Saturday August 9th 2025
Just woke up in beautiful converted stables to sound of birdsong. Everything had warm, dreamy quality. Sunbeams through enormous windows, fluffy duvet tucked beneath my chin, promise of bright fresh start ahead of me.
Last night, walking to the stables in the dusk, it felt as though I’d met the real Ormer.
The moment the last tourist ferry left, it was as if the island breathed out.
The horse-drawn carts disappeared, replaced by the occasional local on a rusted bike with a sleepy dog trotting at their back wheel.
Birds hopped out of hedgerows, as though they knew it was safe now.
Everything was slower and softer. The dust kicked up by the tractors in the daytime was settling like glitter as the sun set, and the whole island shimmered.
As I woke in the stables, I allowed myself a minute to manifest my beautiful new life here.
Me, slipping out of bed and into a cute dress and Birkenstocks ahead of a day at the farm shop.
Overnight oats, freshly squeezed orange juice and a quality coffee machine waiting for me in the kitchen.
The generous walk-in wardrobe transformed into a nursery—soft cream on the walls, a textured rug, a moon-and-stars mobile above the cot—all ready for me to take that next step I’ve been longing for.
Then I returned to reality.
“Just so you know,” said Jones, emerging from said walk-in wardrobe, “that is not big enough to be a bedroom.”
…There had been nowhere else available to stay on the island. Not a single room, apparently—there isn’t much accommodation anyway, as people generally come here on day trips from Jersey or Guernsey, and the island is (as discussed) tiny.
Thought there would be somewhere, though. But Jones rocked up at ten p.m. with a thunderous expression, chucked his bag on my sofa and announced that unless I wanted him to sleep in a cow barn, we were going to need to find a way to share.
And here we were. Both of us. Even though I was fine with the Jones-in-a-cow-barn plan, actually.
He stomped past the end of my bed—the only way out of his “room,” in fairness, is through mine.
He was dressed in gray jogging bottoms and a sagging white T-shirt.
Why are gray jogging bottoms such a good look on a man?
It’s not fair—when I wear them, I look like someone just broke up with me.
I pulled the duvet up higher, though I needn’t have bothered—he didn’t look at me once.
“Is there coffee?” he said as he marched through the bedroom door, leaving it swinging open.
The stables are gorgeous, but it’s definitely compact in here.
There’s this bedroom with its walk-in wardrobe, a bathroom with a surprisingly roomy shower and a freestanding bath that looks over the fields, and then the rest of the long building is a kitchen leading into a living space with a wood burner and cozy sofa.
An idyllic place to live alone, or with a little one.
Not an idyllic place to live with a stranger who claims that your lovely new life belongs to him.
“I don’t know,” I said, “did you make coffee?”
“I’ve only just got up.”
“And I’m still in bed, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.”
“OK, so, no, there is no coffee waiting for you in the kitchen, since I haven’t even— Oh, all right then,” I finished. I’d just heard the shower door slam shut. “I guess you’re not part of this conversation anymore.”
The shower turned on. I lay back on the pillow. Manifest, manifest, manifest. Maybe if I get really good at it, I can manifest him right back to the mainland.
Ten missed calls from Brianna. A string of irate WhatsApps:
Hello? I know you’re starting a new life but you can’t get rid of ME, YOUR BARNACLE, YOUR LIMPET, YOUR ADDITIONAL LIMB
What do you mean there’s another Charlie Jones?! Surely not. How many bloody Charlie Joneses can there actually be in the world?
I’ve googled, there are over a million Charlie Joneses in the world, who would have thought it! CALL ME BACK.
Yanked a cardigan on over my pajamas and went outside to call her. She launched straight in.
“As if another person with that exact name has just by coincidence decided to take a job in a shop on a tiny arse-end-of-nowhere French island—”
“British island,” I interrupted. “It’s British.”
“Really? I looked on a map and it’s right by France.”
“You want to talk Anglo-French history right now?”
“No, I really don’t,” said Bri. “You know I don’t respond well to being educated. I want to talk about you. You backed down! You know they didn’t offer the job to two people accidentally, but you didn’t want to challenge this guy for lying about getting the job, so—”
Moved the phone away from my ear and winced.
