I have to confess, there were fleeting, desolate, dark moments in the days that followed when I wished that I hadn’t screamed that night. That Daniel had been a few seconds too slow, or Lucy that bit stronger. Waking up each day and having to face myself, I couldn’t help wondering if it would have been easier not to have to bother.
I had lost everything except the one thing I had tried to get rid of – myself.
Thank goodness for practical, straight-talking, no-nonsense parents. That, and my wonderful, on-the-brink-of-bonkers grandma.
Together, over the next few weeks, they got me up and gave me something else to think about. Wholesome, nurturing food that was impossible to resist no matter how scrunched up and tender my stomach. Simple, satisfying tasks that were impossible not to take a teensy bit of pleasure from accomplishing – scouring the grill, ironing sweet-scented sheets or snipping sprigs of flowers from the garden and arranging them in pretty vases.
Even better, they only ever asked me once, that first evening, what on earth had happened and they never asked me how long I would be staying, or whether I would be going back to Ferrington.
It was the beginning of June, nearly a month since I’d arrived back home when I found out they were even more remarkable than I’d given them credit for. My knee was still stiff, the scar red and gnarly, although the other abrasions had faded, and when I looked in the mirror, I was starting to appear slightly less like a bedraggled zombie. I’d had a call from Brenda, filling me in on what was happening with the case against Lucy (not a great deal yet, these things took time). I’d spoken to Becky the day before about the business, and was painfully aware that she was running retreats without me, and the next few months were jam-packed with guests.
Even worse, she’d told me that my old editor had been trying to get in touch with me about something important. When I called Miles, he’d warned me that the story of Lucy’s arrest was about to break in the tabloids. It was inevitable that my name would be printed along with it. My dad found me, sitting at the kitchen table where I’d been peeling potatoes for hash browns, head in my hands.
‘Eleanor, is there something wrong?’ He stopped by the table, and even went so far as to put one hand on my shoulder.
‘Yes. Yes, there is.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Dad, there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Oh?’ He took a seat opposite me.
‘It’s about my previous job. Writing the reviews. I wasn’t… it wasn’t quite… I mean… have you heard of Nora Sharp?’
Dad looked at me steadily. He let out a little huff and tapped his fingers on the table a few times. ‘We know.’
‘What?’ I sat back, genuinely stunned.
‘We’ve always known.’
‘But… how? And why didn’t you say anything?’
‘We knew you’d tell us when you were ready.’
‘Yes, but how?’
‘Eleanor, we’ve read everything you’ve written since you could pick up a pencil. We know you. We know your voice. And didn’t you think we’d put two and two together when suddenly a mystery restaurant reviewer appears in town, coincidentally the exact same time you suddenly develop a social life and start eating out all the time?’ He raised his eyebrows, but his face was kind.
‘But then I moved to London.’
‘And could afford to rent a flat in the capital on the income you made from that little blog? Don’t get me wrong, the blog was wonderful. But not big city apartment wonderful.’
‘Didn’t you think it was horrendous?’
His brow creased, adding even more wrinkles. ‘We thought the reviews were balanced and fair. Anyone working in hospitality would agree. We also of course found the memes and the click-bait headlines awful. But we knew they weren’t you. That image wasn’t you, and we believed you would find your way back in due course. You were miserable, and in a perverse way, the more miserable you got, the more we felt sure you would give it up.’
He reached across the table and took my hand. His calloused palm was as familiar to me as the sunlight on the lake, but I could not remember the last time he had wrapped his fingers around mine.
‘We know you, Eleanor. We love you.’
I held on tightly to my father’s hand, even as we cried together. Even when my mum came in to find out why no one had set the tables, we didn’t let go, and so she made us a cup of tea with not one but two biscuits each. Even as Grandma then joined us, chuckling at the early reviews I’d written in Windermere, and how I’d called out their arch-rivals, the snooty, overpriced establishment a mile down the road, for ‘ironically’ serving Heinz tomato soup still in the tin, as that justified charging eight pounds for it.
I had a weird family. We didn’t do big heart-to-hearts or emotional outbursts. We rarely said, ‘I love you,’ and barely ever showed it. But here, sat at the table where I’d chopped ten zillion onions and cracked a squillion eggs, I remembered again the reason why people kept coming back to this strange little B & B year after year. Why they put up with the rigid rules and archaic systems. It was because absolutely everyone was welcome here. Welcomed, and accepted, and treated with dignity and uncommon kindness. No matter who they were, or what they might have done.
