The arrival of the supposed ‘Downsizing Experts’ the following day proved to be rather an anti-climax. They talked the talk but didn’t really persuade Vivienne that the services that they offered were what she really needed.

Their estimates of the costs for their services based upon their inspection of her home and garden made Vivienne gasp with surprise.

“That is an awful lot. It seems rather excessive,” she said to one of the three companies.

“That is our estimate. You have rather a lot of things. Just sorting and cataloguing it all will take us at least a week.

“And then you’ll consign most of it to a skip? I see the costs for that are more than double what I can hire a couple of men for myself and that includes the land-fill taxes.”

They couldn’t answer that. They left shortly afterwards.

Vivienne had done her homework but the encounters had not taken her any farther forward in her quest to move house.

All three of the companies had failed her benchmarks in at least one critical point. That left her with a choice. Should she accept a sub-standard company that was going to charge her an arm and a leg or should she just get the house cleared and be done with it and start again in Devon with just what she could pack into her car. Jacques’s words about how he’d left London kept ringing in her ear.

It was at times like this that she would have taken Betty for a walk which would have allowed her to clear her head. Keeping Betty under control had the effect of pushing whatever was troubling her to the very back of her mind until it was ready to be dealt with in a logical and practical manner.

Vivienne went out for a walk but it failed to resolve anything at all. She was really missing the distraction of Betty at times like this.

After returning home and having a cup of tea, Vivienne wandered around her home looking at it again. As she went from room to room, she began to have an idea. It was based upon something that Jacques had said during their meeting.

When she came downstairs she went into her Dining room. She stood there with her hands on her hips. Gradually, a smile appeared on her face as she remembered something else from her first encounter with Jacques down in Devon.

"Thanks, Jacques. I now know what I need to do.”

---

The next morning Vivienne started on her task of sorting out what she was going to take with her to Devon. The plan was to go through the house and anything that she wanted to take, she'd put in the Dining Room. She started at the top of the house and worked down.

During the process that took two days, she found more than a few things that she’d forgotten she’d ever had.

Sorting out her office had taken all of the first morning. By the end of it, there was a huge pile of papers on the floor that needed shredding.

“Lunch first I think…” she muttered to herself.

---

At the end of the first day, Vivienne had been through the top floor of her home. She was being very pernickety with what she took downstairs. Even so, there was a considerable pile of ‘stuff’ in her dining room. Admittedly, a sizeable portion of them was made up of her clothes.

“That needs another sort!” she said to herself as age looked at the pile.

While she was waiting for her evening meal to cook, Vivienne sorted through a pile of cuttings from newspapers that went back almost twenty years. Most of them were of the ‘why the hell did I save that?’ but two pages caught her eye.

“I remember that,” she said as she looked at two pictures of Dita Von Tesse. She was wearing a Burlesque costume. 'Costume' was hardly adequate to describe the Corset, Stockings and Heels that she was wearing. Her tiny waist was what had attracted Vivienne to the article in the first place. That and the stockings. Her boyfriend at the time had wanted her to wear them but they’d broken up over his demand to move into her place far too early in the relationship before she’d taken the plunge and tried them out.

Those pages definitely didn’t go in the rubbish pile.

That evening Vivienne ate her meal with a distinctly wistful look on her face.

The next day followed the pattern of the first. By the end of the process, the hallway was almost impassable due to the sheer number of bags that were destined for the local recycling centre.

The dining room was full of things that needed another even more vigorous sort.
“That can wait until tomorrow.”

Then she laughed as she surveyed the mess in her normally pristine home.

“It is going to get worse before it gets better my girl so you had better get used to it,” she muttered to herself.

Then she admonished herself. She was talking to herself again. In the past, she would have talked to Betty but Betty was no longer with her. The sooner she was out of this place the better. There were signs and indeed memories of Betty in almost every nook and cranny of the house.

---

Vivienne had just returned from her second trip to the Council Recycling Centre the following morning when her phone rang. She could see that it was her Estate Agent, Gavin Thurston.

