Sunday September 28th 2025
Feel powerful urge for a list. Always a sure sign I’m stressed-out.
Here’s the situation:
Red thinks she’s about ten weeks pregnant.
Toby is the father. (Poor confused Toby—but more on this soon.)
Red needs to see a midwife.
Red doesn’t want Marly and Rosie to know she’s pregnant, because she’s worried they won’t let her stay at the B&B.
Toby doesn’t know Red is pregnant.
Marly thinksI’mpregnant.
Red’s pretty overwhelmed right now, so I didn’t want to go too hard on the whole “You need to see a midwife! You need to tell Toby! You need to tell Marly!” stuff. But she does, she does, and she does. Can’t go on with Marly thinking I’m pregnant—it’s too hard. And there’s only so long that I can be all that Red needs here.
Pouring with rain today—have just ducked into the pub to write this out. They’ve lit the open fire, so I’m drying off here, waiting outthe weather, figuring out what and how to tell Jones about today when I get home.
It’s been an intense afternoon.
Red asked me over to the farmhouse to help her sort her head out, as she put it. We sat on her bed—“Is this weird?” she asked. “Being my boss and seeing how messy my bedroom is?” I explained that being a boss is not the same as being your mum and I really don’t care about the state of her bedroom as long as she knows how to sell an onion that’s slightly past its prime. Though it really was a state in there. Clothes and shoes everywhere, Chappell Roan posters stuck to the walls with dried-out poster putty, several plates growing new species of mold.
“I don’t know how to tell Toby,” Red said, fiddling with an envelope.
“Oh my God, is that the love note?”
Very nearly finished this sentence withthat Jones wrote—saved it just in time.
“How do you know about that?”
“Just…Toby mentioned it to Jones.”
