The Lost Guide to Life and Love
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Had I been right to let Jake go? My new-found confidence after the fire-lighting success was beginning to ebb away. Never mind just now, this evening, tonight—what about next week, next month? What was going to happen?
As I drew the sitting-room curtains I could see that outside everywhere was grey and misty. Seriously creepy. My heart thudded in panic. Where were the lights? There were no lights! All my life I have lived with streetlights, advertising lights, car lights, lights from shop windows, petrol stations, tube stations. I don’t do darkness. Don’t think I’ve ever really seen it. There was a glow of murky yellow light from the farmhouse below and, apart from that, nothing. Just a thick, misty, grey silence, smothering the house and miles of moors in all directions, swallowing everything up. Despite the heating and the fire, I shivered. What was I doing?
There was a sudden noise outside. I leapt back from the window, my heart racing. Then laughed at myself, a little shakily. A sheep. Of course it was a sheep—there were hundreds of them outside. I listened carefully and I could hear the sound they made as they tugged the grass up with their teeth and chomped away. Amazing what you can hear in the country. I closed the curtains again carefully, shutting out the mist and the moors, pretending they weren’t even there.
On the deep stone windowsill was a curious collection of objects. A clay pipe, some small ridged blue bottles, a larger green one, two doughnut-shaped circles made of clay, I think, with holes in the middle, a brooch with no pin, a bone comb with no teeth, a Victorian penny…
They were, I supposed, all things that had been found round and about. Small objects lost or thrown away hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more years ago, by people who had lived here. I thought of that huge grey misty emptiness. Hard to imagine that anyone had ever lived here, so remote from anywhere.
Gently picking up the brooch, I wondered who’d worn it and when, who’d bought it for her and why? Who had used the comb or the liquids from the little bottles? They’d lived here, probably surrounded by mist and sheep too. And they’d been my ancestors. Down the years, I felt a small connection with them, whoever they had been. This had been their home. For now, at least, it was mine.
My tummy rumbled. And I remembered that the little box of emergency supplies I’d packed for our supper—cold chicken, cheese, bread, butter, a bottle of wine, was still in the boot of Jake’s car. This definitely wasn’t the place where you could dial up a pizza. Even if the phone worked. I wondered idly where the nearest takeaway was and I remembered something from Mrs Alderson’s notes.
‘Ready meals in freezer. Price list on lid. Settle up at end of stay. Emergency cupboard in back porch. Anything used from this MUST be replaced as soon as possible. Very important. Thank you!’
I looked in the freezer at a neat stack of obviously homemade dishes. Lamb casserole. Lamb stew. Lamb and capers. Lamb curry. I thought of the sheep whose bleat had made me jump. ‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘I know where you’ll end up.’
There were also some pork, beef and chicken meals too. It seemed rude to eat lamb while the creatures were roaming round outside. So I opted for a chicken and herb casserole and bunged it in the microwave. While I was waiting for it to ping, I went to look at the Emergency cupboard in the back porch. Candles, Primus stove and gas cylinders, torches, a couple of lanterns, a tin marked ‘matches’, tins of beans, sardines, corned beef, tuna, soup, a selection of vacuum-packed ready meals, two pairs of wellies, a spade and a snow shovel. Thank goodness it was still only October.
I found the wine in the fridge—thank you, Mrs Alderson—and what with that and the casserole—very good, proper chicken, with parsley and lemon and a touch of thyme, followed by some of the light, crumbly Wensleydale cheese—I had a very nice supper in front of the fire. Being independent, I found, makes you quite hungry. Yes, of course, I still felt a bit nervous, but I was warm and cosy and had already got used to the sound of the sheep.
I thought about Jake. Had I been a bit too hasty? It would be much nicer if he were here with me, beside me on the squashy sofa, watching the flames in the fire…Except we probably wouldn’t be, would we? He’d be working or watching what he wanted on television. I cradled the phone in my hand and looked at Jake’s picture on the screen. Did I really love him? Did I miss him? Had I ever loved him?
The last few weeks had been tricky. Jake had been moody, distracted. When I was talking to him he had hardly been listening to me. His mind was elsewhere. I wondered if he’d found someone else. He had plenty of opportunity with his work.