“Good morning Mr Thurston. What can I do for you?”

“You do? At the moment, it isn’t a very good time. I’m doing a lot of sorting out and… well, you know downsizing. I’ve just returned from the Recycling Centre.”

“If you are sure that they won’t mind seeing a lot of mess then yes. I will have enough for another trip to the ‘tip’ in about an hour.”

“Good. I’ll be out of your way in an hour.”

She put the phone down and smiled to herself. Another couple were coming to view the house.

Then she looked around and was disheartened by the mess that was all around her.

The next hour was one of feverish activity. She loaded up her car for the next trip and did her best to make the place reasonably tidy. She could see where she’d been but was not happy at just how messy the place was. She’d become a bit of a neat freak over the years. Everything had a place and woe betide it if the ‘Devil of Mess and Clutter’ dared move somewhere else. That would have to change if she moved into a small cottage. Compromises would most certainly have to be made. Then she remembered what Jacques had said about how he’d left London. One suitcase and a backpack. There was no way that she could do the same.

Then she stopped fussing over some stuff for a moment. Could she really just take one carload and leave the rest behind to be cleared by one of the many 'house clearance' companies that operated all over London? That would be a challenge and it would mean leaving behind a lot of things that she'd had and coveted for years.

“No sense in dwelling over that my girl. I have to be out of here in five minutes,” she muttered to herself. This muttering was becoming something of a habit.

After a little bit more tidying, Vivienne left home and went to the Recycling Centre for the third time that day. After she’d dropped off the items, she went over to the supermarket in Cricklewood to get a few items of shopping, have lunch and get a bit of a charge for her car.

After she'd been away for two hours, she returned home. She could see the signs that she'd had visitors. Cupboards in the kitchen had been opened. One of them needed a particular knack to get it closed again. The person who had looked inside had left it open.

She could see that some of her curtains had been moved. It was almost as if her visitors were measuring up the windows for their own curtains. She toyed with phoning the estate agent but decided against it as she didn't want to seem too keen to make a sale.

---

Vivienne attacked her downsizing with renewed vigour and soon had another carload ready to be disposed of. This time it was a long since forgotten Hi-Fi system. It had been bought by her Husband. When he'd left, his new home was unable to take it and despite many promises, he never returned for it so gradually, it had been moved piece by piece into the ‘junk’ room at the back of the house. Over the years it had been buried by lots of other ‘junk’ but thanks to her efforts and the trips to the recycling centre, it was now accessible.

She was just starting to load it into her car in the hope of getting rid of it before the 'tip' closed at 4:00 pm when her phone rang. It was the estate agent.

"Hello, again Mr Thurston."

“They did? That’s nice to know.”

“Hold on a moment. I’m just loading the car up for another trip to the ‘tip’. Let me lock it and go back inside.”

She had loaded one of the large loudspeaker cabinets into the back of her small car. It was obvious that she’d need another two trips to get rid of it all. After locking the car, she went back into the house and sat down in the kitchen. After a brief pause, she picked up the phone.

“Sorry about that. Please tell me that again.”

The smile on her face showed that it was good news.

“Thanks for that Mr Thurston. If they are in that much of a hurry then I need to consult my solicitor to see how we can best move things forward. Provisionally I accept the offer but I will confirm this in the morning if that is acceptable to the prospective buyers?”

There was a pause while he relayed the message to them.

“They will? Then that’s good. I’ll call you in the morning. Now, I really must get this load to the tip before they close for the day.”

“Eh? I don’t understand?”

“Oh, I see. It is the hi-fi system that my former husband bought thirty-odd years ago."

“They do? I think it works. But I’ll leave it to one side for today.”

Vivienne listened to what Mr Thurston was saying.

“I see. If we can do a deal with the purchase in the timeframe that they want then once the deposit is in escrow then I see no reason for them not to come to see it and to test it for themselves.”

Vivienne’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she heard what Mr Thurston was saying.

