Saturday October 4th 2025
Spent the afternoon with Red—am now pretty desperate to get her to see a midwife, and tell someone else she’s pregnant.
Starting to feel horribly guilty. Marly keeps talking to me about leaving the island and I can’t explain why that’s really not necessary, and meanwhile Red still hasn’t had any of the checkups she needs at this stage of her first trimester, and I can’t figure out how to help her without telling someone. Ugh.
Anyway, was really looking forward to the hearty stew Jones said he was making us tonight.
But came home to find the stables cold, dark and empty.
No idea where he is. Have got the log burner going and am currently in the bath, with lots of bubbles, making the most of having the place to myself.
But I’m a bit…sad. Don’t think of him as a guy who promises to do something and then doesn’t follow through.
A helpful reminder to stay focused, really.
Fertility clinic appointment tomorrow—my journey starts here.
My journey. Am thinking of Red, hugging her knees on her B&B bed, agonizing over how to tell Toby about the baby, wondering what he’ll say, what it’ll mean for their relationship, and am reminded of exactly why I didn’t want to hand that kind of power to a man.
Currently on the crack-of-dawn ferry to Guernsey.
Feels very wrong watching Ormer shrink away behind me.
The reverse of my first entry in this diary, the first day of my new life.
Which is ridiculous! I’m not leaving, nothing is coming to an end.
Just have an appointment—an exciting one.
I guess being here on the deck is reminding me how much Ormer feels like home now. Don’t ever want to have to leave.
On the way back now, and my head is full of that awful anxious white noise feeling, but let me try to write a bit about what happened in Guernsey.
It was so busy and hectic after life on Ormer.
Cars seemed to be traveling at a hundred miles an hour, and the shop fronts seemed so bright and garish, the other boats in the harbor so gigantic.
Actually totally…hated it. The air tasted sour and nasty to me, and the trees dotting the roadside looked like over-pruned imitations of real ones.
God knows what I’d think of London these days.
The fertility clinic was up the hill, about a twenty-minute walk. It was cool inside. There were lots of plants around, the kind with little gray pebbles inside their pots.
“Could you fill out this form for me, please?” the receptionist said.
Name.
Address.
Previous address.
GP’s address.
National Health Service number.
Stared down at the form and realized how delusional I’ve been.
Those tests back in London were in my old name.
Everything was in my old name. I can play at being Charlie Jones in the strange world of Bramblebay, Windward Ridge and the Pirate’s Den pub, but outside of the dreaminess of Ormer’s little bubble, there’s a system. We have to identify ourselves somehow.
What will I put on my child’s birth certificate?
What will I say when she asks about my life before she was born?
What will I tell her when she questions where she’s from, when she wants to know about the Joneses?
It hit me right there in the clinic. Becoming Charlie Jones was only ever a fantasy of a life, and I want more than that. I want a future.
Still on the ferry back to Ormer, out on the uncomfortable wooden benches on the deck with my back to everyone so nobody can tell I’m crying half the time.
Just rang Brianna.
“How do you think Mum would feel if I tried to get back in touch?” I asked her.
“Are you kidding me? She’d throw a fucking party! All would be forgiven.”
Not sure about that.
“Yeah, she likes to hold a grudge, but not when it comes to you. You were always her little bestie. She calls me every two days to check up on you, you know that?”
“Really? She does?”
“Look, I get why you drew a line with her in the spring—you needed the space to grieve, she was expecting you to be at her beck and call coaching her through it…It was a mess. You were right to set some boundaries. But she and I both knew you wanted a family and weren’t saying it out loud.
I’m sure she was extra clingy and needy because that’s the only way she knows how to be close with you. She was trying to be there for you.”
“By constantly ringing me to talk about how sad she was that Dad died?”
“I didn’t say it was a good method. But I think if you reached out to her now and opened up to her about wanting to have a kid on your own…”
“She won’t get it. She’ll say ‘a baby needs two parents’ and I’ll just feel horrible and completely lose sight of what I think about the whole thing.”
“I don’t know. You’re stronger than you used to be—I don’t think that would shake you the way it would have, once.
And I reckon she’ll get it more than you think.
You know, when I had the miscarriage, she told me she and Dad tried for four years before she had you.
Hence the age gap between us. She wanted the whole ‘two under two’ thing, but instead we’re five years apart. ”
“You’re kidding. How do I not know this?”
“People don’t talk about fertility and stuff. I mean, fucking hell, you were so unwilling to talk about how badly you wanted kids that you moved to an island in the middle of the Channel and told everyone to call you Charlie.”
That made me laugh. “That was your idea, thank you very much.”
I mean, really, it was Brianna through and through, wasn’t it? My bad-influence big sister, who used to pinch us Wispas from the corner shop on Friday afternoons, who got her first job in telly by walking onto the set of Eastside Close and pretending to be a runner.
Look at this, her message had read, with the photo of that handwritten letter. Charlie’s been offered this job, but she’s just told me she’s not taking it! Crazy, right? What a missed opportunity!
Had always loved Brianna’s updates on Charlie—classic shameless, boundaryless Bri.
When Brianna sent me the picture of the letter, I’d just quit my job in a tearful blur, decided to end yet another failed relationship, dyed my hair and cut myself an extremely high-risk fringe, and was facing the terrifying reality that I wanted a family more than anything, but was once again single.
After years of trying so hard at everything, I had ended up with nothing.
