2. Chapter 1
Peter
The Ramblers of St Claire meet on the village green at ten every Saturday, whatever the weather is doing.
Today, it is doing that thin, cold sort of rain that gets under your collar without ever quite committing to becoming proper rain.
Nancy stands by the church gate with a map tucked beneath one arm.
Luke is beside her, holding two travel mugs and looking as though he has accepted this is now part of his weekend routine.
Hunter and Alexandra are a little way off, heads bent together over something on Hunter’s phone.
Mrs Higgins has Bernard on the bench.
Or, more accurately, Bernard has himself on the bench, spread across it like a weary pensioner waiting for the bus. Mrs Higgins stands over him with his lead in one hand.
“Come on, darling,” she says. “You have not even started.”
Bernard opens one eye.
Then closes it again.
I am still watching him when I spot Mandy.
She stands near the edge of the green with a small rucksack over one shoulder and both hands tucked into the pockets of a plum waterproof. Her boots are muddy around the soles, old enough to have seen more than one field, and a pair of little yellow daisy earrings peek out beneath her knitted hat.
I have seen her a handful of times since the night at her cottage two months ago.
A hello across the bar. A quick exchange in the bakery queue. One awkward moment in the Co-op when we both reached for the last bottle of prosecco and then suddenly found the dairy aisle very interesting.
Nothing private.
Nothing that asks either of us to remember her kitchen counter.
She notices me looking.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.”
I nod towards the rucksack. “You look prepared.”
“It has water, a snack and spare socks.”
“Spare socks?”
“It rained last night.”
“You are expecting a flood?”
“I am expecting wet grass.” She glances down at my boots. “You should try planning ahead. It is very soothing.”
I look past her towards Alexandra. “Did she talk you into this?”
“She said I needed fresh air.”
“Did she?”
“She said I had spent too much of the week indoors.”
“Harsh.”
“She was not wrong.”
The way she says it takes some of the joke out of me.
“Bad week?”
Mandy shifts the strap of her rucksack higher on her shoulder. “Long one.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing dramatic.” She looks towards the low hills beyond the village. “A home visit that ran late. More paperwork than any human being needs. A family who needed more help than I could give them in one appointment.”
“That sounds rough.”
“It is part of the job.”
“It can be part of the job and still be rough.”
Her eyes flick to mine.
For a second, she looks as though she might say something else. Then Nancy claps her hands.
“Right, everyone. We’re heading through the lower fields, up to High Wood, then along the ridge and back by the quarry. It’s muddy in places, but nothing too dramatic.”
Mrs Higgins glances down at Bernard.
“Did you hear that, love? Mud.”
Bernard sighs through his nose.
Mandy laughs quietly.
Nancy starts the group moving. Hunter and Alexandra head off together near the front, their fingers interlocked as they walk.
Nancy and Luke follow with the map between them.
Mrs Higgins produces the foil packet from her pocket, and Bernard gets off the bench with such sudden enthusiasm that she nearly loses hold of the lead.
“Bribery,” I mutter.
“He is motivated,” Mrs Higgins calls.
Mandy falls into step beside me as we leave the green.
The lane behind the church is narrow, boxed in by dripping hedges and old stone walls. Water sits in the ruts from the night before. Mandy steps straight through the first puddle, sending a small splash up the side of her boot.
“You brought spare socks for that?” I ask.
“I brought spare socks for later.”
“Very sensible.”
“What else did you expect from me,” she shrugs.
“You say that as though I do not recognise sensible when I see it.”
“You once tried to fix your bathroom tap with a YouTube video and a butter knife.”
“It worked.”
“You flooded the downstairs loo.”
“Temporarily.”
Mandy smiles.
The lane opens into a field. The grass is wet enough to soak the hems of everyone’s trousers. Ahead of us, Bernard stops beside a hedge and begins sniffing at one particular patch with the solemn attention of a detective at a crime scene.
Mrs Higgins waits.
Bernard keeps sniffing.
“Has he found something?” Mandy asks.
“A smell,” Mrs Higgins replies.
“That’s… vague.”
“It is Bernard. The mystery is part of the experience.”
She considers that. “Fair.”
We pass through a kissing gate and follow the path around the back of Market Street. The bank comes into view through a gap in the hedge.
The closure notice is still taped inside the window.
A smiling woman holding a phone. Blue lettering about digital support. A cheery little promise that customers can bank in ways that suit them.
I have read it enough times since Thursday to know every word.
Mandy slows beside me.
“That is your branch.”
“Was.”
She turns her head.
I keep walking.
“Peter?”
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets.
“They’re closing it.”
Her face changes.
“When?”
“End of next month.”
“And you?”
“Redundancy.”
The word sits there between us.
A pair of walkers pass us, arguing about whether a coffee stop should happen before the hill or after it. Ahead, Hunter holds the next gate open while Alexandra waves people through. Nancy and Luke wait on the other side, talking quietly.
“Have they offered you anything else?” Mandy asks.
“Two things.” I look across the field instead of at her. “One job in Leeds. The other’s regional.”
