We Belong Together

by Beth Moran

  ‘Luke’s great-uncle had a breakdown and left his wife and kids after the Old Side burned his bakery to the ground,’ Becky added. ‘This isn’t some silly old feud to us. It’s family, and neighbours. Lives changed forever, and every single one of them for the worse.’

  ‘Yes, but isn’t forgiveness and reconciliation the only way to bring healing to those who’ve lost so much? There’s a whole new generation who had nothing to do with it. And every Ferrington miner, whatever their side, from what I’ve heard, they all just tried to do what was best for their families. Surely continuing the feud means that no one wins.’

  Becky twisted her mug round in her hands a few times as she thought about that. ‘Yeah. Maybe. Probably most of the younger residents would agree it’s time to start letting go. But easier said than done, to tell a man he has to forgive the people who watched his brother drown. To ask a woman, hey, isn’t it time you got over having to let your children go hungry?’

  ‘What if instead of focusing on what happened then, people had something new to concentrate on? Something that was good for the whole village, that would bring them together? Let each side see that the other side is simply other families, going about their business, trying to live their lives?’

  ‘I can’t imagine what.’ Becky looked at Daniel.

  He shrugged. ‘Well, if Northern Ireland could reach a peaceful agreement, it doesn’t seem crazy to think Ferrington could manage it.’

  ‘Daniel, you’re a genius!’ I said, an idea exploding in my head. ‘Didn’t they have a peace bridge somewhere?’ I whipped out my phone and did a quick search. ‘Yes! Joining the unionist and nationalist sides of the River Foyle. Ferrington needs a peace bridge, and by getting everyone involved, we can bring the two sides together so once it’s built, they’ll actually use it!’

  ‘That’s never going to work.’ Becky shook her head. ‘No one will use it.’

  ‘Maybe Luke Winter will when he comes to pick you up for your first date.’

  At the mention of Luke, Becky’s cheek flushed pink and she couldn’t hide the smile tugging at her mouth.

  ‘I get this is radical thinking to most Ferrings.’

  ‘Try potentially life-threatening,’ Daniel said.

  ‘But I’m going to do some proper research, look into successful reconciliation projects, find out what worked, put together an unbeatable plan and then I’m going to build a damn bridge from your front door to Luke’s and you can both thank me in your wedding speech. Now, didn’t we have a carpet to rip up?’

  In the end, before starting my End the Ferrington Feud project, we had some more recent history to confront. That Friday I had taken a day off from renovations to babysit Hope. I took her to see Ziva and the bees in the orchard, then walked to the river, where we stopped and watched the February sunlight flickering off the water and I pictured the precise spot where a bridge might go. With me looking after her on the Friday, Grandma Billie agreed to have her for the whole day on Saturday. Daniel had an important task to complete, and it was best done without a baby to witness the emotions it would inevitably conjure up. We did ask Billie if she wanted to join us, but she politely declined.

  I gave Daniel a head-start up the stairs to Charlie’s room. It wasn’t the first time he’d been up here in recent weeks – as well as using the bathroom during the retreat, he’d fetched clothes for me on the first day I’d arrived – but entering your sister’s room to fetch something and preparing to pack up her belongings for good are two very different things. I’d cried already that morning, and I hadn’t even got up the stairs yet.

  Knocking tentatively on her bedroom door, I found him sitting up against the bed, feet flat on the floor, hands resting on his knees.

  ‘Hi.’ I moved a pile of clothes from her dressing table chair and sat down. He didn’t reply.

  ‘We could do this another time, or not do it at all. Have another look at the plans and come up with something else.’

  He frowned, shaking his head. ‘No. It’s the only logical option.’

  ‘This is your family home, though. And Charlie’s. If you’re not ready…’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘With all due respect, you don’t look very ready.’

  He looked up at me, then, and to my surprise he was smiling. ‘I was just waiting for you, because I’ve no idea what half of this crap is, and even less of an idea about what to do with it all or where to start.’

  My shoulders dropped several inches with relief. I opened the carrier bag in my hand and pulled out a roll of bin bags. ‘Three piles: keep, recycle or charity shop, and throw away.’