Right down to the newest member of staff.
For a fleeting moment, I made a mental note to never lose sight of that when running Damson Farm Retreats. Until I remembered that I didn’t do that any more. I would mention it next time I spoke to Becky. She might find it useful.
‘Right. We’re twelve minutes late starting the linen. Eleanor, if you don’t mind?’ Mum said, whipping away my mug and plate.
I didn’t mind, at all.
Well. Only a tiny bit.
I booked the rest of the week off. My parents, of course, insisted I pay for my room if I wasn’t there to work, but then later on both Mum and Dad refunded me the money separately, on top of the basic wages they’d been paying me.
I was there to work, but that week it wouldn’t be for the Tufted Duck. For four days I wrote, deleted, rewrote, cut and pasted and deleted most of it again. I had moments where I nearly cracked under the pressure, and others where the words flowed like the Maddon river. Eventually, what emerged was the article of my life. It wouldn’t make or break me – no words would have the power to do that to me again. But it did at least express the most honest apology that I could offer, and I hoped a stark warning and a useful insight to others who may have been temporarily dazzled by the bright lights of fame and fortune, as well as my lessons learnt on the crushing impact of living a lie, rather than facing up to being true to yourself, however tough that might be.
I sent it to Miles, with a clear stipulation that my fee would go to the Ferrington Bridge Fund. I would not be filming any YouTube videos or commenting on social media. He replied within an hour to inform me that it would be the main feature in the Saturday supplement.
He also asked if I would write a follow-up on the Ferrington Feud. I said that I would think about it, which I did, for most of that night and several more that followed. Wondering if I would ever be brave enough to turn up in Ferrington with a notepad, my phone set to record.
Then, one week exactly after the article was published, the Tufted Duck had a new booking.
‘A walk-in?’ I asked Mum, incredulous. The Tufted Duck had no room for walk-ins at the best of times, let alone mid-June.
‘Can you handle it? I need to… do something else.’
‘You want me to stop cleaning this room, and handle a walk-in? But Dad’s on check-in today.’ I was talking to an empty doorway, she’d disappeared as quickly as she arrived.
Putting down my cloth with a sigh, gathering the bucket of spray bottles and dumping my gloves in a bin bag, I made my way down to the reception area.
When I glanced up to see who was waiting in the foyer, I nearly tripped down the remaining few stairs.
Giving myself a mental slap for still being so pathetically obsessed with Daniel that I saw him everywhere I went, I quickly yanked myself together, swallowed back the lump in my throat and carried on.
Then he turned around.
The man smiled, hazel eyes crinkling, one hand automatically reaching up to rub at his scar.
Daniel.
Here.
In the Tufted Duck reception, holding an overnight bag and smiling.
‘I’m sorry.’ He shook his head. He didn’t look sorry. His grin was growing by the second. ‘I shouldn’t be smiling. That’s not what I had planned.’
‘What did you have planned?’ I stammered, coming to a stuttering stop a few metres away.
He shrugged, trying and failing to tug down the corners of his mouth. ‘An appropriate level of contrition to show you how completely sorry I am, and that I am fully aware of what a total arse I was.’ He took a hesitant step towards me. ‘Miserably lost and utterly heartbroken. Because that’s how I’ve been since you left.’
I don’t know how I did it, but despite my thumping heart and wild thoughts running around inside my head, I managed to reply in a manner that was just about on the right side of composed.
‘So why are you smiling?’ I don’t know why that was the question that popped out. Seeing the state the rest of me was in, my mouth appeared to have gone rogue.
He looked at me for a long moment. When he blinked, it was like someone flicked the lights off and then on again.
‘I’m happy to see you.’
‘Okay.’ I didn’t ask why he was happy to see me, let alone why he was here. I wanted this moment to drag out forever. Before the hard questions came, and the heart-breaking answers and then Daniel went away again. ‘Do you want to check in?’
‘Yes, please. If you’ve room.’
I moved over to the check-in desk and flicked through the reservations book, Mum and Dad still not having upgraded this aspect of the system to a computer. My movements were robotically calm, but beneath the surface I was a gibbering wreck. ‘Yes, the Mallard room is free again.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Will you be needing a cot?’
‘No.’ Daniel was still grinning like a loon, but I felt a stab of disappointment that I wouldn’t get to see Hope. It was probably for the best, though. She was too young to understand any of this. I was thirty, and I could barely get my head around it.
