Before I can formulate a response, the alarm on my phone goes off, signalling it’s time to get up and start baking for the day ahead. I go to reach for it, but he shoves past me and snatches it up to silence it. ‘Ahh, so you do have a phone. Vickie and I have been trying to contact you daily and getting no answer.’
‘I changed my number.’ I give him a self-assured nod. It’s not a lie. Throwing your phone into a river certainly does constitute changing your number.
‘Yes, I suppose you thought you’d never be found, out here in the middle of nowhere. This really is the arse-end of the UK, isn’t it? You lose the will to live driving up here, it’s so slow. Lucky I didn’t fall asleep mid-drive and mow down a bloody sheep.’
‘A lot of people like that about Yorkshire, including the sheep.’ I think of the one that’s always got its head over Reece’s wall. It’s by far the best neighbour I’ve ever had, and I bet it never gossips about people behind their backs on neighbourhood WhatsApp groups.
‘Probably the same people who think this little set-up is “charming and delightful”.’ He does the inverted quotes, and I recognise those words from an article last week, which answers my next question of how he found me, although to be fair, you don’t need Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of that one. ‘The ironic part of all this is that you’d probably have got away with it if you hadn’t got so cocky and paraded around online with your yellow campervan and your quaint little outdoor pub quizzes. How did you think I wouldn’t find you after that?’
‘I didn’t, I?—’
‘Fair dos, I probably wouldn’t have. Vickie and I have been looking for you all summer but we’d drawn a blank. Imagine my surprise when my mate came into work last week and said his girlfriend had been reading about this “Marzipan Campervan” thing online and recognised you. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’
I get the feeling that every time he mentions ‘Vickie and I’ that it’s intended to be a twist of the metaphorical knife, like he’s expecting me to fall at his feet and beg him to take me back, but it’s having the opposite effect and only serving to make anger start building inside me, because it’s a constant reminder that he saw nothing wrong with cheating on me, with my best friend, no less.
‘It’s taken me a few days to get the time off, but here we are. Vickie was going to come with me, but she’s had to go back to her old job seeing as you walked out and left her in the lurch with rent to pay for the Nostalgia thing.’
‘Oh, poor Vickie,’ I mutter, trying to ignore the little part of me that’s vindictively pleased about that. I might’ve left her in the lurch, but at least I didn’t have an affair with her boyfriend. Being tied into a tenant agreement for another few months is the least she deserves.
He mooches around the small space. Opening the cupboards, surveying my baking ingredients, having a look in the fridge, picking up a jar with a handful of wildflowers displayed in it, brought to me as a thank you by a little girl who’d enjoyed a slice of cake. I want to tell him to stop, that he has no right to poke around like he owns the place, but… hedoesown the place.
His beady eyes make me uncomfortable, especially when he stops appraising the interior and turns his eyes to me, running across me from head to toe, from my bare feet to my messy just-fell-out-of-bed hair, and the blanket I’m holding around myself like a shield. The campervan that’s been my safety net and my sanctuary suddenly feels like a box that I need to get out of, but Jared’s between me and the door, making me feel trapped. Reece is much taller than Jared, and yet, the space has never felt small with him in it. With Jared, it feels miniscule.
Eventually he turns away and carries on looking around. He picks up the mended vintage teapot and looks it over like he recognises exactly what it signifies, and then he tosses it from one hand to the other carelessly.
‘Put that down, it’s not yours.’
He laughs, a completely fake laugh that does nothing but make my hackles rise, even though he does put the teapot back with a heavy thunk before he can do any more damage to it. ‘No, Dolly, you’re right. It’s not mine. And that really is rich coming from you, considering what you’ve spent the last few months doing with something that’s not yours.’
I look at the teapot, and then at the serving hatch, the menu board leaning against the oven that I haven’t filled in for the day and put outside yet. My little kingdom that I’ve built from nothing, and something fierce rises inside me, filling me with fiery anger.
‘The van isn’t yours any more.’ I’m surprised by the strength in my own voice. ‘This is my business. My home.’
Jared snorts, examining the serving hatch and making a ‘tsk, tsk’ sound at the modifications we’ve made tohisvan. ‘It’s stolen property, there are no two ways about it.’
‘I didn’t mean to steal it. I was upset, I had nowhere to go, I made a mista?—’
‘You took my vehicle without permission and disappeared. That’s theft, Dolly. And this…’ He bangs the serving hatch down and wiggles it around. ‘Modifying a vehicle that isn’t yours. Painting it to disguise it. Hiding in this random, hard-to-find place. That’s premeditated theft and intention to pervert the course of justice. If it was “a mistake”, you would have returned it immediately. Not gone to such great lengths to ensure I’d never get it back.’
I go to argue, but he’s not wrong, is he? What Ishouldhave done was reach the end of the street, turn around, and take it right back to his driveway. That’s not what I did. But at the same time… thank God I didn’t. Where would I have been now if I’d returned the van and stayed in Sevenoaks with my tail between my legs? I would never have come to Thimblenouth. I would never have found this gorgeous little village, with its gossipy villagers and their pub quizzes. I would never have met Reece. All of those things are unthinkable, and they all only happened because of what I did that day. He’s right – it wasn’t a mistake, and if it was, it’s the best one I’ve ever made.
‘Let me buy it from you.’ After the conversation with Reece last week, I was trying to psyche myself up to phone him and offer anyway, but he’s found me before I’ve been brave enough to do it, so I force myself to be brave now. I drop the blanket from around me and stand up straighter, like I’mnotwearing my oldest, rattiest pyjamas.
‘Buy it?’ He laughs, but there’s no humour in it. ‘With what? The money you make from running this little tea party thing?’
‘I can pay you in monthly instalments. The café is doing well, I can afford?—’
‘Monthly instalments?’ Jared’s voice rises, exactly the way it always did when I suggested something he thought was ridiculous. ‘Do you have any idea how much this van is worth?’
‘You didn’t pay much for it,’ I mutter, wishing I could remember exactly what he’d said when he first bought it.
‘It’s not about how much I spent on the shell – it’s about how much I spent on restoring it and fitting it out with every mod-con imaginable that you’ve been enjoying all summer. I worked on this van for nearly a year. It’s priceless.’
‘Tell me what it’s worth and I’ll pay you, every month, until it’s covered in full.’
‘That isn’t good enough, Doll. I can’t accept a deal with such precarious terms. You might be able to afford to pay now, but how long do you think your café is going to last when word gets out that you’re a thief?’
My stomach lurches. ‘You wouldn’t?—’
