We Belong Together

by Beth Moran

  Would a voicemail do?

  If she didn’t call me back soon, it would have to.

  If nothing else, I needed to warn her about the stalker who’d crawled back out of the shadows. She had nothing to hide when it came to being Nora, she’d be able to talk to the police about it, let the newspaper know. Get it sorted once and for all.

  I’d wait one more day for her to call me, then decide what to do.

  Lucy had recently graduated when she contacted me. She’d studied marketing and journalism, and was looking for an internship. I was impressed with how succinctly she expressed her respect for my work, and the areas in which she hoped she could prove useful. Given that I still felt like a lost child bumbling about in a maze of adulting, I was very tempted to consider her offer. Except that I wasn’t sure what I was meant to be doing half the time. I was hardly in a position to be mentoring or managing anyone else.

  And then came the meeting with Miles and his marketing people, and the request for me to up my social media game, get with the times and stop hiding behind my mysterious persona.

  ‘People demand personal, these days, Nora,’ a PR manager, Duncan, drawled at me, flipping a greasy black fringe out of his eyes.

  ‘Eleanor,’ I muttered.

  ‘They want to know everything about you. What you wear, how you stay in shape, who you’re hanging out with. They want to see everything. Chilled back yoga before Sunday brunch, treating yourself to a boxset binge on a rare night in. Suited and booted for a meeting with your PR manager.’ He paused to snort a few times at his own hilarity. I was, in line with the rest of the office, dressed down in jeans, a stupidly expensive T-shirt some up-and-coming fashion student had sent me, and a pair of mustard Converse.

  ‘That’s not really everything about me though, is it? That’s only my personal appearance.’

  ‘Right! Precisely! Like I said, up close and personal is what people are looking for. Gone is the age of the untouchable celebrity. Your fans won’t care about your opinion if they don’t know the real Nora.’

  ‘How can people know the real Nora when she isn’t actually real?’ I asked. ‘And I’m not interested in being a celebrity.’ Not much, anyway. ‘I’m a professional journalist, albeit one operating at the lighter end of the news spectrum. People have appreciated my articles for years without seeing me slobbing in front of the TV with a tube of Pringles.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good moment to capture,’ Duncan grimaced. ‘While your image is thankfully more about attention-grabbing than attractive, maybe swap the Pringles for a banana-flour muffin, given you’re supposed to be a foodie?’

  ‘Supposed to be?’

  I turned to Miles in the hope that he’d add some much-needed rationality. ‘How am I going to carry out my job if people know who I am? Half the places I go wouldn’t give me a table. The other half would be on their best behaviour, which kind of defeats the purpose. If Nora Sharp walks into an event, it’ll ruin it for most of the people there. No one’ll be able to relax if they think I’m eavesdropping from the corner.’

  ‘That being said, I have to listen to the experts,’ Miles said, shuffling a few papers on his desk. ‘You know that all print media is being forced to adapt in order to survive. It’ll be a chance to freshen up the image, experiment with Nora’s future direction. Most food reviewers aren’t anonymous and they still get tables because no restaurant manager believes their food to be anything short of spectacular. And you being there will get any event buzzing. Once everyone’s had a few drinks they’ll be even more likely to spill the gossip knowing that someone’s actually listening to them.’

  ‘Kathy will set up the YouTube channel, talk you through the details and offer tips on sprucing up your image.’ Duncan swivelled round to address Kathy, who’d spent the whole meeting slurping on her celery-infused water and staring out the window at the recycling bins below.

  ‘We were thinking, what, a less civilian hairstyle? Perhaps a bright colour to distract from your face. I’m feeling teal, indigo, possibly apricot, with a chop less middle-aged-mum-at-the-bingo and more “don’t mess me with me, I am a queen”.’

  Kathy deigned to glance across at me. ‘That hair tone is upsetting. I didn’t think they sold such dismal shades outside Eastern Europe.’

  ‘This is my natural hair colour!’

  Kathy widened her eyes, shoved her drink spout back in her mouth, and turned back to the window.