Maybe he was just fed up with me. I sometimes wondered if we’d only got together because we were the two left behind when everyone else had paired off. Yes it was good, but…We still had separate lives. Or rather he still had a separate life. I gazed into the flames and tried to find answers. There weren’t any there. Not tonight at least. I was suddenly very tired.
After locking the doors and windows—and going round them all again to make sure I had—I went up the stairs, singing loudly as I went. I needed a noise. I didn’t like the silence. I wasn’t used to it. Another thing I’d never known. At home there was always a buzz from the street and from the other flats. You’d hear people going up and down the stairs, the distant murmurings from a television, music or bathroom. I regularly went to sleep with the noise of the drunks rolling home and woke to the sound of traffic. But here there was nothing. Apart from the sheep, all I could hear was my own heartbeat, pounding away more loudly than usual.
I sang louder, wondering what people would think if they saw me. The double bed seemed very big and cold without Jake alongside me. I shivered slightly. ‘Good night’, I said to his photo on the phone, preparing myself for a night of worrying, as outside the mist swirled, the sheep bleated. I was miles from anywhere, with no man, no car, no phone signal, no Internet. Utterly alone.
Chapter Four
I slept like a log. It was gone eight o’clock when I opened the bedroom curtains and peeped out on a sunny autumn morning. I could see for miles to some distant smoky blue hills. In the farmyard below me the day had clearly begun hours before. Cows were wandering back to a field, followed by a young lad with a big stick, a couple of dogs were barking and someone was loading bales of hay onto the back of a quad bike.
I showered quickly, made some coffee and wondered what to do that day. I had only myself to think about. Odd. And only I could decide what to do. Odder still. There was no one else to dictate to me or to discuss it with. I had work to do but not for a few days. I was completely free. Which was wonderful but unnerving too. I tried to think, to make a mental list.
If I was going to stay here on my own then I needed to get in touch with the outside world. I needed to be able to use my phone and the Internet. I needed to do some shopping, buy some food. Where were the nearest shops? And how would I get there? Admiring the view was all very well, but I needed to be out and about. Above all, I desperately needed a car. I was well and truly stuck. I had already arranged a couple of Foodie interviews for the week and how was I to get there? Totally impractical. What an idiot I was to think I could. Jake was right, after all. But I didn’t want him to be. Maybe, after all, I should get in touch with him…
I thought about all this while I drank the coffee and then made some more, lingering at the window to drink in the view. But I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit here all day.
I had just decided that I would walk down to the farm and consult Mrs Alderson, maybe ask if I could use her phone—quite simple really—when I heard a car struggling up the hill and then pull up outside the house. Jake! I unlocked the door and stood there, suddenly somehow shy, wondering what was going to happen.
Had last night just been a tiff—the latest of many that could just be forgotten, smoothed over? I’d proved my point, stayed the night by myself. Maybe we could just get back to where we were. But was that what I really wanted?
Jake smiled at me, a polite smile, not unfriendly, but he didn’t rush and kiss me. ‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ I said. I didn’t rush and kiss him either. Part of me was relieved to see him. But another part wasn’t quite so sure. It looked as though I could get things back to normal, but already I was wondering if I wanted to. Coffee?’ I offered, at ease in my new home.
‘No thanks. Just had some.’
I looked, questioningly.
‘Found a bed and breakfast, back down the dale. Bit old fashioned but pretty decent. Internet access and a reasonable mobile phone signal. Enormous breakfast. It’s a double room. I said you might be joining me. I thought…’
It would have been so easy. I could have just packed my little bag, given the key back to Mrs Alderson, and gone to the B & B with Jake. No problem. If he’d come back the night before, when those sheep had started bleating and made me jump, I probably would have done. But as it was, I had done a night on my own, surrounded by mist and sheep. I had not only coped, I had also envisaged a future without Jake.
‘I don’t think so. But thank you,’ I said.
He looked aghast. ‘You’re not staying here? You can’t!’
‘I can,’ I said, feeling more determined.
‘But you can’t use your phone! And there’s no Internet.’
‘There is at the pub.’ I was surprised at how calm I was. How easy everything suddenly seemed. ‘What I need is a car.’
