Two Metres From You

by Heidi Stephens

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Monday, 20 April

  To Do

  More Swap Shop

  Gemma and Matthew half-jogged to the village hall, towing a bemused Mabel behind them. They had both overslept after an evening in bed, followed by a very late dinner and a bottle of wine that led to a soak in the bath that ended up back in bed. This morning Gemma’s hair was a crispy, tangled mess and her arms and face had an angry sheen of sunburn from their walk yesterday, but she didn’t have the time or energy to worry about it.

  At the entrance Gemma and Matthew headed off in two directions – Matthew to placate the waiting volunteers, and Gemma to put Mabel in the office at the back of the shop. Barry was in charge today, and momentarily stopped arranging bottles of Mary Berry Pomegranate Salad Dressing into a precarious pyramid when a red-faced and rattled-looking Gemma burst in with a panting dog.

  ‘Crikey. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, overslept. Just need to put Mabel in the office, can you throw her a carrot and fill that old ice cream tub with water when you have a second?’

  ‘No problem. Look, give her to me, I’ll get her sorted. You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.’

  Gemma smiled gratefully and handed over Mabel’s lead, then kissed between her ears and ran back out of the same door she’d entered approximately twenty seconds earlier.

  The volunteers were all assembled when Gemma hurtled in and flew straight into action; firstly to make up lost time, but also to deflect attention from the knowing smirks and raised eyebrows being directed her way. Matthew took it all in his stride as usual, so Gemma put him on the door in charge of managing traffic and dispensing hand sanitiser. She allocated Erica and Ruth on the outbound items and positioned herself at the table for inbound donations. Gareth had gone to a family funeral, an aunt who had passed away at a ripe old age. The strict rules around social distancing meant that limits had been put on the numbers of people who could attend funeral services; Gemma couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be one of only a handful of mourners in a cold crematorium, unable to hug or comfort each other, never mind share a plate of mini pork pies and a memorial sherry at the local pub. Gareth had offered to pop in later to help clean up, presumably because he had absolutely nothing better to do.

  Visitors started trickling into the hall at 10 a.m., one household at a time, and like Saturday it was a mix of families and couples and people on their own; clearly the opportunity to walk to the village hall in the sunshine on a Monday morning was too exciting to resist. There were also more donations for people to choose from, a combination of what was left from the original collection, and the sanitised and quarantined items from Saturday. The atmosphere felt quite upbeat considering this was the end of week four of lockdown; there was a sense of resignation, an acceptance that this was just how life was going to be for the time being, a few faux-chirpy declarations of ‘We’ve just got to get on with it, haven’t we?’

  As on Saturday, many of the visitors were older, and many wore face masks and gloves like the volunteers. Gemma marvelled at how quickly this new dress code had become normal – a month ago, the only people you ever saw in London wearing face masks were South East Asian tourists. Now the tourists were gone, but the masks were being worn by retirees in English villages. She wondered if they’d become mandatory for everyone soon, and how long that might last.

  Almost all the customers paused for a brief chat with Matthew on their way in, and appeared to be delighted to see him. They asked after his parents and sent their regards, which he dutifully promised to pass on. Matthew had told her that his dad had a long history of asthma, so they were staying isolated from the rest of the village apart from a walk together across the field behind their house each day. Matthew dropped off their shopping, and his mum cleaned everything with antiseptic wipes before putting it away. Now they knew he was getting down and dirty with his neighbour, she probably cleaned everything twice.

  Inbound donations were slow and steady – lots of fiction and a good selection of cookbooks, a few kitchen gadgets and old tools. One woman in her sixties dropped off a bag of children’s colouring books, pens and craft sets, all unopened and unused. Her face was a mask of sadness and grief, and Gemma could only imagine what had happened to her grandchild – at best a family rift, at worst something entirely more devastating. Gemma thanked the woman and she smiled sadly, her eyes lost to memories. ‘Good to have someone use them, they’re no good to me any more.’ She left without looking at the donations table, giving Matthew a half-hearted wave on her way out.

