Chapter 36
SIX MONTHS LATER, SEPTEMBER
Tam
It’s autumn on the farm now. The landscape is changing, becoming softer, the colours mellowing into shades of yellow through to gold and deepest bronze – honey to ochre, copper to russet, blush to ruby. It’s Tam’s favourite season. It always has been, but this year will be different, as will the winter to follow and the spring after that. He will wake every day knowing that just outside the kitchen door is a place filled with riches, and all of it just waiting, for him and for Jack.
June was glorious in the orchard. Frothy, delicate blooms of palest pink everywhere you looked, drifting on the breeze to settle on the freshly mown grass. And the scent…Tam couldn’t get enough of it – pulling down bough after bough to inhale the sweet perfume as he’d walked among the trees. He’d felt as if he was in heaven.
Ideally, they should have pruned the trees much earlier in the year but, almost as if she knew what they’d been through, Mother Nature decided to forgive them, and so as Tam stares upwards now, into a bright blue September sky, the results of their labours are burgeoning, or rather his labours. But for every day he had spent at the top of a ladder bringing life back to the neglected trees, Jack had spent it sowing row after row of seeds. The raised beds that Tam had made were just the right height for him to work at, and slow and awkward work it might have been but this year they will have a harvest, the first in a very long time.
Tam reaches upwards to pluck another apple from a tree. These ones he’s promised to his mum, along with the first of the runner beans. She still can’t get enough of his stories, but this time his tales about life on the farm are all true. She was horrified to hear what Chris had done – just as Frankie had said she would be – but she was also immensely proud of her son and delighted to hear about his new life. There’s no need to talk about anything in the past now, and Tam rarely thinks about it. Why would he?
He polishes the apple against his jumper, fills his lungs with clean, cool air and stares out across the farmyard towards the house. Towards his home. Magic, that’s what it is – pure magic.
Beth
The wee small hours are the ones Beth likes best. When she wakes, warm and drowsy, her body relaxed and at rest. Her alarm will sound in a couple more hours and her day will begin. But it will be a different day to the ones she used to have. Before. Gone are the days filled with rushing and juggling and that scattered feeling that nothing was right. Gone, too, are the nights, which were filled with anxiety, pulled between two places and fully existing in neither.
Now, Beth’s days are measured by routine, by hard work, but work which, for the first time in a long while, has focus and clarity. No longer does Beth feel torn in two, lost between a need to care for herself and provide for another. She leaves the house every morning, her shoulders unbowed, and returns every evening tired but happy in the knowledge that every moment she has been away, Jack has had Tam by his side. The truest of friends.
The evenings are spent in so many different ways. But the biggest difference is that Beth is Beth and Jack is Jack: no longer do they have to pretend to be anything they’re not. They have both gained so much, but becoming true to themselves is one of the biggest gifts Tam has bestowed on them. So, there is laughter, and much talking, nights simply spent snuggled reading, or balmy evenings spent outside, eating, drinking and dreaming. Because always there are things to talk about. Always there are plans to be made and hope to be made room for. Always, there is each other.
Beth turns and pushes her head closer, feeling the softness of Jack’s skin on her cheek. He is lying on his back, she on her side, but after so many years of nights apart, they found they still fit together, are still able to sleep as they once did. She nestles into him, their fingers entwined. Safe. And sound.
Frankie
Despite owning the bakery, Frankie still works the night shift. The daytime no longer holds any fears for her, but she prefers it that way, working each night with William by her side. It’s called Frankie’s now, of course – no longer Duggan’s, no longer tired, and no longer a place to hide from the world. Now it is Frankie’s world. Yet it also belongs to others, because everyone is welcome, at any time of the day. Or night.
There are spaces for customers to sit, to eat, to talk or simply to be, whiling away a cold night when the air outside is too harsh or the wind too fierce. And there’s a board on the wall now too, something that Frankie’s is becoming known for. On it are pinned gifts of food or drink: receipts for raspberry and white chocolate croissants – still William’s favourite – coffees, teas and soups, loaves of bread or cinnamon swirls, paid for by anyone who wants to, and gifted to anyone who might have need of them. Frankie’s happy to see the board is nearly always full. There is a whole world of people out there, invisible people, just like she once was, just like Tam and William and Beth, who, for all sorts of reasons, move through their days – and nights – in ways which are different to everyone else’s. They all have a story to tell and slowly and surely, bit by bit, Frankie and William are getting to know them all.
William
William hasn’t worked at Vipers for over five months now and, true to his word, once he had left, Tam paid a visit to the police. The surprise came shortly after that when Danny paid a visit to William. He wanted to tell him all about Stuart, just in case he hadn’t heard. He wanted him to know how shocked he was, how horrified that one of his employees could have been up to something so awful almost under his very nose. He also wanted to assure William that if he was in any way worried about there being any repercussions for him, then he shouldn’t be. The police were happy that neither Danny nor any of his other staff had been involved, and that was where the matter would end. Danny was only too aware how anxious William might be, given his past history, so Danny had been careful to stress to them what a model employee William had been.
Danny still doesn’t know who William is, but that’s okay. Danny’s an honest man, earning an honest living and living a happy life, and that’s all William really needs to know. One day, when William has more things in his life that he’s truly proud of, he might get back in touch with Danny, and the way things are going, that could be sometime soon. Until then, he’s happy to live his own life. It’s a life that’s turning out to be better than he could ever have imagined.
And lastly…
As for William and Frankie, they’re taking things slow. But Frankie’s a baker, after all; she knows the benefit of that. The end result is always better for not being rushed. William smiles and says he’s proving himself to her. She groans at his pun, but hugs the thought tight. He’s proving to be the perfect partner in more ways than one.
Frankie never dreamed that she would ever rid herself of her past life, that the butterfly would ever emerge from the hard shell she’d been hiding inside, transformed and finally free, but now she is truly learning to fly…She has a warm, safe and fearless place to live, is surrounded by the best of friends, and has a business of her own, doing what she loves day in, day out. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s really happened to her, but she only needs to look at William to know that it’s true. Because William is the truest treasure of them all.
She never dreamed she would have someone like him in her life, someone who doesn’t seek to change her, but who loves her for who she really is, who fills her days with laughter and shares the same hopes for their future, one which will be brighter than they ever dared imagine.
It’s only right then that they stand side by side in Frankie’s, sharing not only in everything the day brings, but the night, too. Opening the bakery to anyone who has need of them – the lost or the lonely, the needy or the invisible.
In fact, to anyone who needs a little light in the dark.
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