Chapter 22

22

Sunday, I finished the last of the wallpaper-stripping and then took Hope out while Daniel got on with some work. After dillying and dallying about whether it was time to brave a stroll down Old Main Street, I decided to start by heading to the orchard. I could then choose whether to keep going along the river, and see where we ended up.

     After the recent sunshine, the sky hung heavy with ominous rainclouds. Once Hope was in the sling, Daniel stepped closer to adjust her hood. He glanced up, meeting my eyes, and there it was again. That fizzle that started deep in my stomach and whooshed up through my body, sending my heart spinning.

     ‘Have fun. Enjoy the river.’

     ‘You too! Enjoy the spreadsheets.’

     Such a snapshot moment of domestic bliss, if Daniel had leant closer and given me a goodbye peck, it would have felt perfectly natural. I dashed out the door before the flush on my cheeks gave me away. Definitely time for a brisk, breezy walk, with the added risk of encountering some verbal abuse at the end of it.

     I found Ziva checking out the boy bees and their queens. Thankfully, she had the courtesy to take a break from poking about in a beehive while a baby was in the vicinity.

     ‘Recovered from last week’s excitement?’ she asked, taking her beekeeping hood off and making the obligatory coos and smiles at Hope before perching on a nearby tree stump.

     I shuddered. ‘I’m completely mortified. That speech will be echoing in my ears for years to come.’

     ‘It was an excellent speech!’ Ziva declared. ‘Clear, engaging, well delivered. You had us all transfixed. What more can you ask for?’

     ‘Not being booed, heckled or having someone throw a drink at me before everyone storms out in disgust?’

     ‘Well, there is that.’ She waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Bah. They’ll have virtually forgotten about it in a week or two. One thing to know about the Feud of Ferrington: these days it is largely bark and no bite. All talk and no trouser, as my father would say.’

     ‘How old were you when you moved here? Did you have family who worked in the mines?’

     ‘I was only a child when we moved here, but my father was a GP, like me. It took a while for the village to accept him, but once they’d embraced him as one of their own he gave his heart to this place, looking after the people of Ferrington and the surrounding farms for over thirty years. He died in 1979. A heart attack. Which I can’t help thinking was perhaps a blessing. He’d have been devastated to have witnessed what happened.’

     ‘Becky mentioned that you lost your father-in-law during the strike. Does that mean you’d be against any sort of reconciliation?’

     Ziva sat and thought about that for such a long time, I began to think she was deliberately ignoring me. Then she shook her head as if coming back to the present, and rested her chin in both hands.

     ‘It was a very difficult time for our family. When John, Becky’s dad, lost his father, it was heart-breaking. His mother never recovered. They were so angry, and so very sad. And some of his best friends – the boys he’d grown up with, worked in the mine with for decades – they didn’t even come to his funeral. They’ve all passed on now, of course. And their children, grandchildren – should they be held accountable for what happened back then? Maybe, some of them. Some have said and done things since which were very, very painful. But does there come a time when these things must be forgiven? Of course.

     ‘I meant it about your speech. It has disturbed me, in the best possible sense. One thing in particular has lodged in my heart and doesn’t want to leave: how long are we going to be defined by what we are not? That’s what got me thinking of my father. He was so proud to be welcomed as a Ferring. Like I said, it would have broken him to see what happened. Maybe I’m not the only one disturbed. Maybe now is the time for some honest dialogue. Some searching questions. To allow these old wounds to begin to heal. But I’m not sure you’re the one to do it.’

     ‘Could you be the one to do it?’

     Ziva pulled a wry smile, pulling herself to her feet with an ‘oomph’. ‘Maybe twenty years ago. I may still appear to be full of vigour, but I’m not far off an old woman. And I have to think about John. While he may be open to change, his Israeli wife being the one to spearhead it would be another matter.’ She reached out, her face animated again as she took hold of Hope’s gloved hand. ‘Now, I must let you get on with your walk, and you must let me get back to the F boys! What will Felix and Finlay think if I keep them waiting?’

