Although the little pots of ink, and brushes, and jars of water and scraps of different coloured paper scattered across the table look interesting, this isn’t the best place for me right now. I can still write, but it usually ends up all over the paper and looks like someone else did it – blindfold, using their wrong hand. Keeping anywhere near the lines is going to take a massive effort. But a few minutes later we’ve been shown how to hold our pens at the right angle, done a – very wavy in my case – row of little straight lines, then watched Beth tracing out the curves of an ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ and ‘d’ a few times on our papers.
Now Aunty Jo and I are trying on our own I’m finding it hard to keep my mind on the job. I take one bite of muffin then do a stroke of a letter. A bit of staring at the very white ceiling. Another bite of muffin. In the time it takes me to do my first ‘a’, Aunty Jo has filled a sheet and is onto the next. She’s hitting this with the same high-impact energy she uses for her Keep Fit and Look Ten Years Younger routines in the mornings.
For me, my full attention is going to the sponge. It’s so dark and sticky – if I’m going to taste anything, it’ll be this. So far I’m not, but you can’t win them all. Not straight away. In between times, I feel like I’m back at junior school. I can’t say I’d ever have put myself at a calligraphy class, unless I was intending to write my own wedding invitations of course. In which case Bella and I would definitely have pulled in one of those lovely Pens and Prosecco Workshops for Brides at Paper Moon in Bristol, and we’d have spent an entire Saturday inhaling our bodyweight of delicious canapés and teensy macaroons. Which I might have dreamed of fleetingly, in passing, maybe one time. Well, maybe a bit more often than that if I’m being completely true to myself. But which definitely won’t be happening now, not since Marcus and I had our discussion, where we talked totally honestly and openly for the first time ever about where we saw ourselves going as a couple.
Don’t ask me how we got seven years into the rosy land of living together before we had that talk. However it happened, we can’t undo it now. And, due to complete fucking mismatch of expectations of the most epic proportions, we had a humungous and hugely fierce argument. Followed by a calm after the storm week of realisation, then a very tearful rethink, where I think I was supposed to back down, but for the first time in seven years, I didn’t. Which was the point we both knew we weren’t going to agree on some of the most important decisions in our lives. So we realigned our pathways to go in different directions. He kept the house, which was only fair because it was his to begin with. And I headed off, leaving years of heartfelt renovations behind, feeling this was all my fault for not getting things straight to begin with.
As she reaches for her next sheet, Aunty Jo looks up. ‘You always had lovely writing on the letters you sent us.’
When we were younger, probably because they didn’t have kids of their own, Harry and Aunty Jo never missed a birthday and my mum was a stickler for ‘thank you’s so we never lost the habit. Marcus always poked fun at my family’s obsession with gratitude. All our quirky ‘thank you’ cards propped behind the toaster and cluttering up the magnetic steel noticeboard drove him wild because they wrecked the minimalist lines of the kitchen. Mostly he saw thanking anyone for anything as sign of weakness.
I smile as I remember school. ‘My writing was neat.’ That bit was easy. Everything else was where I lost it. For me school was simply a chance to have fun with my friends, and my life only took off properly once I’d left. Put me in a room of people and I’m straight off making besties and having a ball, which is why it’s hard to adjust to how I am at the moment. The truth is, with my non-stop chatter on temporary go-slow, even my good friends find me strangely quiet. I don’t want to go out with them either, because it’s just too weird not being the noisy one. It’s fine, we’ll make up for lost time as soon as I’m back to my old self. But it’s strange to think this afternoon is the closest I’ve been to a social event in ages.
‘So, as a newbie, how are you finding St Aidan?’ A woman with a wide grin and a tumble of dark curls falling over the shoulders of her chunky cardigan is pulling up a chair next to me.
I focus on the flowers rioting across her dress, ignore the sweat prickle on the back of my neck and scramble around my brain to find a reply. Any will do, ideally nothing too insulting or unfiltered. ‘It’s … er … quiet.’ What else is there to say about an empty village where the sand blows in your eyes so hard you can’t see the sea, even when you’re not on the beach?
From her laugh she finds that funny. ‘You won’t say that in July. At least when it’s not busy we get to meet here.’
Beth chimes in. ‘Without us, Plum, the owner here, could go right through the winter and never see another human.’
‘So which one’s Plum?’
The dark girl nods at the distant staircase. ‘She’s upstairs painting her seascapes, she lets us put on craft workshops in winter to keep the place alive. I’m Loella, by the way.’
Beth’s smile is hopeful. ‘There are actually lots of other sessions you might like to dip into.’
‘Yes?’ They sound great for Aunty Jo.
Loella carries on. ‘I do patchwork, quilting and anything creative with fabric.’
I sense Aunty Jo sitting up in her funky chair, so I smile at her. ‘You enjoy sewing, don’t you?’
Aunty Jo sits up even straighter. ‘Actually, life drawing was always popular in Harpenden.’
‘WHAT?’ I’m picking my jaw up off the floor, desperate to move this onto anywhere that’s not here. ‘Or how about r-r-rings and things?’
Loella’s beaming and jumping to her feet. ‘We do have an occasional life class, when we can get a model. I’ll put you down for that, upcycled jewellery making when we do it, and quilting? I’ll email you with the times. You will still come to calligraphy?’
Aunty Jo’s flicking through her pile of sheets of perfect swirly letters, but she’s looking doubtful so I jump in before she can refuse. ‘Absolutely.’
Loella turns and nudges me. ‘And whatever you said before, what’s coming now is going to make you think again about St Aidan being quiet.’ She checks her watch. ‘Any second the kids will be back from school and all hell will break loose.’
Beth’s hurrying round with a tray and what looks like an urgent expression. ‘Hand over your ink pots everyone.’
There’s a whoosh of air all the way down the gallery as the door opens, then the hammering of feet and the kind of whooping you’d expect from those Americans who ride horses, do cattle drives and shout ‘yee haw!’ as they wave their ropey things around. There’s a blur of colour as more kids than I can count come stampeding down the gallery, waving their coats in the air. Then my stomach sinks because there’s a skittering daxi too. And, coming up the rear, with a couple of littlies hanging off each arm, there’s a horribly familiar faded denim jacket.
Aunty Jo gives me a very significant nod. ‘Not just a pretty face. Isn’t it nice to see a man who’s good with the small ones?’ Then she leans in and her voice drops to a whisper. ‘Have you seen how muddy their feet are? I do hope he keeps them away from us.’
‘Me too.’ Obviously I love Tash’s little ones, but other people’s kids in large numbers are on my ‘avoid at all costs’ list.
I should tell Aunty Jo off for objectifying too, but I’m not up to smart replies right now. Luckily a tug on my elbow saves me. ‘Cam …?’ I’m hoping I’ve got that right. It’s acceptable to forget adult names – kids, not so much.
His frown is accusing. ‘Why are you here, Edie Browne – you hate writing?’
I lift my arm off my paper so he can see my work and hope he’s remembered the ‘e’ on my name.
‘Three! Is that all you’ve done?’
I nod. That’s three ‘a’s,