by Beth Moran
I’d glided along in the bliss of considering myself a girlfriend, one of a pair, half of a whole, and had quite begun to convince myself that I loved this uncomplicated man. I even mentioned him to my parents, and started thinking about bringing him home to the Tufted Duck (although I’d have to ask for a guest room, given that Grandma was still snoring strong in my bedroom at ninety-three). I spent time with his friends, on boats, and in country houses and at D-list celebrity weddings. And if these new friends seemed to spend more time passed out, scrapping over someone’s so-called partner or crying in the toilets than they did enjoying themselves, well, who was I to judge? I felt honoured to be included.
And then, New Year’s Day, while we were eating breakfast only hours after that beautiful evening in the castle, Marcus’s phone bleeped with a message while he was chatting to a new contact on the other side of the dining room, his phone left sitting on the table between us.
It was a photograph.
In the time it took me to figure it out, several more popped up. To be honest, they would have made me feel sick even if they hadn’t featured my boyfriend. A woman was also in the photos, but it was impossible to make out her face. A written message soon followed:
Best night of my life. Hope to do it again soon xx
Marcus knew a lot of women. They often messaged him. A certain level of flirting and schmoozing, he had assured me, was part of his job. I hadn’t realised that naked gymnastics counted as flirting. The contact was saved in his phone as ‘FireStarter’.
I said nothing, downing my coffee in one mouthful, grabbing the as yet untouched cinnamon swirl from his plate and hotfooting it out of there. The psychological advantage garnered from standing at reception already checking out when he finally noticed my absence and came looking, gave me the courage to speak.
‘Who’s FireStarter?’
The slightly confused smile dropped off his face for a second, before he remembered that appearing to be confused might be the best way to play it. ‘Excuse me, darling?’
Ugh. I was too tired and angry and humiliated to faff about. There were times when being able to channel an alter ego superbitch came in handy. ‘She’s just sent you a pictorial recap of the other night.’
‘You were snooping on my phone?’ He stepped closer, ducking his head in an attempt to avoid a scene.
I took a step back. ‘You left it on the table. No snooping required.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Can we talk about this somewhere else, please? Several of my associates are here.’
‘No. Who is she?’
‘No one,’ he snapped, rolling his eyes in contempt.
‘No one? No one, as in, you don’t even know the name of the woman you cheated on me with?’
‘Oh, come off it, Eleanor,’ he muttered. ‘What are you talking about, cheating? Please don’t start getting all possessive on me, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘What?’ I was the one to look confused, now. ‘What else do you call it if you sleep with someone behind your girlfriend’s back?’
‘I call it perfectly acceptable, if they aren’t exclusive.’
‘You specifically asked me to be exclusive! In August, before I went on the Italian Nonna’s food retreat!’
‘Well,’ he shrugged, glancing about the reception foyer, because it was apparently far more important that he maintained his reputation with his associates than with me. ‘You didn’t ask me back.’
So, I broke up with my non-exclusive boyfriend. Thankfully, he’d proven himself to be a total arse, so I wasn’t too heartbroken about it. Just a little bit lonely – Marcus had made me feel like a grown-up, who knew what she was doing, and had a semblance of a future up ahead. He’d validated my job, laughing off my concerns with comments like, ‘Lighten up, darling – you write humorous food reviews, you aren’t testifying in court.’ He made me feel a tiny bit less like an arse. Or, at least stopped me having so much time to worry about it.
But all that newfound empty time, the time that mattered, in between the fluff and the frippery of my increasingly ghastly job, was now time spent gradually facing up to the fact that I couldn’t keep going any more. The further Nora slipped down this one-way slope to Bitchiness Abyss, the more I loathed what I did. And it wasn’t ‘only a job’, it was my life, and if I had even the slightest modicum of self-worth, I had to acknowledge that how I spent my one precious life mattered.
Here’s a useful tip when deciding whether your chosen career is destroying you one torturous meme at a time: if you are too ashamed to allow your family to read the words you write, then for goodness’ sake, what the hell are you thinking?