‘Same address and phone number as last time?’
‘Yes.’
I added all the details and then paused, hand trembling, lips horribly dry. ‘Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?’
‘You.’
‘Excuse me?’ I nearly choked on my own breath.
‘Um. I mean, would you like to go for a walk, or find somewhere to get a drink or something?’
It was my turn to blink, about 300 times in quick succession.
‘Because, obviously, I’m here to see you.’
Up until this moment, if Daniel had asked to meet up, or phoned wanting to talk to me, my plan had been to say no. It had been a long, hard slog, trying to deal with the trauma of what had happened with Lucy, on top of my whole life tumbling upside down for the second time in six months. Let alone losing the man I loved, and the child I’d begun to care for like my own daughter.
I didn’t want to go over it again, to have to try to explain myself, or beg for forgiveness. I couldn’t bear to ever see that look of revulsion on his face again.
I had reached a point where I was starting to be able to live with being me, but it was so tenuous and fragile that I daren’t risk slipping back again.
But now he was here. Now he was smiling and his arms were stuck in his pockets, not folded angrily forming a barrier between us. Now he was looking at me like he had in the moment he told me he loved me…
‘I have three more rooms to clean. But I could go for a walk after that?’
If anything, Daniel’s smile grew even wider. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘No, you won’t!’ Grandma called from where she was clearly hiding round the corner. ‘Me and your dad’ll sort the rooms. You go off and kiss and make up or whatever it is you need to do. We won’t expect you back until nightfall.’
‘Well,’ Mum retorted, from where she must have been lurking right beside Grandma. ‘There is a mountain of breakfast prep still to do, and the back stairs need a proper vacuum…’
‘Hi, Wendy, hi, Grandma, nice to… hear you,’ Daniel called.
‘She’s joking!’ Grandma called back. ‘You go on, now, off you go!’
‘I am not joking!’
They were still arguing when we slipped out of the door.
We walked the whole hundred yards or so to the far end of the garden, where I led Daniel to a bench hidden behind a wall of clambering roses.
‘I think we should talk before we do anything else,’ I said, eyes firmly fixed on the roses.
‘Right.’ Daniel took in a deep breath. He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘I have a speech planned, if that’s okay?’
I nodded, unable to do anything else.
‘I can’t really remember it any more, but I’ll try to give you the gist… I’m so, massively, overwhelmingly sorry for how I handled everything. I have regretted it every second since you left. I can’t believe I let you go. You’d been beaten up and scared half to death, and instead of being there for you, I… froze. I can’t ever undo not racing to the hospital, I can’t ever be there for you when you needed me then, but I can promise to always be there if you ever need me again.’
‘Daniel… I think you had every right…’
‘No.’ He shook his head, vehemently. ‘No. What you said was true, I knew you. I know you. I was hurt and shocked that you’d hidden all that from me. I’ll admit that I was angry, and I felt betrayed. But once you’d gone, and I stopped being such an idiot and actually took a few minutes to think about it, I realised that I was angry you’d not told me. That you were going through this huge deal, and hadn’t felt able to trust me with it. You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d judge you, I’d think less of you and reject you for it. And I proved your fears right, didn’t I? I was a terrible boyfriend. I totally let you down in the worst possible way. I’m so sorry.’
‘I put you and Hope in danger. You should have been angry.’
‘No. Lucy was the danger. I put you in danger because you didn’t feel like you could tell me.’
‘But I was Nora Sharp. I wrote nasty things about people for money.’
‘I also read the beautiful, uplifting things that Eleanor Sharpley wrote, remember? And I also read a whole load of Nora’s reviews. The ones that people didn’t bother to mention, because they’re decent and written with integrity. I also read the article you wrote last Saturday.’
‘Is that what made you come?’
‘It’s what made me brave enough to come. If you could do that, admit you’d done some awful things that you regretted, refuse to make excuses for it, and only say that from now on you were determined to do things better, it made me hope that maybe you’d allow me to do the same.’
‘I still don’t understand why you think you did anything wrong… Daniel, I need to know that you’re not trying to shove what I did to one side or sweep it under the carpet. I’m not a perfect person. I’m a long, long way from that. Not least, I have borderline approval addiction. The compulsion to make people like me has caused me to be dishonest with myself, and other people, and while I’m working on it, I can’t promise it won’t ever happen again. I’m really bad at getting up in the morning and I have a hideous, lumpy scar on the back of my leg.’
