Nell prodded the lifeless hearth, trying to coax some flames from the Jenga tower of fizzling kindling she’d constructed there. But there was nothing. Just unpleasant-smelling black smoke disappearing up the chimney, polluting the atmosphere with all its fossil-fueliness. She might feel guilty if she wasn’t so bloody cold.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t done her research. She’d spent the whole of her dinner break on her phone, watching YouTube videos showing the correct way to light an open fire. Miming laying out the kindling, newspaper and logs until she thought she had it down. On the way home, she’d stopped at the corner shop and heaved a big bag of fresh, dry kindling and a couple of logs up the hill to the farm.
But the fireplace, like the gaping maw of some taunting, flesh-ravening beast, laughed silently at her with every attempt to get the flames going. Eventually she was reduced to setting light to pieces of individual kindling, one at a time. They burnt out within minutes, but it was a bit of warmth.
At least it wasn’t raining, thank God, and the huge pillar candles she’d dotted around the living room cast a mellow glow that made the place look almost homely. Nell could have a cold but dry night snuggled into her giant floor cushion under two or three of her warmest jumpers, a couple of duvets and her hot water bottle: making plans for the house, reading by candlelight, thinking about her new job.
It had been a good first day, that strange interview with the acting head bloke aside. The Reception kids were pretty amazing. Well, kids that age were always amazing, which was why she’d wanted to teach them. But these ones… maybe it was the rose-tinted, half-drunk feeling of being in a new job in a new place. Maybe it was the fresh country air. But her new class had endeared themselves to her right away: even cheeky, charming Morgan Hancock and little Olivia Cross, who delighted in telling ‘Knock Knock’ jokes that all had the punchline ‘poo’ before collapsing in fits of giggles.
Nell smiled at a picture she’d Blu-Tacked to the wall. It was a child’s picture of a gigantic orange stick figure, apparently with limbs twice the length of a regular human’s, balancing a couple of other stick figures – one on four legs, one on two – as something on wheels sped by. The little girl she’d pulled from the road, Milly Madeleine, had drawn it for her. It was her first gift from her new pupils.
She frowned as a muffled tapping started at the back door. No one would be calling on her now, would they? Anyway, she didn’t know anybody.
The wind? Nell had blocked the broken door with a heavy box of her stuff that had arrived in the removal van earlier, but it wasn’t exactly secure. She’d better go check.
She fumbled for her torch and headed to the kitchen. Then, on second thoughts, she went back to the fireplace and grabbed the poker to take along too.
Once she’d heaved the box out of the way, the door swung open of its own accord and a woeful little face looked up at her.
‘Oh. You again.’ She put down the poker and bent to tickle Colin between the ears. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to, eh?’
The sheep stared up at her, his eyes full of silent pleading.
‘Colin, come on. I’ve been scrubbing for days to get the stench of sheep poo out of the living room. I’m sorry, but you can’t treat the place like you own it any more.’
Colin let out a long, plaintive bleat, holding eye contact.
‘No, now go on. Stop looking at me like that,’ she said, trying to sound stern. She waved her torch beam towards an adjoining field where a number of straggly clouds were floating about, separated from her garden by a gappy, crumbling drystone wall. ‘Look, there’s all your little mates happy enough, see? It’s not raining now. Hell, it’s not even cold – it’s colder in here.’
Colin’s expression suggested he didn’t believe a word of it.
‘Honestly it is,’ Nell said, fully aware she was standing in her kitchen defending herself to a sheep. ‘This house is solid stone, you know. Brrr. Now off you go. I’ll see you around, eh?’ She tickled his ears one last time, Colin tilting his head in appreciation, before closing the door and dragging the box back into position.
In the living room, she took a match to a couple of candles that had gone out and settled down with her book again.
Nell had never read Wuthering Heights before, but felt it was appropriate reading material for someone living in a half-derelict farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors. However, she’d just reached the bit where the child-ghost of Cathy Earnshaw knocks at the window, demanding entrance to her mortal home. The candles cast long, eerie shadows into every corner of the room, dancing on the walls and the thick panes of her own window, and Nell was starting to question whether Emily Brontë had been such a clever choice for her evening read after all.
She nearly jumped up the chimney when another faint tapping started up, at the front door this time.
