Chapter 5 #2
The call came on a Wednesday a couple of weeks later, just after lunch, whilst I was in the middle of writing a list of “Things I Could Do With My Life That Aren’t Sad”.
I’d made it to number four – “start training to be on Survivor (preferably Australian)” – before my phone buzzed with a number I didn’t recognise.
My instinct was to let it go to voicemail, but I was meant to be working from home on the next event for the rescue, so I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Chloe Barlow?” The voice was unmistakable: bright, vaguely American, and warm. “It’s Jen Maxwell from Gwenynen Hollow.”
“Hi!” I said, way too enthusiastically. “How are you? Is this about the … mead?” I eyed my take-home batch, which hadn’t exploded yet, but I figured it was only a matter of time.
She laughed heartily. “In a way, yes. Do you have a moment?”
I did. I could think of nothing better to do in that moment than talk to Jen Maxwell about mead.
“I’ve been thinking about our talk,” she said, “and I wanted you to know – those ideas you had? I think they’re brilliant. The council loved them, too. They’ve helped us secure a grant we were applying for, actually, so we can put those plans into action.”
I sat up straighter. “Wow, that’s … that’s amazing! Congratulations!”
She went on, her voice speeding up as if she were nervous, which made me nervous, too.
“We want to put on an event series, expand our presence, and improve our press and marketing. It’s a lot, and I could use help.
You seemed to have a knack for this sort of thing.
Would you be interested in joining us for the summer? ”
My mouth went dry. I stared at the journal in front of me, the phrase “be the main character” circled in red on the previous page. “You mean, like, work for you?”
“The hours would be flexible,” Jen said, by way of an answer.
“Say, four days a week, most of which could be remote? And then there are a handful of Saturdays where you would go out to markets and festivals with my niece, who helps me run things over the summer. Maybe help her out a bit on your days here until you get the lay of the land.”
“Your niece?” I asked, mostly as filler, because my brain was going a million miles a minute. I sat forward on my sofa, clutching my chest like my heart might beat right out of it.
“Yes, she’s a bit prickly, but she knows the farm better than anyone. She’ll arrive week after next, actually, so that might be a good time to come on board? What do you think? Do you have a notice period at work?”
“Nope, we’re all good,” I said, knowing full well that I did, but I didn’t care. Had I even imagined something like this was an option for me? No. But it was the ultimate Thing I Could Do With My Life That Wasn’t Sad, wasn’t it?
“So, you’re in? You’d like the job?”
“Hell yes!” I practically shrieked, then realised I should probably try to sound more professional. “I mean, yes, I’d love to.”
“Brilliant.” Jen chuckled, and I sighed in relief. We’d get on just fine. “I’ll email the details. We can sort out paperwork and a start date from there. Sound good?”
I nodded enthusiastically before realising Jen couldn’t hear a nod.
I gave her my email address, said goodbye, and proceeded to chuck my phone so hard at the other end of my sofa that it rebounded onto the floor.
But I didn’t care. The universe was conspiring in my favour, and I was going to be working on a fucking honey farm for the summer.
I hadn’t even known to hope for something like this.
* * *
Over the next few days, I threw myself into prep like a girl possessed.
I speed-ran every free online course on marketing, food and beverage branding, event planning, and social media I could find.
I started a monster spreadsheet and filled it with colour-coded tabs, and I made Pinterest mood boards full of keywords like “event bunting” and “modern rustic picnic tables.” I even started following a bunch of Welsh tourism influencers.
My boss at the animal rescue, on the other hand, was a bit less enthusiastic.
There was a sabbatical policy I could leverage so I didn’t have to quit, given that the contract with the farm was only temporary, but my boss Simone made it very clear that she didn’t appreciate being given so little notice.
I hadn’t made a conscious choice to issue an ultimatum, but she was clearly getting the impression from me that I would quit if I had to, and thankfully she didn’t make me.
I didn’t exactly look super closely at the loose ends I needed to tie up, but Simone wasn’t expecting me this summer, and that was what mattered.
The only other problem was the commute. Gwenynen Hollow was fully in the countryside across the Welsh border, and public transport did not agree with it.
It would take me an hour each way on the bus, plus a thirty-minute walk along rural country lanes.
I thought about trying to learn to drive again, and maybe I would if the trial period turned into something more permanent.
But given that my first and only driving lesson at age seventeen had resulted in the instructor’s Ford Fiesta sinking halfway into a duck pond, I figured I’d better get excited about walking.
Plus, what was more main character than looking out of the window of a moving vehicle at the rolling hills sliding by?
In reality, on my first day, as I navigated to the farm just after lunchtime, the bus smelled like wet sheep and reheated meat pies.
I suspected it would only be worse at seven a.m., but I told myself this was what character building looked like.
The rain held off for my walk, and though my loafers had produced a hell of a blister on my right foot by the time I got there, and I was pretty sure I’d sweated all the way through the blouse I’d worn, looking up the gravel drive at the farm felt like a homecoming of sorts.
I stopped for a second to catch my breath, every muscle in my legs as wobbly as jelly.
I looked down at my hands, one clutching the strap of my purse and the other gripping my phone, and realised I was actually shaking.
This was it. My shot at no longer flitting through life, but doing something that mattered.
To me, to the community, and to Jen and her family.
So I banished the Teddy Voice from my mind once and for all and started up the drive.
* * *
Except now, all the excitement drained from my body into the wooden floor beneath my feet, because the Teddy Voice was very much not banished, and that face that had haunted me for months was right in front of me.
