Chapter 19
NINETEEN
A bit of gentle digging back at the village revealed that the house was once owned by Ed and Viola, as I thought, but they’d actually sold it to Jake along with their portfolio of other holiday cottages.
Because it is a bit out of the way and needed more work, though, he hasn’t been able to get around to doing a refurb yet.
He is also, thank goodness, completely open to the idea of selling it to me and Guy, or coming to some arrangement where we live in it rent-free in return for carrying out the work, and as part payment for Guy’s new job as Starshine Cove Maintenance Manager.
‘It sounds a lot grander than it is,’ Guy said when he got the official job offer. ‘I’m basically a manager of one person – me, the glorified handyman.’
I could tell he was pleased though, and so am I.
I trust him, especially now we’re officially not-engaged and all, but it is nice to have some sense of permanence.
Miranda is delighted too, finally believing that he is here to stay, and my dad couldn’t be happier about our potential move.
‘You’ll be close but not too close!’ he’d said, showing that he understands me all too well.
We’ve got an appointment with a financial advisor, which sounds like a terrifyingly grown-up thing to do, to discuss what we do about the house – but it’s all looking good.
One way or another, we hope to be in there before too long.
At the moment the utilities are all on, but there’s no internet and hardly any phone signal, which we’ll need to figure out before we move in.
In terms of the building itself, Guy says it needs a few things sorting first, like a leak in the roof and some mould that needs treating, but that everything else can be done as we go.
I have warned him that when he says ‘we’, it’s very much down to him.
I am not one of life’s natural DIY-ers. Also, I’m getting fatter by the day and I’m going to be pretty busy once the baby gets here.
‘I’ll just lie on a chaise longue,’ I told him, ‘while you prance around naked apart from your tool belt and feed me the occasional peeled grape.’
‘That,’ he’d replied, looking thoughtful, ‘would be a health and safety risk.’
He’s already started on some jobs, fitting them in now before he officially takes up his Starshine duties, and is clearly loving it.
I wonder if part of it is because he has never really had a home of his own before – he grew up in care, passed from pillar to post as a child, and then joined the Army.
That kept him away from the flat he shared with Miranda and her mum for long periods at a time, and from what he’s said it was always difficult on the domestic front anyway.
Never exactly a peaceful haven when he did come back.
After that, much like myself, he has been travelling the world, never staying in one place for too long and certainly never investing time, money and energy into making his own nest. Now, I think he finally feels that he can stop and breathe, and take his time – he is laying down roots for the first time.
We are laying them down together, and I don’t feel the slightest touch of them around my neck like I used to.
It does help that the house is outside the village, so I won’t feel quite as consumed by the Starshine hive mind.
Tonight, the hive mind is out in force. The gene-mapping project that Dan has been doing as part of his medical course has finally come to fruition, and everyone is gathered in the Starshine Inn to look at the special app that shows us the results.
The village has a notoriously dodgy relationship with the internet, and the inn has the best wifi in town.
It also has alcohol, which is definitely part of the appeal for some of the assembled crowd.
Dan talks us all through setting it up on our phones, which takes some time, and then issues us all with usernames and passwords.
He gives us a little talk first, telling us that his project only used DNA provided locally, unlike the bigger ancestry and genealogy companies that can offer comparison with millions of other samples around the world.
This is small-scale and confined to Starshine, and will only show our genetic backgrounds, and our relationships to other people who took part in the study.
‘Does that mean I’ll never know if I’m actually related to Dolly Parton?’ Connie shouts out.
‘You don’t need a DNA test for that, Mum,’ he’d said, laughing.
‘It’s so obvious that you are! But on a serious note, if any of you want to take this further and look for blood relations farther afield, let me know and I can suggest some reputable firms. We’ll look at genetic makeup results first, which can be really precise, like down to specific areas and sometimes even towns, as well as showing the less dominant markers.
I’ve already seen my results, by the way, and I’m pleased to tell you my background is eleven per cent French—’
‘Ooh la la!’ quips Connie automatically, before frowning in confusion. ‘Seriously though? French? Where on earth has that come from…?’
That turns out to be quite a common refrain once we all access our results.
Trevor is thrilled to see he has a small percentage of Orkney in him, because apparently that’s one of the possible sources of the Stonehenge Altar Stone.
Jake and his brother Josh discover not only are they half Italian – which they already knew because their mum was from Italy – but also partly Romanian back in the mists of time, specifically Transylvanian.
This gives rise to Count Dracula jokes, and both men pour themselves glasses of tomato juice to play along.
Cally is slightly disappointed with her result, finding out that she is over ninety per cent Liverpudlian. ‘I mean, I always knew I was Scouse through and through,’ she says, ‘but a girl lives in hope of a little glamour, you know? A sliver of something sexy like Spanish or Greek maybe…’
Ella clocks up some solid English genetics, but with a dash of Polish that surprises her, and Archie is intrigued by a relatively high trace of Channel Islander that nobody in his family has ever mentioned.
My own results are just as much fun, a blend of my dad’s and my mum’s.
My mum’s maiden name was O’Grady, and although she was born and raised in London, it comes as no surprise at all to see almost twenty per cent of my genetic make-up come in as Irish.
There’s some Welsh there too, which given the fact that my dad is a Llewellyn comes as no big shock, and an interesting seasoning of German and Dutch.
Mainly, though, I come back as South West England, specifically Dorset.
If someone had told me that when I was a pissed-off teenager, I’d have been horrified, and convinced the test was wrong – because there was simply no way I could be that closely linked to the place I was so desperate to escape.
Now, I accept that it is part of who I am, and part of who I will be.
I wonder how the genetics will work with my own child – will it be like me and make a run for it, or be like my more contented siblings? Only time will tell, I suppose.
Guy has also done one of the tests, and his results are especially interesting to him, because he doesn’t know much about his own blood family.
He grew up in Hampshire, but beyond that doesn’t have a lot to go on.
He knows his mum’s name and her basic information from his birth certificate, but that’s about it.
I suspect if he sends a DNA sample to one of the bigger companies that Dan mentioned earlier, he might find connections he never knew he had – but that is a thought for another day, and something that is completely up to him.
For now, his results show that he is indeed from Hampshire, but he also has a whopping thirty-two per cent of Scandinavian blood – specifically Danish and Norwegian.
He shakes his head in confusion when he sees it, and I wonder how it must feel to have nobody to ask.
No family members to quiz or share the news with.
I know my dad and I will have hours of fun going through our results together, trying to figure out where the German and Dutch came from.
The idea makes me sad for him, so I give him a big hug. ‘I love you, my sexy Viking warrior,’ I whisper, making him smile. ‘Maybe you can take me for a ride on your longboat later?’
He kisses me, and laughs. ‘This is going to give you a whole new way to flirt, isn’t it?’
‘You bet your gorgeous Viking horn it does, Eric Bloodaxe! Where’s Miranda? Wonder how much Viking she got from the deal? Evan is very blonde, and he definitely likes hitting things…’
Miranda is actually behind the bar on serving duty, which is a fine and noble calling in life.
A job a Viking would be proud of. She’s certainly being kept busy in Starshine’s own feasting hall, because being genetically educated seems to have given everybody a rampant thirst. She gives us a harassed little wave and goes back to pulling a pint of Guinness.
Dan tells us all that we can go back to our results any time, and that we can now also access the section that shows who we are related to within the sample.
He uses himself as an example and shows us that he is matched to Connie as a parent, to James and Sophie as siblings, and to George as his grandparent.
I’m also tagged, as are Lilly and Meg – all of us connected by the tiny little helix-shaped strands of life force that run in our blood.