I was free now though, wasn’t I? Here in the strong, ancient embrace of Damson Farm? Tucked away in between the gently rolling East Midland hills, amongst the bees and the sheep, the lights of Ferrington glinting through the orchard? After all, I’d had no more messages from the stalker since I’d left. Sure, I’d blocked them, but if they were that determined they’d have simply got another number.
Surely that must mean I was safe.
Mustn’t it?
9
I decided to address that question by ensuring I was too busy and worn out to think about it any more. I finally gave in and left Lucy a message, explaining how I’d been doing a lot of thinking and had decided to resign, which of course then meant that unfortunately I would have to let her go. I told her I’d provide her with a stellar reference for Miles if she wanted to carry on as Nora, how much I valued her, and hoped we’d stay in touch blah, blah, blah. I also added that I’d had some disturbing messages. Although they had clearly been aimed at me, and they’d stopped now, I strongly urged her to put everything Nora-related on pause until I could fill her in.
For the rest of the weekend I worked on the study, sorting and dusting and scrubbing away layers of neglect. I folded Hope’s giant heap of clothes into neat piles and rearranged her changing table so there was actually space to change her on it. Daniel helped me swap the furniture about, so that Hope had a space to sit near the window, and he could charge his tech without wires trailing across the room waiting to be tripped over.
I also cooked, and took Hope for a walk around the nearby lanes while Daniel caught up on some work. Then, finding him conked out on the study sofa, we baked cookies with the last of the flour and sugar. In the evenings, we ate dinner once Hope was asleep, lingering over a decaffeinated coffee until the ripe old party hour of nine o’clock, when Daniel would either go to bed or head back to his desk.
Sunday afternoon, Billie phoned Daniel and asked if she could speak to me, so we cried and talked and breathed through a couple of awkward silences.
‘I’m sorry you weren’t told,’ Billie told me, voice trembling. ‘Things hadn’t been… you know, things were never good between us, and then she didn’t cope very well with me moving on. So we’d not seen each other for a long time, beyond the odd hello. I hadn’t realised you’d stayed in touch. Although I wouldn’t have known how to contact you even if I’d thought about it. And. Well. We were so overwhelmed with it all. Hope, the farm, the police. Given the circumstances, we kept things small. There’d been enough fuss.’
Given what circumstances? I wanted to ask. Charlie would not have wanted a small, quiet funeral, no matter what the circumstances of her death. She’d have wanted funny stories and noisy toasts and masses of food and drink, all finished off with a singalong. A send-off that people would have talked about for years afterwards. I felt a stab of anger that I had missed my opportunity to ensure she had a funeral befitting her. But then, it seemed like she’d changed in the year or so before she died. Who was I to say what this older, wiser, sober Charlie would have wanted? Who was I to comment on how a grieving mother, a bereft brother should say goodbye?
Monday morning, Daniel had a meeting in central London with important energy bigwigs, and needed to leave early to catch a train from Newark. ‘I would have made my excuses and dialled in, but if you don’t mind watching Hope agai
n, it would make my boss very happy if I showed up in person.’
‘Of course, no problem. But can you leave me some very clear and minutely detailed instructions?’
Waking just after 6.30, I slipped out of bed in the hope of squeezing in a coffee and maybe even a shower before my housemate’s summons. At the first creak of the floorboard, a thin wail informed me that I was kidding myself. Daniel had taped a spreadsheet to the end of her cot. He might as well have written it in computer code.
Two hours later, Hope had been fed, changed and changed again. I, on the other hand, had only managed to consume a glass of water and the mushed up remains of her banana. For some reason, Hope thought she was the one with something to cry about.
An hour after that, watching the clock like a crack sniper scrutinises their target, only while weeping slightly and with far less steady hands, I gave up trying to placate her screams and decided to distract myself with some further farmhouse exploring.