“What would Leeds mean?”
“Ninety minutes each way if the traffic behaves.”
“And regional?”
“Travelling most weeks. Hotels. Meetings. Being paid to sit in rooms while people explain why customers do not need branches anymore.”
Mandy is quiet for a moment.
“Do you want either?”
“No.”
The answer is out before I can make it sound less blunt.
I do not want to be on the motorway before dawn, or come home to a cold house because I have spent four nights in a hotel somewhere I cannot remember.
I do not want to talk about customer journeys and digital solutions while the people who still come into the branch get treated like an inconvenience.
I know who needs a chair before they start talking.
I know which customers bring in envelopes full of notes because they do not trust machines, and which ones only need help with their phone but would rather die than admit it to their grandchildren.
I know Mrs Walker withdraws cash every Friday before the market, and Mr Armitage always asks after Alexandra before he does anything else.
It is not exciting.
It is not impressive.
But it is mine.
Or it was.
Mandy walks beside me, hands back in her pockets.
“You do not have to want either of them,” she says at last.
“I do need a job.”
“Yes.” She turns her head towards me. “But taking the first thing they offer because you are scared is not the same as choosing it.”
I kick a stone off the path.
“I am forty.”
“So?”
“I should have a plan.”
“You had one.”
“It involved the branch staying open.”
“And they changed it.” Her hat lifts in the wind, and she presses it down with one hand. “That is not you failing to have a plan.”
I look at the wet grass ahead of us.
Mandy touches my sleeve near my wrist.
“You have savings?”
“Yes.”
“You have your house?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have time to think.”
“I do not have forever.”
“No one does.” Her hand drops. “But you do not have to decide what the rest of your life looks like before we reach the top of a hill.”
A laugh slips out of me.
“That is a very specific deadline.”
“It is a manageable one.”
“You are always this practical?”
“No.” Her mouth curves. “Sometimes I eat biscuits at my desk and ignore emails for twenty minutes.”
“That is the most rebellious thing I have ever heard.”
“It is in my world.”
I look at her.
She is trying to make me smile without pretending any of this is small. It should not mean as much as it does.
“I do have transferable skills,” I say.
Mandy gives me a wary look. “Do you?”
“I am very good in kitchens.”
Her cheeks colour.
“Peter.”
“What?”
“We are in public.”
“Most people are over there.”
“Mrs Higgins is behind us.”
“She is busy with Bernard the fart beagle.”
“You use jokes when you do not want to talk about something,” she says once we start walking again.
“I use jokes all the time.”
“That is not a defence.”
I do not answer straight away.
The bank has disappeared behind the hedge. All that is left is wet grass, the low rise ahead and Bernard’s stubborn little shape near the back of the group.
“I do not know what I am supposed to do with it,” I say.
“With what?”
“This.” I gesture behind us. “Being angry. Feeling like I should have seen it coming. Having to tell Lexi I have lost my job.”
“She will worry.”
“That is what I am trying to avoid.”
“She will worry whether you tell her now or in three weeks.”
“That is not helpful.”
“It is true.”
I look at her.
Mandy shrugs. “You can be worried and still tell her.”
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No.” She looks ahead. “I just do not think making it complicated helps.”
The hill rises in front of us. It is barely a hill, more of a long slope with ideas above its station. Bernard reaches the bottom, looks up, then lowers himself onto his stomach.
Mrs Higgins sighs.
“Bernard, love. It is barely a rise.”
He turns his head away.
“You walked further than that to steal Luke’s bacon sarnie last month,” Hunter calls from ahead.
Bernard’s ears twitch.
Mrs Higgins reaches into her pocket and takes out the foil parcel.
Mandy looks at me. “Is that a sausage roll?”
“It is.”
Mrs Higgins breaks off a small piece and holds it beneath Bernard’s nose.
“Come on, darling. Just to the top.”
Bernard gets to his feet at once, takes the entire sausage roll from her fingers and waddles up the slope before she can react.
For a moment, Mrs Higgins stares at her empty hand.
“Well,” she says. “That worked.”
Mandy laughs.
It comes out before she can make it small, and she catches my forearm as she bends her head. She leaves her hand there for a second, then lets go.
Bernard pauses halfway up the slope, turns to inspect the group behind him and lets out a fart loud enough to make Hunter stop.
The smell reaches us a moment later.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hunter says.
Nancy takes three quick steps sideways. Luke pulls his collar over his mouth. Mrs Higgins fans the air with the route map, looking scandalised in the way only a woman who has fed a beagle sausage roll can.
“Bernard,” she says. “Honestly.”
Bernard wags his tail.
Mandy is laughing again, wiping at the corner of one eye with her glove.
“That,” she says, “is the least medically concerning thing I have dealt with all week.”
“High praise.”
“Do not tell him.”
“He will be devastated.”
She looks at the hill, then at me.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Up there.” She starts walking. “You can be angry at the bank while we walk.”
“That is generous.”
“I know.”
I follow her up the slope.