Sunday October 5th 2025
We did try to streamline the meeting-Charlie group.
Galoshes, for instance, seemed a superfluous addition, as did I, if we’re honest, but Marly said a firm “She’s coming, too” when I suggested hanging back.
Rog insisted on joining in, because who else would drive us there?
And Red just needed a ride back to the B&B to change.
Was a bit of a squeeze in Rog’s trailer.
Felt very close to a lot of people who were quite annoyed with me.
Should’ve known there was no such thing as a ready-made new life. The past doesn’t disappear just because you hit restart.
On the plus side, astonishingly, I hadn’t fallen apart.
Anxiety was almost unbearable. But actually, my great big worst possible thing was happening: everyone thought badly of me right now.
I was completely exposed to their judgment.
And I hadn’t run. Had said sorry. Had let everyone feel what they needed to feel without trying to justify my actions or wriggle my way out of it all somehow.
I was sticking around, sitting with the discomfort (understatement.
Feel like I want to claw the dread out of me) and I was going to do my best to make it right.
“So, let me get this straight,” Berty said to me, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees as Rog fired up the tractor engine.
“Brianna told you that Charlie had gotten a job offer working in a farm shop here, but had decided not to take it. So you thought it was going spare…and decided to pretend it was yours?”
“It sounds very bad when you say it like that,” I said. My voice shook. “I really didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“What about us?” Marly asked.
I cringed. “I promise you, if I’d sucked at this and the farm shop had made no money, I’d have left. That was something I told myself from the start. I would only stay if I genuinely did a good job.”
Which had not helped with the anxiety about getting the committee on my side.
“Well. Fair play. I checked the ledgers in the back room yesterday. This week, the shop is making more than twice what it made this time last year, and bringing in the biscuits and coffee has made a massive difference.”
There was a shocked pause. That interjection had come from Galoshes.
“What?” She shrugged, lifting her chin in my direction.
“I’ve always known there’s something off about her.
Now I know what it is. We’ve all done shit we’re not proud of here, haven’t we?
Ormer’s swimming with people who wanted to start over, and nobody wants to start over because they’ve made such a great go of it the first time.
She lied, but the only harm she did was something she could hardly have guessed would happen. ”
“And in fairness, Charlie herself had the same idea as Aspen,” Oliver said.
The sound of my real name in his voice made the hairs stand up on my arms.
“That’s why Charlie gave it to me,” he went on.
“It was the ideal opportunity for a fresh start. I should have thought of it, actually—the idea that you and I came to the job via the same route,” he said to me.
Another fleeting moment of eye contact, enough to make my cheeks heat.
He was the only person I wanted to look at me.
“The job and the name were ripe for the taking, so…two of us took them.”
“And Charlie wanted you to do this? She suggested it?” Berty said to Oliver.
Could see how much it was all pissing him off.
His jaw was tense and he was back to fiddling with his bloody cap again.
He told me once that his ex-wife thought it looked cool when he wore it backward—might explain why I always found the affectation so annoying.
In retrospect, Berty had talked a lot about his ex-wife.
“Look, there’s nothing to feel insecure about—she and I are just friends,” Oliver assured him, “and we have been for a long time. Ever since Fearne died.”
Was Fearne the person Oliver had spoken about on the beach that night? The one he’d lost? After weeks of knowing so little about his past, I was suddenly immersed in it, and it felt so surreal. Like starting again, or…the opposite, I don’t know.
“I suspect Charlie hoped I’d tell her all about you, actually, Rosie,” Oliver said.
“Did you?” Rosie breathed.
He smiled one of his tiny, warm smiles, and nodded.
“I can’t believe she’s here,” Rosie whispered. “I can’t believe she’s ready to meet me at last.”
Had been very much in the moment until this point—there’s only so much you can absorb when you’re this anxious, and, if we’re honest, this confused.
But it suddenly hit me that I was on my way to see the real Charlie Jones.
We’d met back when I was a kid and had chatted briefly at Brianna and Stuart’s wedding, but I didn’t know her particularly.
Had always thought she seemed fun and dressed well.
Since dating Berty, I’d added a few more opinions, many of which were probably a bit unjust, but it’s hard to think pure, kind thoughts about the ex-wife of your boyfriend, especially when a little buried bit of you knows he’s still in love with her.