I peeked into three additional bedrooms on the first floor. Each contained a bed, a solid looking wardrobe and maybe a chest of drawers or a pair of matching bedside tables. The walls were covered in tatty wallpaper similar to the rest of the house, with threadbare carpets in indistinguishable shades, and yet more oppressive curtains. One of them must have been Daniel’s childhood bedroom – there were football trophies decorating one shelf, the others filled with children’s books and a wonky globe. There was also a tiny box room lined with shelving full of bedding and other odds and ends like broken lampshades and cracked leather suitcases. And then, behind the final door, I found another staircase. Balancing carefully as I carried Hope up the steep steps, we found an attic split into another bathroom, a large storage space tucked under the eaves, and what I instantly knew was Charlie’s room. Stretching half the length of the house, the room included three gabled windows and a sloping roof on either side. Rather than a carpet, brightly coloured rugs lay on top of faded floorboards. Three of the walls were covered in white wallpaper dotted with unicorns, while the wall opposite the windows was a deep yellow.
Her bed was utterly Charlie: a gold bedframe with a pale pink canopy, still made up with pink and gold speckled bedding. There were open wardrobes and shelving filling half of one wall, haphazardly stuffed with clothes, shoes and other accessories as if trying to make it impossible to find what she wanted quickly. A dressing table was covered in make-up, jewellery and other knick-knacks, and the rest of the room – a huge armchair, the bookcase, the floor – was simply filled with Charlie. Stuffed toys, souvenirs from her travels, pretty notepads and art equipment. Stacks of books and yet more shoes. A string of fairy lights in the shape of flamingos draped across one wall, mobiles and windchimes dangled from the higher points of the ceiling.
There were still old bottles of toiletries scattered about the tiny shower room. Musty, mildewed towels squatted in one corner, and a brightly coloured robe hung on the back of the door.
There was a photograph on the little table beside her pillow: Charlie in her pyjamas, in this bed, a newborn baby in her arms. I recognised the blanket Hope was swaddled in as the now worn piece of cloth that she snuggled in her cot. But I barely recognised the woman who held her: I had never met this Charlie. She looked… serene. Like she had finally found the answer. Like those brain-death demons of darkness had been vanquished forever by the tiny, beautiful promise in her arms.
Oh, Charlie.
I had never understood that heartbreak was a physical pain that genuinely felt as though something vital had splintered inside your ribs, leaving shards jamming into the soft flesh deep inside.
I lay on the bed on one side, Hope safely tucked up against me, buried my head into the sweet, subtle scent of my friend, and wished and ached for all that had not been, and now could never be.
Unfortunately, seven-month-old babies don’t have much patience for moments of unbridled desolation. Once the wiggling became accompanied by whimpers, we got up to explore the contents of the room. Hope opted to make a thorough investigation of a plastic sandal while I tackled some notebooks.
I found it near the back of the second one. So far, I’d skimmed through poetry and scattered jottings that ranged from joyful exuberance through wistful musings to bleak, all-consuming anguish that skittered chills up my spine.
But here, I found hope for a future. Dreams and plans. My heart cracked all over again as I read pages and pages of Charlie’s ideas to turn the farmhouse into a retreat. A sanctuary. A place for artists and writers, bakers and crafters. Overworked health workers who spent all day every day taking care of others at the expense of themselves. Businesspeople, frayed and frazzled and so stuck in their never-ending treadmill of achievement that they couldn’t remember what was really important.
A chance for people to reconnect with the earth again. To slow down to nature’s steady pace. To stop thinking and start sensing: to smell the damp wood after a storm, the fragrance of the blossom in spring. To listen to the sound of life thriving in every corner, every crevice – the birds, the bees, the rustling of the leaves. To taste – tomatoes plucked that morning, bursting with goodness. Herbs grown on the patio sprinkled over pasta rolled out the old-fashioned way. And, of course, to touch – hands buried in the textures of the garden, seeking treasure in the peaty vegetable beds. The kiss of sunshine on tired skin. The glorious exuberance of icy wind in their hair.
