Chapter Seven
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
Going Out of Office for a few days. Stuff to sort out, guys, bear with me.
ElliottTravels @Tripsky02
@EditorDanB How’re you doing? Thought you were coming over all white picket fence on us?
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
@Tripsky02 Things went bizarre, mate.
Sam Turner @ComfortZone6
@EditorDanB @Tripsky02 Off anywhere nice?
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
@ComfortZone6 Just getting things sorted in my head. Finding things out, you know?
From: [email protected]
Subject: Heading out for a bit
Sorry, Bethie, but I’ve got to take off for a while. I’ll be down to see you in a few weeks, so keep up the exercises like they told you, but I have to go north. Winter is . . . she’s on a deadline and she’s gone quiet on us.
I don’t like it. So I’m going to check it out, make sure she’s coming in on time with this book. Yeah, I want this one out, on the shelves but . . . I need to see her. Think you’re the only one who gets it, Bethie. Sounds stupid when I run it through my head, she hates me, wants me nowhere near her, so why the hell do I feel like this?
I do know. Course I do. You nailed it in your last email (although there were some cracking good voice-recog cock-ups, ‘that time wee ran around the garden?’ Cried laughing at that one). Last time I saw Winter, I walked away.
It hurt. Hurt so much. It was her choice to make, but maybe I could have handled it another way, been more understanding. Helped her see that what she has with Daisy is unhealthy, keeping people at arm’s length while she tells all her secrets to her sister when she could have . . . should have been telling them to me. But making her choose — yeah. Not my finest moment, but I couldn’t take being second best, not after the way we’d been together. Winter made me feel something, made me feel like I fitted in somewhere. You know our family, everyone all niched up, the accountant, the paramedic, the scientist — only you and me breaking the mould, and now—
So, what could I do? She wouldn’t let me save her, so I had to save myself. But I don’t feel saved, Bethie. If I were safe, it wouldn’t hurt like this.
Take care of yourself, kiddo. Promise I’ll come and see you soon.
Danny Boy
Winter Gregory Author Page
This is a picture of the little church I was in yesterday. Stones carved in Primitive and some very interesting stories to go with them!
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Comments:
Briar Jenkins: Beautiful pic! Can’t wait for the book!
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I spent the rest of the week driving around on the moors. Mists would come down overnight and then burn away by lunchtime, so I managed to get some atmospheric pictures of headstones rearing their way up through the fog and then sit in warm sunshine to type and do the background research. Some of the little churches had records going back to the mid-1500s when parish registers first had to be kept, and I found one particularly isolated chapel which had had a vociferously anti-everything vicar in 1623, who had written snarky little notes all over his registers, which kept me happily busy for ages. I didn’t see Alex, Scarlet or Margaret at all that week. I wondered if Alex was regretting his drunken heart-opening email and staying away from embarrassment, or whether, and more likely, he was just busy.
A little of the pain had slipped away now. Dan had gone dark on Twitter and it was easier to pretend he didn’t exist when his name didn’t pop up in my feed every time I checked. Alex tweeted every now and then, but mostly about craft supplies or building work and he clearly checked my Facebook page because he religiously ‘liked’ every update I put. The distance was giving me perspective, and I was realising how right Daisy had been about Alex. He may be gorgeous and kind, he might have the disposition of a saint, but his first responsibility would always be to Scarlet. Did I want that? She was lovely and everything, but she was eight, and lonely, and if she attached herself to me then how would it work if Alex and I broke up?
So I threw myself into work partly, I had to admit, to keep myself out of the town and away from Scarlet or Alex.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Headache, guilt and York check
Hello, Winter. Wow, that sounds a bit like the beginning of a really terrible poem, doesn’t it? Anyway. I really hope I didn’t say anything to upset you in that last, drunken (oh my God, how drunken, I had a headache for two days!) email. I know you’re busy and you came here to write and everything, so it’s perfectly normal that you’d be out every time I came by. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not stalking you or anything — just realised how weird it sounded, as if I was walking past the cottage every five minutes. Really just checking up for Mum, she wanted to make sure you knew that next week was recycling bins (yes, even though there are notices all over the cottage about refuse collection timetables). And, well, maybe just a little bit of wanting to see you, make sure you were all right, eating properly that kind of thing. Maybe not the eating, I put that in so that I didn’t sound stalky again, sorry.
