Chapter 7
SEVEN
‘A retreat? At the farm? Reet, it’s only ten o’clock, don’t tell me you’ve been on the sherry already!’
Rita smiled at the familiarity of her best mate’s Cockney accent.
‘One sec, Kel.’ Pushing in her earbuds, she continued to scrape burnt soup from the bottom of a pan. She’d meant to soak it last night. She’d meant to do a lot of things.
‘I’m serious, Kelly.’ Rita sighed, throwing the pan back in the soapy water and wiping her hands with a tea towel.
‘I’ve got the peace, I’ve got the quiet, the sea air, two beautiful beaches down the road, mud, plenty of mud.
You can’t move online without being lured to survive on just fruit juice in some fancy resort for the joylessly thin, or someone sobbing into a mug of cacao saying it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them. ’
‘But you hate yoga, and the one and only time you did Pilates, you couldn’t walk for a week.’
‘I don’t hate it,’ Rita replied, defensively. ‘I’m just suspicious of any activity that makes me fart involuntarily.’
They both laughed heartily.
‘Rita Jory, née Brown’ – Kelly reverted to the tone she reserved for both her husband and her particularly maddening beauty clients – ‘I’ve known you since we were eleven years old. You’re grieving. You’re lonely. You can’t just have a load of random strangers sleeping under your roof.’
‘I’m not talking about random strangers.
I would be selective. Hopefully, the sort not to steal the towels.
Maybe even a bit… woo-woo. Saying that, they can bring their own towels.
And they won’t be under my roof. I was thinking more of yurts in the High Meadow than a deluxe double with a courtyard view. ’
‘Oh God, yes.’ Kel sounded excited now too. ‘That would mean having to clean. And you don’t want to be doing too much of that. And I guess if they are a bit woo-woo, as you say, they won’t care about luxury.’
Rita put on an affected voice. ‘The natural world can become their temporary home.’
Kelly giggled. ‘Look at you with your yurt talk. And what the deuces do you mean by woo-woo?’
‘You know. Crystals. Meditation. Ecstatic dance.’
‘Ecstatic dance? That sounds a bit pervy, if you ask me.’
Rita sat down on one of the mismatched wooden chairs at the kitchen table.
Henry had been on one of his regular wanders around the farm, and barked at the window to be let in.
She got up to open the door for the old labrador, while continuing to think out loud.
‘Maybe I can invent some new activities. How about a bit of naked star and moon watching out in the fields? And I’m sure that there was a programme on the other Sunday showing goat yoga too?
YES! That would be free to run as well! I just need to gen up on the universe and teach the girls how to balance on the back of a downward dog and we’re sorted.
No one ever need know they are coming to the Fawlty Towers of fitness. ’
Kelly guffawed. ‘If any of it involves getting naked with Jago Jenken from Hawthorn Acre then I’m in.’
‘Kel! Who’s being pervy now! You only met him the once, when his tractor careered through the back field, didn’t you?’
Kelly laughed. ‘Once met, never forgotten, that stud.’
Despite the long-standing Jory–Jenken tension, Rita had to admit that the few times their paths had crossed, there had been something about the neighbouring farmer: a wicked sort of charm she used to ogle from afar without it ever feeling like she was misbehaving.
Rita laughed back. ‘Don’t let your Ron hear you say that.’
‘He wouldn’t even notice. He’s getting on my wick at the moment. In fact, I was thinking I may come down for Easter if you don’t mind. On my tod.’
‘Sennen and Alex may be coming then, too, so yes, the more the merrier.’
‘Perfect. My Dylan is on manoeuvres. He’s not even allowed to tell me where at the moment. So, I’d love to get out of London for a break.’
‘And Kel, I know it might sound mad to you, but I need to try something. The farm’s not going to run itself, and the finances are… well, they’re a bit of a mess. I don’t want to sell it. I can’t.’
‘So, what are you waiting for, Gwyneth Paltrow?’ Kelly laughed. ‘You’d better get down that work shed and start whittling a new sign for this retreat of yours.’
Rita ended the call and slowly shook her head.
Dear Kelly was practical, sharp, and allergic to nonsense.
That was why she loved her. But it had been a long time since she had felt even a tiny flicker of enthusiasm about anything.
The retreat idea had planted itself in her like a seed, and for the first time since the funeral, she wasn’t just surviving the day. She was imagining something beyond it.