She was wearing jeans with huge holes over the knees and an oversized Patagonia T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, her tanned collarbone jutting out in a way my eyes couldn’t seem to look away from.
Her brown hair – teddy brown; how apt – hung in damp waves around her face, tickling her shoulders.
The gold coin she’d worn around her neck before was still there, and from this distance I could see the design on it was that of a bee.
For three months, I’d been seeing Teddy’s face in my mind. The desire to stick it to her, even if she’d never know it, had fuelled me as I’d planned and worked and, for the first time in years, dreamt.
But if I’d been seeing that face in my mind for months, how had I gotten it so wrong? And how had I not seen it the moment I’d looked at Jen, who could have been Teddy’s doppelg?nger if not for the extra decades?
Perhaps it was the vendetta that had been clouding my memory. I’d remembered her face as more angular – sharper and crueller. But the face I was looking at now, despite the confusion and annoyance clear in the crease of her brow, was soft and beautiful.
It was only the discomfort of my work clothes after a half-hour walk that brought me back into my body so I could speak, and I resolved instantly to play it as cool as possible.
I thought for a moment about pretending not to remember her, but there was something more satisfying about making sure she knew I did.
Unbothered didn’t have to be a bad thing, after all.
Even if I felt very bothered as she shook my hand, the warmth of her skin folding around mine as she squeezed, perhaps a bit tighter than was necessary. I didn’t even know what I was saying to her. I just focused on keeping the smile on my face until Teddy dropped my hand at last.
After that, I tried to focus on what Jen and I had been discussing – how we needed to identify the channels and audiences we currently had before we could start planning the first event, or even set a timeline – but I kept glancing at Teddy out of the corner of my eye.
She watched me from where she stood by the open door, then moved to sit at the table in the middle of the room.
The spaniel I’d met before stayed at her heel the whole time, though it was looking at me and wagging its tail, occasionally glancing up at Teddy as if for permission to come and say hello.
“I’m sure we can sort all that out today,” Jen said, ushering me into the kitchen next door. “But let’s put the kettle on first. I may not be from here, but I’ve been here long enough to know that a meeting can’t start without a hot drink in hand.”
“Too right,” I said, looking over my shoulder to see if Teddy would follow. She didn’t.
I told Jen how I took my tea – one sugar, non-dairy milk if she had it (she did) – then busied myself looking at the bright watercolours everywhere.
Even here in the kitchen, there was barely an inch of space not adorned in some way.
The paintings covering the walls were mostly of flowers and landscapes, though there were a few with fruit, one of a boat, and one of a spaniel that looked an awful lot like the one at Teddy’s feet, with “Willow” written in loping script in the bottom corner.
The paintings were all highly stylised, with nothing in the colour you might expect – the spaniel, for instance, was bright green – but the shading and tone and movement of the painting created an almost lifelike effect anyway.
Looking at the paintings gave me a moment to think.
What did Teddy being here mean for me? Jen had said I’d need to go to events and work around the farm with her niece.
Did that mean I’d be travelling all over the UK with the person who had dressed me down just a few months ago?
How much time would we actually have to spend together?
Was I willing to do that for a job which may or may not work out in the long run, even without this new hurdle?
But maybe it wasn’t a hurdle. Teddy hadn’t immediately had another go at me, so maybe she was over it.
She’d had a pretty bad day last time, after all.
Perhaps she was willing to start afresh.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, actually, and the somersaults that had started in my stomach on seeing her would calm down quickly so we could work together in peace.
Jen excused herself to go and get more oat milk, apparently from another building, as I heard the back door open and shut again, and then footsteps on gravel.
I also heard the scratch of little nails against the wooden floor, and I turned to see Willow tip-tapping her feet at Teddy’s side as she loomed in the doorway.
The crease in Teddy’s forehead had severely deepened, and she sighed in what seemed like exasperation as we made eye contact. Now this was the face I’d remembered.
“Hey,” I said, stepping towards her, ready to try to build the bridge I’d need to walk over. But just like she had at the Ren Faire months ago, she cut me off.
“It’s not gonna fly here,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. I reeled back.
“What won’t fly?”
“Carelessness,” she spat.
“Jesus,” I said, throwing my arms up in defeat. “You have one drunken encounter at a festival thousands of miles away, and you never live it down.”
“Yeah, well, you literally cost me my job. And it’s not like it was a complete accident. You were in an off-limits area. Your flagrant disregard for the rules got me fired, cost the bar a lot of money, and could have seriously hurt someone.”
“If I recall correctly,” I said, stepping forward, knowing I damn well did recall correctly given how many times I’d replayed the day in my mind, “you were breaking the rules, too, not using a trolley. So you were just as responsible as I was for what happened. And besides, I’m not the one who lost her shit over it in public. ”
Teddy stepped forward, too, until we were just inches from one another. Her mouth was at my eye level, and I watched as the corner of her lip twitched downward in rage.
“That job is mine,” she whispered. “If anyone is getting a permanent job at Gwenynen, it’s me.”
My expression dropped into one of confusion. Didn’t she already work for Gwenynen? I knew she was only here half the year, but had Jen brought me on full time over her own niece?
I didn’t have a chance to ask any of the questions swirling through my mind, though, because I heard the back door open again, and Jen walked in, asking if soya milk was okay.
Teddy immediately took a step back, an empty smile appearing on her face in place of the scowl she’d worn just a moment ago.
“Yes, that’s great, thanks,” I said, not looking away from Teddy. I watched her eyes as she watched me back; the scrutiny didn’t go away, even if the frown had. Then she turned and walked back out of the room, Willow still in perfect heel behind her.