  As more families arrived and organised chaos descended on the hall, Gemma found her thoughts returning to the conundrum she’d parked in her brain a couple of days before; how to re-connect people in the village to help with loneliness, isolation, lack of support networks and sheer boredom. She was primarily thinking of the women, but actually everyone could benefit from more talking, more sharing and an opportunity to offload. By the end of the session, an idea that had been bubbling away had taken a little more shape, but it needed Matthew’s help and input before she could take it any further.

  When Erica locked the door after the last visitor, they agreed a half-hour break before cleaning started, so Gemma grabbed Matthew and Mabel and hustled them outside for a walk. As they strolled through the field behind the church watching Mabel dart in and out of the wheatgrass, Gemma gathered her thoughts on the idea she’d been brewing and shared it with Matthew. She told him about the conversations she’d had with people in the village and the things she’d noticed, recalling her surprise when she looked at the village noticeboard that first day and saw how many clubs and societies there were. Community made a real difference here; people knew their neighbours and cared about what they were doing. ‘Sometimes more than they should,’ laughed Matthew. So why couldn’t they re-start some of those community lifelines online? Lots of places were doing it using video platforms like Zoom, it was becoming the norm. So why not in Crowthorpe? It wouldn’t work for everything, but enough that the majority of people in the village had the opportunity to re-ignite those old connections.

  Gemma opened a notes app on her phone and they started to make a list of the main groups in the village that would benefit from more support – older people living alone, carers, single parents, teenagers, working parents who were now carrying the added burden of home schooling and living together 24/7. Churchgoers. The list was huge and there was clear crossover between the groups, so they narrowed it down to the biggest and highest priority.

  To Gemma’s mind the challenge was lighting the first fires – if they could make video meet-ups feel normal and easy, people would start to create their own groups. So a general chat over a cup of tea for mums might spawn a smaller group that wanted to talk about home schooling, or healthy cooking, or just get drunk together after the kids had gone to bed. All they had to do was get the ball rolling with some starter groups, and then let the village do what it had been doing naturally for decades.

  ‘So who’s going to run these starter groups?’ asked Matthew. ‘We can’t do everything. I’m still working and you’re busy saving the village.’ He smiled teasingly at Gemma, who pulled a face in return.

  ‘We’re going to get the usual people who run these things to do it. It’s the same club they’ve always led, just online instead of in the village hall or the pub or the café.’ Gemma folded her arms, her eyes glittering.

  ‘And how exactly do you plan to convince them to get involved in your mad scheme? Remember, this isn’t London. Talking to big groups on video isn’t normal; people here are still using landlines.’

  ‘Well, let’s see. We need someone known and respected in the village, who’s good at charming people.’ Gemma smiled sweetly at Matthew, who held his hands up and backed away.

  ‘Woah, Gemma. This is your area of expertise, not mine. I’m not good at the community stuff. I just . . . keep myself to myself.’

  ‘No, you don’t
. You do all their odd jobs, you’ve been in all their homes; the people here trust you. All you have to do is make a few phone calls and rally the village do-gooders, elders, whatever. They’re probably bored out of their minds right now and would love to hear from you. I’ll do all the admin.’

  Matthew sighed heavily, a defeated look on his face. He looked at the list on Gemma’s phone. ‘Just so I’m clear, you want me to call the vicar, the woman who runs playgroup, Yvonne from Autumn Club, Charlie from the pub and Tamsyn from Youth Club.’

  ‘I do. But first we need to iron out a few issues. Let’s carry on at my place later, then we’ll make the calls in the morning. I’ll make you dinner.’

  Gemma felt restored and re-energised by the time they got back to the shop; she had another scheme brewing, and an evening with Matthew ahead. She popped back into the shop just as Barry was locking up, and asked him to hold on a second while she put Mabel back in the office. Hopefully the cleaning wouldn’t take long, and she could have a quiet nap in the meantime.

