by Beth Moran
He focused on the bed, frowning. ‘Do you want me to chuck it outside?’
‘No! No. It’s fine. I can deal with spiders. It gave me a shock, that’s all.’ I rubbed my face with both hands, embarrassment supplanting the fear.
My phone pinged again, from somewhere in the rumples of the duvet. I resisted the urge to grab it before Daniel might see the message, even as my heart near exploded.
He shook his head, one hand gripping the back of his neck.
‘For a split second there, I thought someone from last night had broken in,’ Daniel managed a shaky smile, dropping his hand back down.
‘You really think that’s a possibility?’ I asked, jerking my head towards the window.
‘No.’ He smiled for real then. It was ridiculous how even with the dread of the new messages, that smile felt like the first kiss of spring sunshine.
I grew gradually more aware that Daniel and I were standing in my not-especially large bedroom, both of us wearing our nightclothes.
Ping.
‘I’d better get that.’ My voice had dropped to a whisper. I so did not want to get it.
‘Yeah.’ Daniel ruffled his hair. Was it my imagination on overdrive, or was he flustered? ‘I was hoping to jump in the shower while Hope was settled.’ He disappeared around the door frame, only to reappear a second later, just long enough to say, ‘Good luck with the spider.’
The latest ping turned out to be Becky, apologising for bailing on us so quickly the night before, and asking if I needed any help clearing up. I declined. Spending a good few hours clearing up the cider-tasting mess might help take my mind off both the far bigger mess that seemed to have followed me here, and the potentially even bigger one I would be landing myself in shortly if I didn’t get a grip on my amorous feelings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, clearing up the barn, spending a fruitless couple of hours flicking through wallpaper online, taking Hope for a long walk in the opposite direction to the village, all utterly failed to stop me churning over the latest messages in my mind. Over and over and over they went until I was ready to chuck my phone in the Maddon.
My initial instinct was to block the number. But then they’d only get a new one. If I let this number keep messaging me then when the police investigated my gruesome murder, they’d have all the evidence in one conversation. Plus, I’d tried ignoring them – running away – and it hadn’t worked. As I tramped along the country lanes and footpaths, Hope strapped to my chest, one thought repeatedly sifted to the surface: I would rather know than constantly wonder about it. If things reached the point where I felt genuinely in danger – if, please no, they gave even the slightest indication that they knew where I was – I would speak to the police. I would definitely speak to Daniel. And then I would have to decide whether to face them, flip things around and try to contact the Alami family, or pack my bags and find somewhere else to hide.
The following day, Tuesday morning, I’d heard nothing more. I drove into Mansfield and bought a new phone, updating my Ferrington contacts and my family with my new number and then putting my old phone in my bedside drawer with the promise to myself that I’d only check it once a day. A promise I managed to keep for an impressive hour and fifty-seven minutes.
‘You need to stop worrying about what they might do to you,’ Daniel told me, as we tucked into a late dinner of pumpkin gnocchi on Friday evening, once Hope had settled in her cot.
‘What?’ I dropped my fork, splashing creamy sauce on my jumper, which made feigning cheerful confusion at his comment rather pointless. I did gather my wits quickly enough to realise that the they he was talking about wasn’t the they I was worrying about.
‘When I took Hope for her nine-month check-up today, people mentioned it, but I don’t think anyone’s gunning for you.’
‘What did they say?’
Daniel pushed a couple of pieces of gnocchi around his plate.
‘Come on. Whatever it is, I promise you I’ll have heard worse.’
‘They aren’t so much angry, as, well… that’s not true. People are angry. But at this stage it’s no more than chuntering over village gossip. The receptionist probably summed it up best.’
I braced myself.
‘She called you a deluded, impertinent pipsqueak and asked me to make sure you stop meddling in matters you know nothing about.’
‘So, I can probably show my face in the village without risking a stint in the stocks?’
‘In the Old Side, sure,’ Daniel shrugged, his eyes glinting. ‘I can’t vouch for those snivelling, whiny New Siders.’