Realized she would probably be pretty angry when she discovered I’d stolen her job. And her name. Doubt she liked me much before even getting to that stuff, for all the same reasons I’d not particularly liked the idea of her, either.
“Oh, God,” I whimpered, very quietly.
“Are you doing OK?” Red asked beside me. “It’s all out there now. It must be a bit of a relief, right?”
“Oh, oh,” I said, turning to her and clutching her hands. It wasn’t all out there yet. “I’m a midwife.”
Her eyes widened slightly.
“As in,” I backpedaled, before I revealed Red’s pregnancy to the whole trailer and thus pissed off the one remaining person who seemed to like me, “I’ve wanted to tell you that for ages, because we were talking, weren’t we, about how Doc Laurry should hire a midwife on the island…”
Glanced at Marly, who was looking at me with a slightly warmer expression.
Suppose she thought that was why I’d decided to stay on the island when pregnant even though there was no qualified midwife here.
And that had been the idea—it was the reason I felt comfortable planning to start a family on the island.
It would’ve been lovely to explain that and be free of all the lies, but this one wasn’t mine to dispel.
“Right! We were talking about that!” Red said, a bit too loudly, as though she was performing in a pantomime. She really was a terrible liar.
“You’re a midwife?” Oliver said.
He was looking at me wonderingly. My stomach flipped when our eyes met, just like it always did back when he was Jones. Guess my body hadn’t got the memo that this man was a stranger now.
“I am,” I began, and then I stopped short, because a thought hit me.
Charlie Jones didn’t want a baby. Brianna had told me that as soon as I’d started dating Berty—she’d known how badly I wanted a family before I’d been ready to admit it to myself.
Oliver had been in a relationship with Charlie before coming here. Does that mean he didn’t ever want a baby, either?
Not that it matters. This is exactly why I wasn’t getting involved with Jones Oliver. No men, nobody else’s opinion to consider.
But judging by the way my stomach plummeted when I remembered that Charlie Jones had never wanted a baby…
I’ve been considering Oliver’s opinion already, without even noticing.
For fuck’s sake. When will I learn?
When we arrived at the farmhouse, there was a bit of kerfuffle in the corridor outside Puffin room as everyone faffed about deciding who should be the one to knock on the door.
In the end, we assembled in an impromptu ranking of how important it was for us to see the real Charlie Jones, and it went like this:
Berty (worried ex-husband clearly itching to reproclaim his love)
Rosie (probably long-lost sibling, but too nice to tell Berty this meant she should definitely go first)
Marly (supportive sister-in-law who has put up with a lot of Charlie Jones–related trouble)
Oliver (?? Ex-boyfriend, now very good friend, apparently? Not that I should care, etc.)
Galoshes (pushy)
Me (hiding)
Red and Rog stayed in the kitchen to make a round of tea.
Tried to stick around with them, but Marly looked daggers at me and said, “Nobody ever sorted their life out by hiding in the kitchen.” So I watched in sickened anticipation as Berty knocked on the door of Puffin room and called a soft, “Charlie?”
Would she recognize me? If Oliver had been filling her in on everything going on here, he’d presumably mentioned the other Charlie Jones.
She’d probably not worked out who I was, either—the only person who could have cleared it all up was Bri, I suppose, as she’s the one person who knew us all.
Plus her husband, Stuart, whose birthday party I’d been at when I’d gone home with Berty.
Wiped my sweating palms on my trousers and considered becoming a person who prayed. Though, I thought, what exactly was I praying for? That Charlie Jones wouldn’t think badly of me? Of course she would. She should, frankly.
For a second out there in the corridor I imagined the whole thing from Charlie’s point of view.
She was here to meet her sister. She was about to see her ex-husband for the first time since…
that funeral Berty went to back in the spring?
That was the only time he’d told me he’d seen Charlie since the separation. So this was a big day for them.
I, meanwhile, was a woman who’d dated her husband while they were apart—a temporary blip in their love story. I did not matter.
It sounds so obvious, but the thought totally floored me.
Suddenly properly understood what Rosie had been saying that night we’d stargazed together.
I spend all my time wondering what everyone thinks of me, when the reality is they’re hardly thinking of me at all.
Yes, Charlie likely won’t be best pleased to hear what I’ve done.
But how freeing to realize that actually, I’m a tiny speck in the great big tapestry of her life, and this moment right here with Rosie was her story, not mine.