‘With all due respect, you don’t look very ready.’
He looked up at me, then, and to my surprise he was smiling. ‘I was just waiting for you, because I’ve no idea what half of this crap is, and even less of an idea about what to do with it all or where to start.’
My shoulders dropped several inches with relief. I opened the carrier bag in my hand and pulled out a roll of bin bags. ‘Three piles: keep, recycle or charity shop, and throw away.’
Then I burst out crying. Because, it turned out, I was the one nowhere near ready to divide my best friend’s life into bin bags.
We managed it, however, with a whole load more tears, some rueful smiles, deep belly-laughs and many, many stories exchanged. We had each known a different side to Charlie. Daniel knew Charlie as a little girl, before the brain demons hit. He’d known her in her peaceful place, surrounded by family, where she had no need to impress or put up any front. I knew the other Charlie – the adventurous, spontaneous, sociable Charlie. The woman who loved to get lost in a crowd, who thrived on the new and the waiting-to-be-discovered. Who wanted to cram in as much of life as she could, while she could, and bring as many people along for the ride as possible.
We also both knew the other Charlie, of course. But we weren’t thinking about her today. Today was as good a celebration as we could manage of the real Charlie, not the one imprisoned for weeks at a time by illness, lost in a bleak fog of despair.
Once everything had been bagged or boxed up, we spent another hour trooping up and down two flights of stairs, filling up both cars before Daniel drove to the local recycling centre, and I dropped off a load of clothes, bedding and other useful items at Ferrington church, where they had a pick-up point for a clothing bank charity.
We then reconvened for takeaway pizza at the kitchen table. I’d suggested fish and chips, but Daniel wasn’t in the mood to take a detour to reach the New Side, which, as I pointed out, was all the more reason for building a new bridge to save everyone the bother.
By unspoken agreement, we didn’t talk about Charlie, instead moving on to lighter topics. Daniel told me more about growing up in a village, and honestly if anyone else had told me I’m not sure I’d have believed them. ‘English country dancing’ for PE? Cross-country that literally involved running, unsupervised, through the country, including a farm where the owner frequently brandished a gun at them? A self-appointed Ferring Sheriff who patrolled the Old Side, confiscating kids’ scooters and locking ‘stray’ cats in her shed?
Daniel was equally intrigued by growing up in a bed and breakfast. Especially the kind of weird and wonderful characters who frequented the Tufted Duck, including the Henderson-Browns, who religiously came and stayed for a fortnight every summer, complained about everything from the shape of the fried eggs to the shade of towels, accepted their annual five per cent discount as compensation and immediately rebooked for the following year.
‘This is the first time Hope’s stayed over at Mum’s for months,’ Daniel said, changing the subject once the pizza boxes were empty. ‘It’s a bit disconcerting, not listening out for the baby monitor.’
‘A wasted opportunity, then?’ I asked. ‘You could have got up to all sorts. Had a wild night out, got hammered, rolled in at irresponsible o’clock. You could have had a house party!’
He grimaced. ‘No thank you, to all of the above. What I’m most looking forward to is an undisturbed night and no squawking wake-up call in the morning. I’m going to stay in bed and enjoy a lazy Sunday morning by myself.’
‘Fair enough.’ I sat back, blowing gently on my coffee to cool it down while tryingveryhard not to imagine a Sunday morning in bed with Daniel. ‘Would you rather I left you to your solitude, then? Made myself scarce for the night?’
‘No.’ Daniel looked at me, steadily, and the air in the kitchen went completely still. Either that or my lungs had simply forgotten how to work, too distracted by the depths of potential in his gaze.
‘Okay,’ I managed to squeak, before immediately burying my head in my drink.
I was suddenly very aware that Daniel and I were alone in the farmhouse for the whole night. It was stupid. It wasn’t as though Hope chaperoned our behaviour the rest of the time. But without her, it felt… it felt like I was falling for this man. That if circumstances were different, I’d be hoping he’d suggest we go through to the living room, and he’d come and sit next to me on the sofa, and then, well… without any chance of an interruption…
Thankfully, before I could follow that train of thought any further, Daniel drained the last of his coffee and stood up, stretching.
‘Anyway, it’s been a long day. I think I’m going to head up. Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll sort it in the morning.’ He dumped his mug in the sink, pausing halfway to the door. ‘Thanks for your help today. You being there turned what would have been an unbearable day into something… precious. Beautiful. And. Well. You seem to do a lot of that. I’m glad you were there. Are here.’
I nodded, unable to reply. And with a quick goodnight, he left me to spend the rest of the night clutching those words to my chest.
I was glad I was here, too.
18
I spent the next few days mulling over the feud issue. Was there any way I could try to get involved in this situation without coming across as horrendously offensive? The only positive outcome then being that both sides finally had something to unite them – their outrage at me, the patronising Out-Sider. I joined the community Facebook groups for both sides under different profiles (both fake), scrolling back through reams of posts to see what kind of problems the divide had caused (trying to resist the urge to get sucked into conversations about lost phones, found cats, Sally Jones’ kids on the Co-op roof, or, one particular saga that went on for months: ‘If Macca B don’t stop leaving those fat balls on the rec where my dog can get at them it’ll be HIS balls dangling from the bird feeder’.)
I scoured the websites for every village activity I could find, walked along Old Main Street to look at the posters on the miners’ club noticeboard, then drove to the New Side to do the same at the Methodist chapel. Trying to find something that could cross the Maddon river, a common thread that I could tug on.
It kept coming back to the same thing: a bridge would be in everyone’s interest. Reuniting the village would enable them to pool resources, save money and provide a desperately needed boost to local businesses. More importantly, rather than Ferrington’s identity being forged around the worst time in its long history, a bridge would create an opportunity to celebrate something new and positive.
By the weekend, I’d found enough evidence to cobble together at least the bare bones of an argument. Becky was visiting her brother for a long weekend, and Daniel was juggling Hope alongside a work deadline, so I turned to my friend from the New Side.
Alice was working a double shift that Saturday, so I decided to treat myself to a late lunch, wandering into the Water Boatman just after two. About half of the tables were occupied, and another cluster of customers were gathered around a screen showing a football match.
Every single person turned to watch as I sidled up to the bar, glancing about for Alice, who was unloading a tray of empty glasses. She looked up at me and winked, nodding to a bar stool.
‘All right, Eleanor?’ she called, about three times louder than was necessary.
There was a general rumbling from the other customers. Scuttling to the stool I clambered on and kept my eyes firmly fixed on the row of bottles in front of me, but could still sense every eye in the room boring a hole into my back.
