Ten #2
Ivy leaned back against the cushion. Outside, the wind whipped through the bare branches, sending a scatter of brittle leaves skittering across the garden. She too had felt restless, unrooted.
She glanced at Omar, stacking the dishes with habitual care, then at Fred, scratching Jez behind the ears, his expression peaceful.
A small smile touched her lips. She bowed her head slightly, in quiet gratitude. Thank you, she thought.
Ivy had just returned from church when she heard a knock at her door.
When she opened it, her hand flew to her mouth.
Outside, stood Fred and a clean-shaven Omar.
He had also cut his hair. The new smoothness of his jaw made him look younger, less guarded, and she congratulated herself on her perceptions – she’d been right to think of him as a Bollywood actor.
Even his usual scowl seemed to have softened.
‘Fancy walking that dog?’ suggested Fred.
Ivy smiled in agreement as she collected Jez and stepped outside.
Overnight, snow had transformed Brambleton into a Christmas card scene. The puppy clambered through pristine drifts, his excited yaps echoing in the crystalline morning air.
They set off for a wood beyond the village, where leafless branches wore a fragile lace of snow.
Sunlight slanted through the canopy, transforming ice crystals into a dance of diamond dust. The stillness of the air enhanced the winter silence, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of their boots pressing into fresh powder and Jez’s occasional throaty bark when he unearthed some hidden treasure buried beneath the snow’s white shroud.
‘How is the job search progressing?’ Omar asked, surprising Ivy with his politeness.
Ivy winced as something banged against her shins, her thoughts momentarily interrupted by the sharp jolt. She reached down to pull a branch from Jez’s eager jaws, suppressing a weary breath.
‘Not well,’ she admitted. ‘There aren’t many positions for retired vicars.’
Emboldened by his apparent openness, and mindful of Helen’s warning, she added, ‘what about you? Where did you teach after you left university?’
The shutters came down. ‘Does it matter?’
‘People get frozen out sometimes,’ she said carefully.
‘When they cause trouble. You said that yourself.’ Omar was silent, but her words had triggered a memory so vivid it almost took her breath away.
The meeting with Bishop Taylor had been two years ago, but it remained etched in her mind with painful clarity.
Bishop Taylor, a silver haired man with round gold-rimmed spectacles had been working his way methodically through the agenda.
His voice had the practised, drowsy rhythm of someone who’d chaired a thousand such meetings.
The late afternoon sun slanted through the Victorian windows, casting soft oval patterns across the scattered papers and half-empty cups.
‘And now, parish finances,’ the Bishop intoned, shuffling his papers. ‘I believe they’re all in order?’
‘Actually,’ Ivy’s voice cut through the room with the crispness of snapping ice. She could taste metal in her mouth, her heart hammering. ‘I have concerns about the expense reports from the deanery.’
Archdeacon Phillips, lounging in his chair near the Bishop, suddenly sat up straight. His cheeks flushed pink above his clerical collar. ‘My dear, perhaps this isn’t the appropriate ...’
‘When is it appropriate to discuss financial misconduct?’ Ivy leaned forward. ‘Are you telling me we shouldn’t question how money is spent?’
‘Nobody is suggesting ...’ muttered Archdeacon Phillips.
‘That is exactly what you’re suggesting.’ She pulled out the papers she had brought, laying them on the table with careful precision. ‘Five-star hotels for conferences when budget options were available. First-class train tickets ... a seven-course tasting menu with wine pairing ...’
‘These accusations are very serious,’ Bishop Taylor said, his face flushed. ‘And potentially damaging to the Church’s reputation.’
‘Not nearly as damaging as covering up the truth.’
The hush that followed felt heavy as a prayer book.
‘I’ve reviewed the figures three times.’ She felt the eyes of her fellow clergy burning into her, could hear the sharp intake of breath from the vicar beside her. ‘The mileage claims alone are impossible, unless Archdeacon Phillips has found a way to be in three parishes simultaneously?’
The Bishop’s hand curled around the pen so steadily it seemed carved into his hand. ‘Reverend, these accusations are most irregular.’