“I think that it is best to let our respective legal representatives sort things out. If you could let my people know the details of their people today then, when I speak to my Solicitor in the morning she’ll have all the facts at her disposal. Is that ok with them?”

"No thank you, Mr Thurston. I'll call you as soon as I know anything in the morning."

“Yes, bye for now.”

Vivienne was glad that she was sitting down otherwise she'd probably have fallen over. It appeared that she'd sold the house and the bonus was that that monstrosity of a Hi-Fi system that she was about to take for recycling was to be included in the sale.

Apparently, the prospective buyers had seen the bits of equipment and had seen some value in them. It seemed a shame to dispose of them in that case.

---

Vivienne thought over the offer that had been made on her house that evening. The sum wasn’t at the top end of the estimate that the agent had given her but on the other hand, it was nowhere near the bottom. Shortly before she fell asleep, she said to herself,

“Sod it. I accept and I’m out of here.”

[The next day]

Vivienne went into overdrive once she’d called the solicitor handling the sale and the agent to tell him the good news.

Then she emailed the three downsizing companies and told them that she was not going to need their services. After that, Vivienne called a few ‘House Clearance’ companies to get them to quote for clearing her house. She’d decided to leave it empty. The new owners could furnish the place to their liking and not be beholden to her tired remnants apart from the Hi-Fi.

She spent the rest of the day sorting through her most cherished belongings and whittling them down to a far more reasonable volume. Some of the things that she was resigned to losing, were very personal to her and leaving them behind was going to be hard but if she was going to start a new life, she needed to leave as much of her past one as she could bear behind in London.

Then there was the little matter of all of her kitchen things. There was just far too much to take with her especially if she was going to live with Jacques.

Vivienne sat down thinking… “Don’t be stupid. Two or three kisses and some holding hands and I’m already moving in with him.”

After another session of mental self-flagellation, Vivienne decided that she was indeed being a silly love-struck old woman. Even if her relationship with Jacques did not work out, she could replace all of her prized kitchen items online. The only thing that she was not going to leave for the house clearers was her set of Japanese Kitchen Knives. One of them had cost her over £100. They were all kept in a fine leather roll in a bottom drawer.

Vivienne had bought them a few years before after a visit to a proper Sushi Bar and saw how seemingly effortless the chef had cut through even the very tough Shark Skin. They'd proved to be worth every penny but were only brought out on very special occasions and certainly not when her children and grandchildren were visiting.

Vivienne let out a sigh. Those special occasions had been few and far between.
“I wonder if Jacques will appreciate my cooking?”

Then she mentally kicked herself. She was getting ahead of herself again.

Nevertheless, they were going with her along with some wooden measuring spoons that her grandfather made for her grandmother as a wedding present. They were made from some teak that he’d bought when he was Royal Marine Officer and was posted to Singapore before WW2.

By the end of the day, she had reduced the pile of ‘for Devon’ to about a quarter of what it had been at the start of the day. Vivienne felt pretty pleased with her work.

[the following day]

While Vivienne was waiting for the first of the house clearance companies to arrive, she tried fitting everything that she’d selected to move with her into her car. That exercise failed miserably. There was just too much for her small car.

She resigned herself to either hiring a ‘Man with a Van’ or carrying out an even more radical downsizing. She returned everything to the house and decided that the former was the solution. If she didn’t end up with Jacques or bought a house which would not happen overnight, it could all go into storage until there was room for it wherever that might be.

---

The people from the two-house clearance companies turned up together instead of an hour apart. Vivienne soon realised that this was good in that she only had to explain things once. She told them to question her but not to mention costs. Those could be discussed individually at the end of the tour. Reluctantly, they agreed to it.

Vivienne took them through the house so that they could gauge the size of the problem. At the end of the tour, she pointed out that the back room was not to be emptied. Finally, she took them outside one by one and got them to quote a price and a date for doing the work.

Back in the kitchen, she faced the two men.

“Thanks for coming today. Actually, the two of you being here at the same time made it a lot easier for me. You have exactly the same information upon which you based your quote.”

