Sharon Griffiths - The Lost Guide to Life and Love

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.