     We each turned our separate ways, her back to the boys, Hope and I to the river. I had so much to think about, my body felt stuffed with so many different emotions, jostling about demanding attention, I kept on walking, and walking, pounding out the questions and the frustration as we crossed the muddy meadow, strode along the side of the Maddon, all the way to Old Main Street.

     Gathering my courage about me, I even braved a stroll around the mini-market. One man gave me the dead-eye from the end of an aisle, shaking his head in contempt when I ignored the evil stare. The young girl behind the check-out widened her eyes when she saw me approaching, but after a brief hesitation she ran my pack of bagels and bananas through the till, and even managed a tiny smidgen of a smile when I looked her in the eye, said thank you and wished her a nice rest of the day.

     The proprietor of the disco-off-licence and cheapest vapes on the Old Side lingered in his doorway as I walked past.

     ‘Yer barred!’ he sneered, once I had clearly passed him. ‘The baby ’n’ all!’

     Part of me wanted to swing around and demand to know why. The other, wiser me knew that he was dying for me to ask so that he could reel off all the reasons he’d come up with. Instead, I stuck my chin in the air and walked right on home.

Daniel emerged from his study once we arrived back at the farm. ‘You need to call this number.’ He handed me a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.

     ‘Why? Who is it?’ I asked, dread filling me instantly.

     He smiled. ‘Nothing to look so worried about. Trust me. You want to call them.’

     Maybe so, but I decided I needed a mug of tea and a piece of flapjack first.

     ‘Hello? This is Eleanor Sharpley. I got a message asking me to call you?’

     ‘Eleanor from Damson Farm?’

     ‘Um, yes.’ I supposed I was.

     ‘Oh wow! Amazing! Thank you so much for getting back to me, like so totally quickly? I know you must be completely which is why it’s such a total quest to track you down? Oh my gols, I still like, can’t even believe it? Oh, hang on, there’s Tamarind. Hey, Tammers! You’ll never guess who it is! Like, totally? It’s her, now, on the phone. Eleanor! No – can you believe it, she called I know! I know! … I

     ‘Um, did you want something?’ I asked, because the caller might know, but I certainly didn’t.

     ‘Well, I know this is like probably a total hashtag fail already, but we’d be so happy just to go on the waiting list, if you ever have a cancellation – I mean, not likely, right? But stranger things have happened. So, could we put our names down? For like, four of us?’

     ‘Your names down?’

     ‘I know! I know! I’m cringing at myself even asking, but it took us so long to find the number of your assistant chappie, and you can’t have bookings indefinitely, like they must come to an end at some point? So, whenever that date is, put us down. The full retreat.’

     ‘The full retreat?’ Slow, I know, but my brain was still catching up with my ears.

     ‘Yeah, like the lifestyle reconfiguration one? Saskia said it totally changed her world! Like, that’s why she resigned from Hardman and Hanes and rebranded as an apple guru? Whatever she did, we want that one.’

     ‘Right.’ So wrong it’s right? ‘First of all, let me take some details, then I’ll figure out when we can squeeze you in.’

     I’m totally down for squeezing!’

     Five minutes later, I had a party of four booked in for a night on the May Bank Holiday weekend. I could hardly claim eight weeks wasn’t enough time to prep for a lifestyle regeneration retreat, given that for the previous one I’d had about eight minutes.

     I had some work to do.

Although the exclusivity of the retreat appeared to be its main appeal, we didn’t want to be so exclusive that every potential customer needed detective skills to find us. Becky and I spent our mornings decorating the top floor, the afternoons creating a website that we hoped came across as mysterious and need-to-know rather than vague. We fiddled about with some numbers and costings, but with so much still to work out, we ended up simply adding something about how each retreat was custom-made, and to contact one of our retreat curators for a bespoke quote.

     There was so much potential to waffle on about restoring well-being and cultivating emotional breathing space, spouting piffle that promised everything while refraining to specify what anyone would actually be doing in practice. We could have ramped prices through the roof and sniggered our way to a hefty profit. But that was not what we were here for. Becky and I were done with making money from spouting piffle. We wanted Damson Farm to welcome everyone who needed it. Those who thought they couldn’t spare the time or the money most of all.

