Nineteen #2
‘If we can prove this is going on, it should be enough to force an investigation by the Charity Commission, and that should exonerate Omar,’ said Helen.
‘I’ll email you the documents Hazim sent me,’ she added, already scribbling notes.
‘Fred told me that Omar tried to make a run for it, but you persuaded him to give us until Christmas to try and unravel what’s going on at FF. ’
Just over two weeks away , thought Ivy. ‘Doesn’t give us much time,’ she added out loud.
‘Especially as Robby keeps pressing me for an update.’ Helen sighed.
‘Can you put him off?’ asked Ivy.
‘I’ll try but we might need to find Omar a hiding place.’
Ivy’s eyes widened in alarm, ‘No!’
The stockroom door burst open and a woman in a sequined sash and a blinking tiara staggered in, clutching a half-empty Prosecco bottle. ‘Where’s the blasted loo?’ she slurred, eyes unfocused.
‘Not in here,’ Ivy said, standing up. ‘Out the door, second on the left.’
The woman swayed, then let out a raucous cackle.
‘Whoops, wrong room!’ She swung around, nearly taking out a shelf of coffee beans before stumbling back out into the din of the hen party.
The door swung shut behind her, the muffled shrieks and laughter still ringing in their ears. Helen sighed. ‘Right. Where were we?’
‘Suppliers being paid twice,’ Ivy said. ‘Could be an accident? Someone in a hurry? Send me the documents and I’ll see if I can work it out.’
A loud cheer erupted from the café, followed by a burst of off-key singing. Ivy sighed. ‘That’ll be the bride leading another toast. I’d better get back out there before someone starts dancing on the tables.’
Helen smirked. ‘We wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘Don’t even joke,’ Ivy muttered, already heading for the door. ‘Just keep going. I’ll check in when I can.’
As she stepped back into the café, the party was in full swing: glittery dresses, festive decorations and the unmistakable hum of excitement. She was exhausted, but in a good way.
A bonfire hissed and spat, throwing gold and orange light over Ivy’s garden and carrying the scent of damp leaves and charred wood.
Omar had pruned the roses and was now disposing of the debris, crouched by the fire, prodding it with a stick.
Ivy folded herself onto a bench nearby, leaning forward and warming her hands over the flames.
She looked at the man she was trying so hard to help.
‘Just over two weeks to Christmas,’ she said. ‘Feels strange this year.’
He nodded, the firelight reflecting in his eyes. ‘How do you celebrate?’
She gave a short laugh. Last year’s Christmas lunch had been just her, Fred and Trish.
The first time she hadn’t presided over a crowded table of parishioners who didn’t have family or friends to spend the special day with.
This year would be her second, and she had mixed feelings about the celebration.
She preferred a full table. ‘I used to do the full thing. Turkey, crackers, all that.’
He smirked. ‘Crackers are a scam. Paper hat, poor jokes, plastic rubbish inside ... Congratulations, you fooled yourself.’
She laughed, swiping at his shoulder. ‘I feel too worn out to contemplate the upheaval of a Christmas lunch.’ He rocked on his haunches, grinning.
He took a breath, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. ‘I could cook something.’
She glanced at him. ‘You ... cook Christmas dinner?’ The idea of handing over her kitchen to someone else at Christmas unsettled her for a moment, but the memories of his delicious cooking, the fragrances, the taste of the contrasting spices, the way the meat melted at the nudge of a fork won her over.
‘Alright,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Back home, we cooked for feasts. I’ll make something good. Not turkey. Too dry. Maybe lamb. Proper spice, slow-cooked.’ His eyes flicked to hers. ‘Would you let me?’
She tilted her head, considering. Two months ago, he had just been a stranger needing shelter. Now, they sat here, in the warmth of a fire, speaking like family.
‘I’d like that,’ she said.
He nodded, pleased, then threw another pile of clippings on the fire. The flames flared up, sparks shot into the night. A gust of wind sent embers swirling and the smell of burning thickened in the air. He prodded the fire with a long stick, careful, methodical. It was how he did everything.
She studied his face, the way the firelight softened the lines of it. ‘You’ll be here, won’t you? On Christmas Day?’
He met her gaze. ‘Where else would I go?’
She smiled, looking back at the fire. The flames hissed, settling. The cold pressed in at their backs, but here, by the fire, they were warm.
Ivy made herself some scrambled eggs and prepared for an early night.
She had locked up and was heading upstairs when she remembered it was recycling day in the morning.
She dragged the boxes out from under the stairs and carted them to the front door.
Outside, the December evening seemed to wrap around the village like a thick blanket, muffling sounds and softening edges.
She listened to the distant surge of the sea, its rhythm as familiar to Ivy as her own heartbeat.
She hefted the recycling box onto the low wall, glass bottles clinking softly.
Ivy turned to retrace her steps and paused, arrested by movement next door – Helen’s familiar figure, silhouetted briefly in the glow of Fred’s porch light before disappearing inside his cottage.
Again. The door rattled shut, but to Ivy, it was the sound of ice splitting beneath her feet: thin, cracking, inevitable.
The peaceful years of belonging as Brambleton’s vicar stretched behind her like a well-worn path she had navigated alone, and in front of her the uncharted territory of retirement.
She’d been walking that solo too, until recently.
Until Fred’s smile started feeling like sunshine breaking through a cloudy day.
She stood motionless, one hand still on a recycling box.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, the word forming a small cloud in the frosty air.
Her hands trembled as she adjusted her scarf, her skin suddenly too warm despite the cold.