  Then I burst out crying. Because, it turned out, I was the one nowhere near ready to divide my best friend’s life into bin bags.

  We managed it, however, with a whole load more tears, some rueful smiles, deep belly-laughs and many, many stories exchanged. We had each known a different side to Charlie. Daniel knew Charlie as a little girl, before the brain demons hit. He’d known her in her peaceful place, surrounded by family, where she had no need to impress or put up any front. I knew the other Charlie – the adventurous, spontaneous, sociable Charlie. The woman who loved to get lost in a crowd, who thrived on the new and the waiting-to-be-discovered. Who wanted to cram in as much of life as she could, while she could, and bring as many people along for the ride as possible.

  We also both knew the other Charlie, of course. But we weren’t thinking about her today. Today was as good a celebration as we could manage of the real Charlie, not the one imprisoned for weeks at a time by illness, lost in a bleak fog of despair.

  Once everything had been bagged or boxed up, we spent another hour trooping up and down two flights of stairs, filling up both cars before Daniel drove to the local recycling centre, and I dropped off a load of clothes, bedding and other useful items at Ferrington church, where they had a pick-up point for a clothing bank charity.

  We then reconvened for takeaway pizza at the kitchen table. I’d suggested fish and chips, but Daniel wasn’t in the mood to take a detour to reach the New Side, which, as I pointed out, was all the more reason for building a new bridge to save everyone the bother.

  By unspoken agreement, we didn’t talk about Charlie, instead moving on to lighter topics. Daniel told me more about growing up in a village, and honestly if anyone else had told me I’m not sure I’d have believed them. ‘English country dancing’ for PE? Cross-country that literally involved running, unsupervised, through the country, including a farm where the owner frequently brandished a gun at them? A self-appointed Ferring Sheriff who patrolled the Old Side, confiscating kids’ scooters and locking ‘stray’ cats in her shed?

  Daniel was equally intrigued by growing up in a bed and breakfast. Especially the kind of weird and wonderful characters who frequented the Tufted Duck, including the Henderson-Browns, who religiously came and stayed for a fortnight every summer, complained about everything from the shape of the fried eggs to the shade of towels, accepted their annual five per cent discount as compensation and immediately rebooked for the following year.

  ‘This is the first time Hope’s stayed over at Mum’s for months,’ Daniel said, changing the subject once the pizza boxes were empty. ‘It’s a bit disconcerting, not listening out for the baby monitor.’

  ‘A wasted opportunity, then?’ I asked. ‘You could have got up to all sorts. Had a wild night out, got hammered, rolled in at irresponsible o’clock. You could have had a house party!’

  He grimaced. ‘No thank you, to all of the above. What I’m most looking forward to is an undisturbed night and no squawking wake-up call in the morning. I’m going to stay in bed and enjoy a lazy Sunday morning by myself.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I sat back, blowing gently on my coffee to cool it down while trying very hard not to imagine a Sunday morning in bed with Daniel. ‘Would you rather I left you to your solitude, then? Made myself scarce for the night?’

  ‘No.’ Daniel looked at me, steadily, and the air in the
kitchen went completely still. Either that or my lungs had simply forgotten how to work, too distracted by the depths of potential in his gaze.

  ‘Okay,’ I managed to squeak, before immediately burying my head in my drink.

  I was suddenly very aware that Daniel and I were alone in the farmhouse for the whole night. It was stupid. It wasn’t as though Hope chaperoned our behaviour the rest of the time. But without her, it felt… it felt like I was falling for this man. That if circumstances were different, I’d be hoping he’d suggest we go through to the living room, and he’d come and sit next to me on the sofa, and then, well… without any chance of an interruption…

  Thankfully, before I could follow that train of thought any further, Daniel drained the last of his coffee and stood up, stretching.

  ‘Anyway, it’s been a long day. I think I’m going to head up. Don’t worry about the mess, I’ll sort it in the morning.’ He dumped his mug in the sink, pausing halfway to the door. ‘Thanks for your help today. You being there turned what would have been an unbearable day into something… precious. Beautiful. And. Well. You seem to do a lot of that. I’m glad you were there. Are here.’