Now I’m worrying that you don’t want to talk to me, that’s really what it is. After I told you about Ellen. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking, in case you’re reading all deep stuff into that email. I mean, I know it was an accident, I know it was. But there’s all these ‘what ifs’, if you know what I mean, what if I’d had the delivery where I always do, what if I’d warned her to keep clear, what if? Stupid, yes, I know. Anyway. Look. I completely understand if you’re not on for Saturday any more, I can talk to Scarl and she’ll be fine, she knows you’re busy and she really wants me to buy a copy of your book so that she can get you to sign it for her! I’ve told her it’s more like a history book than one of hers but she’s still insisting. She can, I’m sure you’ve noticed, be very persistent.
Let me know though. Please. I don’t want any last-minute disappointments for her.
Thanks
Alex
From: [email protected]
Subject: Saturday
Of course Saturday is still on! You must think I’m really evil if you think I’d cancel! Oh, and is Light Bulb coming too, only my car won’t take a horse trailer.
Winter
From: [email protected]
Subject: Relief and thank you
Thank you. Thank you, you don’t know how relieved I am. The thought of explaining to Scarl . . . urgh. No, sorry, never meant to doubt you! But I know how it can be when work gets busy, sometimes it’s like having to balance things in your head, isn’t it? With me it’s Scarl, getting her up and to school and making sure there’s something to eat and that she gets picked up and there’s my life and friendships and then the workmen and getting the buildings together — we need the roof on before winter sets in — and sometimes I feel as though I’m sitting in the middle of this huge war, just keeping the peace. Her on one side and my whole life on the other. God, that sounds like she isn’t my whole life, which she is, but not . . . I’ll shut up now. We’ll come to the cottage at, what, ten on Saturday? And, I’m sure you’re glad to hear, Light Bulb is being turned out for the day, in Mum’s garden.
Alex
From: [email protected]
Subject: Scarlet
Hi Alex
Any chance I could pop over sometime? There’s a couple of tiny issues with Scarlet, it would be nice if we could chat over a coffee or something rather than in school. Oh, and Scarlet told me that her friend the writer — is that Winter? — was taking her shopping in York? That is really sweet of her, and she does seem like such a nice lady. I’m really glad you’ve met someone like her, Al. It’s what you both need.
Lu x
The nights were dark here. Of course, nights are sort of dark by definition, but the nights here were really dark. I walked along the paved way by the river, where the odd street light threw angular shadows. Dark. Less artificial light, and more stars. More stars than I could ever remember seeing in one place, bright and cold and clear, it was like the sky used mouthwash. The air smelled of a primitive kind of cold, snow and peat and stone ringing with frost, as though those high hills that rose above the little town were funnelling a new Ice Age towards us.
‘Hello, Winter.’ It was Margaret.
‘Blimey. Why do I always seem to meet the same people whenever I’m out?’ I muttered, but she heard.
‘It’s a small town. Three thousand residents, over half of which are elderly, a quarter are small children and most of the rest are in the pub right now.’ She gave me a smile. ‘That really only leaves me, you and Alex, so it’s no wonder. How is the writing going?’
Hmmm. Here we are, walking slowly along by the river at ten o clock at night. That should give you a hint that it’s probably not going quite as smoothly as it should be.
‘I’m having a break.’
‘And you’re taking Scarlet to York tomorrow? Shopping . . .’ She tailed off as though she knew the word but couldn’t place its meaning. ‘I know Alex appreciates the time you spend with her. We love her dearly but she’s very much a handful. I’m sixty-three and my husband passed over a while ago, just before Ellen . . . well, and Scarlet doesn’t really have much of a feminine influence in her life.’ Margaret gave my jeans-and-anorak get up the once-over, and seemed to be stopping herself from continuing ‘not that you’re very feminine’. ‘There’s really only Lucy.’ Another tailing-off pause, as though a lot of possible futures collided in her head, but then she refocused. ‘I’m just on my way to the Women’s Group meeting, we’re having Ewan McGregor tonight and I’m looking forward to it. Of course, he isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, a little bit too keen to get his willy out, but it’s a treat for the older ladies, isn’t it? I mean, not that he’ll be there in person, of course, but it’s something.’
