Inspired by Edouard Manet (1832-1883) – Carnations and clematis in a crystal vase (around 1882) – Pastel – 10,63 x 6,30 inch

It’s been already a year. We have a tremendous weather. The sun has been up for a couple of hours now and the heat rushes imperceptibly through the living room window which has been mistakenly left opened. Sophie likes cooling the farmhouse every morning at dawn in the summer to keep the freshess of the night inside the sufocating southern rooms. And then as soon as the yellow star appears, she closes the shutters and all the openings.

But today is a special day. It’s been already a year. Sophie came out early to take a walk in the garden. She had a very specific mission, to pick pink carnations and a blue clematis. She loved them so much. They were her favorites. Then, she will put the flowers in an appropriate crystal vase, the one that her aunt had offered her for her wedding, the one she had nearly knocked over and smashed into thousand pieces of an evening of fierce anger.

The house is now in the dark, the vase sits on the coffee table in the sitting room, facing the library. Sophie sits in a Chesterfield brown leather armchair from her great-grandfather, so old but so comfortable. She tries to read but her eye is irresistibly attracted by the vase and the flowers. It’s been already a year.

The grandfather clock strucks twelve. Time goes by so quickly. Sophie fell asleep, the book on her lap, open on the same page as the day before, the one with the title. She can’t read further. She offfered it to her for her eighteenth birthday. It was her favorite book when she was her age. It was Consuelo, the Countess of Rudolstadt by George Sand. Sophie knows that one day … It’s been already a year.

She prepares a white ham sandwich with two slices of bread, mayonnaise and pickles for lunch. A small glass of red wine, a Bordeaux, a Burgundy. And why not her favorite wine? A Saumur Champigny, a light, unpretentious wine. It’s the last bottle, she really would have appreciated … It’s been already a year.

Hours drift by, clouds pass by, moon comes up. Soon the day will be over. She misses her dreadfully, awfully and yet it’s been already a year.