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Ellie’s stomach did a loop the loop. She’d been trying not to think about it too much because it made her feel nervous. If she could go back in time and tell the seventeen-year-old her that she’d be going on a date with Finn Harman, she knew her younger self would run around the village screaming with joy. It was funny how things worked out because now Finn had paid six hundred pounds for the privilege of her company for the evening.
‘I don’t know yet. Finn said for me to give him some dates that would work and I said, pretty much any evening would be fine so he said he’d get back to me.’
‘It’s quite exciting though, right? You two going out on a date. Not that it’s real date, I know, but… well…’ Darcie nibbled at a fingernail. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Finn seems to like you. A lot. And I haven’t seen him like this in years.’
‘You think he likes me… a lot?’ Ellie took a slow, deep breath.
‘I do. But he was badly hurt by his ex-wife and I know you’ve been hurt and so it’s difficult for you both to trust again. I get that. But… well… growing up I thought there was something between you and at one point I thought you might get together. In fact, I was kind of disappointed when you didn’t.’
‘Me too,’ Ellie said then she bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to admit that then but what did she have to lose?
‘You were? Oh Ellie, just imagine if you had got together. We’d have stayed in contact all that time and life would have been very different. We’d have been able to go through so much together.’
‘My parents moving around so much was exhausting. I really didn’t want to leave Wisteria Hollow but what could I do? I was just a child.’
‘You had no choice in that.’ Darcie sighed then drained her coffee. ‘I would have loved for you to be my sister-in-law.’
‘Me too.’ Ellie said and she reached out and took hold of Darcie’s hand. ‘But I’m here now and I know we’re not children anymore, but we still have time ahead. I’m hoping to stay in the village now.’
‘I hope you do. And… if something happens between you and Finn then that would be the icing on the cake.’
‘Well, we shall see.’ Ellie stood up then she picked up the recyclable cups and packaging from their lunch. ‘I’ll take these through to the back and put the kettle on, shall I?’
‘Ooh yes! That would be perfect.’ Darcie slid down on the sofa and stretched out her legs. ‘I could quite go for a nap now.’
‘Nap away, boss! I’ll wake you when I return with the tea.’
Darcie sighed then pushed herself back up. ‘I won’t nap, much as I’d like to. I have too much to do today and it would be awful if a customer came in and saw me snoring and drooling.’
‘You drool in your sleep?’ Ellie asked.
‘Only sometimes. When I’m very relaxed.’ Darcie giggled. ‘Drives Ross mad.’
Ellie was still laughing as she carried the debris from their lunch through to the small staffroom. She hadn’t liked to say it, but she remembered Darcie drooling in her sleep way back when they were kids and they had sleepovers at each other’s homes. Darcie’s drooling was not a recent thing. But then Ellie knew that she tended to wake herself up snoring if she fell asleep on her back, so there was always something. Goodness, if she ever spent the night with a man again, she’d have to make sure she fell asleep on her side. All this used to seem so much easier when she was younger but now, it was a minefield.
Chapter18
Ellie
Three weeks passed with Ellie working atDragonfly Dreams, taking long walks in the countryside, reading and occasionally entertaining William Shakespaw. She felt relaxed and content with life. She’d agreed on a date with Finn for the next day and suspected that they hadn’t rushed it because they were both feeling a bit nervous. After all, it was a big deal getting back in the saddle, on the bike or any other euphemisms you wanted to use instead of sayinggoing on a date after decades of not dating. She almost spoke to her daughter about it but decided against it because it would only make her more nervous and place more pressure on the occasion. It was the same with her son because she knew he’d worry about her and tell her to be careful, to put an app on her phone so he could track her whereabouts and ensure she hadn’t been kidnapped or something equally ridiculous. The thing was, her children didn’t know Finn and they did tend to worry about her and had been the same since she’d split from their father. It was as if, as soon as she became single, they became convinced that she’d end up being stolen away by the nearest single male of a certain age. Therefore, confessing to them that she’d allowed herself to be auctioned off for a date would not have sat well with them. It was funny how the tables turned, and parents initially did the worrying then their children took over and worried about the parents.