  The volunteers had re-assembled in the village hall, so they set to work cleaning the latest batch of donations. The addition of Matthew, Barry and Gareth – who’d changed out of his funeral suit and joined them – to the usual team of Ruth, Erica and Gemma, helped make light work of the pile; they rattled through it in less than an hour, and had everything crated up ready to be dragged through to the storage area before a final wipe-down of the hall and tables.

  As Gemma gave the village hall toilet some elbow grease and bleach, she heard an almighty crash followed by a shower of tinkling glass from the other side of the wall. Thinking it was one of the windows in the main hall, she sprinted back to check everyone was OK. But other than all the volunteers being frozen in confusion, the huge arched windows were exactly as she’d left them. ‘What the hell was that?’

  Matthew shrugged, but Ruth hurried towards the door. ‘It must have been in the shop.’

  Gemma’s hands flew to her face as realisation dawned. ‘Oh my God. Mabel.’

  Ruth rattled the key in the lock as Gemma hopped from foot to foot, unable to breathe as tears and panic bubbled inside her chest. She fully expected to find Mabel dead or horribly injured, so it made her scream when Ruth opened the door and a yellow furry body shot out like a bullet, hurtling across the lane into the churchyard before anyone could even register what had happened. Gemma shouted her name and started to run after her, but Matthew grabbed her arm.

  ‘No, you stay here. She might come back and she’ll be scared if it’s all strangers. Give me her lead and I’ll go and find her.’ He squeezed her arm and looked at her intently. ‘She’s OK, Gemma, she won’t go far. It’ll be fine.’

  Gemma nodded and dug Mabel’s lead out of her handbag, then watched Matthew jogging off into the churchyard. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, reminding herself that Mabel wasn’t squashed under a chiller cabinet with her back paws sticking out like some kind of canine remake of The Wizard of Oz, so that was a good thing. Matthew would bring her back, and it would be fine.

  The bad news was that Gemma still didn’t know what the crashing noise was, or why Mabel wasn’t snoozing in the back office. She experienced a creeping sense of dread, then headed into the shop.

  ‘Oh my God. Oh my fucking GOD.’

  The shop looked like someone had thrown a rave in an abattoir. The chiller doors were hanging open, with packs of meat either empty or covered in teeth marks where Mabel had tried and failed to rip her way through the vacuum packaging. The hessian bag of carrots had been scattered across the floor, punctuated by small piles of orange vomit where Mabel had eaten her fill, then thrown up and started again. Worst of all, the Mary Berry pyramid had been toppled, creating a river of broken glass and pomegranate salad dressing that flowed from the centre of the shop to the door. For good measure, Mabel had clearly done a few laps of the shop in a panic and taken down a rotating rack of greeting cards and a cardboard display unit of lentil crisps, which she’d subsequently trampled through, bursting a few bags open on the way. All in all, it was absolute carnage.

  Gemma looked at Ruth and the rest of the volunteers, all of whom were rendered entirely speechless. How could one dog create such havoc in such a short time? She blew all the air out of her cheeks, trying not to cry.

  ‘This is my fault. I can’t have closed the office door properly when I got back from our walk.’

  Ruth gave her a stern look. ‘It’s not your fault. I should have called the fridge man but I haven’t got round to it. You can see the cardboard propping up the chiller has got all soggy. Mabel wouldn’t have done this if the fridge wasn’t open.’ Personally Gemma thought that was stretching Mabel’s self-control a bit, but right now was prepared to go with it.

  Barry gasped. ‘It’s my fault it’s soggy, I mopped the floor before I closed the shop. Ruth told me not to mop around the fridge, but I forgot.’

  Everyone looked at Erica, who put her hands up and took a step back. ‘This has absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  Gareth laughed and broke the tension, then moved into military mode by starting to organise the troops.

  ‘OK, this isn’t going to clear itself up, so let’s make a plan. Barry, you go and help Matthew, see if you can cover a bit more ground and track Mabel down. She’s probably feeling quite sorry for herself. Gemma, you get some rubbish bags and gloves for everyone, we’ll need to be careful with all this glass. Erica, can you get a broom, mop, dustpan, whatever’s in the cupboard. Ruth, put the kettle on, we all need a cup of tea. Let’s get started.’