Brianna has always had a slightly Janice-from-Friends quality to her voice when particularly animated.
On the few occasions I’ve visited her on the Eastside Close set, have noticed the cast get jumpy when she adopts this voice, and that several of them refer to her as “Ms. Director, ma’am.
” Sometimes wonder whether I’m the only person in her life who isn’t scared of her.
“Bri, look, it’s a man’s world,” I said, in my most sensible tone, when she paused for breath. “The odds were in his favor, not mine. And maybe they did give him the job, too! It’s a reasonable explanation for how this happened, isn’t it?”
“No! You’re just letting him stay because you’re scared. Why are you assuming he deserves this more than you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, because he probably does?”
“What have we said about low self-esteem?”
“Men find it a real turn-on?”
“Eww, disgusting. But true. How old is he, by the way, the imposter—is he old?”
Thought about it. “Midthirties, I reckon? But he’s kind of”—lowered voice—“rugged. Sort of ageless. You know, like…Daniel Craig.”
Glanced around nervously. Was standing on the little patio outside the kitchen, looking out at a hard-mown patch of hedged grass that would’ve been called a “stunning south-facing garden” by a London estate agent, but that Rosie had called “the wee patch if you’d come with a dog.
” Last I heard, Jones was still in the shower, but I would not like him to hear me comparing him to a former James Bond.
“Ooh, OK, I get it: if he looked like Daniel Craig I’d let him sleep in my bedroom, too. Tabbie! Have you washed your hands?”
Tabbie yelled an indignant yes in the background. Felt a pang of nostalgia for Bri’s house, with Tabbie’s crayon artwork in frames on the walls and her sticky jam fingerprints on the sofa arms.
“He’s not in my bedroom, he’s in an adjoining room.”
“Is there a door?”
“There’s a doorway.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, it’s not like that. You know where I’m at—I’m done, Bri. Romantically finito.”
“Sworn to celibacy?”
“Well, maybe not celibacy for life. But I want to be a mum someday soon, on my terms, and that means no men.”
“I do think that’s wise,” Brianna said.
“And definitely not this man.”
“On account of how he’s a job-stealing liar?”
“Well, that, possibly, and the fact that he seems to be in a perpetual bad mood. And now he’s my colleague and housemate. Anyway”—I adopted my brightest Cheerful Charlie voice—“I don’t mind having a comanager.”
“You don’t mind working with the imposter?”
I mind. This was definitely not on the script of my picture-perfect new life, nor was the massive salary cut. But…
“Running a remote farm shop is a super cute Hallmark movie job, but it’s also a job and I don’t have a ton of relevant experience, so…I don’t mind sharing the load with someone else.”
“Don’t say that experience thing to anyone else,” Bri said sternly. “You’ve got to—”
“Fake it till I make it, yep, I know.”
“Do I need to come out there, however a person does that, and check you’re really all right?”
“No!”
The idea of BMW-driving Bri getting pulled up the hill from Ormer’s harbor in a tractor trailer made me feel very stressed.
“Fine, but don’t trust this guy, OK? He could be a real con artist or something.
And don’t do anything mental,” Bri said.
“Don’t join any weird island cults or sleep with anyone I wouldn’t sleep with.
Sensible me, that is, not the old me, she slept with that guy from Casualty, you don’t want to be like her.
I’ll call you again later, Mabes needs me.
Stay strong, remember you are going to be great at this job and keep your eye on the prize. ”
I had a chat with Tabbie before she lost interest in me and left Bri’s phone on the sofa, and now I’m just sitting out on the sturdy little bench in the garden, listening to the island.
You can’t hear the sea from the stables, but it’s misty this morning, and every so often a foghorn sounds through the white glow behind the hedges, reminding me that I’m never more than a short walk from the world’s edge.
I’m just taking it all in, one breath at a time.
Maybe the grief and the sadness really have stayed on the mainland. Maybe I can find happiness here.
I’m not going to deny Jones his chance at this beautiful life—I’m not willing to risk the possibility that he might take mine. But if he does try to muscle me out or suggest to Rosie that she should just keep one of us on, then I’ll come back at him with claws.
This new me might be positive and peppy and ponytaily, but she still knows how to fight her corner.