It being a Friday, and us being wild and crazy young things, we decided to find a boxset on the TV. Carrying our drinks into the living room, we picked an old BBC detective series, and settled back to watch. I don’t know if it was because we were sharing a bottle of wine, but Daniel had sat next to me on the sofa. Positioned directly in the middle of his cushion, feet propped on the coffee table, I was nevertheless finding it increasingly challenging to concentrate.
About half an hour in, he picked up the remote and pressed pause. ‘You’re still fretting.’
‘I’m not! Honestly, I meant it when I said I’ve faced far worse. Part of writing articles means people not only decide they hate you, they get pathetic amounts of pleasure from repeatedly telling you that.’
‘Eleanor, you can’t sit still. It’s like sharing a sofa with a termite nest.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, tell me what’s up.’
Daniel’s face softened in the glow of the table lamp. His arm twitched a few inches towards me, and my breath caught as I wondered whether he wanted to reach for my hand. I longed to lean my head against him, bury my face in his jumper and tell him everything, but instead I leant back, summoned up a self-deprecating smile and rolled my eyes.
‘Sorry. I think it was “pipsqueak” that got to me.’
His eyes roamed my face, searching for the truth. I wished with a desperate ache that he could read my mind, even as I feared it.
Nothing could happen between us. It was a futile, miserable hope that the zaps of electricity were something he felt, too, when I was hiding so much. I could no longer pretend that my past life was irrelevant. But he’d made it clear how he felt about Nora Sharp, and imagining him feeling those things about me was more than I could bear.
To never know Daniel as more than a friend, I could live with. To lose that friendship would break me.
I took the remote out of his hand, ignoring the flutter of attraction when my fingers skimmed his palm. Pressing play, I wiggled further back into the sofa and picked up my wine. ‘I’m fine.’
It was a long night, spent twisting myself up in my duvet. After checking my old phone for the zillionth time, sure that this time I really had heard a notification ping through, I turned it off. I still heard the imaginary pings, but at least the remaining dregs of my rational self could now ignore them.
That wasn’t the only thing keeping my brain whirring. My restless thoughts constantly roamed back to Daniel. To his eyes, his smile, every time he’d ever spoken to me or looked at me or happened to walk down the hallway at the same time…
To where he lay, wearing scruffy lounge pants and a rumpled T-shirt, because even in March the farmhouse was still freezing at night, only a few metres away across the landing.
Most of all, I wondered whether he was thinking about me.
Nights like this, I ached for Charlie.
Hauling myself out of bed while it was still dark, I washed down a fortifying bowl of porridge with extra-strong coffee, stuck my hair in a ponytail, donned my scruffiest clothes, collected the necessary tools and climbed up to the top floor.
Since clearing Charlie’s old room, it had sat there empty of everything but the bare furniture. Some of it would stay – I planned to repurpose an old chest of drawers and a bookcase to put in the side room for Hope, along with her changing table from the study, and the rest would go in the barn in case we wanted to use it
somewhere else later on.
But first, the unicorn wallpaper needed to go. I checked the steamer had reached boiling point, grabbed a scraper and got cracking.
I took a brief lunch break to watch Hope while Daniel went for a run. I felt him eyeing me, sensed the trace of concern and questions behind his veneer of normality. Daniel was ready to listen the moment I was prepared to talk.
Re-emerging from the clouds of steam much later, I showered and changed into a sloppy pair of lounge pants and went to rustle up something for dinner. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper.
‘I cooked a rice thing.’
‘Oh?’ Surprised, I lifted the lid on a pot gently bubbling on the stove, dipping my head to investigate. ‘It smells fabulous.’
‘After working flat out since before dawn I’d imagine beans on toast would smell equally as delicious.’
‘No, I love chorizo and prawns together. And is that feta?’ I straightened up. ‘For a straight down the line cheddar guy, this is impressive.’
