His tone was curious rather than pained. After a moment, he took her hand from where it lay on the bed between them.
“It’s OK,” he said.
“I must love you,” Charlie said, and she was shocked to find her eyes filling with tears as she said it.
“I’m so sorry,” Oliver whispered. “Looking after me like this has been hard for you. Of course you’ve fallen out of love with me.”
“Oliver, God, don’t,” she said, beginning to cry. “Idolove you.”
“In a way,” he finished for her. “You love me in a way. But not in the way that you loved Berty.”
She shut her eyes tightly, squeezing two tears onto the pillow beneath her.
“You’ve done so much for me,” Oliver said, wiping her tears away. “Especially these last few weeks. But you don’t have to stay with me just because I’m…like this. You can leave, Charlie.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Charlie said, and she meant it.
True, she didn’t love him with the fiery endlessness with whichshe had loved Berty. But she did care for him, and she owed him, too. Or was it Fearne she owed? Whoever it was, she felt a deep, cosmic obligation to keep returning to this squalid place.
“Can we stay together like…friends?” she asked, and then cringed at herself. “I just mean that I still want to help you get back on your feet, and talk to you about Fearne, and still see you…”
It occurred to her only as she said this that it might actually be true.
“I want you in my life,” she whispered.
Oliver smiled. A tiny, Oliver smile, the first she’d seen in several weeks.
“Well, I like being in your life, Charlie. So that works.”
—
It did work, sort of. They fell into a routine as Oliver began to recover, a kind of mutually supportive grief. They would stay up late on his tiny balcony over the A road, drinking toasts and sharing stories of Fearne. Charlie would go to work the next day and try to turn the shop she’d built with Fearne into something that could exist without her.
But Charlie couldn’t shake Brianna’s words from the night at Fearne’s flat.I wonder if you need a fresh start, Charlie.
When Fearne was alive, they’d sometimes joked that it was Fearne’s world, and everyone else was just living in it. And in a sense, it had been, for Charlie. It hadn’t particularly bothered her: she loved Fearne, and was happy to let her best friend lead. She didn’t mind her days being filled with bikes, and when Fearne’s handsome friend wanted to take her out on a date, she didn’t mind that, either. But now Fearne was gone, Charlie had been left in a sort of…ghost life. Even her job was a dream she had shared withFearne. She was estranged from her adoptive parents and had no other family, yet; she had nothing to anchor her but an ex-boyfriend who moved through the same ghost town she did.
She woke up one morning with a pounding head, stared across at her bedroom wall and realized she had no idea what she and Oliver had done the previous night. Had they cooked pasta for dinner? One day was sliding miserably into the next; they were not in the first pit of grief, but wherever they were now was viscous and gloomy, an emotional quagmire. Charlie reached blindly for her phone and began to doomscroll, as she did every morning, but part of her recoiled as she did it. She was looking for escapism, presumably, but where was the pleasure in this? Where was the pleasure in anything, lately?
It was fate, Charlie told herself later. She turned to her usual bookmarked pages—Isle of Ormer property, the Isle of Ormer official site, the community Facebook page—and there it was, advertised in gold letters above an image of the island in its emerald-green splendor.
Are you seeking a different kind of life?
Would you like to join a warm, friendly community on a beautiful, secluded island?
Farm shop manager required at Bramblebay Farm. Apply to Rosie Nicole, Bramblebay Farm, Isle of Ormer.
Charlie could hardly believe how perfect it was.
She handwrote her application. She stretched the truth a little on her CV—Vintage, Please was notquitethe resounding success she made it sound—but her cover letter was all truth. She wroteabout how she had been fascinated by the Isle of Ormer for many years. She wrote about how it was time, at last, to live the dream she had made so many mood boards about. And she finished her letter by saying that more than anything, she hoped Bramblebay Farm might be herhome, the home she’d always longed to find.
Wednesday September 24th 2025
Anxiety’s not been so bad today—honestly can’t say why, maybe it was facing the fact the Galoshes stuff was triggering it? Or maybe it’s just Ormer Ormering away around me in its beautiful autumn colors, reminding me that the great big gorgeous world gives no shits about the nonsense knots I’m tying in my own head. The Rosie method—the big-sky method. Whatever the reason, it’s an absolutereliefnot to feel like I want to climb out of my body for a while.
Came home from work and Jones was out. Felt weird. Bit disappointed—he’s usually in on a Wednesday night. We tend to have a cozy evening, cook something with a lot of cheese in it, switch the lights out early (have got in habit of going to bed at same time, because of bedroom logistics. We say good night through the door once we’re both tucked in—it’s all sickeningly cute, and there I lie, thinking about him topless).
Eventually spotted Jones out of the kitchen window. He was gardening. Odd—I’ve never seen him garden before. Rog and I did some planting out there a few weeks ago (before I almost accused him of theft) and am not actually sure Jones had yet noticed. But there he was, with my trowel, hacking away at something in the soil. Looked hard going. Plus it was almost dark.
