“Chat.”
“Yes! Like you did with Rosie and Marly. Why not? We need to work together now, don’t we? Shouldn’t we try to get along?”
At last, he looked away from me. Felt my shoulders drop slightly, as though he’d physically let me go.
“I’m not here to make friends,” he said, hefting the bin bag over his shoulder.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we onThe Bachelor?” I pretended to peer out at the empty fields.
“It’s nothing personal. But I don’t want to chat. Or walk. Or pub. I just want to keep myself to myself.”
“But…we’re managing the farm shop together. We live together. We don’t even have a door between our bedrooms, currently,” I said, baffled. “I’m really not sure how you’re going to do that.”
“Me neither,” he said, slipping a hammer into his tool belt and heading back inside. “But for now, I think we should just try to pretend we each have the stables and the shop to ourselves.”
So…that’s what we did. We kept cleaning—separately—until it got too dark to work, and then I announced I was going home, and he headed back, too, walking along the track behind me. We weren’t close enough to be walkingtogether, but we definitely weren’t far enough apart to benottogether, either. And neither of us said a word.
Every time I glanced over my shoulder, he’d look away, fixing his gaze on the skyline. I tried to do the same, and act like there wasn’t a bigger, maler, grumpier Charlie Jones on my tail, but even when I picked up the pace to drop him, he kept sneaking into my brain anyway. I’d alternate between rageful made-up conversations with him (“If you think freezing me out will make me go back to the mainland,you’ve got another think coming, mister!”) and accidentally dwelling on the sight of him with the tool belt strapped around his hips. Isn’t it annoying when someone is hotter than they deserve to be?
There was a moment when we got back to the stables, though—hardly avoidable, really, unless I’d slammed the door in his face on my way in. He murmured a low “thank you” as he moved on through to get himself a glass of water. First time he’d spoken to me in hours.
I stayed in the entrance as he braced himself at the kitchen sink, knocking back a whole glassful, back muscles bunched beneath that plaid shirt. He met my eyes as he turned to place the glass above the dishwasher. Clink.
He swiped the pad of his thumb across his bottom lip, and a tiny shiver moved through me.
Jones takes up more space than he has a right to. More air, more attention, more of everything. When he’s a few steps away, it feels like he’s closer, and when he’s close, he might as well be in my head. This island is tiny and this house is tiny and he seems to fill every corner of it.
Anyway, now I’m writing in the kitchen while he’s in the walk-in wardrobe. Am trying to act as though I’m here on my own, like he said. But I can hear him moving around. Can hear the low swish of him pulling his jumper off over his head, the slight sigh as he settles back on the bed, the quiet tap of his keys on his laptop keyboard.
How the hell am I meant to pretend this man isn’t here when it feels like he’s bloody everywhere?
From:Charlie Jones
To:Charlie Jones
Subject:Day seven sober
We now have a door on the walk-in wardrobe. It’s astonishing how little difference it makes to my awareness of Charlie’s presence on the other side of it.
Anyway, this isn’t what I sat down to write about. Tonight, we met the committee. Local producers with a mandate to “help steer and inform” the running of the Bramblebay Farm Shop. And, I discovered later,alsothe running of the post office, the ferry service and the island itself. If there is a committee, these twenty people are on it. In fact, they even make up Ormer’s government. All democratically elected, but since there are twenty-two roles and only twenty people stood for election, I’m not sure how relevant that is.
I’ll try to paint a picture of the meeting.
“My chocolate boxes need to be at the till,” was how Karyn introduced herself to me.
“Oh, hi, you’re the chocolatier?” Charlie said. “I tried your truffles, they’re incredible!”
Karyn ignored her. “And don’t think we don’t know that Toby’s mum’s bread gets front-of-store placement because her son works at the shop. It’s favoritism. Nepotism.”
“Fascism, I’d go so far as to say,” Doc Laurry said solemnly, with an almost imperceptible twinkle in his eye. The island GP, he was there because the rare and obscure herbs he grows in the cottage garden outside Ormer’s medical center are sold at the shop, but also, I suspect, because he enjoys the entertainment.
He’d brought biscuits—shortbreads studded with homegrown lilac blossom and basil. I expected people to give them a wide berth, as the flavor was a bit experimental, but it seemed the committee was familiar with Doc Laurry’s baking. They were all gone before I had a chance to try one.
Everyone was also drinking Gamede cider, pressed and bottled at the pub from Bramblebay apples. This was more troubling than the lack of biscuits. I don’t even like cider, but the condensation beading on the bottles was enough to make my mouth water. That wolfish voice said,Come on, it’s basically juice, and you’re so tense—you’ll be much more relaxed for this meeting if you just have a drink.
It’s surprised me how hard this week has been. I didn’t expect to want a drinkthismuch, or maybe I’d not expected the desire to be quite so…devious. The voice sounds just like my rational voice, and always has such good reasons why one drink would be fine. I thought after seven days sober I’d feel more confident that I can do this, but I’d say I actually just feel humbled, and a little scared.
Charlie shot the doctor an amused look before returning her attention to the rest of the committee. We’d cleared a space in the middle of the shop, piling the vegetable crates around us to create enough room for a central trestle table and a chair for everyone, though of course we’d miscounted, which had caused some drama eventually resulting in Charlie and me roaming around chairless between the cabbages and leeks, trying to givethe impression we were running the meeting while Galoshes used a parsnip as an impromptu gavel.
