The Lost Guide to Life and Love. Sharon Griffiths
This was my decision. My choice. I’d taken control. That’s it. Deep breath. I had taken charge of my life. So now what do I do? There was only me to ask, only me to answer and only me to worry about. This took some getting used to. Wonderful but frightening. I tried to think, be practical.
It was late afternoon and already getting dark. I quickly explored the rest of the house. Up a steep narrow staircase was a double bedroom where you could lie in bed and look straight out at the miles of hills. There was a smaller bedroom and a tiny bathroom that looked reassuringly new. I unpacked my bags, which didn’t take long. My few things looked a bit lonely all by themselves in the wardrobe. I drew the bedroom curtains and put all the lights on.
Then I went downstairs, sat on the sofa and wondered what to do next. I looked at the stove. The house was warm enough, but a stove would be cheery, wouldn’t it? A house like this needed a real fire. It should be fairly easy to light. There were even instructions. I’d never been a girl guide, but I reckoned I could light a fire. Of course I could. Buoyed up by new optimism, I had no doubts. Well, not many. I knelt down in front of the stove as if I were praying to it, found matches and a couple of firelighters, handily left on a shelf, followed the instructions carefully. Ow! The first time I let the match burn down and scorched my fingers. But at the second go it was suddenly blazing, flames licking round the sticks. Result! I left the doors open and sat back in the glow to feel the heat. Lighting a fire was very satisfying in a deeply primitive sort of way. I felt quite proud. Already in my new independent life I had achieved something I had never done before.
For the first time I noticed the samplers hanging on the wall above the stove. Framed pieces of needlework, probably done by a child and, by the look of it, many years ago. Age had faded the bright colours of the embroidery, but the tiny, careful stitches were as sharp as ever, the message clear.
‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ it said, firmly. Right. No messing there.
The other sampler was more difficult to read, the reflection of the glass blanking out the message. I looked at it from different angles until in the end I stood with my nose almost on the edge of the frame and suddenly the letters snapped into focus.
‘Carpe diem,’ it said. ‘Seize the day.’
Well, that’s what I’d done, hadn’t I? I had seized the day, well, the moment anyway. To be honest, I wasn’t usually very good at spur-of-the-moment. I always wanted to know whether the day was going to be worth seizing first. And by the time I’d done that, it was often too late. Letting Jake drive off without me was the boldest thing I’d done.
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