Day Forty-One Sober
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
Charlie left me a steaming hot coffee on the kitchen table this morning, with a note.
Sorry to skip comanager meeting, but really had to go for a run and clear my head.
We need to talk when I’m back. Also, Red will need a hand at the harbor when the morning deliveries come in—all our dried fruit has been dispatched and they’ve sent us way too many prunes!
Rosie has suggested we do a campaign around Keeping Ormer Regular, i.e.
, she is way too nice and doesn’t want to complain / return them.
Don’t worry, I’m on it. Feel confident you’d agree that bowel-related promotions are not on-brand.
Make sure they’re turned away, please! Xx
When I first met Charlie, she seemed acutely unfunny—the sort of person who can’t take a joke. Now that she’s being herself, she makes me laugh more than I’ve laughed in…longer than I can remember.
I said something like this to her the other day, and she told me not to judge a woman by her “sensible dresses,” and that many of the funniest women she knew spent a great deal of their time pretending not to be.
The more I thought about that, the sadder it seemed.
I’m ashamed to think of all the people I overlooked, in my old life.
You have so much less to give when you’re drunk and unhappy and pretending not to be.
At least things are different now. I really do think I’ve changed. Maybe I’m uncovering the person I used to be, or maybe I’m becoming a new version of myself, but either way, I’m getting somewhere.
The coffee is just how I like it—gold-top milk from Jerry’s dairy and a splash of Ormer honey. I’m just here, in the quiet of the kitchen, drinking it.
This probably doesn’t seem noteworthy enough for an email. But it is, actually. Because I’m sitting here with a good coffee that someone cared enough to make me, thinking about the ways I want to be better, and I’m feeling glad to be alive.
And with that, I’ll say,
Bye for now,
Charlie Jones
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
Subject: Day forty-one sober (cont.)
“You look different,” Charlie said, when I arrived in the shop.
“So does this.” I pointed to the ceiling.
Charlie has hung swathes of orange velvet from the barn roof, between all of her handmade autumnal decorations.
It looks great—the tourists will love it, but it’s not so much that it’ll alienate the locals, though Galoshes did spend some time muttering about what a pain the drapes were when she was trying to dust away the spiderwebs.
But muttering is Galoshes’s side gig—I’d be alarmed if she didn’t.
Charlie was examining me, undeterred by my chat about the drapes. I immediately went hot. Charlie rarely looks at me for long—she’s always the first to drop eye contact or turn away. When she does meet my gaze, it’s electric.
“Is it the shirt?” she asked.
It wasn’t the shirt. I’d worn it before. I’d just tidied myself up a bit. I’d styled my hair instead of leaving it however it was when I got out of bed, given myself a proper close shave, put on some aftershave and had that coffee.
It was just a coffee, obviously. But also, it was the first time in a very long time that I actually felt one hundred percent pleased to be here, on this planet, existing. So, in that sense, not just a coffee.
“Yep, shirt’s new,” I said. “You said in your note we need to talk?”
“Yeah, I…” Charlie glanced over at Toby, who was explaining to a tourist why Ormer soil produces the best potatoes. She looked back at me. “You look happy,” she said, as though the thought had just dawned. “Properly happy. That’s what’s different.”
“Don’t ruin my image now, Charlie. You know the guys down at the harbor refer to me as Charlie Jones the Frowner? To differentiate me from you, I guess.”
She didn’t laugh. “Let’s talk about my stuff later,” she said after a moment. “Now doesn’t feel like the time.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. It can wait.”
I hesitated.
“I did have something I wanted to mention to you, actually, if that’s OK?” I said.
Ever since the night at the lighthouse, Charlie is very careful around me.
It grates on me, to be honest—that urge for more of her is there all the time—but I understand why she’s doing it.
I want to keep my distance, too—that’s been my agenda ever since I got here. So I’m being extra polite as well.
“We need to move forward with the coffee machine and biscuits.” I lowered my voice when I said coffee machine, and lowered it even more for biscuits.
Galoshes wasn’t in today, but no doubt this conversation would make it back to her somehow.
“We’ve got less than three weeks until our deadline, and profits are up, but not… ”
“Not two salaries’ worth,” Charlie said. She sighed. “I know. I know. But Galoshes was right—nobody on that committee will cross her. We’re stuck until she comes around to the idea.”