And to stop, and look. To soak up a world unobstructed by concrete and tarmac. Rolling hills stretching out across the horizon. A myriad of stars undimmed by city lights.
I was flabbergasted. I had no idea Charlie had this in her.
She had added sketches of the rooms, as well as listed the gatherings she would hold in the orchard and the field beyond that ran down to the river. Examples of menus, and plans for secret nooks she would create in the garden for people to sit and ponder. There were designs for a vegetable patch, and a fire pit beside a tiny stage area at the top of the meadow, space to dance as well as relax.
Charlie had invented a tiny heaven on earth.
She had peppered the pages with mentions of me: ‘Ask El about prices’, ‘Check with El if this could work’, ‘EL I NEED YOU!’, ‘How much could El invest?? – would need to draw up contract so proper business partners.’
She’d finished off the last page of the notebook with this:
A place to feed your senses, your stomach, your creativity and your soul. To recharge, reconnect and reimagine. To wander and to wonder. To remember who you are, and that who you are matters.
I wanted to go to this place so badly my feet were twitching to get on up and get there.
And as I read, and thought, and wandered through my friend’s imagination, Hope gnawing on her fist, eyes transfixed on the crystal mobile gently spinning above her, I began to wonder.
Could I create this place? Could I do it, without Charlie?
I could cook and clean, and probably manage some basic decorating. I knew how to serve people, take bookings, and complete most of the admin that came with running a hotel – and what I didn’t know, I could ask my parents. Daniel could teach me how to grow things. I’d been to enough events to know how to create an atmosphere. And what if Nora ended her career by writing about how coming here had transformed her, been her grand epiphany?
My heart began to accelerate. It was like seeing the first streak of pale light washing across the horizon. Now, I had something worth working for. Worth living for.
I could do this.
I would do it for Charlie, as my legacy to her. And for Daniel, and for Hope. And for me. And every other lost and lonely, stress-riddled, worn-out, washed-up person who needed it, too.
10
After cobbling together a basic lunch for us both out of a giant jacket potato and some cheese and salad, we went shopping. Ferrington had two small supermarkets according to my online search, one on Old Main Street, and one on the New Side of the river, imaginatively called New Main Street. I could have made a longer tri
p to a proper supermarket, but I wanted to have a look around the village – and although Daniel had left me full instructions about how the pram converted into a car seat, a walk seemed enough of an expedition for now.
It was a twenty-minute stroll through the orchard, across the field and along a short footpath beside the river until we reached the first row of cottages that led us into the village. The day was mild for January, although the sky was overcast and the shadows gloomy, and pushing Hope ensured my cheeks retained a warm glow. It was easy to spot the shop, and I was grateful I hadn’t risked driving as every space was full along the narrow street leading up to it.
The village was, shall we say, not as picturesque as I’d been expecting. There were some older, cottagey type houses along Old Main Street, but the row of shops was a 1950s eyesore, and looked as though the only fresh paint it had received since then was graffiti. Along with the Ferrington mini-market was a hairdresser featuring faded posters of women showcasing their eighties’ perms, the pizza place that Daniel had been to the other day, a Greggs and an off-licence which also advertised ‘cheapest vapes on the Old Side’. The only vapes on the Old Side, I would imagine. There was the Old Boat House pub that advertised a riverside garden and local sausages, and a miners’ social club that looked like a cheaper version of the pub. Opposite all this was the dinkiest, quaintest old-fashioned church I’d ever seen.
So maybe not quite picture postcard, but at least there was no air pollution, hardly any litter, and I could hear ducks quacking along the riverbank.
I went straight into the shop, loading up as much as I felt able to hang off the back of the pushchair – a fairly even mix of cleaning supplies and food. The selection was basic, to say the least, and they had completely run out of bananas.
Not to worry. We had a good hour or so before it started to get dark, and that gave us an excuse to cross the river to try the shops on the New Side.