  I nodded, unable to reply. And with a quick goodnight, he left me to spend the rest of the night clutching those words to my chest.

  I was glad I was here, too.

  18

  I spent the next few days mulling over the feud issue. Was there any way I could try to get involved in this situation without coming across as horrendously offensive? The only positive outcome then being that both sides finally had something to unite them – their outrage at me, the patronising Out-Sider. I joined the community Facebook groups for both sides under different profiles (both fake), scrolling back through reams of posts to see what kind of problems the divide had caused (trying to resist the urge to get sucked into conversations about lost phones, found cats, Sally Jones’ kids on the Co-op roof, or, one particular saga that went on for months: ‘If Macca B don’t stop leaving those fat balls on the rec where my dog can get at them it’ll be HIS balls dangling from the bird feeder’.)

  I scoured the websites for every village activity I could find, walked along Old Main Street to look at the posters on the miners’ club noticeboard, then drove to the New Side to do the same at the Methodist chapel. Trying to find something that could cross the Maddon river, a common thread that I could tug on.

  It kept coming back to the same thing: a bridge would be in everyone’s interest. Reuniting the village would enable them to pool resources, save money and provide a desperately needed boost to local businesses. More importantly, rather than Ferrington’s identity being forged around the worst time in its long history, a bridge would create an opportunity to celebrate something new and positive.

  By the weekend, I’d found enough evidence to cobble together at least the bare bones of an argument. Becky was visiting her brother for a long weekend, and Daniel was juggling Hope alongside a work deadline, so I turned to my friend from the New Side.

  Alice was working a double shift that Saturday, so I decided to treat myself to a late lunch, wandering into the Water Boatman just after two. About half of the tables were occupied, and another cluster of customers were gathered around a screen showing a football match.

  Every single person turned to watch as I sidled up to the bar, glancing about for Alice, who was unloading a tray of empty glasses. She looked up at me and winked, nodding to a bar stool.

  ‘All right, Eleanor?’ she called, about three times louder than was necessary.

  There was a general rumbling from the other customers. Scuttling to the stool I clambered on and kept my eyes firmly fixed on the row of bottles in front of me, but could still sense every eye in the room boring a hole into my back.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ one man asked, leaning on the other end of the bar. ‘Ain’t seen you in the Boatman before.’

  ‘Oh, leave it out, Stigsy!’ Alice shook her head, taking a wad of notes and about a pint of loose change from the man she’d just served. ‘She’s an Out-Sider. Only moved here a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Moved where?’ Stigsy said, leaning forwards to inspect me with a leer, as though he could find an address label, or catch a whiff of Old Side takeaway pizza.

  ‘Damson Farm!’ Alice folded her arms and stuck her chin up. ‘Like I said, neutral.’

  Stigsy sniffed. A few of the other men stepped closer, and a woman seated at a table in the corner with a set of dominoes called out, ‘You know the rumours, Alice. Maybe Damson weren’t so neutral as all that!’

  ‘Yeah!’ various people in the crowd agreed.

  Oh my goodness.

  What the hell had I walked into? I’d thought it was rural Nottinghamshire, not the Wild West.

  ‘Shame on you, Carole-Ann Matthews!’ Alice yelled above the growing murmurings. ‘If we’re talking rumours, what about your Dylan going to Ziva Solomon about his manky elbow because he couldn’t be bothered to see Dr Porter over at Brooksby, eh?’

  Carole-Ann turned scarlet, suddenly finding her dominoes deeply engrossing.

  Alice picked up a tea-towel and began slowly drying a pint glass, somehow making the gesture appear ominously threatening.

  ‘And you, Dennis?’ she asked, her voice soft with menace. ‘You want to talk about the rumours regarding your little Tuesday night rendezvous? John Stoat, do I even need to mention the words MOT?’ She scanned the room, eyes narrowed. I don’t know about the rest of the crowd, but every hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  ‘That was an emergency!’ An older man with tattoos covering his bald head blurted, before grabbing his bottle of cider and flinging himself out the door.