  Panic started pumping through my system as Duncan droned on about eyebrows and cosmetic enhancements, underwear to provide a ‘more natural silhouette’. Apparently my 34D breasts were totally last decade.

  Looks aside, I wasn’t overly proud. I knew my style tended towards too-busy-to-bother, and I was fine with that, like most women I would much rather be judged on what came out of my mouth and what I wrote than on how plumped my lips were. I knew that most people would judge me on who I was, not the lack of flaws on my filtered face.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because who I would be, in this instance, was Nora Sharp, and she was gradually being shaped by the media machine into a nit-picking dragon with a wedge of bitter lemon where her heart should be. In between all the positive, thoughtful, constructive reviews, Nora Sharp made her fame and fortune from the random sentences that were ripped out of context and then twisted into a cruel meme. If you searched for Nora Sharp online, the ‘sharpest quotes ever’ compilations and social media threads all created an image of a woman who relished other people’s mistakes and failures, and enjoyed nothing more than getting thousands of other people to laugh at them along with her.

  Nora Sharp had no right to expect any peeks into her personal life to be received with grace, or critiqued with kindness.

  But there was worse.

  Was I ready for my family to find out that Nora Sharp was in fact their beloved daughter, or the good citizens of Windermere and the staff at the Tufted Duck to discover that I was the person responsible for the failure of Emma from The Great British Bake Off’s new restaurant venture?

  Nora Sharp had morphed into a monster, and at the end of the day I was the only one who could stop her. I could pretend my reluctance to reveal myself was shyness as much as I liked, but that’s not what the real problem was.

  I had promised myself that one of these days, when I’d finally got a publisher for the new novel I never got around to finishing, or my Eleanor Sharpley blog somehow ended up paying all my bills, I would stop. Once I’d gained enough of a reputation to be able to move into other areas of journalism, like those fluffy magazine interviews about a soap opera star’s three-month wedding anniversary. Once I’d written the real food, rustic cookbook I dreamed about when sampling yet more unidentifiable gastro-gubbins.

  I would stop. Kill Nora off once and for all.

  But I needed a back-up plan, or at the very least a back-up bank balance to see me into the next venture.

  I wasn’t ready.

  And then I remembered the email from Lucy, the enthusiastic wannabe-intern, prepared to help me out however she’d be most useful. I wondered what colour hair she had. Whether she’d be up for a revamp?

  Two weeks later Lucy joined Team Nora. It turned out she was sticking with the mahogany hair, almost the exact same shade as mine, but according to Kathy, on Lucy it was a tone that spoke of ageless glamour, not aged grandma. But all other aspects of Nora’s brand got a reboot with Lucy more than happy to act out my YouTube scripts, as well as taking over Nora’s social media accounts.

  I hadn’t realised how lonely life as a self-employed mudslinger had been until I had someone to share it with, and it was such absolute bliss that I convinced myself to overlook how Lucy played on the image of Nasty Nora. I traded in my unease for the joy of having someone to stand in the corner with at parties. To crack open a bottle of wine and eagerly discuss what invites to accept, decline or wait and see if we felt like turning up on the day. To have a friend, even if she was paid to be one. As momentum built
, we started noticing the nods in her direction when we attended events and soon, to all intents and purposes, Nora became split between the two of us: I wrote, she swanned about in the eye-wateringly expensive clothes that people sent Nora. I contemplated going back to doing the restaurant reviews alone, in order to ensure anonymity, but then Lucy adopted a wig and a smile so bright that no one would mistake her for Nora Sharp.

  As an intern I didn’t pay her much, but she got plenty of nights out and more clothes, bags and kitchen implements than even the two of us could make use of (so we often sold them on and split the difference). I also provided a generous allowance for her to maintain the requested ‘spruced-up’ image.

  So, she got all the attention, I got to keep writing. A perfect partnership.

  And then the messages started arriving.

  And things started to fall apart…

  6

  I knew I had to start sorting things out so first I contacted my landlord and terminated my lease. I should call Miles and explain that Lucy wrote the latest article, and that she’d probably be happy to keep going if he asked her. I should call my parents and tell them I planned to stay at Charlie’s farmhouse for a while. And once I’d done all that, I should probably think about what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life.

