an unsolvable mystery when Zannah’s GCSEs are coming up. Could it be some kind of stress-escape fantasy? Would that be enough to make me imagine I saw …
No. No way.
I might never know what it means, but I’ll always know what I saw.
I check my phone. There’s a new notification, from Instagram. Lewis. ‘He’s replied. “Call me!” with an exclamation mark. He’s sent a number.’
‘Good. Then let’s call him,’ says Dom.
The Olde Jug, our local village pub, has been around since the seventeenth century, but has only been called The Olde Jug since the new owners took over last March, added on a conservatory at the back, and hung hundreds of pottery jugs from the dining-room ceiling. These changes caused a rift in the village that’s still noticeable more than a year later.
The discouraging estate agent warned Dom and me about village life. ‘Personally, give me the city any day,’ he said. ‘I live two minutes’ walk from Rawndesley station, shops all around me. Don’t need to get into my car to go anywhere, apart from for work. Villages are all well and good if you like that sort of thing, but they’re not right for everyone – your neighbours popping in all the time, wanting to know your business.’
This was the one consideration that made me anxious about moving to Little Holling. Dom reassured me. ‘Think of it this way: how much fun would it be to live in a village if you couldn’t give less of a shit what the other villagers think of you?’
So we decided to eschew the film club, the book group and all other such delights, and hope for the best. Dominic often boasts that he’s avoided our neighbours so successfully that he has no idea what any of them think of him. The only exception to this is The Olde Jug’s new owners. When they first arrived and changed the pub, the opposition to their proposed new-conservatory shake-up was so loud and hysterical that it reached even Dom’s ears. At first it seemed as if the entire village might boycott the pub, so Dom decided we had to go there as often as we could. For a while, we ate there four times a week, even though it was a stretch, financially. ‘I’m not letting a perfectly nice pub go out of business because some idiots can’t cope with change,’ Dom insisted.
He also went round knocking on doors one day, trying to persuade people to see sense. Many of them did – chiefly, those who had most missed their evening pint or four while the whole-village boycott was in progress – and that was how Little Holling divided into two factions, the one led by my husband and the one led by the deeply obnoxious Val and Geoff Monk, who, now, turn and walk the other way if they see any member of my family heading in their direction.
Robin and Ruth, The Olde Jug’s new owners, have become our close friends, even though we no longer bankrupt ourselves eating their Sunday roasts and Friday fish-and-chip suppers every week. I’ve told Dom I know they’ll understand, and they will.
‘Well, I don’t,’ he says. ‘Why not ring Lewis from the car, if you don’t want to do it in our house?’ he asks as we walk across the green to the pub. It’s an odd-looking building: tall and narrow, with a white-painted brick frontage and red-painted stonework above and below the windows. It doesn’t look like a typical village-green pub.
‘With people strolling past, nosy villagers knocking on the window, dogs barking on the green?’ I say. ‘No thanks. I want to be in a quiet room, alone, where I know Zan and Ben aren’t going to stick their heads round the door and yell, “Can we go into town and get a Nando’s?”’
‘You’re building this up too much, Beth. Going to a special place to make the call …’
‘Dom, I’m nipping across the green, that’s all. I mean, here we are.’
‘You’re hoping and secretly believing that Lewis Braid is going to tell you something mind-blowing that solves everything, and you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘I want to be able to focus, that’s all.’
I’ve never said so to Dom in case it would sound disloyal, but I can’t concentrate at home – not on anything important that requires focus, not while Zannah and Ben are in the house and awake. That’s why I do my work admin late at night. Teenagers are even worse than nosy villagers