The two men looked at each other with surprisingly nervous expressions on their faces.

"I have come to a decision and I have selected you, Mr Stavros, to do the work. I'm sorry Mr Akers, I needed it done before you could fit me in. Thanks for coming."

To her surprise, the loser, Mr Steve Akers smiled.
“Thank you, Ms Palmer. It is not often that a potential client makes up their mind so quickly.”
He shook hands with the winner, Mr Andrew Stavros and left.

“Now Mr Stavros, are we on for the agreed date?”

“Yes, Ms Palmer. Thanks for choosing my company. Will you be here for the removal?”

“Oh yes. I would not miss it for the world or at least that is my intent. How long do you think it will take?”

“As I said when we were outside, it will take two days with three of my men working.”

“Ok. As long as the kitchen and my bedroom are the last to go.”

He smiled back at Vivienne.

“You are the client. I’m glad that you are going to be here. We find that many clients see items that they want as they go out the front door. As we say, ‘when it’s gone, it’s gone’.”

"I hope I don't do too much of that. I don't have a lot of space where I'm likely to be moving to."

He smiled.
“That isn’t uncommon. May I ask where you are going?”

“Cromer,” replied Vivienne picking a name out of her memory.
"A one-bedroom apartment overlooking the sea."

“We’ll bear that in mind when taking things out.”

“Then I’ll see you for the big empty. Will you be here?”

“At the start. I always like to introduce my team to the client. That way you aren’t faced with three strange men turning up and saying, ‘Hey Missus, we are here to clear your home’. It can be unsettling to some people.”

“I understand perfectly,” said Vivienne as she showed him the door.

She returned to the kitchen and looked around. She would be sad to see her little home from home, disappear almost in a flash. Over the years, she’d spent a lot of time in that room second, only to her bedroom.

Then she smiled,
"Learning to cook on a wood-fired stove will be a whole different experience," she muttered to herself.

---

After arriving in Devon late the following morning, Vivienne went straight to Jacques’s place. Her car was almost full to bursting with her things. She’d smiled several times when she’d realised that it held far less than half of all her ‘worldly good and chattels’. The remainder would have to be dealt with after the house had been cleared at the end of the following week.

Her good mood didn’t last when she arrived at the end of the drive up to Jacques’s smallholding. She saw him with his arms wrapped around another woman. His Land Rover and another car almost filled the small parking area. If there was room to turn around and flee, she would have done so in an instant.

Jacques had seen her arrival and hurried over to the parking area. He stood in front of the car and effectively stopped Vivienne from leaving. Slowly some tears formed in her eyes. She was thinking ‘how stupid could she have been’.

In the end, there was nothing for it but to switch off her car and get out. Tears were streaming down her face now.

“Vivienne. Can I introduce you to my daughter, Gabrielle?”

At that moment, Vivienne felt about an inch high.

“But…?” muttered Vivienne.

“Gabrielle came over from Paris to give me some bad news. My father died three days ago on Reunion and before you say it, yes, I’m an idiot for not having a phone.”

Vivienne’s ‘autopilot’ took over and she found herself with her arms wrapped around Jacques. She hugged him for well over ten seconds before letting go.

Gabrielle had made her way to them. Vivienne could see the family resemblance in a flash.

“You never told me that you had a daughter?”

“That’s because Papa and I have not always been very close,” said Gabrielle before her father could answer.

“That’s true and it is mostly my fault,” said Jacques.

“What happened to your Father?” asked Vivienne.

“He had Cancer of the Liver. He refused to come back to Paris to get a transplant,” said Gabrielle.
“Papa didn’t even know that he was ill. I was told not to tell Papa by my Grand Mama.”

It seemed to Vivienne there and then that Jacques’s family was as disjointed as her own.

“I came over on the Ferry to Portsmouth last night and arrived here just before you.”

“I’m going to have to go to Reunion for the Funeral,” said Jacques with a tone of resignation in his voice.

