When she found out that her adoptive parents had lied about the death of her birth parents, back in 2019, she thought it might be time. Spurred on by grief and fury, she even signed up to the Who-Might-I-Be app—she did the swab and everything. But the moment she found her sister, the moment she saw Rosie’s beautiful smiling face on her profile page, Charlie panicked.
She wasn’t good enough yet. Her finances were a mess; she and Berty were still living in a tiny, rented flat in the gray pocket of London where they’d grown up, and she hated her job on the tills at Sainsbury’s, and she wasn’tcoolenough yet, she wasn’t long-lost sister material.
Charlie’s adoption story was so unlike all the beautiful ones she would stalk on social media. Winny and Simon Morrissey had adopted Charlie as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, and it had not worked. But neither of them would leave, then, because of Charlie—they felt it would be wrong. As a result, much of the time, everybody involved felt painfully unloved, none more so than Charlie, who learned at every turn that she was a much-resented inconvenience.
She had always believed her birth parents were dead—her mum and dad had told her as much from birth—so she would not let herself dream of finding them. But the Morrisseys had almost no relations, just a few distant cousins and an aunt who couldn’t travel, and Charlie always longed for afamily. A sibling, maybe. She felt deep in her heart that she had one out there somewhere, a person who would understand her in a way that nobody ever had, not even Fearne, not even Berty.
And then she’d learned that her birth parents had lived until 2019. All along, they’d been out there, alive and real—a truth her parents only told her once it was no longer true. The Nicoles died in a car accident when Charlie was twenty-eight.
The rage Charlie had felt was unlike anything she had experienced before. Howcouldher parents have kept this from her? They had stolen something priceless; they had robbed her of a chance to understand the story of how she came to be. She couldn’t forgive it.
Her fury was the fuel she needed to cut herself off from her adoptive parents altogether. Aside from a few reconciliation attempts they’d made over the years, they had not spoken since. It was around this time that drinking slipped from something fun to something necessary, and finding her blood relatives shifted from a childhood fantasy to Charlie’s greatest life goal. She became obsessed with becoming worthy of them—it was suddenly imperative that she leave her job and do somethingcooland unusual, and when Fearne suggested they turn Vintage, Please into a reality, Charlie jumped on it. She felt like a blank page; she had to make something of herself.
Because the only thing equal to the powerful desire to find her birth family was the overwhelming fear that they wouldn’t want her back.
She had screen-grabbed Rosie’s profile the second they matchedon the Who-Might-I-Be app, and then instantly deleted her account. She must have opened that screenshot a hundred thousand times. Her fascination with the Isle of Ormer had begun there—she’d learned all about the Nicole family,herfamily, and their long-standing history on the island. Berty and Fearne had encouraged her to reach out countless times, or even just to visit Ormer without declaring who she was, but Charlie would always say the same thing.I’m not ready.
But how does a person know when they’re ready? When would Charlie ever be good enough?
She had come so close when she’d seen the farm shop advert. Ajobon the very farm her sister owned—it was too perfect an opportunity to miss, and it came to her when she was so close to rock bottom. As though Rosie was already looking out for her.
She applied. She got the job, thanks, she thought, to her rather inflated CV—Charlie had always been good at a positive spin. And she had planned to go, she really had. She knew Fearne would have wanted her to; Berty had moved on with Brianna’s pretty little sister; there was no joy left for her at Vintage, Please without Fearne.
But then Oliver found the backup box underneath her sink, and Charlie finally faced the truth that she had a problem.
And that meant she wasdefinitelynot ready.
How about now, though? What about October 4, 2025, when she was more than two months sober, when the contract on her flat was coming up for renewal and she had the perfect opening to move elsewhere? Vintage, Please was doing better online than in-store these days; she was glad she’d kept it going, but was considering giving up the brick-and-mortar shop and moving the business to online only. She could manage it from anywhere if she did that—even from a tiny island in the middle of the Channel.
For the last two and a half months, Charlie had woken up, wanteda vodka orange and made herself a cinnamon syrup–laced coffee instead. She had fought through the early shakes and cravings; she had gone to her AA meetings, wept on the phone to her sponsor, joined an online sober community, and through all of it, she had marveled at herself. She had never thought she was a particularly strong person. Who knew she had this kind of staying power?
Every day, she had allowed herself a few messages to Berty—a reward at the end of each sober evening. He was impatient to meet up, but she had set herself a goal: three months sober before she could see him again. She had to earn it.
She had read Oliver’s emails over and over, gleaning every detail she could, and said to herself,Maybe next month I’ll visit him on Ormer. Maybe next month I’ll be ready.
She might never have gotten there, if it hadn’t been for that peculiarotherCharlie who had turned up in Oliver’s emails. The brave, beautiful one with slightly bendy morals who had searched that empty room at the farmhouse and found a list of Charlie Joneses. That particular email from Oliver had given Charlie the first clue that her sister knew her name.
She had deleted her profile so fast all those years ago. Withinsecondsof the match being made. Frenzied googling told her that once her profile was gone, there was no way for Rosie to know they’d matched, unless she’d happened to be in the app at that precise moment. But the list of Charlie Joneses in Rosie’s spare bedroom told Charlie the one thing that she longed to hear more than anything.
Her sister wanted to know her.
Sunday October 5th 2025
We did try to streamline the meeting-Charlie group. Galoshes, for instance, seemed a superfluous addition, as did I, if we’re honest, but Marly said a firm “She’s coming, too” when I suggested hanging back. Rog insisted on joining in, because who else would drive us there? And Red just needed a ride back to the B&B to change. Was a bit of a squeeze in Rog’s trailer. Felt very close to a lot of people who were quite annoyed with me.
Should’ve known there was no such thing as a ready-made new life. The past doesn’t disappear just because you hit restart.
On the plus side, astonishingly, I hadn’t fallen apart. Anxiety was almost unbearable. But actually, my great big worst possible thing was happening:everyonethought badly of me right now. I was completely exposed to their judgment. And I hadn’t run. Had said sorry. Had let everyone feel what they needed to feel without trying to justify my actions or wriggle my way out of it all somehow. I was sticking around, sitting with the discomfort (understatement. Feel like I want to claw the dread out of me) and I was going to do my best to make it right.
“So, let me get this straight,” Berty said to me, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees as Rog fired up the tractor engine.“Brianna told you that Charlie had gotten a job offer working in a farm shop here, but had decided not to take it. So you thought it was going spare…and decided to pretend it was yours?”
“It sounds very bad when you say it like that,” I said. My voice shook. “I really didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“What about us?” Marly asked.
I cringed. “I promise you, if I’d sucked at this and the farm shop had made no money, I’d have left. That was something I told myself from the start. I would only stay if I genuinely did a good job.”
Which had not helped with the anxiety about getting the committee on my side.