A duck broke cover and slid, quacking, into the busily-running stream.
‘Well, I’m sure Scarlet and I will have a lovely day tomorrow.’ I tried to ease my way further along the path. ‘I won’t bring her back too late.’ Because I’ll probably be deaf by lunchtime.
‘I’m sure you understand . . .’ — Margaret closed the gap between us again. ‘. . . how much Alex trusts you with her. He’s very . . . he’s quite an unhappy young man. He was so different before Ellen died, so carefree and, well, although I shouldn’t say it, he was a bit of a hit with the ladies, oh, they were practically queueing up for him in those days! But since then he’s been so serious. Has trouble meeting people , if you see what I mean, of course everyone around here knows everyone else and is related to everyone else, so much so that every time we have a wedding we all have to check it’s not incest, but not people from outside.’
I wanted to say that all the women must be blind if they were letting something like his stammer get in the way of getting their hands on that spectacular body, but it wasn’t really something you said to the mother of the object in question, so I just nodded. ‘You’d better get on. Ewan McGregor’s willy will be getting cold.’
She bobbed her head a couple of times. ‘Nights are the worst, you know,’ she said, quietly. ‘Everyone remembers more at night.’ And then she was gone, neat heels, which looked grey in this half-illuminated darkness but were almost certainly pink, clicking along the stone path like a dog’s claws on lino.
‘Of course they do.’ I shrugged myself deeper into the anorak. I’d bought it at the Agricultural Merchants earlier in the day, having nothing in my London suitcase that even halfway suited the way the temperature oscillated up and down the scale this far north. Down south we’d still be sitting out in our gardens or on balconies at this time of night, drinking wine and chatting. Here the theme from Coronation Street sounded like a klaxon warning everyone to don their duvet.
The dark brings out memories in the same way as it brings out the rats.
* * *
‘You could read a book.’ Daisy’s advice wasn’t up to much tonight.
‘I’ve told you, the only things in here with me are spies, and whatever Jeffrey Archer writes about. I didn’t bring my Kindle with me.’ I stared at my laptop. ‘And I’m too twitchy to read.’
A sigh. ‘Winnie, you can’t use me as a substitute for entertainment, you know.’
‘I’m bored.’
‘You’re lonely.’
I thought about it. Was she right? I was used to spending a lot of time alone, writing books about dead people didn’t involve a lot of circulating with crowds, but then I’d always had company to fall back on. People I could phone to go out for a drink, Daisy to chat to. ‘Maybe. It is rather just me and the doll’s house TV here. Honestly, Daze, it’s like something that should be on display somewhere rather than a house, everything is three-quarter size! I feel bloody enormous.’
‘Look. If you’re really serious about having a bit of a “thing” for Alex—’
‘I couldn’t be more serious if I made a documentary about it.’
‘All right. But you don’t have to be serious serious, do you? Why not just be a bit light-hearted about it? Have fun. Just because you’ve met a guy who’s luscious and everything—’
‘With an arse to die for,’ I couldn’t help putting in, because she did seem to be underplaying the godlike nature of Alex.
‘Still not convincing me, Winnie, it doesn’t mean you have to launch yourself at him.’
‘I don’t “launch myself” at men!’ I bridled.
‘You did a bit at Dan, Win. Remember? As soon as you met him, when you went for drinks to go over the notes for the book edits, Dan was all you could talk about. And you carried on about him pretty much like you’re doing over Alex.’
That first meeting. We’d talked on the phone, emailed, then decided that, since the offices were shut for the Bank Holiday, and he wasn’t far away, we’d meet up in the pub and talk over a tricky issue I had. I’d seen him sitting there as soon as I walked in, almost as though my eyes had been looking for him without realising. Slim and dark, hunched over a pint, legs up on the seat opposite. Black jeans, big boots and a T-shirt with a picture of the galaxy on. Hair that spiked and fell around his ears as though he’d just got up and a face like an angel that’s lost a bet with Hell. And Daisy was wrong, I hadn’t launched myself, I’d fallen.