“There is a flight from Paris tonight,” said Gabrielle.

“Then you had better go and pack. How will you get to Paris?” asked Vivienne.

“I will take the train to London then Eurostar to Paris,” he replied.

“What about booking seats and all that?” asked Vivienne.

"We had better go into Totnes and try to book everything. The phone signal is a lot better there," said Vivienne.

“Papa?”

“Thank you, Vivienne. I’m sorry that I can’t stay.”

Vivienne managed a small smile.

“You have to be with your mother at a time like this,” said Vivienne.
Then she looked at Gabrielle.
“What about you? Are you going to go as well?”

"Gabrielle hates flying," said her father.

“It is true. I will take the ferry back to France tonight. I have a very bad fear of flying after a really bad flight back from Reunion some years ago.”

“I’ll leave you two here to get acquainted while I pack for the trip,” said Jacques.
He disappeared off towards his cottage without waiting for an answer.

“Papa told me about you when he called me from London last week. I am sorry that we could not have met in better… times. Oui?”

“Your English is very good,” commented Vivienne.

"Papa insists that we speak it when we are together. Otherwise, I get little practice outside of Fashion Week."

“Are you in the Fashion Industry then?”

“Just a minor way. I help organise the events. I think you call it ‘Hospitality’.”

Vivienne chuckled.
“That is as good a name as anything.”

Jacques appeared carrying a small bag.

“I have everything. What I don’t have, I can get in Reunion.”

“What about a suit? For the funeral?” asked Vivienne.

“I’ll rent one there. That’s what most people do on the island,” he replied.

Vivienne looked at Gabrielle.
“My car is full. Can we take your car?”

“Oui, but I will need directions.”

“We will need to stop off at Sylvia’s,” said Jacques.

Gabrielle looked concerned.

“Sylvia is my neighbour. She looks after this place while I’m away.”

Vivienne started to say something but stopped herself just in time.

“Let us go then.”

Half an hour later, they were in Totnes. Gabrielle parked in the Supermarket car park while Vivienne looked up train times. Gabrielle looked at the flight booking.

“There is a seat in Business Class,” she said after a few minutes.

“And there is space on a Eurostar train that stops at Charles de Gaulle,” added Vivienne.

“What is the cost of the flight?” asked Jacques.

“Don’t worry about that. I have just sold my house. I’ll pay for the flight,” said Vivienne.

“I can’t ask you to do that?”

“Do you have a credit card that could cover the cost of getting to Reunion?” asked Vivienne.

Slowly, he shook his head.

“Then it is settled. I’ll pay for the tickets,”

The two women took control as if they’d been friends for years and didn’t let Jacques argue. After a few feeble attempts, he simply gave up.

There was a train to London due in twenty minutes. That would give Jacques plenty of time to connect to the Eurostar train to Paris and his almost twelve-hour flight to Reunion.

Both of the women in his life either hugged or kissed him or both, goodbye outside the station. Jacques went red in the face. He clearly was not used to this sort of attention in Public.

They watched his train disappear towards London in silence.

Gabrielle looked at her watch.
“I need to go. The Ferry won’t wait for anyone.”

“Do you have room for another one?”

“Pardon?”

“I’d like to go to Paris. There are some things that I’d like to buy.”

Gabrielle looked strangely at Vivienne.

“And it will give me a chance to get to know you a little. There is so much about your Papa that I don’t know.”

Gabrielle looked Vivienne up and down. Gabrielle was exceedingly well dressed. Vivienne was very dressed down by comparison.

“Yes, I need a brand new look and where better to get it than in Paris eh? Perhaps you can help me get it? I could use someone with a good understanding of the fashion business to help me get a total makeover when it comes to clothes.”

Gabrielle smiled.

"It would be a nice change to travel with someone," said Gabrielle.

"Same here especially someone who can give me some decent advice on so many things."

After looking puzzled for a moment, Gabrielle smiled and said,

“Oui. You are correct. Then it is time to leave, n'est-ce pas?”

[to be continued]