‘Ugh. That bloody sheep,’ she muttered, patting her thundering heart.
She unlocked the front door and yanked it open.
‘Colin, mate, I swear to God— oh.’
‘Um, hi.’
On her doorstep was the school mum she’d met briefly earlier, Stevie Madeleine, holding a bottle of white wine out in front of her. Red, the cocker spaniel that had caused so much trouble, was panting at her ankles.
‘Sorry,’ Nell said. ‘I thought you were a sheep.’
Stevie shrugged. ‘Happens to me all the time. Can we come in?’
‘Well, yes, you’re welcome to, but I’m afraid I can’t offer much in the way of home comforts.’
Stevie and Red followed her into the living room. Stevie looked around, blinking in the candlelight.
‘Bloody hell, you weren’t kidding.’
‘Yeah, it’s a work in progress,’ Nell admitted. ‘So what can I— sorry, pull up a box. What can I do for you?’
Stevie plonked herself down on one of the numerous cardboard boxes filled with Nell’s stuff that had been shoved against the walls while Red made herself comfy on the floor cushion. ‘Call it a housewarming present,’ she said, nodding to the wine at her feet. ‘I really can’t thank you enough for what you did today. My Milly’s a dozy little sod on the roads at the best of times. I’ve asked the mums who supervise the breakfast club bus to keep an extra-close eye on her, but sounds like you were the only one on the ball this morning.’
‘Oh, I didn’t do anything much,’ Nell said, flushing.
‘You saved my little girl’s life. My dog’s too. That’s something much in my book.’
‘I really didn’t. I just got her out of the way.’ Nell changed the subject, feeling embarrassed at her increasingly exaggerated heroism. ‘Where is Milly?’
‘She’s staying at her nana’s tonight. That’s my wife Angela’s mum, not mine – my late wife, I should say. I don’t have any family in the village.’
‘Oh, I am sorry. About your wife, I mean.’
‘Thanks.’ Stevie picked up the wine. ‘Anyway, I thought we could have a glass or two together. If you wanted to have a drink with me, that is. And if you drink.’ She laughed. ‘I’m making a lot of assumptions here, aren’t I? I just wanted to say thanks for what you did for Mill, and you being new to the village and all, I guessed you might feel like you needed a friend.’
‘How did you know where I lived?’
‘Carmel in the post office told me. She got it from Anne Scott, Xander’s mum. I guess Anne got it from Xander. Everyone’s kind of amazed the old place found a buyer, to be honest.’ She smiled at Nell’s expression. ‘I know. It’s a cliché, but yep, we’re that village. No secrets.’
‘Do you know Xander then?’
Stevie shrugged. ‘I know most people. And most people know me, and most people know most other people. We’re—’
‘—that village. I know,’ Nell said.
‘Now you’re getting it,’ Stevie said, grinning. ‘I know the Scotts better than most though. Xander and his mum are old friends.’
‘Look, is he – I mean, he seems a nice lad and everything. But is he definitely all there? We had the weirdest conversation today when he called me to his office.’
Stevie laughed. ‘Oh God. What did he say?’
‘He just sort of blathered manic nonsense at me. I walked in on him having a nap at his desk. Then he told me how masterful he’d been in the staffroom earlier and how he definitely, definitely wasn’t insane. He looked knackered, I felt kind of sorry for him.’
‘Well, be gentle with him, it was only his first day. And he’s had a rough couple of years.’
‘Has he? Why?’
‘Not for me to say, really. He might tell you, when you know him better.’ Stevie regarded Nell thoughtfully. ‘You know, I’ve been a friend of the Scott family since I moved here. Xander was a shy, awkward, lanky eighteen-year-old then, earning beer money doing odd jobs in our garden. Now he’s a shy, awkward, lanky thirty-something. He’s always struggled to talk to girls he fancies.’
Nell laughed. ‘Me?’
‘Why not?’
‘Come on, we just met today. Plus he’s my boss.’
She shrugged. ‘He’s still Xander. Got wine glasses?’
‘Just a sec.’
Nell went into the kitchen and dug out a couple of dusty sherry glasses. She gave them a rinse in the sink and headed back to Stevie.