  Instead, I did something that felt even more revolutionary. I donned my coat, hat and the sturdiest boots I could find in my bags. I opened the front door, breathed in a huge, crisp lungful of January air and stepped into the winter sunshine.

  Without allowing myself to think too hard about it, I strolled across the gravel yard to a gate leading into some sort of garden beyond. Ensuring the gate was closed behind me, I followed a track into a field of scrubby grass peppered with short, twisty-looking trees, their bare branches like bony fingers stretching out against the sharp chill. I had to duck my head a few times, to avoid some of the thickest boughs, keeping one eye up while the other watched for the tendrils of bramble snaking across the earth and the clumps of nettles. My hunch that this was some sort of orchard was confirmed when I stepped in a rotten apple, and suddenly started spotting them everywhere. Apples, and what appeared to have been plums – or more likely damsons, I supposed.

  I flicked through my memories for mentions of an orchard in Charlie’s many conversations about the farm, soon recollecting stories about picnics under the trees, how her job had been to carefully wrap the picked fruit in newspaper, layering it in crates to store during the winter. Maybe she’d strung up a hammock and used to read here?

  However, like the rest of the farm, this was nothing like her stories. While winter may have been partly responsible for the orchard being so austere, devoid of any life save the sleeping trees, the silence here seemed deeper than merely the seasonal lull. Like a long-forgotten enchanted wood, with the echoes of past pleasures frozen in time. I half expected to stumble across a statue of Mr Tumnus hiding in amongst the trunks. Only, instead what I found as I wound through the undergrowth, boots squelching into the mud, was the bees.

  Or, more precisely, two figures covered from head to toe in beekeeping gear. Either that or there’d been a serious radioactive leak no one had bothered to mention.

  No – definitely bees. I quickly spied a row of hives lined up a couple of metres from the far fence, and to my horror, one of the safe and securely dressed beekeepers was in the process of lifting the lid off one of them. I couldn’t decide whether to move closer so that they spotted me in time, or turn and flee. I assumed bees could catch me up in seconds, so I plumped for yelling and waving my arms instead.

  ‘Hello!’

  Great. They clearly couldn’t hear me while enveloped in their nice, safe, sting-preventing suits. I darted a few steps closer, pausing a few metres away as I dodged the handful of bees now buzzing around. ‘Hello!’ I cried, louder this time, before swiftly retreating again.

  Both figures jerked their heads towards me, the one holding the lid scanning around before finding me lurking beside a clump of brown bracken, as if that could protect me from a swarm of angry insects. They hurriedly placed the lid back on the hive, before both of the beekeepers pulled back their hoods.

  I recognised the person by the hive as the doctor, Ziva.

  ‘Why, hello, stranger,’ she beamed, before a bee to her left caught her attention. She pointed her finger at it. ‘Come on, then, Derek, back into the warm you go. And you, Damian! Stop bothering our visitor and get inside!’ She waited a moment, scanning around for any other escapees. ‘There you are, Dylan, don’t think I didn’t see you there, hovering about! And you, Douglas, Dougie and Dougal! Queen Delilah will be worrying about you! In you go!’

  And to my amazement, most of them did buzz their way back to a small hole in the hive box and disappear back inside.

  ‘Well, then.’ Ziva stuck gloved hands on her hips. ‘You’re looking much improved! This is Eleanor, who I told you about,’ she informed the other woman, who was much younger, with a cloud of dark, corkscrew curls. Behind her huge tortoiseshell glasses I could see Ziva’s kind brown eyes, which along with her slender frame led me to guess correctly that they were mother and daughter.

  ‘Eleanor, this is Becky, my youngest. She’s helping me heft the hives.’

  ‘Right. Hi.’

  ‘Having recently chucked in a highly successful career in pharmaceutical sales on a whim and a prayer, she’s otherwise rattling around the village getting up to mischief wherever she can find it.’

  ‘Mum!’ Becky groaned. ‘I’m thirty-three, not thirteen.’

