Chapter 34
‘Tell me again why we’re doing this on a Saturday night when we could be in some glamorous bar somewhere?’ asked Ella, making a face as she carried on adding to the long paper chain on the table in front of her.
‘Because it’s December tomorrow and we need to decorate the café ready for a hopefully really big Christmas rush next month?’ suggested Lily, trying to unravel some fairy lights on her lap.
‘Because you love coming here and helping out?’ called out Hannah from the top of a stepladder as she hung a star on top of the large Christmas tree in the corner next to the balcony, its reflection sparkling in the glass doors.
‘Er, wrong answers,’ replied Ella.
‘Because we’re all living here in Cranley at the moment and you have to come to us?’ suggested Beth, handing Hannah a couple of baubles to be hung at the top of the tree.
‘Is the right answer.’ Ella sighed. ‘I miss our glamorous nights out in the city.’
‘We haven’t done that for ages,’ replied Hannah, before slowly coming down the stepladder.
‘A fact of which I’m well aware,’ said Ella, in a pointed tone.
Living away from the city for the first time, Beth was beginning to realise that she much preferred living in the countryside. Away from the lure of the Greenwich observatory and her dating disasters, she could see that it wasn’t all that it had promised.
Besides, stars are hard to see at night in the city with all its ambient light, she thought, glancing through the glass. The clouds suddenly parted and the moonlight flooded the lake, making it look like molten silver.
Every clear night, she could head outside and study the skies, filling her soul with celestial wonder.
The endless starry skies were also having a marked effect on her bank account.
Thanks to Ella’s marketing efforts and the success of the meteor showers stargazing nights, her Starry Skies blog had had a huge uptick in both followers and clicks.
She would never be rich, but along with her magazine article and percentage of sales from tickets sold at the stargazing nights, at long last she felt she was beginning to build a career from her passion for astronomy.
There had been other unexpected benefits as well.
‘Did I tell you that I got an email this afternoon from one of the cruise ship companies in Antarctica?’ she told her friends as they all sat down for a well-earned glass of wine.
‘Apparently somebody from the cruise line was here as a hotel guest for the meteor showers recently and now they want me to go there and be a guide for their stargazing cruises at the end of January.’
‘That’s incredible,’ said Hannah.
‘Chance of a girly holiday?’ added Ella, with a grin.
‘Only if you’re paying for the plane tickets,’ muttered Lily.
‘I haven’t said I’d go yet,’ Beth told them, laughing.
‘Why not?’ asked Ella, amazed. ‘It would be an amazing career opportunity.’
Beth nodded her agreement but still wondered why she was hesitating.
The old Beth, scratching out a non-existent career in the city and desperate to get ahead in astronomy, would have snatched the chance to be a guest speaker on a luxurious cruise ship in Antarctica.
And yet, out here in the countryside, she was finally beginning to silence her inner voices and find peace with where she was in life.
She wondered whether it was because finally she had a career of her own. She felt she was beginning to reach the potential that she had always known that she had regarding astronomy.
The feedback from the meteor shower stargazing night had been incredible and given her no end of ideas for the special Christmas night that was already in the calendar and beginning to be booked up already.
In addition, it had fed her a wealth of confidence which she had been sorely lacking until that time.
Jeremy was still hassling her, on the premise of it being about the magazine articles that she was still writing, but he was also trying his best to flatter her into going back out with him, despite assuming that she was still having her fake affair with Noah.
But she now knew that she wasn’t worthy of the way he treated her.
She was worth a thousand Jeremys and finding her self-worth was more than anything that he had ever been able to offer her.
He had never been the right man for her and it had only taken talking to Noah and some time away for her to realise how wrong Jeremy had been about everything.
She was slowly discovering that she was a natural teacher. That she did have something to give back after all her many years of studying. And that she was good at it.
Ella was still chatting away about how amazing a girly holiday would be for them all.
‘I mean, come on, ladies,’ she urged her friends.
‘After all, you all live here now and I’m stuck on my own in the big city with nobody to play with.
My weekends are so boring these days. Who am I supposed to go out with on a Saturday night? ’
‘A date?’ suggested Hannah.
Ella rolled her eyes. ‘The dating apps are all full of non-starters. As if this time of year wasn’t bad enough.’
‘You mean the lead-up to Christmas?’ asked Lily, bewildered at her friend’s attitude. ‘Oh, I love it.’
‘Me too,’ added Hannah.
Ella blew out a long sigh. ‘That’s because you’re all loved up and it’s far easier with Christmas around the corner to snuggle up to someone special under the mistletoe rather than getting a turkey dinner for one like a saddo.’
‘You’re not a saddo,’ Beth told her. ‘And by the way, I’m not loved up either.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Ella raised her eyebrows at Beth in question.
‘No,’ replied Beth. ‘I told you before. That was an entirely fake thing with Noah. And I don’t know if any of you have actually noticed but this is the longest I’ve ever been single or not dated anyone.’
‘We’d noticed,’ Hannah told her. ‘We just didn’t want to upset you by pointing it out.’
‘And how do you feel about that?’ asked Lily.
Beth thought about it. She didn’t know if her break-up with Jeremy had been the last straw or what had changed but she felt stronger, as if she could cope with whatever life threw out at her by herself. She still wanted love and a family of her own but the need wasn’t so great any more.
‘Actually I feel good,’ said Beth truthfully. ‘I’m happily single at last.’ She reached out to squeeze Ella’s arm. ‘You’ll find someone special to love though, I’m sure.’
‘I sincerely hope not,’ replied Ella, looking horrified. ‘When I finally choose who I’m going to be involved with, it’s going to be an entirely business partnership. None of that mushy stuff for me.’
Beth and her friends shook their heads at their friend’s cynical attitude towards relationships and giggled to themselves.
But glancing back at the mistletoe that they had just hung around the café, Beth was transported back to the sweet memories of Noah’s kisses once more before she pushed the idea from her mind, no matter how tempting.