‘With respect, Bishop, so is claiming ￡427 for a single dinner meeting.’ Ivy’s voice shook.
She could smell her own fear, and her heart was beating so fast she was sure everyone could hear it.
‘My parishioners are farmers, shop workers, pensioners. They donate their money to us, even when they can barely heat their homes.’
‘I think this is premature. There’s no need to burden the Bishop with—’ Archdeacon Phillips began, his voice sharp with authority.
‘Premature?’ Ivy’s palm slapped against the table, making the cups rattle. ‘How long do you suggest we wait? Long enough to ensure the newspapers get hold of it. When our congregations lose faith not just in us, but in what we represent?’
The silence settled between them, dense and impenetrable. Outside, a woodpecker drummed on a tree. Ancient folklore warned they were death’s hollow messenger, announcing the approach of something terrible. Ivy felt sweat trickling down her back, but she held the Bishop’s gaze.
‘Perhaps, we should take a short recess,’ the Bishop said finally, each word measured and heavy. ‘Reverend, my office. Now. Archdeacon Phillips, you will join us.’ He stood, his chair legs squealing against the floor. ‘The rest of you, give us fifteen minutes.’
As chairs scraped back and people moved, Ivy caught fragments of whispered conversations:
‘Never in my twenty years ...’
‘Brave or foolish?’
‘About time someone said—’
She gathered her papers with trembling hands, knowing this moment would change everything.
A shaft of snow slid off a branch and Ivy ducked to avoid it just in time; it smashed into the undergrowth, shocking her out of the memory. She’d done the right thing, pressed her case, even if it had led to her early retirement. The Church had protected itself.
She spoke gently. ‘Why are you in Brambleton, Omar?’
His words snapped like brittle twigs.
‘You don’t need to know.’ he said before striding ahead, off the pathway, leaving deep footprints in the powder.
Fred’s shout drew her attention. ‘Jezreel, no!’ The puppy had wrapped his extending lead around a tree, tangling both himself and Fred in an elaborate web of plastic.
Despite the situation, Fred looked oddly competent as he sorted out the mess, firmly commanding Jez to sit. To Ivy’s amazement, the dog obeyed.
‘How did you manage that?’ she asked as they fell into step together, leaving Omar to forge ahead alone.
‘Dogs need clear boundaries,’ Fred said, then gave her a significant look before angling his eyes toward Omar. ‘Like some people we know.’
Ivy debated telling Fred about Helen’s warning at the Christmas market. Wasn’t he entitled to know if he was harbouring someone dangerous? But the words stuck in her throat.
Instead, she admitted how fond she had grown of Omar, surprised by how easily the confession came. When had Fred become someone she could share such private thoughts with?
Fred’s voice became unusually serious. ‘Ivy, you need to be careful. Men like that – younger men – they can take advantage ...’
‘Oh!’ The idea was so absurd, she almost laughed. Did Fred think she was in love with Omar? ‘No, it’s not like that ... .’ she scoffed.
Fred’s response was comical. His shoulders dropped six inches all at once, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and a sound escaped him – something between a laugh and a hiccup.
Ivy chuckled, too. Fred was right to find it funny – the thought of her, a plump ex-vicar in her late fifties, cavorting with a handsome, educated Afghan in his thirties was patently ridiculous.
She and Fred fell into a companiable silence as they walked back to Brambleton through the white landscape, Fred holding the lead, the little puppy gambolling obediently by his side.
The snow started to fall again, and two fat flakes caught in Fred’s hair.
Ivy wondered what it would be like to brush those snowflakes away.
Just as she was about to point them out, they melted, and she stayed silent.
Ahead, Omar’s dark figure moved through the trees like a shadow, carrying his own silence like a shield.
The contrast hit her like a blast of icy air: Fred, open and jolly beside her, snowflakes melting in his hair like tiny blessings, while Omar moved alone through the cold, carrying his secrets like stones in his coat.
And here she was, drawn to one, trying to protect the other, unsure where either path might lead.
Her instincts told her to ignore Helen’s warning about Omar.
Helen – and Ivy suspected most of the other villagers too – didn’t trust Omar.
But something was about to happen that would prove one of them wrong.