(Apologies for re-sending this: I understand many subscribers were unable to access the earlier post. I hope technology will cooperate this time.)

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

The phrase wormed its way into my ear even before the decision to move back was made.

Rattled, hounded, flummoxed and exhausted by French bureaucracy – a maze even without the extra complication of Brexit – I can’t remember which one of us first voiced what we had both been wondering for a few weeks, but dreading to admit even to ourselves: “Do you think we should move back to Norwich?” Thinking about it, it must have been me. I am the great quitter in the household.  Never had any sticking power. The one who walks out of a show during the interval if I am not enjoying it.  Or leaves a well-paid job with fringe benefits because I hate it. Once I realise I’ve made a mistake, something isn’t right for me, isn’t likely to get better or, if it did, the cost would be too high, I head for the emergency exit.  

Howard is the level-headed one, the one who perseveres, who doesn’t give up, who stays for as long as it is possible. Maybe the show will improve after the interval, maybe the job will get better, maybe it wasn’t a mistake.  Wait and see.

Still, once the possibility of having to go back to Norwich was uttered out loud, the sense of failure, crushing disappointment and overwhelming dread of a second international house move in less than a year made it at times hard to breathe.

Packing again, when we still couldn’t always remember where we had put everything after the move to Nice? Lifting heavy boxes again when our sprains and minor injuries had only just healed? Looking for a new home after finding our current one –however far from ideal – barely eight months earlier? Were we really doing the right thing? Moreover, the expense of two moves in one year would be very difficult to bear.

As my panic-struck brain was bouncing off the walls, Howard kept saying the one thing that made it land back into my skull: “What’s the alternative?”

The alternative would have been more of his lying awake at night, keeping track of all the forms we had filled in; of my waking up in the morning, my heart pounding so hard it felt as though it would tear through my chest, wondering if there were forms we’d forgotten to fill in.  I always joke that Italian bureaucracy is part Kafka and part Goldoni. French bureaucracy is pure Kafka. People smiled when I said that I’d rather translate La Chanson de Roland than have to navigate the impenetrable, labyrinthine language of administrative French.  

Before moving – permanently, we thought – to Nice, we had taken exploratory trips, made enquiries, done careful research. Lists of pros and cons were drawn up. Worst-case scenarios imagined. Sums done. We found answers to all the questions we thought of asking.  

Only there were questions that it never occurred to us to ask.  

In the end, I’ll never know for sure if we hit a brick wall because it stood unavoidably before us or if we simply grew too exhausted and confused to avoid it.  Imagination is the first step to a successful outcome and when you’re so physically and mentally tired you don’t have the strength even to picture your desired outcome, all you have the energy to hope for is peace of mind.  And sleep.

“What will people in Norwich say?” I finally blurted out as though that was a more important concern than the actual move.

I can’t remember what Howard replied exactly, but it was something along the lines of Why would they say anything? And if they do, why do you care? 

Norwich is a relatively small city.  Most of our acquaintances here know one another, and there can be a touch of Jane Austen’s novels in social gatherings and curiosity about our neighbours’ business.  More than once I’ve met someone who exclaimed, with a varying blend of excitement, as well as a pinch of triumph at being in possession of privileged information (information is a valuable commodity in relatively small cities and each morsel can be dressed in more than one sauce), “Oh, I hear that you –” followed by the account of an alleged adventure, disaster or extraordinary feat that made my relatively small life sound a great deal more glamorous than it is.  And now, I thought, these same people, all sympathy, would exclaim, “Sorry it didn’t work out” and my imagination and paranoia would add, Thought you were too good for us, did you? Look at you now, come crawling back.

Of course, nobody would be unkind enough to say that or think that.  Of course not.  Well, a few might think it.  Those, perhaps, who have lived decades in the same house, who find it odd that someone over thirty – let alone fifty or sixty – should still be renting their home, have had several different professions, and not had children.  Those in whose presence I always feel socially defective.  But why the hell did I care, anyway? I have no idea, but I suddenly understood people who, after emigrating and falling on hard times, are too ashamed to return to their home country.  It’s hard to go back with anything less than a spectacular, envy-generating improvement in your life.  Of course, I kept reminding myself that there were a few of friends who would not judge, smirk or make seemingly anodyne remarks that somehow managed to leave scratches on me.  I decided to focus only on them.  I figured that if they said Sorry it didn’t work out, they would add (and – when it came to it, they did) At least you had the courage to try.  

As we organised, packed and grew even more stressed and I found myself freefalling into burnout, there were dots of light to keep many of my shadows at bay: my friends. During our ten months in Nice, I had the joy and the privilege to meet a number of women who became treasured friends.  French, Australian, British, Irish, Fijian, Austrian, American. Generous, supportive, warm women with whom I felt I could be myself.  Explore this myself.  In that nurturing, accepting setting, I learnt more about this myself in ten months than in the preceding ten years.  Funny, how some people can bring out the best in you, then hold up a mirror so you can see this best in yourself. 

Sorry it didn’t work out.  I thought about this sentence for the entire train journey from Nice to Norwich, from the blue Mediterranean to the grey North Sea.  We’d planned to settle in Nice permanently.  That wasn’t possible.  But isn’t everything in life a lesson if you’re able to learn it? But this is not just a lesson.  Dear friends. Getting to know myself.  Invaluable gifts.

Yes, after three and a half months back in England, people still say, “Sorry it didn’t work out in Nice.”  To most of them I reply “Thank you” or “Oh, well” and smile politely.

It may not have worked out as we’d planned.  But it did work out.