I’ve been considering Oliver’s opinion already, without even noticing.
Forfuck’ssake. When will I learn?
When we arrived at the farmhouse, there was a bit of kerfuffle in the corridor outside Puffin room as everyone faffed about deciding who should be the one to knock on the door. In the end, we assembled in an impromptu ranking of how important it was for us to see the real Charlie Jones, and it went like this:
Berty (worried ex-husband clearly itching to reproclaim his love)
Rosie (probably long-lost sibling, but too nice to tell Berty this meant she should definitely go first)
Marly (supportive sister-in-law who has put up with a lot of Charlie Jones–related trouble)
Oliver (?? Ex-boyfriend, now very good friend, apparently? Not that I should care, etc.)
Galoshes (pushy)
Me (hiding)
Red and Rog stayed in the kitchen to make a round of tea. Tried to stick around with them, but Marly looked daggers at me and said, “Nobody ever sorted their life out by hiding in the kitchen.” So I watched in sickened anticipation as Berty knocked on the door of Puffin room and called a soft, “Charlie?”
Would she recognize me? If Oliver had been filling her in on everything going on here, he’d presumably mentioned theotherCharlie Jones. She’d probably not worked out who I was, either—the only person who could have cleared it all up was Bri, I suppose, as she’s the one person who knew us all. Plus her husband, Stuart, whose birthday party I’d been at when I’d gone home with Berty.
Wiped my sweating palms on my trousers and considered becoming a person who prayed. Though, I thought, what exactly was I praying for? That Charlie Jones wouldn’t think badly of me? Of course she would. Sheshould, frankly.
For a second out there in the corridor I imagined the whole thing from Charlie’s point of view. She was here to meet her sister. She was about to see her ex-husband for the first time since…that funeral Berty went to back in the spring? That was the only time he’d told me he’d seen Charlie since the separation. So this was a big day for them.
I, meanwhile, was a woman who’d dated her husband while they were apart—a temporary blip in their love story. I did not matter.
It sounds so obvious, but the thought totally floored me. Suddenly properly understood what Rosie had been saying that night we’dstargazed together. I spend all my time wondering what everyone thinks of me, when the reality is they’re hardly thinking of me at all. Yes, Charlie likely won’t be best pleased to hear what I’ve done. But how freeing to realize that actually, I’m a tiny speck in the great big tapestry of her life, and this moment right here with Rosie washerstory, not mine.
Isle of Ormer, now
Charlie was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring down at three pages of Charlie Joneses. There were tears in her eyes.
It was Rosie’s handwritten marginalia on the printout that had gotten her. The little notes about each person she thought was a contender: Charles from North Yorkshire (the nose??she’d written beneath his photo), Charlotte from Geneva (moved there aged 18, born in London). It was heartbreaking and beautiful all at once. Little did Rosie know that searching for similarities like this, obsessing over the details, creating this room in preparation for the moment—all of these small actswerethe similarity. This was absolutely something Charlie Jones would do.
