Page 22 of A French Inheritance
Briony was up early the next morning and made herself a coffee, which she drank sitting in the kitchen whilst trying to figure out how to organise herself for the next few days.
Some food shopping was high on the list to get her through the weekend, so a visit to the village shop for essentials like cheese, eggs, yoghurts and some salad ingredients.
Stocking up at the boulangerie with bread was also on her list. Tomorrow, Saturday, she was working with Briony in the Stables.
Monday she’d catch the bus into Cannes, find a cash machine and get some more cash in euros, before doing a bigger supermarché shop and catching a taxi home.
So that left this afternoon and evening, and all day Sunday, to potter around the cottage working out how to put her own mark on the place.
Make it feel more like her home rather than still being Giselle’s.
Nothing drastic: move the furniture around in the sitting room, change the pictures, buy some new cushions and maybe new curtains for winter.
She’d already decided that a pot of yellow paint to brighten up the kitchen was on the shopping list.
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An hour later, Briony was back from the village, the shopping had been put away, the kettle was on and there were two slices of bread in the toaster for a late breakfast. Taking her breakfast out on to the terrace, Briony inhaled the fresh air as she looked around.
The garden was going to need some attention too, but she knew Jeannie, a keen gardener, would welcome taking charge out there.
Once she’d finished her breakfast, Briony wandered into the sitting room.
There was too much furniture in here for her taste, although she did love it all.
Perhaps if she rearranged it, had the two Chesterfield settees facing each other, with one of the coffee tables in between, that would work.
The writing bureau could stay where it was, an armchair could go either side of the French doors.
Another one in the corner. And ornaments could disappear from the bookshelves, there were far too many.
The first problem arose when she tried to move the settees.
They were too heavy, she needed a man’s strength.
Maybe Gerry when he arrived would help move them.
So she left them where they were and moved the armchairs nearer the French doors, placing a small table on one side of each of them.
The lamps that had stood on the tables she placed on the floor temporarily by the bureau.
One was a beautiful art deco brass lady.
That was definitely staying. She’d decide what to do with the others later.
Briony remembered seeing some empty boxes in the shed where the garden furniture had been stored.
After fetching a couple, she started to take the ornaments down from the bookshelves.
More space for books and photographs. As she worked, she realised a lot of the items, a mix of French and English, were collectable, if not quite to her own taste.
Some old Limoges plates, a couple of French chalk-ware beautiful decorative figurines.
Small things that would be snapped up in an auction, but for now they were going in a box until she could decide what to do with them.
Lucy sent a text that evening.
See you at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning outside the Stables.
Briony popped one of the pizzas she’d bought in the village into the oven and when it was ready settled down with a glass of wine at the kitchen table to eat while she scrolled through cars for sale on the internet.