He kept his eyes on the newspaper, pretending not to be bothered, but his eyes crinkled up at the corners. ‘Well, your fancy metropolitan cooking ideas seem to have inspired me. And I presume Hope and I are going to benefit from all that bumping and scraping up on the top floor. This is the least I owe you.’
I fetched bowls from the dresser and ladled out two glistening mounds of deliciousness.
‘Well, I can’t start the master bedroom until you’re out of there, so that makes the top floor next on the list.’
He filled glasses with flavoured water and handed me a fork. ‘I’d have been happy to leave it undecorated, particularly considering everything else that needs doing.’
‘You can’t relax properly while surrounded by thirty-year old unicorn wallpaper, covered in Blu Tack stains and blobs of make-up! And Hope deserves a beautiful bedroom.’ I paused, squeezing the sudden rush of tears back behind my eyeballs. ‘I needed to feel close to her, today. Even if I was removing her wallpaper, I think she’d have approved.’
Daniel looked at me, his own eyes glistening. ‘She’d have been so thrilled.’
I nodded in acknowledgement, unable to say anything more.
‘This is really good!’ I finally managed, a few forkfuls later. ‘I might add the recipe to the retreat folder.’
‘Why, thank you for the compliment, but it’s a top-secret recipe.’
‘I’m not sure it’s that good.’
‘Maybe not, but due to being unable to remember what I chucked in there, even I don’t know the secret.’ He put his fork down, turning serious. ‘I am really grateful. I would have come and helped, only Hope’s been grizzly all day. Bringing her up there would only have been frustrating for both of us.’
‘I’m not sure a baby should be in all that hot steam anyway. And I thought we’d agreed that we’re both equally grateful, so don’t need to go on about it any more?’
‘Yeah.’ He pulled a rueful smile. ‘You know. Still working through a few self-sufficiency issues.’
Daniel had given me a new start – a home, a purpose, and the chance to spend time with Charlie’s beautiful baby, who made me laugh even harder than her mother had.
We were not equally grateful.
22
Sunday, I finished the last of the wallpaper-stripping and then took Hope out while Daniel got on with some work. After dillying and dallying about whether it was time to brave a stroll down Old Main Street, I decided to start by heading to the orchard. I could then choose whether to keep going along the river, and see where we ended up.
After the recent sunshine, the sky hung heavy with ominous rainclouds. Once Hope was in the sling, Daniel stepped closer to adjust her hood. He glanced up, meeting my eyes, and there it was again. That fizzle that started deep in my stomach and whooshed up through my body, sending my heart spinning.
‘Have fun. Enjoy the river.’
‘You too! Enjoy the spreadsheets.’
Such a snapshot moment of domestic bliss, if Daniel had leant closer and given me a goodbye peck, it would have felt perfectly natural. I dashed out the door before the flush on my cheeks gave me away. Definitely time for a brisk, breezy walk, with the added risk of encountering some verbal abuse at the end of it.
I found Ziva checking out the boy bees and their queens. Thankfully, she had the courtesy to take a break from poking about in a beehive while a baby was in the vicinity.
‘Recovered from last week’s excitement?’ she asked, taking her beekeeping hood off and making the obligatory coos and smiles at Hope before perching on a nearby tree stump.
I shuddered. ‘I’m completely mortified. That speech will be echoing in my ears for years to come.’
‘It was an excellent speech!’ Ziva declared. ‘Clear, engaging, well delivered. You had us all transfixed. What more can you ask for?’
‘Not being booed, heckled or having someone throw a drink at me before everyone storms out in disgust?’
‘Well, there is that.’ She waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Bah. They’ll have virtually forgotten about it in a week or two. One thing to know about the Feud of Ferrington: these days it is largely bark and no bite. All talk and no trouser, as my father would say.’
‘How old were you when you moved here? Did you have family who worked in the mines?’
‘I was only a child when we moved here, but my father was a GP, like me. It took a while for the village to accept him, but once they’d embraced him as one of their own he gave his heart to this place, looking after the people of Ferrington and the surrounding farms for over thirty years. He died in 1979. A heart attack. Which I can’t help thinking was perhaps a blessing. He’d have been devastated to have witnessed what happened.’
