Looks aside, I wasn’t overly proud. I knew my style tended towards too-busy-to-bother, and I was fine with that, like most women I would much rather be judged on what came out of my mouth and what I wrote than on how plumped my lips were. I knew that most people would judge me on who I was, not the lack of flaws on my filtered face.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because who I would be, in this instance, was Nora Sharp, and she was gradually being shaped by the media machine into a nit-picking dragon with a wedge of bitter lemon where her heart should be. In between all the positive, thoughtful, constructive reviews, Nora Sharp made her fame and fortune from the random sentences that were ripped out of context and then twisted into a cruel meme. If you searched for Nora Sharp online, the ‘sharpest quotes ever’ compilations and social media threads all created an image of a woman who relished other people’s mistakes and failures, and enjoyed nothing more than getting thousands of other people to laugh at them along with her.
Nora Sharp had no right to expect any peeks into her personal life to be received with grace, or critiqued with kindness.
But there was worse.
Was I ready for my family to find out that Nora Sharp was in fact their beloved daughter, or the good citizens of Windermere and the staff at the Tufted Duck to discover that I was the person responsible for the failure of Emma fromThe Great British Bake Off’s new restaurant venture?
Nora Sharp had morphed into a monster, and at the end of the day I was the only one who could stop her. I could pretend my reluctance to reveal myself was shyness as much as I liked, but that’s not what the real problem was.
I had promised myself that one of these days, when I’d finally got a publisher for the new novel I never got around to finishing, or my Eleanor Sharpley blog somehow ended up paying all my bills, I would stop. Once I’d gained enough of a reputation to be able to move into other areas of journalism, like those fluffy magazine interviews about a soap opera star’s three-month wedding anniversary. Once I’d written the real food, rustic cookbook I dreamed about when sampling yet more unidentifiable gastro-gubbins.
I would stop. Kill Nora off once and for all.
But I needed a back-up plan, or at the very least a back-up bank balance to see me into the next venture.
I wasn’t ready.
And then I remembered the email from Lucy, the enthusiastic wannabe-intern, prepared to help me out however she’d be most useful. I wondered what colour hair she had. Whether she’d be up for a revamp?
Two weeks later Lucy joined Team Nora. It turned out she was sticking with the mahogany hair, almost the exact same shade as mine, but according to Kathy, on Lucy it was a tone that spoke of ageless glamour, not aged grandma. But all other aspects of Nora’s brand got a reboot with Lucy more than happy to act out my YouTube scripts, as well as taking over Nora’s social media accounts.
I hadn’t realised how lonely life as a self-employed mudslinger had been until I had someone to share it with, and it was such absolute bliss that I convinced myself to overlook how Lucy played on the image of Nasty Nora. I traded in my unease for the joy of having someone to stand in the corner with at parties. To crack open a bottle of wine and eagerly discuss what invites to accept, decline or wait and see if we felt like turning up on the day. To have afriend, even if she was paid to be one. As momentum built, we started noticing the nods in her direction when we attended events and soon, to all intents and purposes, Nora became split between the two of us: I wrote, she swanned about in the eye-wateringly expensive clothes that people sent Nora. I contemplated going back to doing the restaurant reviews alone, in order to ensure anonymity, but then Lucy adopted a wig and a smile so bright that no one would mistake her for Nora Sharp.
As an intern I didn’t pay her much, but she got plenty of nights out and more clothes, bags and kitchen implements than even the two of us could make use of (so we often sold them on and split the difference). I also provided a generous allowance for her to maintain the requested ‘spruced-up’ image.
So, she got all the attention, I got to keep writing. A perfect partnership.
And then the messages started arriving.
And things started to fall apart…
6
I knew I had to start sorting things out so first I contacted my landlord and terminated my lease. I should call Miles and explain that Lucy wrote the latest article, and that she’d probably be happy to keep going if he asked her. I should call my parents and tell them I planned to stay at Charlie’s farmhouse for a while. And once I’d done all that, I should probably think about what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Instead, I did something that felt even more revolutionary. I donned my coat, hat and the sturdiest boots I could find in my bags. I opened the front door, breathed in a huge, crisp lungful of January air and stepped into the winter sunshine.
Without allowing myself to think too hard about it, I strolled across the gravel yard to a gate leading into some sort of garden beyond. Ensuring the gate was closed behind me, I followed a track into a field of scrubby grass peppered with short, twisty-looking trees, their bare branches like bony fingers stretching out against the sharp chill. I had to duck my head a few times, to avoid some of the thickest boughs, keeping one eye up while the other watched for the tendrils of bramble snaking across the earth and the clumps of nettles. My hunch that this was some sort of orchard was confirmed when I stepped in a rotten apple, and suddenly started spotting them everywhere. Apples, and what appeared to have been plums – or more likely damsons, I supposed.
I flicked through my memories for mentions of an orchard in Charlie’s many conversations about the farm, soon recollecting stories about picnics under the trees, how her job had been to carefully wrap the picked fruit in newspaper, layering it in crates to store during the winter. Maybe she’d strung up a hammock and used to read here?
However, like the rest of the farm, this was nothing like her stories. While winter may have been partly responsible for the orchard being so austere, devoid of any life save the sleeping trees, the silence here seemed deeper than merely the seasonal lull. Like a long-forgotten enchanted wood, with the echoes of past pleasures frozen in time. I half expected to stumble across a statue of Mr Tumnus hiding in amongst the trunks. Only, instead what I found as I wound through the undergrowth, boots squelching into the mud, was the bees.
Or, more precisely, two figures covered from head to toe in beekeeping gear. Either that or there’d been a serious radioactive leak no one had bothered to mention.
No – definitely bees. I quickly spied a row of hives lined up a couple of metres from the far fence, and to my horror, one of the safe and securely dressed beekeepers was in the process of lifting the lid off one of them. I couldn’t decide whether to move closer so that they spotted me in time, or turn and flee. I assumed bees could catch me up in seconds, so I plumped for yelling and waving my arms instead.
‘Hello!’
Great. They clearly couldn’t hear me while enveloped in their nice, safe, sting-preventing suits. I darted a few steps closer, pausing a few metres away as I dodged the handful of bees now buzzing around. ‘Hello!’ I cried, louder this time, before swiftly retreating again.
Both figures jerked their heads towards me, the one holding the lid scanning around before finding me lurking beside a clump of brown bracken, as if that could protect me from a swarm of angry insects. They hurriedly placed the lid back on the hive, before both of the beekeepers pulled back their hoods.
I recognised the person by the hive as the doctor, Ziva.
‘Why, hello, stranger,’ she beamed, before a bee to her left caught her attention. She pointed her finger at it. ‘Come on, then, Derek, back into the warm you go. And you, Damian! Stop bothering our visitor and get inside!’ She waited a moment, scanning around for any other escapees. ‘There you are, Dylan, don’t think I didn’t see you there, hovering about! And you, Douglas, Dougie and Dougal! Queen Delilah will be worrying about you! In you go!’