‘Take mine,’ said Jake instantly. He was, after all, a decent bloke. ‘And I’ll hire one. We probably need two anyway, if we’re both working. We should have thought of that. Come on.’ He reached out and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘This is silly, Tilly. You don’t really want to be here by yourself, do you?’
It was good to feel his arm around me. But I also knew it wasn’t right. Not any more. And I was also suddenly irritated by the way he called me Silly Tilly. People always thought that was so original…I hadn’t minded so much before, but lately he’d been doing it more often and suddenly I’d had enough. I thought of the samplers on the sitting-room wall. ‘Carpe diem’. ‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil.’ So I took a deep breath and I did.
‘I don’t think there’s much point in being with you, Jake,’ I said, carefully. ‘I don’t think things are the same any more. Something’s changed. These days you don’t seem to be with me really.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But I’m working on this project…’
‘…about football club owners.Yes, I know.’
‘Well, not entirely. There’s more to it than that and the more I looked into it, the more I found. There’s a lot of very dodgy stuff going on.’
‘What sort of dodgy?’ Despite myself, my curiosity was sparked.
‘There are some very unpleasant characters involved, not least Simeon Maynard. Everyone knows there’s something going on, but nobody’s talking and it’s impossible to prove. I’ve been trying for weeks.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me? You’re working on this really big story and yet you say hardly a word about it to me. Doesn’t say much about sharing, does it?’
‘No, well, sorry, but I have talked it over with Flick.’
‘Flick?’
‘You know, Felicity Staveley, from college. Well, she’s now working on that investigative programme on Channel Nine, and she said—’
Flick. Felicity Staveley with her perfect hair and gallons of confidence. She was meant to be a lowly TV researcher, but had already appeared on screen looking stunning and knowledgeable.
‘So are you and…Felicity, well, are you…?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Jake quickly. Too quickly. ‘It’s just that she has lots of contacts and we’re old friends and it seems logical.’
‘Of course,’ I said coldly. ‘Absolutely logical.’
Only Jake could fancy another woman for her contacts book. But Felicity’s ambition was a match for his and I knew then that I had well and truly lost Jake. And I didn’t even mind. Well, not much. I felt oddly distant from him. This was all so unreal anyway—this place was another world. ‘Look, if you don’t want to be without the phone and the Internet, keep in touch with…Felicity, why don’t you stay at your bed and breakfast? But I want to stay here.’
‘You can’t stay on your own.’
‘Jake, will you please stop telling me what I can or cannot do. Of course I can!’ And hey, I so enjoyed saying that—especially when I saw the stunned expression on Jake’s face. ‘But I need a car.’ I flipped through Mrs Alderson’s folder. There was a leaflet about taxi and car hire from a garage about ten miles away. ‘If you take me to the garage so I can hire a car, that would be helpful. Thank you.’ My tone was brisk and businesslike.
‘But…’ Jake looked as if he wanted to carry on arguing, persuading, talking. But he also looked baffled. He wasn’t used to my taking decisions so calmly. He suddenly shrugged. ‘OK, Tilly,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It is.’
Maybe it was my imagination. But I thought he looked relieved.
When the man at the Dales Garage had heard where I was staying, he’d led me smartly away from the neat little rows of shiny Ford Focuses and instead taken me round the back and shown me a rusty Escort van. ‘Engine’s fine and there’s nowt left on bodywork to hurt much more,’ he said. I wasn’t that sure, it looked a heap of trouble for me, but as he was asking just a tiddly sum for it, the deal was done. Jake tried to intervene, but I waved him away. A rusty Escort van was suddenly my vehicle of choice.
‘Anyway, I like the registration number, PIP,’ I said to Jake, who looked at me oddly.
‘I think the northern air has done something to your brain,’ he muttered. ‘Ring me if you want anything,’ he said. ‘And here’s the address of the B & B.’ He gave me a card. Our hands touched for a moment. ‘There’s always half a double bed there for you.’
‘I don’t think so. But thank you.’
He gave me a hug, suddenly awkward. I gave him the briefest of kisses and then climbed into PIP and drove off with barely a backward glance. I’d checked my phone—I discovered this morning that you could get a signal just at the top of the track from the farm to the main road by the old chapel. But now I needed to check my email.
