Imagine a moment of perfect happiness with no past and no future and no thoughts of time ebbing away. With no thoughts of anything. No conscious thought at all. An instant of perfect happiness. Soft breeze. Soft sea. True love. True laughter. Giant turtles. And so on. These moments come once in a while to the very, very lucky. Of course they don’t usually last for long.
Jo Smiley and Charlie Maxwell McDonald, on the fourth day of their honeymoon, were lying in the moonlight on a small, empty, private beach in Mexico, only recently disturbed from their canoodling by the sound of a giant turtle dragging its hefty weight across the sand towards them. Its progress was slow and they watched it for ages before Charlie said – whispered, quite seriously, as if it were some new discovery:
‘It’s definitely coming towards us.’
Jo started giggling because they’d been watching intently all this time. There had never been any question where it was headed.
‘Why? What’s so funny?’ he murmured, turning to look at her, and then because he loved her, and he loved her laughter, starting to laugh himself.
The turtle stopped still. Silence.
‘Oh. Now we’ve frightened it,’ said Jo.
‘Or it thinks it’s frightened us. Either way we should set its mind at rest.’
Slowly they stood up and tiptoed back to their hut. It was a magnificent hut. Booking into this simple-looking corner of Paradise had been the most extravagant thing Charlie had ever done. He had imagined that his elegant, metropolitan wife, who until recently had been thriving in the luxurious world of Public Relations, would have been disappointed with anything less.
But he underestimated how much she loved him. Jo Smiley knew all about creature comforts, as fine-looking, highly effective, well-connected thirty-one-year-old London PR women are prone to. Jo had spent a lot of time and clients’ money in some of the smartest restaurants and hotels in the world. But that was all in the past now. And anyway it wasn’t the point. She would have been happy with Charlie anywhere. Anywhere. To have found a companion like Charlie; unworldly, unpretentious, tall, dark, funny, wise, kind and handsome (of course) was without doubt the greatest luxury of all.
In fact when Jo looked at Charlie and imagined the bucolic life which lay ahead of them she felt light-headed with hope for the future. The house they would be living in was beautiful; crumbling and uncomfortable and an insatiable swallower of cash, but it was lovely, and destined shortly to be lovelier still. When they returned to England she and Charlie were going to set to work restoring it. She and Charlie were going to build a dream-place together. Not only that, they were going to make it pay.
So when they weren’t watching tortoises or doing all the other things which enhanced their perfect happiness, they were talking about the future of Fiddleford Manor. It had been home to Charlie’s family for over two hundred years and now it was theirs and to keep the roof from caving in and everything else from falling apart, they were turning the house into a business. They were going to open the place up as a refuge for anyone in hiding from an angry public, or a baying and bullying press.