Daniel nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Okay. You may have noticed that I’m not the most emotionally intelligent of men. I am woefully bad at recognising and dealing with my own feelings, which means I can hurt the people I care about most. I also still push about a wheelbarrow of guilt and shame, and the need to somehow make things up to people who aren’t even alive any more. I have a frustrating tendency to try to do everything alone, in some warped need to prove myself to no one who even cares. I bury myself in work to avoid facing up to my problems, and I think that you are the most incredible, wonderful woman I have ever met.’ He paused. ‘I love you, flaws and failings and all.’
‘I love you, too.’
Daniel’s eyes sparkled. ‘So, perhaps for now we just need to agree that we forgive each other, and accept each other, as we are?’
‘That sounds like a good plan,’ I replied, my voice so soft I could barely hear it over the buzzing of the motorboats in the distance.
He coughed, scratched the back of his head, and looked up at me from under his brow. ‘I don’t want to suggest starting again, because we aren’t going to gloss over what happened, as if it didn’t matter. But I, for one, would very much like to restart what we had. I’ve had weeks to think about it, though. I understand if you need some time.’
‘I don’t need any time,’ I blurted, in one rush of breath. ‘I forgive you for behaving like a perfectly normal, rational person, and if you can honestly forgive me for all the crap I put you through, and for being a famous bitch, then yes please, I would really like to try again.’
The grin was back. He hadn’t stopped looking at me, and it sent a flutter of joy through my body that only intensified when he slowly reached out and took hold of my hand. Once he’d wrapped his hand around mine, he gently tugged me across the bench, closer and closer until our lips met. It was a challenging kiss, given the smiling and the laughing and the crying, but still managed to be the loveliest kiss ever.
It wasn’t, of course, a simple case of forgive and forget. We talked well into the night, while walking and drinking ice-cold cider and eating fish and chips on the shoreline. We curled up on the sofa in the living room and laid out the whole truth.
We talked about how Hope had grown in the past few weeks. It was her birthday in a few days, and it looked as though she might even be walking by then. Becky had been working flat out running the retreat, absolutely convinced that her business partner simply needed a bit of time.
‘How’s Alice getting on as Operations Manager?’ I asked.
‘Good. The Boatman threw her one hell of a leaving do. They got the Bridge Band to play, and the two pubs ended up having a skinny-dipping relay race across the river and back.’
‘Who won?’
‘Nobody knows. An argument broke out about whether Caris Smith was cheating for using a rubber ring, and next thing we knew the swimmers were being attacked by a flock of geese.’
‘Becky said Alice is still with Jase.’
He nodded. ‘But Luke said she had a look at Becky’s spare room the other day, eyeing it up for size.’
‘Maybe I’ll give her a ring, tell her how putting off making the right choice only leads to regrets later on.’
‘Maybe you should tell her in person.’
‘Maybe I should.’
He described how the orchard was now bursting into life, with tomatoes, courgettes and spinach nearly ready for harvesting, and plans taking shape for its first wedding – childhood sweethearts from separate sides who broke off their engagement thirty-four years ago, but never had eyes for anyone else since.
‘Well, if they can forgive and forget and go as far as getting married, I’m not sure we have any excuse.’ I sat back on the sofa, horrified at my own words. ‘Not that I’m… I didn’t mean to imply…’
‘Was that a proposal?’ Daniel pretended to be horrified, but his eyes were dancing.
‘No! Oh my goodness, no!’ Every inch of my skin had flushed with mortification.
‘Good.’
‘Yes! Yes, very good. Not to be suggesting that we…’
‘I’d quite like to do that myself, if you don’t mind. And without Grandma earwigging from the corridor.’
‘I’m not earwigging, I was on my way to get a mug of cocoa!’ a croaky voice retorted from the other side of the door.
‘Shall we take this conversation somewhere more private?’ Daniel lent closer to murmur in my ear, the heat of his proximity doing nothing to ease my blushes.
‘Okay,’ I whispered back.
‘And then, tomorrow, Eleanor Sharpley, will you come home with me?’
A surge of warmth exploded inside me. I think it was joy. Joy, and hope, and the freedom of being known, and loved all the same, while understanding that there is always more to know – some good, some bad – but the one thing that will remain is love.
‘I will.’
I was going home.