‘Sorry they’re so tiny,’ she said, handing them over. ‘The crockery and stuff came with the house. Looks like Farmer Ted was a fortified wine kind of a guy.’
‘Well, frequent refills can be the order of the night.’ Stevie poured an incy-wincy glassful of wine and handed it to Nell. The candlelight cast a glow through the crystal, making a flickering golden ghost on the stone flags of the floor.
‘Cheers then, Miss Shackleton,’ Stevie said, raising her glass.
‘Not sure I’m really supposed to go drinking with my school parents,’ Nell said, toasting her back. ‘I’ll have to trust you not to grass me up to the governors.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Stevie said, waving a hand. ‘It’s a small village, everyone drinks with everyone. You know, your predecessor was the head’s ex-wife. He met his current wife when she was serving as a school governor. It’s that incestuous round here.’
‘Xander’s married?’
She laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. No, I mean the real head, Jeremy Illingworth.’
‘Ah, right.’
‘Can I just make it clear I’m not coming on to you, by the way?’ Stevie said, smiling awkwardly. ‘I’m old enough to be your – well, not quite your mum, I hope, but certainly a much older sister from your dad’s first marriage.’
Nell blinked. ‘Never would’ve assumed you were.’
‘No. Sorry. Sexual orientation’s usually the first thing newcomers get told about me so I like to drop that in, just in case someone gets the wrong idea when I show up on their doorstep waving bottles of wine.’ She took a long draught of said wine. ‘It was the first thing you heard about me, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, Jolene Hancock did mention it in passing.’
‘Mmm, I bet. She doesn’t mean any harm, but when you’re the only gay in the village it does tend to be the first thing about you that comes to mind for people.’ Stevie half-smiled. ‘I actually think they’re proud, in a funny sort of way. Jo’s the kind of person who hates being tarred with the small-town yokel brush. Born and bred in Leyholme but her heart’s in New York.’
‘She did seem kind of… I dunno, glam, I suppose.’
‘Exactly. And when you’ve got your very own pet lesbian in the school-mum brigade, well, that’s practically cosmopolitan, isn’t it? I’m the human equivalent of a soy frappuccino and smashed avocado on sourdough. Someone to namedrop. I don’t mind.’
‘Don’t you? I’d be pretty pissed off.’
Stevie sighed. ‘Oh, they’re good people. But I guess I am a bit jaded from years of being reduced to “the gay single mum”.’
‘So you’re not from Leyholme originally then?’
‘No, I grew up in Cononley. Angela was, though. We met through work and when it got serious I moved here to be with her. I think that makes it worse, to be honest, when you’ve come in from outside.’ Stevie shivered and nodded to the fireplace. ‘Have you considered lighting that, love? My nipples are about to have one of your eyes out.’
Nell smiled. ‘I gave it my best shot. Turns out my inner cavewoman skived off the class on how to make Man’s red fire.’
‘Here. Pass us the matches, I’ll soon get it roaring.’
Nell watched in awe as Stevie first deconstructed and then rebuilt her little stack of logs and kindling, creating a perfect interwoven prism. In the gaps she stuffed knotted sheets of newspaper. The finished pyramid was a thing of beauty, almost a modern art sculpture.
‘How did you do that?’ Nell asked in a reverent whisper.
‘We had an open fire when I was a kid.’ Stevie lit a match and touched it to the twisted newspapers. ‘It was the only heating in the house – it heated the water tank too, so even in summer we had to light it if we wanted a bath. One of my chores was getting it going first thing every morning, before my little brothers were up.’
‘That sounds a bit Dickensian.’
‘It did have a workhouse vibe in the cold weather. We lived on a farm too, a working one. My mum left us when my youngest brother was tiny and Dad worked long hours with the animals, so I was left to take care of the kids.’ She glanced up. ‘What about you? Are your parents nearby?’
‘There’s just my dad and his wife, over in Leeds. My mum…’ Nell hesitated. ‘…she left us, too.’
‘Yeah?’ Stevie focused her attention on the fire, which Nell appreciated. There was nothing worse than the stares of pity and surprise you tended to get from strangers after dropping something like that into conversation, as she was sure Stevie knew from her own experience. ‘No contact now, then?’
