in boxes weeks ago.

But I did, I protested. And this is what was left over.

The last three hours of my London life seemed to slip by in minutes. Finally, I ran the vacuum cleaner around the bedroom, left a bottle of champagne and some chocolates in the fridge for the new occupants and locked the door for the last time. Downstairs, I surveyed the colourful pile of miscellanea on the pavement with dismay. In addition to the bin bags stuffed with clothes, there were work files, my laptop, table lamps, rugs, plants, dusters, random coat hangers, a pair of zebra-print stilettos stuffed inside a wastepaper bin and a big black hat trimmed with roses that I kept specifically for weddings. The car boot was already filled with duvets, pillows and fifteen bags of dried fruit, the rear seats with bin bags, boxes of china and my stockpile of Farrow & Ball paint, along with the handbags and shoes that I put into storage and then rescued again. It cant all be mud and waxed green jackets, I told myself.

Youll have to get in the car, said Jerome, a window dresser by profession. And Ill somehow stuff the rest of it around you. When he had finished cramming in shoes, clothes and magazines at random, I couldnt see out of the rear window and my nose was almost touching the windscreen thanks to the giant potted palm wedged behind the drivers seat.

Good luck, said Jerome as I pulled away. Dont forget to email me when you arrive.

Bon voyage! yelled Daisy, my neighbour. Hopefully see you in France next summer.

As the car limped to the end of the road, its suspension several inches closer to the ground than usual, I realised I had forgotten something. Panicking, I reversed at speed, the sound of china rattling ominously as we hit the traffic bumps.

Fortunately, Daisy and Jerome were still standing by the gate.

How do I get to Portsmouth? I yelled.

The A3, Daisy shouted back. Follow the signs from Hammersmith.

I give it a month, said Jerome, shaking his head, before youre back.

So my exit was not an orderly one. But as I drove through the familiar streets of west London sunny but empty on an August Bank Holiday Monday it felt liberating to leave behind the playground of over a decade, which, in truth, had started to feel like a prison over the past year. Even my flat had become a place of sad memories, filled like the streets of my neighbourhood with the ghosts of my last relationship. I couldnt walk past certain restaurants in Notting Hill, sit in the French cafe behind Kensington High Street or stroll through Holland Park without feeling sad at the thought of what I had lost. But as I whipped past Olympia that August morning and flew around the Hammersmith roundabout both normally choked with traffic it seemed that London was releasing me without a fight.

In addition to the flat, I also gave up a career that many would kill for, as fashion and beauty director of a glossy magazine. Although I had loved working in fashion in my twenties and early thirties, I had reached the stage where I could no longer deal with fashion designers and their ridiculous egos. It had taken me fifteen years to come to the conclusion that I couldnt bear fashion people. I was tired of conspiring in key fashion myths: that its necessary to spend 600-plus on a new designer handbag every six months, or that a grown-up woman could look good in a ra-ra skirt, micro-shorts or whatever unseemly trend designers were pushing that season. I also felt guilty about persuading readers to rush out and buy must-have items that I knew were must-nots and that would end up on a fast track to landfill within six months.