Sleep was one of the few things on which Jason and Emily disagreed strongly. She needed a full eight hours and preferably nine; he resented sleeping more than six. Resented, as he called it, sleeping his life away.
Shortly after 7 a.m., having woken once during the night with a headache and taken two paracetamols, he slipped out of bed feeling very hungover. He dressed in his warm winter cycling gear, which he’d unpacked late last night, went down to the kitchen and plugged the command box back in. Then he went through the integral door to the garage, checked the tyres on his road bike, secured his helmet, gave the command for the door to open and wheeled the bike out on to the silent street, commanding the door to shut behind him.
He was delighted to see the Sunday papers, wrapped in plastic, lying on the doorstep. The village store certainly was efficient, he thought. He would bring them inside when he returned; Emily was unlikely to get up before then.
Five days shy of the shortest day, there was very little light. It was a mild morning with a faint drizzle. Although there were no vehicles around, as a precaution he switched on his bike lamps and his head torch, before mounting and heading off, clicking into the pedals.
Shooting a glance at the house opposite, where there were no signs of life, he passed the infernal Santa’s grotto, which had been left on all night, and pedalled along the silent street, passing empty houses with their sale boards on both sides until, after a short distance, the road ended in metal fencing and trespasser warning signs. He turned around, cycled back past the Penze-Weedells, the Noddy house next door where he had seen the couple with their children, which looked dark and empty, then around the curves of the long close, passing the as-yet-unfinished and fenced-off shells of houses.
It was rapidly getting lighter. As he reached the end of the estate, he turned right onto the lane, and rode hard up the steep hill, changing down to the lowest gear, standing up for the leverage to keep going, breathing in the heady scents of the wintry country air. After some minutes of hard slog, determined not to give up and walk, he finally crested the hill, and an awesome view of Sussex countryside greeted him, as some kind of reward for his effort. Fields of farmland. Random houses and farm buildings. He could just make out the county town of Lewes in the far distance, in the breaking light. He freewheeled joyfully and at breakneck speed down the far side, passing a field full of alpacas, and nearly lost it on a sharp right-hander.
The exercise and the rush of cold air exhilarated him, and his hangover was going. He felt happier than he could ever remember. A townie all his life until now, he had always hankered to live in the country. Their new home, Lake House, seemed like a fulfilment of his dream. He could paint there for sure. Right now, his mind was like the lake he could see from his studio window – teeming with inspiration. At first the idea of living on an estate had bothered him, but now he realized, and especially after meeting the Penze-Weedells, that on his doorstep would be an endless supply of characters to surreptitiously photograph and use in his work.
He wound on along a country lane, and through a small, sleepy hamlet, then after another quarter of an hour, he checked his Garmin. Seven miles. Coming up to 8 a.m. Time to head back.
Time to get to work and start painting. A million ideas were jostling for priority inside his head.
Never before, in all his life, had he felt so creative. He would deliver to Susan Burton at the Northcote Gallery, for his one-man exhibition on 8 February, twenty-two paintings that would knock her socks off.
He pedalled like fury, a man on a mission, towards home.