“Well. Fair play. I checked the ledgers in the back room yesterday. This week, the shop is making more than twice what it made this time last year, and bringing in the biscuits and coffee has made a massive difference.”
There was a shocked pause. That interjection had come fromGaloshes.
“What?” She shrugged, lifting her chin in my direction. “I’ve always known there’s something off about her. Now I know what it is. We’ve all done shit we’re not proud of here, haven’t we? Ormer’s swimming with people who wanted to start over, and nobody wants to start over because they’ve made such a great go of it the first time. She lied, but the only harm she did was something she could hardly have guessed would happen.”
“And in fairness, Charlie herself had the same idea as Aspen,” Oliver said.
The sound of my real name in his voice made the hairs stand up on my arms.
“That’s why Charlie gave it to me,” he went on. “It was the ideal opportunity for a fresh start. I should have thought of it,actually—the idea that you and I came to the job via the same route,” he said to me. Another fleeting moment of eye contact, enough to make my cheeks heat. He was the only person I wanted to look at me. “The job and the name were ripe for the taking, so…two of us took them.”
“And Charlie wanted you to do this? She suggested it?” Berty said to Oliver.
Could see how much it was all pissing him off. His jaw was tense and he was back to fiddling with his bloody cap again. He told me once that his ex-wife thought it looked cool when he wore it backward—might explain why I always found the affectation so annoying. In retrospect, Berty had talked alotabout his ex-wife.
“Look, there’s nothing to feel insecure about—she and I are just friends,” Oliver assured him, “and we have been for a long time. Ever since Fearne died.”
Was Fearne the person Oliver had spoken about on the beach that night? The one he’d lost? After weeks of knowing so little about his past, I was suddenly immersed in it, and it felt so surreal. Like starting again, or…the opposite, I don’t know.
“I suspect Charlie hoped I’d tell her all about you, actually, Rosie,” Oliver said.
“Did you?” Rosie breathed.
He smiled one of his tiny, warm smiles, and nodded.
“I can’t believe she’s here,” Rosie whispered. “I can’t believe she’s ready to meet me at last.”
Had been very much in the moment until this point—there’s only so much you can absorb when you’rethisanxious, and, if we’re honest, this confused. But it suddenly hit me that I was on my way to see the real Charlie Jones. We’d met back when I was a kid and had chatted briefly at Brianna and Stuart’s wedding, but I didn’tknowher particularly. Had always thought she seemed fun and dressedwell. Since dating Berty, I’d added a few more opinions, many of which were probably a bit unjust, but it’shardto think pure, kind thoughts about the ex-wife of your boyfriend, especially when a little buried bit of you knows he’s still in love with her.
Realized she would probably be pretty angry when she discovered I’d stolen her job. And her name. Doubt she liked me much before even getting to that stuff, for all the same reasons I’d not particularly liked the idea of her, either.
“Oh, God,” I whimpered, very quietly.
“Are you doing OK?” Red asked beside me. “It’s all out there now. It must be a bit of a relief, right?”
“Oh, oh,” I said, turning to her and clutching her hands. It wasn’tallout there yet. “I’m a midwife.”
Her eyes widened slightly.
“As in,” I backpedaled, before I revealed Red’s pregnancy to the whole trailer and thus pissed off the one remaining person who seemed to like me, “I’ve wanted to tell you that for ages, because we were talking, weren’t we, about how Doc Laurry should hire a midwife on the island…”
Glanced at Marly, who was looking at me with a slightly warmer expression. Suppose she thought that was why I’d decided to stay on the island when pregnant even though there was no qualified midwife here. And thathadbeen the idea—it was the reason I felt comfortable planning to start a family on the island. It would’ve been lovely to explain that and be free of all the lies, but this one wasn’t mine to dispel.
“Right! We were talking about that!” Red said, a bit too loudly, as though she was performing in a pantomime. She really was a terrible liar.
“You’re a midwife?” Oliver said.
He was looking at me wonderingly. My stomach flipped when our eyes met, just like it always did back when he was Jones. Guess my body hadn’t got the memo that this man was a stranger now.
“I am,” I began, and then I stopped short, because a thought hit me.
Charlie Jones didn’t want a baby. Brianna had told me that as soon as I’d started dating Berty—she’d known how badly I wanted a family before I’d been ready to admit it to myself.
Oliver had been in a relationship with Charlie before coming here. Does that mean he didn’t ever want a baby, either?
Not that it matters. This is exactly why I wasn’t getting involved withJonesOliver. No men, nobody else’s opinion to consider.
But judging by the way my stomach plummeted when I remembered that Charlie Jones had never wanted a baby…