I bounced along in my little rusting van, crunching the gears every now and then as I got used to it on the steep narrow roads. The previous owner must have weighed about twenty stone because the driver’s seat was in a state of collapse. The carpet was full of holes and there were odd gaps in the dashboard. But there was a radio. I pushed a button and Madonna came belting out and I sang out loud along with her at full volume. I was on my own in a strange place, in a strange van and suddenly it wasn’t scary, it was exciting, exhilarating. ‘Who’s That Girl?’ Me!
The Miners’ Arms, like the farm and the cottage, was grey stone and solid at the top of the moor. Just three or four houses and the old chapel were its only neighbours. As I pulled up in the car park, my new-found confidence faltered a little. Walking into strange pubs and bars alone could always be a bit dodgy. But the sign was newly painted and the windows sparkled. I could do this. Of course I could. I carefully locked PIP—though I didn’t believe that anyone could possibly want to steal it—and walked into the pub.
Inside there were rough stone walls and flagged floors and it smelt warmly of wood smoke and polish and further in of tantalising food smells—proper food. My stomach rumbled. Two fires burnt brightly in huge fireplaces at either end of the bar. At a table near one of the fires, two middle-aged couples in walking gear were enjoying coffee and cake. Near the other fire sat an old man reading The Northern Echo, a pint in front of him. Another couple of men were tucking into pies, steam escaping from the golden pastry and the meat tumbling out in a thick, rich gravy.
The walls were covered with old photographs. And more of those samplers. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again‘, said one, around a picture of a very fierce-looking spider, while the other said it was ‘Never too late to make amends‘. Very virtuous.
A young girl with gleaming blonde hair was sitting knitting behind the bar. As soon as she saw me, she put down her knitting and smiled. ‘What would you like?’ she asked.
‘I’ve really come in to use the Internet,’ I said, ‘but I’ve just realised I haven’t had any breakfast.’
She laughed. ‘Coffee? Orange juice? Bacon and mushroom muffin? Scr—’
‘Stop there,’ I said. ‘Coffee, juice and bacon muffin, please.’
‘The computers are round the side there, I’ll bring the coffee over for you.’
I smiled happily and followed her directions. This must have been the best Internet café ever.
In a tiny little snug alongside the bar were two computers, a printer and a huge old farmhouse settle, covered in rugs and cushions. There were shelves full of books and leaflets on local history and on another table was a pile of today’s newspapers and a selection of magazines, everything from Farmers’ Weekly to Celebrity Gossip. Bliss. The girl brought my coffee, which was good too—strong and rich, without a hint of bitterness. I checked my email—in twenty-four hours my inbox was already overflowing with rubbish—and confirmed my interview with a cheese-maker the next day. And then, quickly, I emailed Jake. Just to say that the little van was fine. I knew it was over between us, even without Felicity—sorry, I just couldn’t bring myself to call her Flick—but it was somehow important to keep on good terms. I was just emailing my friends Polly and Susannah and wondering what to tell them about Jake—they’d never really liked him, not really—when a tall man with wild, curly hair and a scruffy sweater sat down next to me at the other computer. ‘Morning,’ he nodded. ‘Your muffin’s ready. It’s on the table near the fire.’
I signed off the email and sent it quickly to Polly and returned to the cosy bar. As I ate the muffin—brilliant bacon—I looked at the photographs on the wall. They were a mixture of old and new. And it took a while for it to dawn on me that they were of the same places taken years apart, or rather, more like a century apart.
In front of a low archway that seemed to lead directly into the side of a hill, workmen in waistcoats and stout trousers, caps and long moustaches carried hammers and picks and gazed solemnly at the camera. Next to it was the modern scene—the same archway, but this time surrounded by walkers in brightly coloured cagoules, peering and pointing. A picture of the chapel dated 1900 had a hundred or more serious-faced worshippers in their Sunday best—very uncomfortable those clothes looked—lined up on the steps. The modern version showed half a dozen lads in jeans and T-shirts laughing as they unloaded canoes off the roof of a minibus.
A long view across the moors was full of industrial buildings, tall chimneys, a huge water wheel and clusters of activity. The modern version was bleak, empty, just a few ruins and a lot of sheep. The photograph was stunning. The photographer had caught the shadow of a cloud scudding across the hill. Very atmospheric.
