To my surprise, my rescuer not only got out of the Jeep, but unclipped the baby from her seat and walked with me towards the main house. The farmhouse was not quite how Charlie had described it. She’d told me stories of a place bursting with life and colour, chickens pecking about, semi-wild cats slinking round every corner and dogs greeting visitors with a wagging tail. This place felt deserted. Like a ghost farm. Faded, chipped paintwork on the door and shuttered windows. A dead clematis hanging off a rotting trellis beside the front door. The weather didn’t help, admittedly, gloomy skies reflecting off the grey puddles pooling in the gravel yard, but there was nothing else. Not a pot plant or a hanging basket. Not a bird singing in the distance or a string of lights left over from Christmas. Just quite a few straggly weeds.
This did not look like the kind of place my best friend would live. For the first time, I felt a stab of anxiety that maybe she wouldn’t be here.
But I shook that off, even as I limped across, concentrating so my trainers didn’t slip on the wet slabs that formed a square in front of the door. Damson Farm had belonged to Charlie’s family for generations. She belonged to the farm. If she’d moved on, she’d have told me. She always had before. But the tweak of hesitation was enough to allow the man to stride past me, open the door and step right in. After a moment dithering, my bladder compelled me to follow him, moving through a hallway and finding myself in the kitchen that Charlie had told me about so many times. Again, the picture she’d created of hustle and bustle, baking and cooking, the Aga always warm, the kettle always steaming, was a million miles away from this cluttered, soulless, decidedly grubby and sad-looking room.
The man dropped his car keys onto a pile of mess on a dresser. ‘There’s a bathroom across the hall.’ He nodded towards the entrance hall, paved with the same dark red tiles as the kitchen. It was when I glanced back that I spotted the highchair. The empty baby bottles amongst the mound of dirty pots by the sink. The pram pushed up against one wall.
This was his house. His and the baby’s house. So, where was Charlie?
My brain stuck there, unable to process the possibility of what a man and a baby in Charlie’s house could mean. I ducked across into the bathroom and spent a hasty five minutes sorting myself out as best I could – which wasn’t very much, given what I was working with. After an initial glance in the mirror I had to steel myself before I could face a closer inspection. I’d lost my hat at some point during the night, and my deep brown mahogany-on-a-good-day hair was now a matted mess. Huge greyish-purply rings surrounded each listless, bloodshot blue eye. The bump on my head was smeared with dried blood, speckles of which also covered the rest of my face. And if you could find a foundation to match this skin-tone it would have been called ‘hint of corpse’.
Lovely. I splashed water on my face, dabbing gently at the blood stains with some toilet roll, and wondered why on earth this man had let me in his car, let alone his house.
I didn’t wonder for long. My frazzled brain had far more important things to worry about right then. And to be honest, if he had turned out to be one of the bad guys, as long as he let me sit down and maybe have a hot drink before bludgeoning me to death, I couldn’t summon up the energy to care.
I returned to the kitchen to find a steaming mug sitting on the table, opposite where he sat with a matching mug, the baby next to him in the highchair giving the impression of a very unorthodox interview panel. Hat and hood off, I could see they both had the same thick, tufty dark hair. I gingerly lowered myself into a seat, before taking a few sips of scalding, sugary tea while I fought through the fog to come up with something to say.
‘Thanks again. I dread to think what would have happened if you’d not arrived when you did.’
The man shrugged. ‘You’d have slept a bit longer until someone else came along.’
‘But they wouldn’t have lived at Damson Farm.’ I paused, questioningly. ‘I presume you do live here?’
He nodded.
‘I’m kind of surprised you brought me here without asking any questions about who I am.’
‘You weren’t in a fit state to answer any questions.’
I took another gulp of tea, my hand barely able to lift the mug up to my mouth.
‘So, now that you’ve warmed up and are sitting down, why are you here?’
‘I’m a friend of Charlie’s. Charlie Perry.’
His eyebrows raised slightly, before he quickly pulled his features back into neutral. ‘She’s not here.’
I felt a rush of relief that at least he knew who she was, that this was the right Damson Farm, that she hadn’t made the whole thing up to cover up a boring childhood living in a three-bed detached house in the suburbs. ‘Well, I guess that’s not so surprising. Do you know when she’ll be back, or have any contact details so I can let her know I’m here?’
‘Given you’re having to ask me that, you clearly aren’t that good a friend.’
‘The last number she gave me hasn’t been working. I assumed she’d lost her phone again.’
‘Look, no offence but Charlie made a lot offriends.If you’re someone she met in a hostel somewhere, or worked in a bar with for a few weeks, then I’m sorry but she’s not here. I can give you the number for a garage who’ll tow your car to wherever you’re headed next, and drop you there once you’ve finished your tea.’ He bent down to pick up the crinkly fabric doll the baby had gleefully thrown onto the floor, then stood up, making it clear that I had finished my drink, whether I’d actually finished it or not.
It took nearly everything I’d got, but I heaved myself to my feet, too, gripping the chair with both hands.
‘I know Charlie makes friends everywhere she goes, which is a stupid number of places. I know she drops everything and moves on after a random conversation or an out-of-date flyer catches her attention. I know that she disappears completely for months at a time and then turns up again as if she’d never been gone. I also know that this is the only place she’s ever called home. I know this because she’s invited me here tons of times during the twelve years we’ve been friends. The last time I heard from her she said she’d be staying here for at least a year, probably a lot longer. And this time I believe she meant it.’
He eyed me silently for a long moment, his hand reaching up to stroke the scar on the side of his face. ‘Eleanor?’
‘Yes! Yes, I’m Eleanor.’
‘Okay.’ He let out a long, slow sigh, and for the first time I noticed how tired and drawn he looked. His hazel eyes were utterly forlorn. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, like this, after you’ve clearly had a crap night. But Charlie died.’
What?
The words engulfed me in a torrent of devastation – shock and anguish crashing up through my stomach and lungs, my heart, until it hit my brain.