     I worked with Charlie’s notebook open beside me, and I sought to honour her dream in every word I wrote.

     I was, however, realising that despite being a B & B girl born and bred, there was a lot that I didn’t know about the ins and outs of the business. More to the point, while I knew how my parents ran the Tufted Duck, I didn’t know why they chose to organise and plan and fry the bacon the way that they did. I’d be an idiot not to find out as much as I could as soon as I could.

     I gave them a call that Wednesday afternoon, hoping to squeeze in a conversation during the relative lull between cleaning up from one weekend rush and getting ready for the next.

     I hadn’t spoken to them in a few weeks. My parents loved me, and I loved them, but neither of them had a mobile phone, and pinning them down for a conversation was not an easy task.

     ‘Hi, Grandma.’

     ‘Hello? Eleanor, is that you?’

     ‘Yes. How are you doing?’

     ‘Well, fine of course.’

     ‘Are Mum or Dad around?’

     ‘Who?’

     ‘Wendy and Colin. Can you put one of them on the phone?’

     ‘Colin has gone out.’

     ‘What about Wendy?’

     ‘What about her?’

     ‘Can you tell her that Eleanor’s on the phone and wants to talk to her, please?’

     ‘She’s upstairs, doing the family rooms.’

     ‘Okay, but can you go and ask her to come and talk to me?’

     ‘When do you want to talk to her?’

     ‘Now, Grandma. Can you go and fetch her now, please?’

     ‘Right.’

     She hung up.

     After leaving three messages on the answer phone, and sending an email to the bookings line, I decided there was only one thing for it.

     ‘I’m going to visit my parents for a couple of days,’ I told Daniel that evening as we ate dinner. ‘I’ve got loads of questions about how they run the Tufted Duck, and getting them on the phone is impossible.’

     ‘When’s the last time you saw them?’ he asked.

     ‘I stayed for a weekend last May, but they were full, so too busy to talk much past “Table three want scrambled eggs”.’ I shrugged. ‘Then again, they’re always busy. I can’t remember them ever taking a holiday.’

     ‘They never visited you in London?’

     ‘I’m not sure they’ve been further south than Blackpool.’

     ‘Is that what it’s going to be like for us, once Damson Farm is open for business?’ He stood up and collected my now empty plate.

     ‘Most definitely not. We can’t run a place to rest and recharge if we never take any time to practice what we preach.’ I got up to help him with clearing up. ‘Although you’re hardly one to talk. You barely take a day off, let alone a holiday.’

     ‘I took a month’s leave when Charlie died.’ He gave a rueful smile.

     ‘That wasn’t a holiday.’ I flicked on the kettle. ‘Maybe I should take Hope with me, give you a couple of days off?’ I stopped then, as an even better thought occurred to me. ‘Except then you’d probably end up working even longer hours without Hope to interrupt you. You should come!’

     ‘What?’ Daniel turned to face me, but he didn’t look horrified.

     ‘Come to the Tufted Duck. Best breakfast in the Lakes. I’m only going for two nights.’

     ‘Are you asking me so you don’t have to drive your death-machine?’

     ‘No! I’m asking because it would be lovely for you to see the place that inspired Charlie to come up with her plans for here. And you could do with the fresh mountain air and soul-stirring views. Wouldn’t it be amazing to spend two whole days without going in your study? No spreadsheets, no conference calls, the only forecasting required being whether to take a coat and what toppings you want on your breakfast pancakes?’

     Daniel smiled. ‘Sold.’

     Becky was ecstatic about the idea of Daniel and I going on a ‘mini-break’.

     ‘It’s a research trip!’ I reminded her, for the fifteenth time. ‘I’m going to be gathering information, grilling my parents and mostly holed up in the office while Daniel and Hope go and have fun.’

     ‘Yeah, I completely believe you,’ she smirked, dipping her brush back into the pot of cornflower paint we were using for Hope’s new bedroom.

     ‘We’re staying with my parents! And my grandma!’

     ‘Meeting the family. How very sweet.’

     At that point I may have accidentally flicked blue paint in her hair.