Wednesday September 24th 2025
Anxiety’s not been so bad today—honestly can’t say why, maybe it was facing the fact the Galoshes stuff was triggering it?
Or maybe it’s just Ormer Ormering away around me in its beautiful autumn colors, reminding me that the great big gorgeous world gives no shits about the nonsense knots I’m tying in my own head.
The Rosie method—the big-sky method. Whatever the reason, it’s an absolute relief not to feel like I want to climb out of my body for a while.
Came home from work and Jones was out. Felt weird.
Bit disappointed—he’s usually in on a Wednesday night.
We tend to have a cozy evening, cook something with a lot of cheese in it, switch the lights out early (have got in habit of going to bed at same time, because of bedroom logistics.
We say good night through the door once we’re both tucked in—it’s all sickeningly cute, and there I lie, thinking about him topless).
Eventually spotted Jones out of the kitchen window.
He was gardening. Odd—I’ve never seen him garden before.
Rog and I did some planting out there a few weeks ago (before I almost accused him of theft) and am not actually sure Jones had yet noticed.
But there he was, with my trowel, hacking away at something in the soil.
Looked hard going. Plus it was almost dark.
By the time I’d gotten my trainers on and headed out to query this new activity, he was sitting on our garden bench, sipping at a coffee with the satisfaction of a man who had Achieved Something. I looked at the flower bed.
“Umm. You dug up all my primroses?”
“What?” Jones said, pausing midsip and giving the flower bed a double take. “What primroses?”
I pointed at the heap of greenery now sitting by the hedge.
“Oh, shit,” Jones said, putting his coffee down beside him. “Those weren’t weeds?”
“Those weren’t weeds,” I confirmed.
“Oh no. I’m so sorry.”
Shifted his coffee to the side so I could sit down. “Hope that’s decaf,” I said, peering into his mug.
“Well, it’s not whisky,” he said slightly distractedly. He was still gazing at the flower bed. “Do you think I can replant them?”
“You could try,” I said, eyeing the squished primroses. “What inspired the sudden Monty Don–ing?”
“Bit of a weird day. You know Toby’s in love with Red?”
“I did sort of figure, with all the longing gazing.”
“They were together for a few weeks,” Jones said, reaching down to flip over one of the more distinct-looking primroses from the heap beside us. “They’re really not weeds? There aren’t any petals, or…”
“Not yet,” I said, trying not to laugh. “They’re not in flower right now.”
“You’d have killed me for ruining your flower bed six weeks ago,” Jones said, looking up at me with a little smile as he straightened.
When I first met Jones, he was so heavy.
Heavy brow, heavy shoulders. These days, he’s lighter.
There’s still a shadowy quality to him—a sense of complexity, maybe—but it reads as maturity rather than messiness.
I remember when I first saw him at the harbor, I thought his whole vibe was very “I’m a hot mess, try to fix me.
” Now it’s more, “I’ve got layers, want to see? ”
“I’d only have minded because I’d care so much what Rog would think about us wrecking the flower bed he built. And what the rest of the committee would think when they walked along the track and saw our garden.”
“Ah, and you’re done trying to impress people now?”
“Absolutely,” I said, having just spent my day relentlessly trying “casual chat” with Galoshes (my latest unsuccessful tactic for winning her over). “Did you say Red and Toby were together?” I asked, rewinding.
“I know. An intense summer romance, apparently. All sorts of grand promises made. Then Red just stopped replying and started avoiding him whenever possible. It’s been driving him crazy.”
“That doesn’t sound like Red. She wouldn’t mess someone around like that.”
“That is actually not the mystery of the evening,” Jones said, chucking the remnants of his coffee into the grass. “I went to the farmhouse to drop off a love note for her from Toby—”
“I’m sorry, you what?”
Jones looked distinctly embarrassed, which made the whole thing even cuter.
“Look, it’s a long story, the boy was very upset…”
“How’s the grumpy island hermit act going for you, by the way?” I asked.
He leaned his shoulder into me, a teasing nudge.
All very friendly and PG, but my body didn’t think so.
My stomach went swoopy. I leaned back, just a little—prolonging the moment, maybe turning it into something else.
Sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in the darkening garden, I found myself thinking, I don’t just want him.
That swoop in my stomach, it’s pure, undiluted longing.