How long had she felt this way about Fred?
The realization was dizzying, like stepping onto ground that wasn’t quite solid.
Over thirty years of comfortable, carefully maintained independence, and now this – this adolescent flutter in her stomach, this ache in her heart.
She muttered her favourite lines of poetry:
Since that I may not have
Love on this side the grave,
Let me image Love . . .
She tasted metal and realized she was biting her lip. What did one even do with these feelings at her age? The last time she’d felt this way, Margaret Thatcher had still been in Number 10.
It had been a day in late September, and unseasonably warm.
Ivy recalled the heat shimmering over the church grounds and the delicate sweet scent of honeysuckle wafting peacefully over her.
She had been waiting on the wooden bench, her cotton dress clinging slightly to the small of her back.
She smoothed the fabric with restless fingers.
James had sounded strange on the phone, his usually confident voice hesitant.
But after three years together, she thought she knew what was coming.
The soft scuff of footsteps on the sun-baked path made her look up.
There he was, tall and earnest in his light summer shirt, the one she’d helped him pick out for his seminary interviews.
His dark hair gleamed in the sunlight, and her heart squeezed with familiar affection.
A bell tolled – three o’clock. Right on time, as always.
That was James, dependable as sunset. The man who would make a wonderful vicar, a wonderful husband.
And she would be the perfect vicar’s wife, just as she’d been meticulously preparing to be. Her heart skidded.
‘I brought iced coffee,’ she said, holding out his favourite iced mocha, a mix of cold coffee and chocolate syrup. Back then, before baristas started experimenting with fancy flavours, it had been a sophisticated option.
Their fingers brushed as he took it. She noticed his hands were damp with perspiration and hid a smile. He was nervous. It was touching and she loved him for it, but he did not need to be.
His first words should have been a warning sign. They were too formal. ‘Ivy, thanks for seeing me.’ He sat beside her, but not as close as usual. ‘I’ve been praying. A lot.’
She smiled, pressing her cup against her neck for relief from the heat.
‘God has been speaking to me.’ He stared into his untouched coffee. ‘Last week, I was in the cathedral praying for guidance.’
Ivy pictured the stunning medieval stonework and beautiful stained glass of Bristol Cathedral.
She would miss it once James completed his theology studies at Clifton College.
But they would go where they could help.
God would guide them to their destination.
‘I was sitting there, wrestling with everything. Colin was with me,’ he added.
Ivy’s thoughts briefly turned to the wonderful, supportive Colin, James’s tutor, who she had come to see as a friend and mentor to them both, helping her carefully nudge James toward his calling, practise sermons and subtly plan their future parish together.
‘And then the sun came through the stained glass,’ James continued, ‘and the light ...’ His voice caught and he gulped. ‘The light fell right across the altar. Red and gold, like fire. And I knew.’
Ivy’s smile froze. It was as if the milk in her iced coffee had turned sour on her tongue. His tone didn’t match the joy of an impending proposal.
‘I’ve been fighting it for months,’ he continued.
‘But I can’t anymore. Colin helped me to see it clearly.
The Catholic Church is where I belong. The true apostolic succession, the real presence in the Eucharist .
..’ He looked at her finally, his eyes bright with tears and fervour.
‘I’m converting, Ivy. I’m going to train for the Catholic priesthood. ’
Ivy felt the blood drain from her face. Colin.
A trusted friend. The man who had sat across from her at countless dinners, who had encouraged her ideas for parish outreach programmes, who had watched her pour herself into becoming the perfect vicar’s wife.
It was a triple betrayal: by James, by Colin, and by the Church.
The smooth coffee cup slipped from her numb fingers, and she scrabbled to catch it. A butterfly danced past, wings catching the sunlight, oblivious to the way her world was shattering. The honeysuckle scent that had seemed so sweet now felt cloying, overwhelming.
‘But if you do that,’ she whispered. ‘We can’t ...’
‘I know.’ His voice broke. ‘God is asking me to give up everything. Even you. Especially you.’
The bell tolled again, marking an ending she had not seen coming.
Her untouched coffee grew warm between her hands as the sun blazed around them, bright and merciless as divine fire.
What James couldn’t know was that Colin had spoken to her just days before, gently suggesting that perhaps she was pushing James too hard, that her ambitions for their future might not align with true service.
‘A vicar’s wife must be malleable, Ivy,’ he had said with that paternal smile of his.
‘I wonder if you might find the role constraining .’ Now she understood the true meaning behind those words.
He hadn’t been advising her. He had been undermining her.
The institution she had trusted had taken that trust and used it against her.
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she asked herself why the Church had done that, and then it dawned on Ivy that this was God calling her too, telling her that her destiny was not to be the wife of a vicar, but to be one herself.
It took years of prayer to shake off her disappointment at losing her future with James.
She had never sought solace in anyone else.
And maybe it was being ostracized by the Church, which had led her to consider Fred in a new light.
She switched her gaze to her own cottage, where Jez sat on the windowsill.
He must have jumped up there when she left with the recycling.
The puppy’s head tilted as if curious. ‘Some things are just not meant to be, Jezreel,’ Ivy muttered.
‘I’ll just have to grow old with you for company instead. ’
She plodded back toward the cottage. As she reached the door, her hand trembled against the handle.
The old familiar ache blooming sharp in her chest, for the children she’d never had with James, claimed by the Catholic Church, now heightened with the sorrow of a life stolen by this intelligent, warm young woman turning Fred’s head.