  ‘Either way, you need something to occupy that vivacious brain of yours. Maybe making a new friend would be the first step.’

  ‘Ungh.’ Becky smacked one glove over her face. ‘I’m so sorry about my mother. The way she talks, you’d think I was the embarrassing one.’

  We both stood there, feeling the self-consciousness of two girls on the first day of school wondering if they’d found a friend.

  ‘Well, Becky? Why don’t you tell her about the bees?’

  Becky pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, mother. No normal person is interested in hearing about the bees. Especially in this weather. Eleanor, I’m so sorry, please don’t let us keep you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such an apiary snoot!’ Ziva exclaimed, as if bewildered at the very thought I might not be wandering through life bursting with bee questions. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of things she’d like to know, aren’t there?’

  ‘Um, yes. Of course…’

  ‘Well? Ask away, dear! Oh, for goodness’ sake, David, it’s not warm enough to be out and about yet!’

  Ummmm… ‘Do you give all the bees names?’

  Becky broke into a grin, her handsome features suddenly adjusting to fit her face perfectly. ‘These are all the D boys, because they’re in hive D, with Queen Delilah.’

  ‘Right.’ Well, that made perfect sense now.

  ‘Are you collecting honey?’

  ‘Nah, not this time of year. We’re hefting the hives, like Mum said. Checking the boys still have enough food to last until spring. The D boys are a bit light, so we’re going to treat them to a slab of fondant icing as a top-up. Do you want to stay and watch?’

  ‘No!’ I replied, forcefully enough to replace Becky’s grin with a look of surprise. ‘I mean, I would, another time, but I’m a bit nervous of getting stung. I wouldn’t want to do the wrong thing and make them angry.’

  By a bit nervous I meant extremely anxious, but I didn’t want to seem rude and upset the D boys.

  ‘I’ll let you get on. But, um, Becky, I mean, if you wanted and if you’ve not got much on at the moment, then, well, I’ll be staying at the farm for a little while longer so if you were at a loose end one afternoon then you could, well…’ For goodness’ sake, Eleanor! I sounded like I was asking her out on a date. Why were words so much easier when you could write them down? ‘Anyway, what I mean to say is feel free to come over for a cup of tea anytime. Or coff
ee, if you don’t like tea. Or water. A drink! Any drink… well, obviously not any drink…’

  Phew. I could feel myself sinking deeper into the mud.

  ‘A cup of tea would be lovely! Thanks so much for asking! I will do that. Probably a day when Mum’s busy so she doesn’t tag along and spoil it.’

  Ziva had the gall to look affronted. ‘As if. I have my own friends, thank you very much.’

  ‘What, Damian and Duke and Demetrius?’ Becky smirked, making it impossible not to smile back.

  ‘Do be quiet, poor Eleanor will be thinking we’re completely batty, and when you come knocking for that drink she’ll pretend to be out and then where will you be? Back to being a Noreen No Mates!’

  ‘Well, I’d better get on and leave you to it,’ I interrupted, my face having grown so stiff with the cold I sounded like I’d just had dental surgery. ‘Really nice to meet you, Becky.’

  I turned and hurried away before they could open the hive again.

  ‘I met Ziva and her daughter today,’ I told Daniel, later that evening after he’d put Hope to bed, then picked up a pizza from the takeaway in the village. We were eating at the kitchen table, which felt slightly awkwardly on the brink of date-like, but the only other option was me on the sofa in the study while he sat at his desk, and that was weirder. I’d had a peek in the other downstairs rooms while Hope had been in the bath – in addition to the shower room there was a spacious living room, formal dining room and rickety conservatory. There was also a utility room off the kitchen, with a door leading to the cellar. The bones of the house were stunning. The problem was they lay beneath layers of dust, grime, chipped paint, peeling wallpaper, general neglect and universal ugliness. What a total waste. I couldn’t help thinking that Charlie would be distraught, even as she’d understand and offer her brother nothing but sympathy and encouragement. Or maybe she’d send a trusted friend along to help, and she only had one of those.