And honestly, I thought that feeling was gone for good. Thought I’d grown out of it, had been through too much. Surely you can only want someone like this when you don’t know how easily they could hurt you.
I pressed my shoulder to his and savored it, and all the while I was thinking…Oh no.
“So, yeah, there’s a spare room at the B&B, but they won’t let us use it,” Jones was saying, moving away slightly, breaking that connection between us.
“What?”
I was busy having my terrifying epiphany: Jones, my job-stealing knitwear-wearing deep-chatting roommate, had shifted from the category of “distractingly hot guy but obviously won’t go there” to “major, major problem.” Because you can’t ignore a stomach swoop like that.
It’s rare. It’s precious. It demands your attention.
“A whole empty room. And Marly got so weird about it. She started talking about the shop, and us, as if me being told about the room was conditional on me telling them stuff about me, and my life? Then she got sort of pissed off at me.”
“Sorry,” I said, catching up, “there is a spare room? But we can’t have it? Why not? Do they not trust us in their house?”
So weird to think we could’ve potentially stayed on the island without being housemates.
Imagine not saying good night to Jones through the wall every evening, or brushing against him as we pass in the kitchen, or talking the way we do over dinner sometimes, the way I’ve never talked to a man before.
Don’t think I actually knew men could be as interesting as Jones.
“I have no idea,” Jones said. “I’ve been out here ruining your flower beds trying to think it all over. Do you think it has something to do with the job mix-up? Somehow?”
“The room? How could it?”
“I really don’t know,” he said.
He paused for a moment, looking at me in the darkness. I shivered.
“What will you do, if we can’t get the shop running a better profit by harvest festival?” he asked softly.
“We will.”
“We really might not.”
I looked away. “We will. I’ve got a plan with Galoshes. You’ll see.”
He seemed relieved. Which just demonstrates the problem with the stomach swooping. Because I don’t have a plan with Galoshes at all—just didn’t want him to worry. The sort of shit you do for a person you like way too much.
Thursday September 25th 2025
New day. Have pulled myself together and stopped lusting after my inconveniently named roommate.
Well, not stopped, but have redirected my brain to other, more productive avenues.
Don’t know what I was thinking last night—I’ve let this crush get too far.
No more sexy daydreaming about Jones. The plan is solo motherhood.
There is no way to do that with a man in the mix.
Helpfully massive job crisis to deal with anyway—it’s less than two weeks until harvest festival, which means the Galoshes problem needs sorting now.
Have decided to tackle this one element at a time.
The most pressing issue is not the in-my-face insubordination, it’s the fact that she’s blocking the coffee and biscuits.
We’re losing precious days to prove the concept—we’re almost out of time.
Had a brain wave on my run this morning, though.
One thing I learned in my old job is that a woman who feels powerful will relax.
And I think Galoshes feels powerless right now.
So as much as I want to show her who’s boss, and force her to do as she’s told…
“How would you do it?” I asked, sitting down opposite her as she ate her lunch on one of the farm shop picnic benches.
She looked startled, and then irritated. Not surprising. This was absolutely an ambush.
“This is my lunch break,” she said, taking a very deliberate bite of her pasty.
“Then you can have the time back. I want to know how you’d do it. How could we introduce coffee and biscuits at the farm shop, but do it the Ormer way?”
Her chewing slowed a little. She swallowed, looking at me with narrowed eyes through her pink-rimmed glasses. I bit down on the anxious impulse to tell her not to worry and that I’d come back later. There was no later. I was out of time.
“The Ormer way? Do you even know what that means?”
“No,” I said. “Not really. I would really like to, though.”
“Well. I suppose I’d offer discounts for locals, so they could afford it, too.”
“Good idea.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“What else?” I asked.
“When they used to serve drinks down at the post office, some of us would just wander over with a mug.”
“Bring your own mug—love it.”
“And the coffee wouldn’t be some fancy forty quid a bag stuff. Just normal coffee.”
Winced a bit at this. But fine—we can still put some nice farm-shoppy touches on the flavor description on the chalkboard. “Amber tones,” “cinnamon-edged,” that sort of thing. I mean, who’s to know? It’s like wine, everyone’s just making it up.
“And any leftovers go to those families on the island who need it. We all know who they are. No fuss, we’d see it gets to where it should go.”
“I’d need a little more detail on that, but absolutely, we would want to avoid waste anyway.”
Galoshes put her pasty down. “Are you serious about this?”