Who were all those old people? What had happened to them? How had a place so busy become so empty?
‘Lead mining,’ said the blonde girl behind the bar as she followed my gaze. ‘A century ago and more, there used to be hundreds of men working up here. They used to be packed into lodging houses during the week and then walk back to their families at the weekend. They say the lead for the roof of the Houses of Parliament came from up here. It must have been like the Klondike. Hard to believe now, when it’s just sheep.’
‘I’m amazed the pub survived.’
‘It didn’t. It was closed for fifty years and was just a house. Dexter—’ she nodded her head in the direction of the Internet snug, so I assumed she meant the guy with the wild hair and scruffy sweater—‘inherited it last year and decided to reopen as a pub this summer.’
‘Brave move.’
‘S’pose so. But it’s going OK. Really well in fact. He does some of the cooking too. He’s not a bad cook either. For a photographer. He took all the pictures—well, not the old ones obviously, but the others.’
‘These are really good. Does he work for anyone in particular?’
‘No, just for himself. He does a lot of books and colour supplement stuff. He hasn’t done much lately though because he’s been working all hours getting the pub right. But he’s hired a chef now, so I expect he’ll get back into it.’
Some more customers came in and she put her knitting down again to serve them. She seemed to be knitting a lacy sort of scarf.
I remembered that I hadn’t looked up the directions to the cheese-maker. I looked across. Dexter had finished on the computer. Presumably he was in the kitchen preparing food for the people who’d just come in, but some walkers were busy online now. Never mind. I was very comfortable in this cosy bar. I thought about a glass of wine but, being my mother’s daughter, and having the van outside, I opted for another coffee and flipped through one of the papers. That model was all over it again. ’Foxy’s gone to ground!’ said the headlines. After signing her huge contract, the model had gone missing. Probably drugged up somewhere, I thought. No, not drugged. When she leapt up and through that window she hadn’t seemed a bit like a hunted animal. She seemed the one in charge, well ahead of the pack, as if she were playing a game. I wondered, idly, what had become of her, where she was.
By the time the walkers had finished on the computers and I’d gone online and found the directions I needed, the bar was empty. I was just picking up my coat ready to leave when Dexter came through to the bar, looking serious and carrying two plates of sausages. ‘Right, Becca,’ he said to the barmaid, ‘earn your keep and tell me which of these you prefer. You too,’ he said to me, offering me a plate. ‘Unless you’re in a hurry…’ His sudden smile completely transformed his face. He was, I realised, quite good looking and probably not as old as I thought, maybe just ten years older than me. And I decided I wasn’t in a hurry at all as he went on, ‘I try and use everything as local as possible, but it’s got to be good, so all opinions welcome.’
I sat myself back at the bar and tried two bits of sausage. ‘Definitely the second one,’ I said.
‘Why?’ asked Dexter.
‘The first one was good, but highly spiced, so all you could really taste was the chilli. Good, but overwhelming. The second one was quite simple, but proper meat, proper flavour. Didn’t need the spices to tart it up.’
Dexter nodded approvingly and I felt as though I’d won a prize. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he said. ‘That’s the one we’ll go for. Have another bite to be sure.’
So there I was, perched at the bar of a stone-flagged, wood-smoky pub on top of a moor in the middle of nowhere, eating sausages, with grease on my chin, when we heard outside the sort of roar made only by a very expensive, show-off car. It stopped right outside. A moment later the pub door opened and in strode two men. Young, fit and extremely good-looking men, radiating testosterone and confidence and that sort of glow that belongs to the very rich and very successful.
Becca gave a small, breathless yelp. I gawped. It was the last thing I’d expected in the middle of nowhere. I blinked and stared to make sure. There was no mistake. Footballers. Clayton Silver and one of his team-mates, the young Italian Alessandro Santini.
The last time I’d seen Clayton Silver was in Club Balaika back in London. What on earth was he doing here?
Suddenly the bar, which had seemed so warm and cosy earlier, now looked faded and dusty, dimmed by the dazzle of these celebrities. I’d felt so comfortable perched at the bar, and now that cosiness was spoilt. Only Dexter remained completely unfazed.