Chapter 40
After a week in Cornwall, Phoebe feels ready to head back to Somerset. Her grandmother is back at home and doing well. And the sea air and several more swims with her dad have made Phoebe feel better too.
The day before she’s due to leave, she receives an email from her boss, checking in and gently asking her if she might feel ready to return to work or if she needs more time off. Since arriving in Cornwall, Phoebe has had a lot of time to think. Usually, she’d use any spare moment to catch up on emails or check in with patients, but she’s forced herself to hold back. Instead, she’s spent the time considering whether she wants to go back to work or if it’s time to contemplate a different career altogether. It’s something she’s thought about over the years when what she does feels too heavy. She’s never acted on it because a good day always rolls around after the bad ones, but this week she has forced herself to consider the prospect more seriously.
However, every time she goes down that road, her mind pulls her down another path, back to a seed of an idea that was planted the very first time she visited the river and has been taking root ever since.
After reading Mel’s email, she calls her.
‘How’s your nan doing?’ is the first thing she asks and Phoebe suddenly feels grateful for having a boss who understands that she has a life outside of work – who encourages it, in fact.
‘She’s doing OK, thank you. And I’m doing much better too. I’m heading back to Somerset tomorrow.’
‘I’m so pleased to hear it. And I don’t want to put pressure on you, but how are you feeling about returning to work?’
Phoebe thinks of all her patients and how they have let her into their lives to share the tough days, but the better ones too. She pictures the feeling of satisfaction when she sees someone take a step forward. There’s nothing like it.
‘I’d like to come back,’ she says decisively. ‘But I’d like to shake things up a bit. My patients need more than I’m able to offer them. I can give them medication and time, but what they need too is community. A place to go where they can be among other people who share similar experiences, where they can chat, but also not chat too. Do something to help them take their minds to a different place.’
She remembers everything her father told her about the importance of his hobbies and the friends he’s made in the process. And she thinks about the women she has met at the river who have so quickly made her feel as though she’s part of something.
‘I’d like to set up a mental health wild swimming group. I’ve started swimming at the river in Farleigh-on-Avon recently and it’s so beautiful there and has an amazing sense of community. It got me thinking that if it’s already helped me so much, then it could help my patients too. I know it sounds a bit out there, but I’ve done a lot of reading about the mental health benefits of cold-water swimming and time in nature and I think there could really be something to this. I think it could really help my patients.’
She speaks quickly so she can get it all out before changing her mind. She doesn’t say that she thinks it could help her too, but it’s there in her head. If she’s going to continue doing this job, then something needs to change. And getting both herself and her patients into the water feels like a good first step.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’ Phoebe realises that she’d been so focused on just putting her idea out there that she hadn’t actually considered that her boss might say yes.
‘Yes. I think it’s a brilliant idea. This job isn’t just about administering medication. You’re right that the people we work with need community. We know how much loneliness affects all facets of health and something like this could be exactly what our patients need to help tackle the loneliness they face. This is exactly the kind of creative, proactive idea I love to see from my team. I’m going to adjust your schedule to make sure you have time to get this project off the ground. And when you’re back, I think it’s time we talk about next steps for you and your career. Well done, Phoebe.’
After they’ve made plans for next week and the first mental health wild swimming group meeting, they say goodbye and Phoebe is left reeling. Well, shit. This is actually happening, then. For the first time since she received the phone call from her mum, excitement bubbles up inside of her. Mel is on board with her plan and it even sounds like her longed-for promotion might actually be on the cards. Next, she needs to convince her patients. She can already anticipate that this might be the tricky part.
‘I promise I’ll come back again soon,’ she says to her grandmother as she hugs her goodbye the next day. ‘And I really mean it this time. I’m going to visit much more regularly from now on.’
‘That’s OK, dear, I know how busy you are.’
‘But I want to,’ Phoebe says, leaning forward to kiss her grandmother on the top of her soft white hair. She hugs her mum and brother tightly too.
Her dad drops her at the station and as they say goodbye, he gives her a tight hug.
‘You take care of yourself, love.’
‘I will,’ she promises.
‘Nothing makes me prouder than being a dad to you and Seth,’ he says, his eyes growing teary. ‘And that’s not because of the jobs you do or the things you achieve, but because of who you are. You never forget that.’
As she settles in on the train, Phoebe sends a message to Kate telling her she’s on her way home. Kate has been checking in with her all week and it’s made Phoebe regret having let her other friendships fizzle out over the years. As the countryside rolls by outside the window, she scrolls back to one of her old WhatsApp groups. What if she were to send a message and resurrect the group? Her hands hover over her phone, thinking about what she might say. But it feels hard to know where to start. Would messaging out of the blue just be really fucking weird? Would they even want to hear from her after all this time?
