‘Rita. Rita Jory. And your new landlady, it seems.’ She smiled faintly.
Zenya’s eyes flicked to the bubbling pot. ‘The nettles up here are perfect for tea. Best picked before the sun’s too high. Clears the blood, lightens the heart. Would you like a cup?’
Rita hesitated, then laughed nervously. ‘No thanks.’
Her gaze wandered to a battered rucksack just inside the tent, where a deck of tarot cards peeked out from a side pocket. The top card was face up, The Tower, depicting lightning splitting a crumbling building in two.
Rita looked away quickly, a chill creeping up her spine at the image.
Zenya caught her glance and smiled faintly, not moving to hide the cards. ‘I read for people sometimes,’ she said quietly. ‘Not to tell them their future, but to help them hear themselves. Most people already know what they need to do, but the noise of life drowns it out.’
She gestured towards the ocean below, which currently mirrored the dull and uninviting drab sky above. ‘The air cleans you. The salt in the wind… it blows the grit out of your soul if you let it. The land holds you. If you listen long enough, it will tell you things.’
Rita’s eyes dipped towards the tarot card on show. ‘What does that one mean?’
Zenya leaned in. ‘The Tower is the card of upheaval. Sudden change. Destruction of what’s no longer true. Like lightning tearing down old, shaky foundations so something new can grow. It’s raw, it’s chaotic, but necessary. Sometimes, things need to fall apart before they can get better.’
Rita swallowed hard, the weight of those words settling deep inside her.
Zenya watched her for a long moment. The silence stretched between them, until the wild woman broke it. ‘Sorry for pitching up on your land like this. I never mean to be a nuisance. And I honestly didn’t think anyone would find me up here.’
‘Camilladoes have her uses, then.’ Rita smirked, wondering if she should be more concerned about this particular trespasser, but equally feeling an unexpected pull toward the bohemian woman. ‘It’s OK. Come down for a real cup of my tea and a shower if you ever need one.’ Rita realised her mistake and backtracked, ‘Not saying that nettle tea isn’t… or that… you do need one, I mean, of course.’
Zenya’s smile deepened. ‘Maybe, thank you.’
Rita looked to Camilla, who was still happily grazing away. ‘I’d better get Houdini here back down to the herd and hope none of the others have followed her lead. They don’t usually, thankfully.’
Zenya lifted her metal cup of tea aloft. ‘Until our starry paths cross again, Rita Jory. This place has a way of healing, of making things right. It’s going to be OK, you know. I can feel it.’
With the goat pen fixed after a fashion, chores complete and a jacket potato cooking in the Aga, Rita sat with knees curled in her window seat in the Den, a steaming cup of Earl Grey next to her. Henry was snoring on the sofa. She was knackered from her unexpected sprint earlier but also weirdly felt a sense of calm after meeting Zenya.
Her thoughts then drifted back to livelier days. She remembered the kitchen bustling with life on a Sunday, Archie carving their favourite beef joint. Yorkshire puddings the size of plates and crispy roasties, with thick gravy and fresh vegetables picked from the garden. A perfect meal amidst the comforting chaos of family chatter around the table.
And then the kids had flown the nest, leaving just her and Archie. After the initial wrench of change, they’d slipped back into the rhythm of being just the two of them, almost like a second honeymoon. They could walk around naked again, have noisy sex without worrying who might hear. Dinner could be nothing butsnacks if that’s what they fancied, and they could argue freely, without needing to keep their voices down.
Now she had to work out how to be alone. Solitude could be beautiful but she was too gregarious for it to sustain her. As if trying to wash away these memories, she physically shook herself and sat tall. She was only forty-five and a young forty-five at that and despite waves of grief still engulfing her, there was a spark in her eyes that refused to dim, a restless energy humming just beneath the surface. She wasn’t ready to hang up her dreams or settle into quiet routines. Age was just a number; it was the spirit that counted, and hers was far from ready to fade.
Outside, gulls shrieked across the grey March sky, as if offering their approval of her thoughts. And down in his pen, a crowing Nigel was trying to fight the wind.
She opened the book Jude had pressed into her hands a few days previously with that knowing smile of his.It’s about walking, she remembered him saying…about grief and losing your way, and then clawing it back through nature, solitude, and sheer bloody determination. She’d meant to just dip into it. Just a few pages. Instead, she read for an hour. And if it weren’t for suddenly remembering with a jump her lunch in the Aga, she could have read for much longer.
Maybe, she thought, slipping the book onto the coffee table, it was time to start clawing things back herself.
SIX
After lunch, the skies had brightened and, craving a bit of fresh air, Rita, with book and fold-up chair in hand, made her way towards the aptly named Singing Tree. The ancient sycamore stood alone above the cliffs, its broad green canopy forever whispering and murmuring in the sea breeze. On gustier days, the branches didn’t just rustle, theysang, a high, haunting note that carried across the fields like a hymn. Its silver-grey trunk, mottled and peeling in papery patches, looked as though it were slowly shedding the decades it had spent standing sentinel over the bay.
She noticed how the meadow could do with a mow, but that had been Stan’s job and the trouble was, she couldn’t exactly ask Stan. Not now that she’d let him go as a farm hand as she couldn’t afford him andespeciallynot now that she had heard he was working for Jago Jenken over at Hawthorn Acre.
The feud between the Jorys and the neighbouring Jenkens had been simmering for as long as Rita could remember, though she’d never been involved herself. She’d quickly learned that even uttering the Jenken name was enough to make Hilda, her mother-in-law’s face harden and her voice turn to a growl. Archie, meanwhile, if she ever asked him, would just grow cagey, offer astiff smile, and murmur, ‘It’s nothing to be worrying yourself about.’ Which, of course, made Rita want to know about it all the more.
But she didn’t have time to be worrying about any of that now. With her home on the line and not wanting to leave it, it was time to swim, or she would most certainly sink. Troubling thoughts of how she was going to pay the next wave of credit card bills engulfed her.
A sudden flutter of wings pulled her from her thoughts. A robin landed on a low branch, its russet chest puffed out as if it had something important to say. The sight of it brought an unexpected wave of calm, as though the little bird had been sent on a quiet mission to reassure her.
From where she stood, she could see a faint ribbon of smoke curling up from Zenya’s cauldron in the distance, drifting lazily into the brightening afternoon sky. Oh, to be that free, Rita thought, suddenly wondering how the Mancunian had ended up in a field in Cornwall as she clearly wasn’t just on holiday.
She sighed and opened her book, read a few pages, then, not able to concentrate, closed it again and stared out at the sea beyond. As her gaze moved between the horizon and Zenya’s camp, the little robin returned and began hopping around near her feet, and the sentiment between the pages ofWildbegan to stir wild thoughts within her. The courage it had taken the woman to walk the Pacific Crest Trail alone, hauling her grief and her pack over mile after mile until she’d shed more than just the weight on her back was incredible. And with her mind feeling suddenly clearer, her dad’s words drifted in: ‘Everything is written, Reety; you just need to sometimes look for the direction signs.’ What if she could create that space for herself… and, even better, for others too?