‘Not much. She…’ Nell flinched, but pushed herself to go on. She ought to be able to talk about this with people. It wasn’t wrong; wasn’t shameful. It was just something that happened. ‘She had an affair, when I was a kid, and it left her… in a delicate situation, if you like.’
‘Delicate, as in…’
‘Pregnant, yes. On purpose maybe, I don’t know. She wanted another kid and my dad didn’t, or couldn’t, that was the muddled message I half picked up from overhearing them rowing. So when I was nine she left to start a new family with this other bloke, her lover. Totally forgot about the family she already had.’ Nell gave a bleak laugh. ‘Every year she sends me a bit of cheap costume jewellery for my birthday and I send her a thank-you card. And that’s it; the sum total of our relationship.’
Stevie finally looked up to meet her eyes. ‘Wow. What a bitch. I’m sorry, Nell.’
‘Well, I guess it’s always more complicated than it seems when you’re viewing it through a child’s eyes. Dad married again when I was thirteen.’
‘Do you get on well with his wife?’
Nell stared into the fire, burning shame rising in her cheeks as she thought about Leanne.
‘I wasn’t much of a stepdaughter,’ she confessed. ‘Leanne was just like a mum to my little brother Freddie. He was six when they married so she’s the only one he really remembers. Me… God, I was a pain in the arse.’
‘It must’ve been tough, seeing someone taking your mum’s place. Thirteen’s a difficult age to have to share your home with someone new.’
‘Maybe so, but I was a selfish little cow.’ Nell winced with guilt. ‘The number of times I yelled at her that she wasn’t my real mum when all she was trying to do was reach out to me. The sulks I used to go into because I felt like she was taking my dad away from me.’ She sighed. ‘She must hate me.’
‘Surely not. Not now you’re both adults.’
‘I don’t know. We’re civil enough to each other, but I drove such a wedge between us back then, it feels like we’ll never be able to close the gap.’ She thought back to the brief telephone conversation she’d had with Leanne earlier: little more than a ‘happy birthday’, an awkward silence and then goodbye. ‘It’s always so strained when we’re together, and yet she’s such a great mum to my brother. So happy with Dad…’
‘And you feel like the outsider,’ Stevie said softly.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s my mum I ought to have been angry at. She’s the one who walked out on us. All Leanne ever did was try to be there for me and all I ever did was push her away.’
‘Well, it’s hard, that kind of rejection from a parent. It goes deep – deeper than a kid can properly understand. All they really know is the anger. Trust me, I’ve done this one.’
‘It did feel like that. I didn’t have the words, then, so I just acted out. And Leanne got the full force of it.’
‘You should talk to her.’
Nell sighed. ‘I’m not sure how, now. I’ve been so distant since leaving home.’
‘It’s never too late to start healing, Nell.’
‘No. I guess not.’ She summoned a smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘So how did you end up moving to this godforsaken corner of the globe then, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘There was a job opening. I’d just broken it off with my fiancé and felt like I needed a new start.’
Stevie laughed. ‘In Leyholme? Funny place to come looking for new starts. Why here?’
‘Looking for something. Something I always felt I’d missed out on.’ Nell stared into the fire. ‘A place I could belong, maybe.’
‘Well, chicken, I think you might find it. You certainly seem to have made an entrance.’ Stevie picked up her sherry glass and finished the bit of wine left in it. ‘Hey, how about we leave the place to warm up and head down to the pub? We’ll freeze our lady-goolies off in here.’
‘It’s not that cold, is it?’
‘Says Susie Seven-Jumpers over there. I’m not even wearing a vest.’
‘Red’s fine. Fast asleep, look.’ The cocker spaniel was snoring away on Nell’s cushion, back leg twitching as she dreamed of chasing rabbits.
‘Red’s covered in fur. Plus she’s an idiot, which stops her feeling the cold.’
‘Dunno, Stevie. I’m not sure I really ought to be seen necking wine in the local on my first day, having it get around that the new Reception teacher’s a drunk.’
‘You worry too much,’ Stevie said, laughing. ‘But if it really bothers you, we’ll go to the White Bull in Morton. It’s only half an hour over the moors, a nice little torchlight walk. I’ll buy you a drink and fill you in on all the playground gossip you’ll need to know if you want to survive in this place until the Christmas holidays.’