Day Eighteen Sober
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
You know what we didn’t think about when we decided Charlie and I could cohabit? The laundry.
There’s just…lingerie. Everywhere. I’ve only ever lived with women who I’ve seen in the lingerie before it’s hanging from the washing line in the garden or draped over the radiator in the bathroom. It’s totally different when you see the lingerie first. Your brain starts trying to fill in the gaps.
What a ridiculous email this is. It’s one a.m., relatedly. I’m going to sleep.
Night,
Charlie Jones
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
Subject: Day eighteen sober (cont.)
The less said about last night’s email the better. Who knew I could be that embarrassing when stone-cold sober?
I want to write about exploring Ormer. That’s a much more worthwhile topic.
I got up early on Saturday and Sunday, heading out to explore sandy coves and caves dripping with stalactites, woodland where the leaves are already beginning to turn golden.
Yesterday I grabbed Red as she brought a herd of tourists up to the farm shop as part of her new tour route, and grilled her for a location to visit today, while the shop’s closed.
She started coming up with ideas, but Galoshes shushed her—she shouldn’t be telling me too much when I’m not a “local,” apparently.
After a brief pause for me to assure a tourist that he was allowed to look at the cabbages (Galoshes has a real thing about people touching the stock), I asked what one needs to do to become a local.
After all, Red has only been here for a couple of months and is still staying up at Rosie and Marly’s B&B.
“You just have to stick around,” Toby piped up from the till. “That’s literally it.”
Red flinched. She has developed a strange aversion to Toby lately.
Charlie and I have discussed it, and apparently Charlie’s broached the topic with Red in case there’s something worrying there, but Red insists that she has no problem with Toby.
She just…never looks directly at him anymore.
Toby, on the other hand, spends an enormous amount of his time gazing at Red.
It’s on our list of staff issues to resolve—we’ve started amending the shift pattern because if you leave the two of them alone together the shop becomes deathly silent and very uncomfortable.
Red was saved from interacting with Toby by the arrival of Doc Laurry with a tray of cacao and chestnut macarons. This time I wasn’t about to miss out—I was reaching for one before he even started speaking. Galoshes, meanwhile, was examining the tray with horror.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Tree bark and something or other, I’ll bet.”
“Charlie asked me to bring in some samples?” Doc said, with an unconcerned smile.
“Did she now!” Galoshes said.
The biscuit was ridiculously delicious. The sort of thing you’d get in an expensive restaurant with a teaspoonful of salted-something ice cream on top. (Charlie’s right, we have to sell these.)
“Galoshes has never been a fan of my concoctions. I believe she considers them”—Doc consulted Galoshes—“uppity?”
“Look, no offense, Doc, but we’re a farm shop,” Galoshes said. “We’re here to sell good food to local people. Not pretentious biscuits to nobby tourists.”
A passing tourist with a basket full of pickles looked a little startled at this. I pulled Galoshes aside, away from the main shop floor.
“Please, Galoshes, trust us on this one. The changes Charlie and I have made so far, even just the layout, the way stock is labeled, the decor—we’re making considerably more money for the shop this week than last. Red bringing tourists up here on the tour has helped a lot, too. We’re up. Don’t you want to be up?”
“Charlie is so obsessed with the tourists,” Galoshes snapped. “She keeps changing everything around without telling me, and I can never find anything anymore for real customers.”
I could relate to this—Charlie and I aren’t exactly communicating about plans, and I often feel on the back foot when I walk into the shop in the morning. It isn’t helping.
“Shall I come back another time, with the samples?” Doc said tactfully.
His tray was almost empty anyway. Toby was at the till, looking panicked at the volume of tourists forming a queue.
“That might be best,” I said. I took the last of the biscuits, though. For research.
After the rush of sales, Red shepherded her tourists back out of the shop again, all clutching their new local produce. As she walked out, she pointed to a spot on the map of Ormer that Charlie had fixed up next to the door.
“Try there,” she whispered to me with a quick thumbs-up. She had holes in the cuffs of her long-sleeved top, as if for this very purpose. “Great views—people often hang out up there.” Then, on the glare she was getting from Galoshes: “What? Look at his face. He just wants to be part of things!”
I explained to Galoshes that I was not trying to be part of things.
