‘I grew tired of it. Pretending my words were someone else’s. I grew up in the Lakes, and big city life was starting to get to me. A bit like Stephe and co, just because something sounds like living the dream, doesn’t make ityourdream.’ I wasn’t sure they were convinced.
‘Bad break-up?’ Alice asked.
I pulled a face. This I could roll with. ‘He was a lying, cheating sack of crap.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ Alice rolled her eyes. ‘Grew tired of swanking about with celebrities in free clothes!’
We of course had a good laugh about the retreat, going over our strokes of apparent genius along with the moments of utter cringe.
‘So, what’s next?’ Becky asked. ‘How are you going to get Damson Farm up and running for real?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure. All I was meant to be doing was sprucing up the farm before we decided what to do next. But amongst the lack of sleep, the preposterous activities and the stress of knowing we were one tiny misstep from a calamity the whole time, I sort of loved it.’
‘Itotallyloved it!’ Becky declared. ‘Although, to be fair, it wasn’t my money on the line.’ She took another sip of her gin fizz then, before placing it carefully on the table. ‘If you were looking for a business partner, however, I’d be up for it.’
I was speechless.
‘I’ve got a fair amount of savings lying about just waiting for the right investment. I’m bored, lonely and I think I could bring something of value.’ She paused to tuck a corkscrew curl behind her ear. ‘I think we could work well together, as long as we draw up a proper agreement, make sure expectations and assumptions are all clear from the start.’
I swallowed. Blinked a few times. Shook my head in wonder.
‘I mean, if you want to go it alone, I totally understand, absolutely no offence taken or feelings hurt. You don’t even have to explain, beyond a “thanks, but no thanks”. I’ll still come and help you out as and when, obviously.’
I cleared my throat in a vain attempt to dislodge the chunk of emotions. Blinked a few more times.
‘That sounds incredible.’
Becky’s blank face broke out into her beaming smile again, bright enough to chase away any twinges of trepidation about whether before she invested in our future together, I should perhaps divulge my past.
New start. New life. New Eleanor.
The past was irrelevant, here, wasn’t it?
‘Well,’ Alice chipped in, once I’d dried my eyes and blown my nose. ‘Last I checked I’ve about thirty-five quid in the bank, but if you need a team member you can pay, instead of them giving you money, I’m all in.’
‘Hurrah, our first employee!’ I chinked Alice’s glass with my now empty one.
‘Who will be hired on a sub-contracted basis, and is therefore not an actual employee who requires national insurance payments!’ Becky added, in an exact mirror of my celebratory tone, adding her glass to the mix.
And there you have it, Old Siders, New Siders, No Siders – Team Damson was born.
* * *
Every day the next week, Becky came to the farm. She’d known Daniel forever, and they quickly developed an easy camaraderie that helped settle my nerves about the whole thing. Becky hired a solicitor friend to help us plough through the legal side of our new venture, and it made sense to add Daniel as a director, given that we were using his property. We spent a couple of hours each morning working on the reams of admin, switching to cleaning, painting and sorting in the afternoon. Dotted amongst all this was time spent conducting what Becky deemed the most vital element to any successful business partnership: building trust and establishing a rapport, otherwise known as eating biscuits, savouring long lunches consisting of ‘test menus’ and ‘test cakes’, all accompanied by a steady stream of conversation.
Sometimes Daniel joined us, spooning mushed up carrot into Hope while making the odd suggestion or reeling us back in to reality when our ideas started straying beyond innovative and into downright silly.
I tried to pretend I didn’t love those meetings best of all, but it was growing increasingly difficult. I knew this, because I was also struggling to remember why my growing feelings for Daniel were such a bad idea. He was a good guy. He was honest and forthright, the complete opposite of Marcus. A perfect example of the kind of person I was trying to become. He was a heart-squeezingly devoted dad. We laughed at the same things, were able to talk for ages or, more often, not bother talking at all. Most importantly, I felt completely comfortable with him – apart from those times he looked at me a second too long, or stood beside me to peer into the pan I was stirring, and I caught a whiff of his scent, and shivers ran up my spine that were far from comfortable.
I was rapidly starting to want to know everything about this man. I loved every second spent discovering who he was, who he had been – and, in the spirit of the lifestyle regeneration retreat, who he wanted to be. But the deeper we went, the more I wanted him to like me, the more important it became to keep the colossal shadow in my past hidden. Because the more I knew him, the more I knew that he wouldn’t like what he found there. I was stuck, and it was distinctlyuncomfortable.
I also suspected that at times he could sense that I was keeping something from him. Only, unlike Becky and Alice, he was patient, and gentle about it. At a loss of what else to do, I decided to simply enjoy his patience and his gentleness for as long as he’d let me.
17
One of the most important changes we needed to address was the bathrooms. Daniel had agreed that he would move into Charlie’s room once we’d found the courage to sort through all her things and then redecorate. The storage space next to it could be adapted into a bedroom for Hope at some point, too. We spent a good while going over our options for the first floor, eventually agreeing to see if it was possible to convert the box room into a bathroom that could then have interconnecting doors to the two smaller bedrooms. It wasn’t ideal, but as Becky kept reminding me, this was a retreat house, not a hotel or even a B & B, and we wouldn’t be charging anything close to £2,000.
That gave us four bedrooms, with space for up to eight guests. If we managed to make a success of it (‘What do you mean, “if”?’ Becky retorted), then there were a couple of falling down outbuildings that were begging for a renovation. One thing at a time, however, as Daniel kept reminding us. Or, to be more realistic, about 300 things at any one time.