She closes WhatsApp and instead lets herself open her email for the first time that week. And then she starts composing messages one by one to her patients, beginning with Ben.
Dear Ben,
I hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry I’ve been away this week, but my colleague Mel tells me you are doing OK, if still understandably disappointed about the football group.
I have an idea to run past you. I’ve decided to start a new group myself. It’s not football, I’m afraid. I might have learnt a lot from watching Match of the Day with you, but you are still very much the football expert, not me. This new group will bring together other people I work with, just like your football club did, but this time doing something that I love, that’s helped me through a tough time. The first meet up of the Mental Health Wild Swimming Group will take place at Farleigh-on-Avon on Monday, at 10 a.m. Map attached. I’d love it if you’d consider giving it a go.
The countryside changes outside as the train crosses through Cornwall and up to Devon. Phoebe sends message after message about the new swimming group. So far, none of her patients have replied. But she keeps sending them anyway.
When Phoebe finally steps off the train at her stop, she nearly drops her bags in surprise, seeing not just one familiar face waiting for her, but four. Kate, Sandra, Jazz and Hester are gathered on the platform, waving at her and smiling. They are all dressed in boiler suits – Kate’s yellow, Sandra’s red, Jazz’s pink and Hester’s indigo denim.
‘What are you guys doing here?’ she asks after hugging them each in turn. ‘And what are you wearing?! You look like a girl band.’
‘Sandra was the one who suggested the outfits,’ says Jazz. ‘We weren’t up for it at first. But then we chatted and worked out that we all own at least one boiler suit, so we thought, why the fuck not?’
‘You look bloody ridiculous,’ Phoebe laughs. ‘But awesome too. I still don’t totally get it, though.’
‘We’re superheroes. Obviously,’ says Hester.
Jazz strikes a pose, hands on hips. ‘Wild swimmers to the rescue!’
‘Kate told us you’d been having a tough time,’ explains Sandra, looping her arm over Phoebe’s shoulder. She glances at Kate for confirmation, but she just shrugs her shoulders lightly. ‘You spend your whole life looking after other people,’ she continues, as if having a group of new friends turn up to rescue you in matching outfits is a totally normal thing to happen. ‘It’s our turn to do something for you.’
Phoebe blinks rapidly. She’s already done enough bloody crying this week. But they’re not making it easy for her … She sniffs and tries to subtly wipe her face with her sleeve.
‘This is only part one of the plan,’ says Kate. ‘Come on …’
They travel back to Farleigh-on-Avon from the station, Kate driving, and when she pulls up onto the high street, the sight of Giuglia’s makes Phoebe’s palms grow clammy. She hasn’t seen Luca since their almost-encounter in the deli, but she knows she can’t put off running into him forever, not when they are neighbours and when he serves the best coffee in the village.
As she gets out of the car, she notices a pick-up truck parked on the pavement near the deli. To her surprise, Kate and the others head straight to the truck, Sandra jangling a set of keys in her hand.
‘Is this your truck, Sandra?’
‘What, do you think I don’t look like a pick-up truck sort of person?’ She puts her hands on her hips in mock outrage.
‘I said the same thing,’ says Jazz. ‘I had her down as a Fiat 500 kind of woman myself.’
‘A relic from my second marriage,’ Sandra explains. ‘It was one of his most treasured possessions. He ran off with one of my bridesmaids. I delight in driving the truck past their house every now and then, blaring feminist anthems. It’s really quite useful too. It did the trick today perfectly. Right, shall we unload?’
‘Unload?’ asks Phoebe, and as she does, she looks properly at the contents of the truck. It is piled high with furniture. She spots planks of wood that look like a bed frame piled on top of a pine table with its legs in the air. There’s a mismatched array of dining chairs in different colours and, in the middle, an extremely bright orange sofa.
‘I remember you telling me about your ex taking all the furniture from your flat when he left,’ says Kate as Phoebe casts her eyes over it all, taking it in. ‘Between us, we all had some bits and bobs we didn’t need anymore. You don’t have to keep it all forever if you hate it, but it might just help get you back on your feet?’
‘The bed frame and dining table are from my parents’ attic,’ says Hester. ‘They used to belong to my grandparents but have just been getting dusty up there since they passed away. I think they’d love to know they were being used.’
‘The chairs are from all of us,’ says Jazz. ‘I hope you don’t mind that they’re not a matching set.’
‘And the sofa is from me,’ adds Sandra. ‘I’ve been meaning to find a new home for it. I hope you don’t mind the colour, I know it’s not to everyone’s taste …’
The women are clearly waiting for her reaction, huddled around the pick-up truck in their matching boiler suits, all with equally eager expressions on their faces. But Phoebe can’t find any words. She looks from the women to the truck and back again.
‘I … I love the colour. I love it all! This is one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.’
