I guess part of us had always been expecting this. Our previous experience of the vendor had not been exactly positive. Now, as our dream future in France settled in tatters around us, we just felt numb. Tomorrow, we were completing on the sale of our lovely house in the Sarthe – but now there wasn’t going to be a next chapter.

Maître G was so sympathetic and obviously hated having to be the bearer of this awful news, less than 36 hours before we were due to get the keys for our lovely new home. A lawyer acting for our vendor had contacted her the previous evening to say that he had just found out that the mill was about to be sold. Was she aware that the vendor had a personal debt secured on the property?

Monsieur had apparently defaulted on rent payable for land he used for his business over a number of years. Unable to pay, he had converted the debt of tens of thousands of euros into a private mortgage on the mill. Not only had Monsieur not declared this during the sale but he was disputing the debt (hence the involvement of the lawyer) and the whole matter had been  subject to a judiciary process for quite some time. If we continued with the purchase we would be taking on the debt and would in turn be involved with the French courts.

Maître G had delayed telling us until she had explored all the options. OK, so what could we do?

1. We could go ahead with the purchase and take on Monsieur’s debts. We would not be able to dispose of the property and stood a good chance of the creditor suing us and winning.
2. We could try and negotiate a solution whereby we rented the mill from Monsieur for as long as it took for the legal battle to be resolved – years rather than months she estimated. And in the meantime Monsieur would probably lose the mill and we’d have been paying money down the drain for nothing.

Or c) we could pull out of the purchase completely.

We couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t the notaire just withhold the disputed sum from the proceeds of the sale and pay off the debt? “I really wish that was possible”, she said “but because this matter has already gone to judiciary process we cannot do that.”

“If we pull out of the purchase, will we pay a penalty?”

The French house purchase system is much stricter than in England. Once the compromise de vente, presale contract, is signed and the purchaser’s obligatory cooling off period has expired, either side must pay a penalty (usually 10% of the purchase price) if they pull out.

“No, the vendor has obviously broken his side of the contract by not declaring this mortgage.”

“Is there any way we can get out of the sale of La Tourelle at this point?”

“Unfortunately not. Your sale is perfect. Your purchaser has done everything he is required to do.” (including flying out from San Francisco to sign the Acte de vente tomorrow, we thought grimly.)

My mind was racing, trying to explore all the possibilities.

“If we pull out of our purchase can we claim a penalty from the vendor for breaking the contract?”

Maybe we could get the vendor to cover the cost of us pulling out of our sale?

“I can certainly explore that aspect for you, but this man is in so much mess that you would probably have to sue him for the penalty sum.”

We had no choice. Colin and I both agreed that, with heavy hearts, we would have pull out of the purchase of our beautiful mill.

Jean-Paul arrived. “Salut, ça va? Tout va bien ? , Hi, how’s things ? Everything going OK ?

The following morning was quite surreal. We locked up La Tourelle for the last time, threw our bags into the car and drove to the notaire’s office, an hour away. It was the first time that we had met our buyer and he turned out to be a really nice guy. Having recently inherited several millions from his parents who had been astute/lucky enough to have bought some land in the area of California later to be known as Silicon Valley, Jack had been buying small characterful houses in several different countries around the world, and was intending to spend a couple of months in each, every year – letting them out through airbnb when he wasn’t there.

When we arrived, Chris had hinted that he had found out something from Gérard and that things were not as desperate as everyone had first thought. I really didn’t dare raise my hopes. After we had all gone through every clause in every document and signed (a much faster process this time, as Maître G had invested in the technology to do everything on an encrypted connection, signing just once on a tablet) The notaire confirmed that there had been some progress but she wouldn’t say more until she had spoken to all legal parties concerned. She would phone us later that afternoon.

As we had originally been planning to do a bit of sight-seeing on Wednesday, before completing on the mill on Thursday morning, we decided to make the most of the day. Well, we hadn’t got a home to go back to, had we? A stroll round the market in La Flèche, followed by lunch in the warm sun at a brasserie on the church square, then an afternoon walking around St Pierre sur Erve. Masochists we must be, because after a walk to the Chapelle de St Sylvain, we carried on to see le Moulin de Gô, a watermill in the process of renovation.

It was nearly 5pm and we still hadn’t heard anything from Maître G. I tried ringing her, forgetting that the office was shut on Wednesday afternoons. So I rang Chris. He couldn’t get hold of her either but said that he was 99.9% sure that the meeting with the vendor’s notaire was still happening first thing the following morning, as planned. It had been scheduled for 9am and we weren’t surprised to hear that the reason for that was so that Monsieur would be sober enough to participate. The notaires had also planned to have a gendarme collect Monsieur and escort him to the meeting and attest to his fitness!

You can imagine the emotional state Colin and I were in that evening. We were staying with Marianne and Jean-Paul. They had kindly offered to let us stay as long as we needed. It was a lovely evening under the circumstances.

I still didn’t have a clue what we would do with the van full of furniture. The nearest self-storage facility was 40 k away in Le Mans. I’d asked our old neighbours if they knew anyone who had garage or out-house we could rent. Jean-Paul had dashed up to the chateau to see if the owner could store it for us, but Madame had already departed on her winter travels.