What a total dream of a job, I had messaged back. Can’t believe she’s giving that up! xx
Brianna had called me immediately.
“So,” she’d said, without a hello, “I have an amazing idea. You take it.”
“I take what?”
“The job.”
“Charlie’s job?”
“She’s taken your man, babe.”
“She has not. He’s not my man anymore. And as far as I’m aware, he’s not her man again yet.” I paused. “Is he?”
“OK, well, no, but she’s been messaging him. Since before you officially broke up, I’m pretty sure.”
“You like Charlie. Are you this much of a bitch to all your friends?”
“I just know where my loyalties lie! She’s a friend, you’re my sister. End of story. Plus she’s been the flakiest flake for the last three months since her mate died—”
“Bri! I imagine she’s probably been grieving?”
“I know, I know, why do you think I’ve been going around to check on her so much!
I am actually officially worried about her, to be fair, but she’s refusing to talk to me about what’s up, so I’ve put someone else on the case.
Someone more touchy-feely. Anyway, you’re not taking anything off her because she doesn’t even want it. It’s a dreamy new life going to waste!”
“Brianna…”
“The first thing I thought when I saw that letter was, Oh my God, it’s like these people exist in another time, sending handwritten letters and being like, just rock up and turn right at the cow field!
How easy would it be for someone to scam them?
And then Charlie says she’s not going to take the job, and I’m thinking… well, someone should, right?”
“Bri, don’t be crazy.”
“That is like saying, Water, don’t be wet. You know this. But you also know I’m a genius.”
“It’s immoral! Like you say, it’s a scam. That job was offered to Charlie.”
“Charlie will have lied through her teeth to get it.”
“Then it should go to someone else who applied.”
“Or to you. Why not? It’s not a scam if you’re only trying to do a good job, is it? You’d be great at running a farm shop! It’s perfect—you desperately need a fresh start. You might even end up building a life there—a cute little island community could be the perfect place for a single mum…”
I remember how a shiver had gone through me when she’d said that.
But not a bad shiver, an excited shiver.
A decade ago I’d have rather died than be a single mum.
It would have scared the hell out of me.
But I was thirty-seven. I wanted a baby so badly that sometimes I thought of little else, despite constantly telling myself I was in no rush, didn’t mind waiting, blah blah blah.
Was the next step really downloading Hinge again, scrolling through all the mediocrity, no doubt settling for less than we deserved?
Was it really better for my hypothetical child for me to rush into a relationship with yet another man who’d probably end up leaving me one day?
“I don’t even know if they have, like, maternity care on this island of hers,” I’d found myself saying. I was already half-gone.
“Are you kidding me? You’re always going on about how you hate the medicalization of pregnancy and birth, you big hippy. And what a perfect place to raise a kid! They could run wild on the cliff tops and eat organic stuff from your shop! Ooh, I’m googling, there’s a little school there.”
“Oh my God,” I’d said, melting. “An island school?”
“There’s nothing to stop you from doing it. I’ll be your reference, if they ask for one.”
“What if Charlie’s already turned it down? Said she’s not coming?”
“She hasn’t. I asked. She said something vague about how that wouldn’t be necessary—she’s just going to flake and not show up, hundred percent.
This is Charlie we’re talking about. Literally all you have to do is say you’re called Charlie Jones,” Brianna had said.
“You’ve never liked your name anyway. Come on.
It would be fun. And rebellious. You’ve never rebelled in your life, you might like it.
You know it’s always suited me very well. ”
“Until you got married to a man called Stuart and settled down and had two babies.”
“Becoming a boring suburban mum was the most surprising thing I could do by the time I hit thirty-five and you know it. Why are you not loving this plan as much as I am? It’s a ready-made new life.”
“I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“Why not? I mean, come on, you want to. And have you ever in your life done something because you wanted to, and not because you thought it would impress someone else?”
“Wow. Ouch.”
Most of the people in my life back on the mainland thought of me as confident, bold, outspoken—not the sort of person who pandered to the opinions of others. But Brianna knew the truth. That’s sisters for you, I guess.
Though Jones saw the true me pretty quickly, too. That night in the rain at the lighthouse, when he’d looked me right in the eyes and told me he liked me better when I wasn’t faking anything…
Anyhow, I’d told Bri that it would have been wrong—it was stealing. But even as I’d said it, if I’m totally honest, the thought of nicking this from under Charlie’s nose had been a little satisfying, given the context.
“Who gets hurt?” Brianna had asked.
“Well…I guess…the people who own the farm and end up with a really inexperienced farm shop manager?”
“Screw that, you have a degree, you’ve got experience working in retail…”
“I worked at Next in my sixth form summer.”
“Right! Great! I think you’ll be amazing at the job. You have watched a lot of Hallmark movies.”
“This isn’t how the world works. I can’t just pretend to be someone else.”
“Please! You’ve been pretending to be someone else for years. This is a chance to be yourself at last, Aspen.”
Just never, ever imagined the lie could get so big.
Am last off the ferry—what you get for hiding away on the deck—and just saw a guy filing off the boat who looked…
terrifyingly familiar. Got major heebie-jeebies.
Am reminding myself that many men wear their cap backward.
In fact, Jones was when I first saw him at the harbor all those weeks ago. (Charlie Jones, I mean—Ormer Jones.)
Oh my God, I think it’s him. I think it might actually be him?!
I can’t believe this. What’s he doing here? On Ormer? My Ormer?
Oh, God. It is him.
It’s Berty Jones.