“Don’t tell me, love, I don’t give a shit,” she said.
Galoshes’s attitude is also, incidentally, on the list of staff issues to resolve.
Bye for now,
Charlie Jones
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
Subject: Day eighteen sober (cont.)
Tonight I think I saw the real Charlie for the first time.
I headed for the spot Red had tapped on the map.
I could only reach it by scrambling up a steep narrow track in dense undergrowth, and for a long time it felt as though I was just getting deeper and deeper into a giant blackberry bush, but eventually I emerged onto a peak with a view that stretched all the way across to Little Ormer.
The whole island lay below me—I could even see the winding trail on Windward Ridge joining the two halves of Ormer, like a rope holding the island together.
I traced the fields of Bramblebay Farm, realizing I recognized almost all of them—the wheat fields Marly and Rog harvested yesterday, the gem-green clover field, the orchards with their higgledy lines of trees.
There were wine and beer bottles on many of the picnic blankets around me, and I almost turned back around and headed home, but then I heard someone shout “Jones.” It was Marly.
She waved me over to introduce me to a couple of farmers from the east side of the island.
She handed me a lemonade without asking if I wanted anything stronger, but nobody commented or seemed surprised.
Nothing staying private on this island has its pluses: it saves you having to explain yourself to anyone.
“We’re talking exes,” Marly told me, after insisting I sit down with them. “You got any really nasty ones?”
“A really good one, actually,” I said, then winced. What was my second rule, after not drinking? Leave the past in the past.
“Oh! A good ex!” one of the farmers said, knocking back his beer. “Do I smell heartbreak?”
I shook my head. “I owe her a lot. More than I could ever repay.”
“Money?” Marly asked.
Something in her voice made me glance at her. There was a sharpness to it. She was looking at me keenly—it was a good reminder to keep things vague.
“Not that kind of owing,” I said. “She helped me turn my life around. I wouldn’t be here without her.”
We talked a little bit about the drinking, too, and I ended up saying the word depression—I don’t even know why. I came here to stop burdening people with my shit, but Marly’s too easy to talk to, and it felt so good to be out there in the fresh air chatting about stuff that actually matters.
“Ah,” Marly said, when I mentioned depression. “I’d been wondering.”
“Whether I’m depressed?”
“Where the empathy comes from. Real empathy is one of the few upsides of bad shit happening, in my experience. Some people just turn mean, but the good ones get wiser, connect better…Oh, I know you’re shooting for a lone wolf thing, but I don’t buy it—you’re a connector through and through.”
I made it clear that this was not correct, and I am in fact an aspiring hermit.
“Give you one tiny nudge and all your feelings come spilling out,” Marly said, grinning at me. “It’s a good thing, especially in a man—take the compliment.”
After that, the conversation quickly descended into a lot of complaining about farming—which, to be fair, did seem like a profession with a lot to complain about.
I settled back to listen as the sun set pink over the island.
There was rain forecast for the night ahead, and you could feel it in the air.
The sadness was still there—it’s so fucking dogged—but it was a nice way to spend an evening.
The nicest I’ve had in a really long while.
“Where’s Charlie tonight?” Marly asked me.
I explained that she’d gone off hiking, planning to watch the sunset at Pouque Rock.
Marly’s face went blank and she checked her watch. “That’ll have been high tide.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
“What?” I said. “What’s the problem with that?”
“It means the rock will be cut off from land.” Marly pulled a face. “Do you think she was prepared to get marooned with bad weather on the way?”
I checked my phone. “She’s not called or anything.”
“Shit,” Marly said. “I’ve got three missed calls from her.”
I was already moving. It was me who suggested Pouque Rock, me who encouraged her to get out of the stables more.
The viewpoint is only about fifteen minutes from the rock, and—I figured—a lot less if I ran.
I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there—it’s not like I had any means of crossing the water and reaching her—but I did know that I hated the thought of Charlie there all alone.
I also hated the fact that she’d called Marly, and not me.
The rain began as I scrabbled down through the brambles to the main island tracks.
I yanked my hood up and ran faster, heading straight for the coast. The light was low as I wound my way along the narrow tracks of the coastline.
I squinted toward the horizon. There was an erratic, blinking light in the direction of Pouque Rock.