‘Come on,’ says Sandra, unlocking the truck. ‘Let’s get all this unloaded. Kate tells us you live above the deli?’
They start with the dining chairs. Jazz explains that she’s done her back in, so she guides them up the stairs as the others take a chair each.
‘Lovely light in here,’ Sandra comments as they set them down in the living room. ‘It will be gorgeous when we’re finished and once you’ve given the place a lick of paint. Only recently moved in, have you?’
‘I’ve been here three years,’ admits Phoebe. As she looks around, it strikes her how un-lived in the place looks, not just because of the lack of furniture but because of the plain walls and simple venetian blinds that were there when they moved in.
‘Oh. Well, magnolia is a very practical choice. And some people do prefer to keep things simple …’
‘I don’t,’ replies Phoebe quickly, only really realising how true it is when she says the words out loud. ‘I’d much prefer bright colours on the walls.’ She pictures her parents’ home, which is chaotic but colourful, the living room a sky blue and the kitchen filled with striped Cornishware crockery in multicoloured shades, the fridge covered in photographs. She glances down at her outfit of tight cropped trousers in a post-box red worn with a gingham shirt and her usual biker jacket over the top and it strikes her that the place where she lives has none of her personality visible in it. ‘Max preferred things simple, and besides, we never seemed to find the time for decorating …’
‘Maybe we can head to the hardware store once the furniture is in?’ Kate suggests. ‘We can help you paint?’
‘Ooh, I love painting,’ says Jazz. ‘I find it very soothing.’
‘That would be amazing,’ Phoebe replies, blown away yet again by their kindness.
As they head back downstairs for the next load of furniture, the door to Giuglia’s swings open. Phoebe feels her stomach involuntarily tighten at the sight of Luca stepping out onto the street in his green apron, his mop of curls as messy as ever and a dab of something that looks like pesto smeared across one defined cheekbone. Through the window behind him, she can see that the deli is empty, apart from the same older gentleman with the Italian newspaper who Phoebe remembers seeing the first time she stepped inside the shop.
She meets Luca’s eye and he raises a questioning eyebrow, but there’s a faint smile on his mouth. Heat rises to her face.
‘I know there was a bit of noise when I was getting the shop set up, but moving out? Am I really that bad a neighbour?’
His tone is teasing, as if he’s forgotten the awkwardness of the last time they saw each other. But Phoebe hasn’t forgotten. It’s been haunting her, along with the frustration of knowing that she wouldn’t have been so goddamn stupid if she hadn’t been drinking. She hasn’t touched alcohol since her conversation with Mel, even when her parents offered her wine at the table on her first night staying with them. After she refused, she noticed that the next day there were no wine glasses set out for any of them.
He puts his hands into his apron pockets and leans back against the door frame, that particularly mischievous curl falling down over one eyebrow. For the first time, Phoebe notices the dimple in his chin and the fact it looks exactly the size and shape of the pad of her little finger.
‘I’m not going anywhere. Just, um, redecorating,’ she explains, before adding reluctantly, ‘bad break-up.’
‘Ah.’ He raises his eyebrows and nods. ‘I know about those.’
It’s her turn to raise an eyebrow now, but he offers no further explanation, just a steady smile.
‘Just what we need!’ declares Sandra, causing Phoebe to break eye contact with Luca and notice that the others are staring at him in varying degrees of subtlety. ‘A big strong man.’
Luca’s cheeks flush as red as Sandra’s boiler suit.
‘Um, isn’t that a bit anti-feminist?’ chips in Hester, scuffing the toes of her shoes into the ground.
‘I was joking, dear,’ replies Sandra, rolling her eyes and waving a hand carelessly. ‘I know we are perfectly capable of moving the rest of the furniture by ourselves. But the fact we could do it by ourselves doesn’t mean we should have to. We have nothing to prove here, ladies! And besides, given the gender pay gap, I think it’s only fair to get men to do a bit extra to help out every now and then. After all, we are essentially working for free from January until March each year.’
‘Yes, to that!’ Jazz says with a cheer.
Sandra only somewhat undermines her speech by adding, ‘Plus, look at those lovely arms, he looks highly suited to furniture-lifting.’ She winks lasciviously and Phoebe tries her best not to follow her gaze to Luca’s biceps.
Luca is practically squirming by now, his tanned neck blotched with crimson. Watching him wriggle uncomfortably makes Phoebe stifle a laugh. It makes her feel better, seeing him looking as uncomfortable as she feels to be seeing him again.
‘Sure, I can help a neighbour out,’ he says, flipping the shop sign to closed and leaving the one customer sitting contentedly with his newspaper, espresso and a biscotti. ‘OK. I’m all yours.’
And Phoebe tries her best not to let her own face turn pink at his words.