‘Becky mentioned that you lost your father-in-law during the strike. Does that mean you’d be against any sort of reconciliation?’
Ziva sat and thought about that for such a long time, I began to think she was deliberately ignoring me. Then she shook her head as if coming back to the present, and rested her chin in both hands.
‘It was a very difficult time for our family. When John, Becky’s dad, lost his father, it was heart-breaking. His mother never recovered. They were so angry, and so very sad. And some of his best friends – the boys he’d grown up with, worked in the mine with for decades – they didn’t even come to his funeral. They’ve all passed on now, of course. And their children, grandchildren – should they be held accountable for what happened back then? Maybe, some of them. Some have said and done things since which were very, very painful. But does there come a time when these things must be forgiven? Of course.
‘I meant it about your speech. It has disturbed me, in the best possible sense. One thing in particular has lodged in my heart and doesn’t want to leave: how long are we going to be defined by what we are not? That’s what got me thinking of my father. He was so proud to be welcomed as a Ferring. Like I said, it would have broken him to see what happened. Maybe I’m not the only one disturbed. Maybe now is the time for some honest dialogue. Some searching questions. To allow these old wounds to begin to heal. But I’m not sure you’re the one to do it.’
‘Could you be the one to do it?’
Ziva pulled a wry smile, pulling herself to her feet with an ‘oomph’. ‘Maybe twenty years ago. I may still appear to be full of vigour, but I’m not far off an old woman. And I have to think about John. While he may be open to change, his Israeli wife being the one to spearhead it would be another matter.’ She reached out, her face animated again as she took hold of Hope’s gloved hand. ‘Now, I must let you get on with your walk, and you must let me get back to the F boys! What will Felix and Finlay think if I keep them waiting?’
We each turned our separate ways, her back to the boys, Hope and I to the river. I had so much to think about, my body felt stuffed with so many different emotions, jostling about demanding attention, I kept on walking, and walking, pounding out the questions and the frustration a
s we crossed the muddy meadow, strode along the side of the Maddon, all the way to Old Main Street.
Gathering my courage about me, I even braved a stroll around the mini-market. One man gave me the dead-eye from the end of an aisle, shaking his head in contempt when I ignored the evil stare. The young girl behind the check-out widened her eyes when she saw me approaching, but after a brief hesitation she ran my pack of bagels and bananas through the till, and even managed a tiny smidgen of a smile when I looked her in the eye, said thank you and wished her a nice rest of the day.
The proprietor of the disco-off-licence and cheapest vapes on the Old Side lingered in his doorway as I walked past.
‘Yer barred!’ he sneered, once I had clearly passed him. ‘The baby ’n’ all!’
Part of me wanted to swing around and demand to know why. The other, wiser me knew that he was dying for me to ask so that he could reel off all the reasons he’d come up with. Instead, I stuck my chin in the air and walked right on home.
Daniel emerged from his study once we arrived back at the farm. ‘You need to call this number.’ He handed me a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.
‘Why? Who is it?’ I asked, dread filling me instantly.
He smiled. ‘Nothing to look so worried about. Trust me. You want to call them.’
Maybe so, but I decided I needed a mug of tea and a piece of flapjack first.
‘Hello? This is Eleanor Sharpley. I got a message asking me to call you?’
‘Eleanor from Damson Farm?’
‘Um, yes.’ I supposed I was.
‘Oh wow! Amazing! Thank you so much for getting back to me, like so totally quickly? I know you must be completely inundated, which is why it’s such a total quest to track you down? Oh my gols, I still like, can’t even believe it? Oh, hang on, there’s Tamarind. Hey, Tammers! You’ll never guess who it is! Like, totally? It’s her, now, on the phone. Eleanor! No – can you believe it, she called me! I know! I know! … I know!’
‘Um, did you want something?’ I asked, because the caller might know, but I certainly didn’t.