  A couple of hours later the shop looked considerably less like it had been looted by middle-class pirates, and all the spoiled food and chewed packaging was in the big wheelie bin at the back of the shop. Fresh cardboard wedges were propping up the chiller, and all the sticky dressing had been mopped up and the stone floor scrubbed with a stiff brush, leaving a section stained pale pink like there’d been a brutal murder. Gemma suspected the smell of pomegranates and vinegar would probably linger for the rest of time, reminding the people of Crowthorpe of the day her stupid greedy Labrador got high on carrots and twenty-eight-day-aged Aberdeen Angus ribeye and went on the rampage.

  Gemma was burning with shame, but also becoming increasingly worried that neither Matthew nor Barry were back. It wasn’t like Mabel to run off, but she must have been terrified by the noise of the falling bottles and was probably hunkered down somewhere, feeling sick and scared. When the cleaning was finished Gemma popped outside and called her name in the churchyard for a few minutes, but there was no sign of her. She couldn’t get hold of Matthew because he had no signal, so she just had to wait. Evening was falling, and she was starting to entertain horrible thoughts about Mabel being on her own in the dark, her paws full of broken glass, injured and scared.

  When she walked back from the churchyard, the rest of the volunteers were standing in the lane outside the shop, looking ready to go home. Gemma apologised to Ruth for the fiftieth time.

  ‘Don’t be daft. It was nobody’s fault, and no real harm done.’

  Gemma smiled weakly at everyone. ‘I’m going to stay here and wait for Matthew. I’ve got a phone signal here so he can call me, and Mabel might come back. You all head off, and thanks for being amazing.’

  Gareth shook his head and held up a fistful of rope, cut into metre-long lengths. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’re all going to look for Mabel. I’ve made some leads and worked out a plan so we can cover more of the village. We’ll meet back here every half-hour to check in.’

  Gemma started to cry heavy, racking sobs, overwhelmed by fear and exhaustion and gratitude. Barry reached out to pat her on the shoulder, then awkwardly withdrew his hand when he remembered he wasn’t allowed. Everyone looked at her, clearly desperate to offer comfort but powerless to do anything. Gemma’s phone rang, and her heart leapt as she saw it was Matthew. She fumbled to answer it through her tears, putting it on speakerphone so everyone could hear.

 
‘Gemma? I’ve got Mabel, she’s fine. She was in your garden.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  To Do

  Hug dog

  Wallow in guilt and mortification

  Gemma ended the call with Matthew, sobbing with relief. She blew kisses at the volunteers, then ran through the village as fast as she could, not stopping until she was coughing up a lung at the bottom of Matthew’s steps. She really needed to do more exercise – sex and light jogging were clearly not cutting it.

  Mabel was stretched out on Matthew’s sofa, her head in his lap as he gently stroked her head and gave Gemma a huge smile. He’d scoured the village for her for two hours, searching the fields and woods and calling for her until he’d found himself outside West Cottage. He decided to pop into the barn to call Gemma so they could make a new plan, but instead had found Mabel lying on her side under her favourite apple tree, fast asleep and snoring away contentedly. He’d gently woken her up to check for serious injuries, then carried her up to his apartment so he could call Gemma. She’d had a long drink and didn’t seem any the worse for her adventures.

  Gemma gave Mabel a long hug, sobbing into her furry neck. She couldn’t voice how relieved and grateful she was – Aunt Laura had trusted her to look after Mabel for the rest of her life, and something terrible could easily have happened to her. In the past few hours Gemma had worked through endless nightmare scenarios in which Mabel had fallen prey to malevolent cows, become tangled in barbed wire, run in front of a lorry on the M4, thrown herself into some kind of clattering farm machinery, crossed paths with a dog-hating farmer with a shotgun, been stolen by thieves and fallen down an old well. The countryside was full of things that could kill a dog and today Gemma had lived through every one of them. She moved from Mabel into Matthew’s arms and he held her tight until she stopped crying. ‘It’s OK, she’s home now,’ he whispered, stroking her hair until her breathing calmed.