  ‘Now,’ Alice carried on. ‘If anyone of you want another drink today, or any other day I’m in charge of this bar, you’d better sit down, shut up, and make sure you don’t pass within three metres of my friend here unless it’s to extend a warm, New Sider welcome.’

  The only sound in the whole room was my heart, approaching warp-speed as it rattled against my ribs.

  ‘Well, a friend of Alice is a friend of ours, isn’t that right, fellas?’ A man wearing a tie and formal jacket over the top of his Mansfield Town football shirt said. ‘Nice to meet you, love.’

  ‘Cheers, Kev,’ Alice nodded, the rest of the pub echoing his comments with rumbles of assent as they turned back to the screen and picked up their pints again.

  I pressed one hand to my wheezing chest. ‘And you arranged to meet me here why, exactly?’

  Alice handed me a glass of white wine, eyes glinting. ‘Nothing to get your knickers in a knot about. These lot know where the balance of power lies.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to warn me?’

  ‘Nothing to warn you about!’ She waved her hands at the now settled room. ‘Besides, I thought it would be good practice for them, having a new face turn up. Prise open their narrow minds a fraction. Isn’t that what you wanted to talk to me about?’

  I took a long slow sip of wine, eyes closed as I regained my composure. ‘I’m driving, obviously, I can’t actually drink this.’

  ‘Drink away. It’s on the house. Ray over there starts his Uber shift in a couple of hours. He’ll drop you back, no worries.’

  I was very worried, actually. Although, the more wine that settled in my stomach, the more I remembered that this totally proved my whole point, that the village was in dire need of someone to come up with a brilliant idea to end all this nonsense once and for all.

  Alice wasn’t so sure.

  ‘You want to what?’ she whispered, leaning across the bar, eyes darting.

  ‘Just an initial meeting, so we can get the ball rolling.’

  ‘Did you see what happened here, less than an hour ago?’

  ‘I did.’ I stifled a hiccup. ‘And I also saw that people actually need both sides. And they know it. The doctors, MOTs, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been looking into conflict resolution in small communities, and what we need is one pe
rson to stand up and speak out. The key is making sure that it’s the right person – someone people listen to, and respect. Someone with standing, who wields power. Once you—’

  ‘Blummin’ ’eck, Eleanor, do not even joke about that being me!’

  ‘Once this very specific and wise and lovely person starts advocating for reconciliation, all those other people who secretly want it too, who know full well that it’s in the interests of everyone, once that person speaks up, other people have the courage to join them.’

  ‘No.’ She leant back, whipped her towel over her shoulder and went to serve more drinks.

  Okay, stealth attack it was then.

  After briefly contemplating walking home, wading across the river where it wound around the edge of the farm, I decided to save that escapade for warmer times, instead calling Daniel and offering him a cinnamon apple crumble in exchange for a lift home.

  While I waited for him to arrive, I posted an event on each of the Ferrington Facebook groups. I’d been invited to enough events over the past few years to understand what motivated people to turn up to them. The difficulty in this case had been finding a suitable location. While admiring the impressive range of fruit ciders behind the Boatman bar, I’d had an idea that hit every base with one genius stroke, if I did say so myself.

  Cider tasting in the orchard barn! Damson wine! Damson and apple pies! Cakes! Tarts! Crumbles! Jams and chutneys!

  Next Sunday evening, a time that my rigorous research into Ferrington goings-on revealed had absolutely nothing going on whatsoever. Even the takeaway vendors were shut. Both pubs were open, but they were always open, and neither of them were offering free drinks.

  Underneath the giant font pronouncing THREE FREE SAMPLES PER PERSON, I added, in much smaller font, that there would be a ‘short talk from a local about Ferrington’s glorious farming history’. There. Now, no one could boo me when I gave a presentation that would of course mention Ferrington’s pre-mining history, before perhaps then dropping a hint or two about how this could inform a potentially glorious future.