So when a friend of my late Dad, told me that a friend of his needed an office manager, I hadn’t asked what type of office I’d have to manage. I got the job after one short telephone interview. It seems there are some jobs no one wants.
The people were lovely, don’t misunderstand me. But the premises were as gloomy as my cottage, and listening to funeral music day in and day out, did nothing to lighten my mood. Seeing clients in tears each day didn’t help. I’d been more than a little depressed when I took the job. By the time I lost it last week, I was … well, let’s just say that I was seriously close to needing the services of Barratt, Rose & Corne, myself.
The six large, beautiful horses neighed as I slowly drove past them, their clouds of warm breath mingling with the dancing snowflakes in the chilly air. I couldn’t believe how many people were queuing to get into the quaint, Norman church.
It sat in what looked like the centre of the village on a little ‘island’ of green, with a massive and rather imposing ancient oak tree with a bright yellow bench beneath it. I could imagine that bench was the perfect place to sit and while away an hour or so on a hot, summer day. Today, you’d be likely to freeze on the spot. Although the myriad, white lights, sparkling in the oak tree made me instantly think how romantic it would be to sit on that bench in this snow shower with Clark.
No. Not with Clark. I must forget Clark. Clark was history. Clark was in the French Alps, skiing with his friends. Clark was now my ex.
I drove around the island and watched all the people dressed in the sombre black you rarely saw at funerals these days. Most of the clients using Barratt, Rose & Corne seemed to go for the ‘Let’s celebrate our dearly departed’s life, and wear bright colours to show how thankful we are to have had them in our lives’, not, ‘Let’s wear black from head to toe to show how bereft we are at having lost the ones we love’. I wore black to Mum and Dad’s funerals, but I wish I’d worn my usual, bright and cheerful clothes. I know that seems foolish. The colour of my clothes wouldn’t have changed the way I felt.
I circled the church and read the name, St Mary Star of the Sea on a board to one side of the lychgate entrance. That had a certain ring to it and despite the situation I caught myself smiling just a little – until I spotted the tiny graveyard at the rear of the church. I hadn’t noticed that on my way down the hill because I was so busy looking at the line of cars and the coach and horses.
But at least the small, wooden building attached to this side of the church, which I assumed was the church hall, looked bright and festive. Strings of multi-coloured lantern-shaped lights hung from the guttering right the way around in a somewhat higgledy-piggledy fashion. A wreath the size of a car tyre sat proudly on the bright red door and to one side of that stood a plump, dark green pine, pear-shaped Christmas tree, the tip of which tilted a fraction to one side beneath the weight of a sparkling, golden star.
To the other side of the red door, a nativity scene sheltered beneath a smaller replica of the lychgate. Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus and a host of plastic animals looked warm and cosy in spite of the snow swirling all about. Although I’m not sure a polar bear or a penguin made it to the real event, but the donkey and the cow seemed right at home.
Seeing all that cheered me up, but I was still wondering whose funeral it was as I drove back up Seahorse Cliffs road towards the Sunrise Bed & Breakfast. Perhaps the owner of the B&B would know who was being laid to rest. From the two conversations we’d exchanged, I got the impression that Lilith Shoe seemed to know everything about the village and its residents, and was more than happy to share the information.
‘Now I’m not one to gossip,’ she’d said, the first time we spoke – and then proceeded to do just that. Not that I knew who she was talking about, but it was clear that Lilith was not the sort of person you would want to tell your secrets to. Not if you wanted them kept secret.
Luckily, I had no secrets. I was an open book, so Mum and Dad had always said when they smiled and hugged me close.
‘I can always tell what you’re thinking and feeling, sweetheart,’ Mum repeatedly told me. ‘You have such an expressive face and your emotions light up your eyes, whether good or bad.’
Strangely though, that’s not what my ex-boyfriend, Clark thought. On the day he told me he was ‘going to find himself’ and that ‘our relationship had run its course’, he also said that he never knew what I wanted and that he wasn’t a mind-reader, so how was he supposed to know that I was hoping he would ask me to move in with him.
The fact that I’d hinted about it several times, and not in a subtle manner, had clearly gone right over his head.
‘I thought you weren’t particularly interested in marriage and kids and stuff,’ he’d said.
I wasn’t. Particularly. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want those things one day. Perhaps. With the right man.
‘I wasn’t suggesting we should rush down the aisle,’ I’d told him. ‘All I was hoping was that we could spend more time together. As a couple. Under the same roof.’
He had given me a blank look, shrugged and said that if he had known that’s what I was hoping, he would’ve told me long ago that he didn’t see the same future for us.
I’ve never been good at relationships, which is weird bearing in mind Mum and Dad had the perfect marriage. They had met when they were five, been friends, fallen in love in their teens, wed in their early twenties, and were married for fifty-five years. I’d been with Clark for two years, and at thirty-three, that was the longest relationship I’d ever had.
I really thought we would spend the rest of our lives together until that fateful day when he told me he needed to ‘find himself’. But quite how spending three weeks skiing in the French Alps with his mates would help him ‘find himself’ was still beyond my comprehension. And why had he been dating me for the last two years if he had no intention of taking our relationship further?
When I asked him that, he’d merely shrugged again and said, ‘We had fun, didn’t we?’
I think what he was actually telling me was that now he wanted to have some fun with someone else.
I knew it wouldn’t take him long to find a replacement. Clark’s a good-looking guy. But even I was surprised to see he seemed to have obtained another girlfriend just a few days after we had broken up. He’d only been in the French Alps for three days and already his social media was crammed full of photos of him and a rather beautiful blonde.
Not that I checked his social media much. Only once or twice. Okay, possibly a few more times than that. But it wasn’t as if I was stalking him or anything. And I didn’t comment on any of his fun-filled posts, no matter how tempted I might have been to do so. I played it cool.
Which reminded me that I must find my phone. I wasn’t sure where, exactly, it went when I threw it onto the back seat after seeing the last update he’d posted, as I’d waited for the lights to change at a particularly busy junction.
Bastard! How could he be having so much fun without me? Wasn’t he even a little bit sad that our relationship was over?
Clark was also the reason I no longer had a job. The rest of the partners were happy to keep me on, but Clark Corne, the youngest partner in the business, having taken over from his now retired dad, felt it might be better if I found a position elsewhere. Now that we were no longer dating.