“Could I talk to her about it?”
Charlie paused. A few weeks ago, she’d have said a point-blank no—the biscuits were her idea. But we are working together now. We are an actual team. And I didn’t want to say it, but we both knew Galoshes has much more of a problem with Charlie than she does with me.
Charlie’s shoulders slumped. “Ugh. That would actually be great. Thank you.”
She smiled at me—a quick, tantalizing flash—then headed off to meet with Rosie about harvest festival events, which was next on our list of activities to bring tourists to the shop. On rolled the day, same old new life. Except…that coffee feeling hung around.
When you’re sad, you think sadness is what you need. You want to sink into it, let it cover you—the sadness is bad, but it’s familiar, and it disguises itself as something right, as though feeling anything else would be a lie.
For a long time, I’ve thought that the only thing that can help me surface from the misery is a drink. When I’m drunk, I’m not exactly happy, but I’m free from the awful grip of that sadness, and that’s such a fucking relief.
But the coffee this morning reminded me what actual contentment feels like. And it was better than drunk has ever felt.
So yeah. Same old new life. But…different.
So long,
Charlie Jones
From: Charlie Jones
To: Charlie Jones
Subject: Day forty-two sober
I’ve not written about this yet—what does that say, I wonder—but Marly and I have started going for bike rides.
If Marly had said to me when I arrived here, “Let’s go for a bike ride before work every Thursday,” I would have shut that idea down immediately for several reasons. 1) Planned bonding activities make me want to jump off cliffs. 2) I didn’t want to make friends. 3) I don’t ride bikes.
But she didn’t suggest it. One day I was walking up to the farm shop from the post office, and Marly was out on the tandem bike she shares with Rosie.
She asked me if I wanted a lift. “Just dropped Rosie up at Pipit Spinney,” she said. “Got a spare seat.”
I told her no, thanks.
“You sure? It’s at least a twenty-minute walk from here, if you’re heading to the farm shop.”
“Anywhere else on this planet, that would be considered close.”
Marly laughed. She was doing her best to cycle beside me at walking pace—not easy on a tandem. She tilted, and I lurched to catch her.
“Jeez, savior complex much? I can handle my bike, Jones.”
I apologized, obviously, and kept my hands fisted by my sides after that.
“Come on. Hop on. I’ll do all the legwork, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m used to it with Rosie—she always gets distracted by the scenery and forgets to pedal.”
“You don’t want me on there. I’m a terrible backseat driver.”
“I can really see that. But go on. I won’t take no for an answer. Rain’s on the way, and I don’t want you serving in my shop looking like a wet rat. No, not a rat. That’s not right. A”—she examined my face as she wobbled along on the tandem—“badger. A wet blond badger.”
I climbed on. I told myself it was mostly to end this particular line of conversation, but as soon as my feet were on the pedals, I knew it was more than that.
I’ve taken everything so slowly since I quit drinking.
Walking pace, literally. But feeling the wind in my hair, even on a tandem, was so good.
I’ve not been exercising, apart from walks; I forgot the absolute rush that comes when your heart beats in your chest and the air catches in your throat.
There are so many things I’ve not trusted myself to do since realizing I was an alcoholic.
But it was time to get myself moving again.
I rented a bike, a battered, rattled old thing that I immediately fell in love with.
And next time I saw Marly on my way to the shop, she was on her mountain bike instead of the tandem, and I ended up joining her for a bit of a loop—I was early, we were chatting anyway.
Then it happened the following Thursday, too, and the one after that.
Before I knew it, I was waking at half past five on a Thursday specifically to meet Marly by the signpost on the corner of the Rue.
This morning’s ride was a particularly good one.
Marly and I paused midway, spread-eagling ourselves in the ferns on the side of the track, our bikes propped up against two giant pine trees.
The woods are one of my favorite spots on Ormer—less obvious than the beaches and cliff tops, but they get better the more you get to know them. Like most things.
Marly was querying the idea that I came to start a new life here with no plans to make friends, fall in love or really interact with anybody. I explained that, yeah, I wanted to be alone, which is why I loved the sound of a farm job on a remote island in the middle of the Channel.
“You chose to work in a shop in a small, tight-knit rural community. Maybe you thought you wanted to be alone, but I’d argue your subconscious wanted different. Do you have family? Any abandoned loved ones back on the mainland?”