“I agree,” said Aunt Cam. “Warren’s newspaper article will be festering on compost heaps in a few days, but if you can get your TikTok to be trendy on the line…”
“Yes, make them a virus,” added Aunt Aggie.
“Exactly, a trendy virus, that’s how they all do it now, even Dame Judi Dench had one of those,” Aunt Cam agreed, and then added in a low whisper, “Dame Judi is my free pass!”
“I didn’t know that,” said Bella. “Who’s yours, Aunt Aggie?”
“Oh dear, touchy subject,” said Aunt Cam, sighing.
“It’s not my fault they keep bloody well dying!” exclaimed Aunt Aggie. “First, I lost Honor Blackman, then Diana Rigg. Free passes are not to be chosen willy-nilly. At themoment it’s between Anjelica Huston and Shirley Bassey; I like my women sassy.”
“I’m not sure how we got here,” said Fred.
“I think that might be my fault,” Bella replied. “But anyway, I think it’s a great idea. I fully support it. If you like, I can talk to Andreas at the Forest Inn, see if he wants to offer a voucher too. I’ve almost become a part of the furniture since Liam’s been staying there.”
Fred made sure to catch her mum’s eye and give her a smile.
“And we’ve got a Jezebel at the Crooked Elm, so leave that with us,” said Aunt Aggie.
“Okay, that just leaves me to write these letters. I think it’s going to take me a while.”
“We’ll leave you to it, dear,” said Aunt Cam. “I’ve got to prepare for our PBJ life-drawing class.”
“Mr. Bishop is our model for this evening,” added Aunt Aggie.
“You’re not holding it here, are you?” asked Fred, aghast. “I’m not sure Mr. B’s nakedness is something I could come back from—not after the day I’ve had.”
Aunt Cam chuckled. “Don’t you worry, sweet thing, you’re quite safe from Mr. Bishop’s birthday suit; the vicar has offered us the use of the church hall for our classes.”
The kitchen cleared out, and soon it was only Fred and her box of paper left. She made herself another mug of tea and settled down to write. It had been a long time since she’d put pen to paper in this way. But once she got started, she found the process quite cathartic.
She had fallen in love with her hometown by degrees, hardly noticing it was happening at all until this morning, when faced with losing its good opinion of her. This community in this small town had only ever offered her a soft place to land; had reached out with many hands to pick her up—sometimes literally—when she’d fallen; had seen her home safely when she was a slip of a girl running wild; had given her the benefit of the doubt more times than she could count. This was her home, and she was determined to make sure she deserved it.
The Aga hummed and ticked to itself in the corner and as the afternoon light slowly ebbed away, she lit candles to write by. Outside, snowflakes brushed against the windowpanes, and the seabirds screeched, but inside, all was calm and bright.
—
Fred hand deliveredeach letter through the recipients’ letter boxes. By the end of Tuesday, she’d heard back from all of them and was relieved to find that not only was she off the hook over the article but they were happy to take part in her collaborative marketing plan.
“People rarelywantto stay angry,” said Aunt Cam on Wednesday morning, as she cleared the table after first breakfast. “It’s tiring carrying all that extra weight around, makes you ill; most of the time, folks want to shuck it off as quickly as possible.”
Fred was scribbling down some final notes and reminders for her first video. Her mum was already in theworkshop, and Aunt Aggie was locked in a battle of wills with some snails that were hell bent on munching the sprout trees she’d earmarked for Christmas dinner.
She leaned back from her notebook, idly chewing the end of her pen as she thought about all the Mum baggage she’d lugged around for most of her adult life. She wondered how much of those negative energies had seeped into her life, slowly poisoning it. She had no one to blame but herself.
“Do you think I ruined my own life by being angry at Mum? Like, did I push out so much spite that it boomeranged back around to me?”
“Gracious, child, the very notion. Ruined? Your feelings on that subject were a mere speck on your overall blueprint—one molecule among the trillions that make up your story. And that story has barely begun, how could you have possibly ruined it?”
“I feel like I wasted so much time and energy on blaming Mum for everything.”
“And now you’ve let it go. It’s done. Don’t lament it. Celebrate all that free space you’ve got inside you, waiting to be filled up with silver linings.”
“You have such a good way of looking at things.”
“I’ve had plenty of time to practice. And plenty of time to get it wrong and make it right again. Life is one long game of Snakes and Ladders; the trick is to keep getting back on the ladder.”
“I seem to have slipped down a lot of snakes recently.”
