I think about what my choices actually are. They mainly come down to time and money.
My interim role at work is coming to an end in January, and Stacy has told me I’m in the top three for the permanent position. If I quit, I’d lose my benefits, my security, and my foothold in yet another industry. But if I tutored full-time, as a freelancer, I could potentially make up most of my salary with fewer overall hours, since the pay is so much higher, as long as I lined up enough private students. And since the sessions are all on Zoom anyway, I could do it remotely.
I could do a summer in England and write. Give my dream a real chance and see what happens.
I decide in that instant.
I will.
Felix
The property I find is an existing twenty-room inn in a nineteenth-century manor house in Devon.
The building needs a full update and the restaurant is currently just your average country pub—scotch eggs, fish and chips, well-done burgers. But it’s spacious, with a beautiful garden and a view of the sea. The second I see it online I know it’s what I’m looking for, and pretty much the moment Ned and I walk into the lobby, we’re ready to make an offer.
By Christmas, we own a hotel.
There are owner’s accommodations in a flat above the lobby, and I move myself and Priscilla into them.
It’s a mess.
Renovation is constant stress and faff, and the costs quickly exceed our projections, so we have to scramble to find an additional investor. I don’t have time for a rigorous routine. My entire life is chaos and variables.
I love it.
I feel exhilarated. Energized by living a life different from the one I’ve always had, in some form, in London. When I go back once a month, to meet with Ned and Sophie and my two pub managers, I can’t wait to leave.
It’s humbling and reassuring at once to see how well the business runs without my daily involvement. I’ve built something amazing. But it doesn’t need me to fret over it. I can let go and expand my remit.
It makes me want to expand myself in other ways too.
When I envision a life in this place, I envision a partner, eventually a family. And when I think of what that partner might be like—one woman always pops into my head.
Hope Lanover.
It’s impossible to walk the streets of this quaint seaside village without remembering her dreams of living in just such a place. I wonder if she’d be happy here. I wonder if she’d be happy with me.
I search online for clues of her, but she’s not on social media, and Lauren’s posts are scrupulously absent of any hint of her.
Which does not stop my sisters from pointedly asking about her every few weeks. It’s been so relentless that when Pear demanded her address, I dug it up and gave it to her.
“Would you like to send a little note with the package?” she asked.
“It didn’t end well,” I finally admitted. “I don’t think she’d want to hear from me.”
“I think she would,” Pear said airily. “A secret about girls is we always want to know when someone is pining for us.”
“I’m not pining,” I objected.
“Obsessing, then,” she said.
“Fuck off, please.”
But my sister is not wrong.Piningis an appropriate word.
I know Hope’s only a text or phone call away, but every time I resolve to get in touch with her, I lose my nerve at the critical moment.
I had my chance, and I squandered it.