Today was Friday and the fine weather had given way to rain. It lashed against the windows and the wind rattled the panes in their frames. The wind blew down the chimney and sent ash whispering across the hearth. It was a day for snuggling under a blanket and reading, but Ellie felt restless. She wasn’t working today or over the weekend and had cleaned the cottage from top to bottom already, so now she needed to find something else to occupy her time. Since her arrival, she’d worked her way through the cottage and cleaned, tidied and painted the rooms. She’d kept what she wanted of her aunt’s possessions and donated the remainder to charity. The only room she hadn’t yet visited was the attic and she knew she’d been putting it off because the last time she’d been up there, many years ago, it had been rammed to the rafters with all the paraphernalia that her Aunt Iris couldn’t bear to part with. Her aunt had kept the cottage neat and tidy but the attic was her hoarder space and so over the years that she’d lived in the cottage, she’d filled it with everything she desired but didn’t want invading the lower floors.
Ellie took another peek out of the window that overlooked the back garden and seeing that it was still dreadful outside, she decided to go for it. She could at least go up there and have a look around and if it seemed overwhelming then she’d leave it for another day.
She grabbed her phone and stuffed it into her pocket, just in case she got stuck or fell or something equally awful, then climbed the stairs. She had a torch in her bedroom in case of power cuts so she went and got that first. Underneath the hatch to the attic, she reached up and tapped the hatch cover and it sprung open then she pulled the cord and lowered the ladder. She knew there was a light switch just above the hatch so she hoped the bulb was working as it would be easier than trying to hold a torch while looking around.
The air that came down from the attic as she climbed the ladder was musty. She had no idea when the hatch had last been opened and watched as tiny flakes of dust spun through the air and a cobweb fluttered to the side of the opening as if lowering it had broken the gossamer threads.
When she reached the top of the ladder, she reached for the light switch and thankfully, the attic flooded with light. She steadied herself against the hatch while she stepped tentatively onto a board that had been placed over the joists and looked around.
‘Oh my…’ She sighed in dismay because there were boxes and bags everywhere she could see. The ones at the front were covered in dust so goodness only knew how long they’d been there let alone the ones further away. It looked like the sort of job that could take weeks to do and she suddenly felt tired and lacking in motivation. But, had her aunt known that she was not long for this world, Ellie thought she would have tried to sort some of this out to avoid Ellie having to do so. That was the thing with being single… whatever you left behind had to be sorted by someone who was not your partner and would not know what you wanted them to do with everything. Ellie did not want that to happen to her children and so she would sort out Iris’s belongings and her children would, at least, be spared from that job. She would then tidy the attic and ensure that everything she did store up here was clearly labelled so that when she passed away, whoever came after her didn’t have to face the mountainous job that she was now facing.
‘OK, I can do this,’ she said, pushing up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and taking a step to her left.
An hour later, she’d managed to go through one black bag of paperwork that appeared to be mainly old magazines her aunt had not wanted to throw away. Some of them were from as far back as the 1970s and she found it fascinating to look at the clothing and to read the articles. She could donate them to Darcie’s shop or to the library because magazines like this would be rare. With the advent of online magazines and articles, physical copies would become rarer still, but these were a record of what life had been like, what people had been interested in and the attitudes of the time. She decided to take the bag downstairs and have a good look through it before taking anything to Darcie’s and then she could give whatever Darcie didn’t want for the shop to the local library. Amazingly, the magazines weren’t damp but then the attic space did seem to be well ventilated.
She carefully carried the bag down the ladder and to the kitchen then she made a coffee and drank it before heading back up. At this rate, she thought, it could take her months to go through everything but then she did have the luxury of time and she thought she would quite enjoy sorting through the bags and boxes if everything was as interesting as the first bag had been.
