The Lost Guide to Life and Love (3 page)

And as for drink…Well, you could see Mum was just programmed to set up Frankie’s Coffee Shops really. Apparently, Granny Allen had brought up her younger brothers and sisters, then her own family, and then her grandchildren too, all from a tiny farm high up on some bleak northern fellside. She must have been very tough, very determined, but not, I guess, a barrel of laughs.

‘She was actually your great-grandmother, or even great-great, I’m not sure,’ Mum was saying. ‘I went to Hartstone
Edge with my mother when I was very small. We went somewhere by train, which seemed to take forever, and then it was a very long drive after that, up high and winding roads. My great-aunt lived there then. To be honest, I can’t remember much about it, I was very young. Lots of hills and sky, I remember. And sheep. And a stream with a ford and a little packhorse bridge. I remember playing on it with some cousins. It’s probably all changed now, of course. It was always a hard place to make a living.’

For a moment she looks miles away. ‘I’ve always meant to go back there. But the time was never right. But now you can go instead and tell me what it’s like. Anyway, it will be good for you to have a little break, even if it’s a working holiday. How long are you away for?’

‘We’ve booked the cottage for two weeks, but we can probably extend it if we want to.’

‘Take plenty of warm clothes. You’ll need an extra layer up there, especially at this time of year. High Hartstone Edge! What a coincidence.’ We look at each other and this time my mother really does smile as we say in unison, ‘What would Granny Allen say?’

It had rained all the way up the A1. Grey roads, grey traffic, the constant spray from lorries. The further north we headed, the worse it seemed to get. I had long since lapsed into silence. Jake was concentrating hard on the road ahead as he peered past the windscreen wipers into the gloom ahead.

‘Shall I drive for a while?’ I offered.

‘Might be an idea,’ he said, ‘I could do with a break. Look, there’re some services soon. We’ll stop and get a coffee. Give the rain a chance to stop.’

The service station didn’t look promising. The only free space was at the far end of the car park and we had to run through the rain, dodging the puddles and then into a world of flashing video games and the smell of chips. We bought some papers and some coffees and sat down at the only table that wasn’t piled high with heaps of dirty, greasy plates.

The coffee was only just drinkable, but at least it was good to be away from the constant whoosh of the windscreen wipers. I leant back, stretched my legs and flipped vaguely though the heap of papers. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright.

‘That’s her!’ I said. ‘The girl from the club!’

‘What girl?’ asked Jake, puzzled, as I twisted the paper round to show him.

‘ “Supermodel sensation, Foxy, has hunted herself down a very tasty new contract”,’ Jake read. ‘“The stunning redhead, who has taken the fashion world by storm since her first appearance on the catwalks at London Fashion Week two years ago, has signed up to be the new face of Virgo cosmetics in one of the company’s biggest ever deals. No chicken feed for fabulous Foxy!” Was she at the club? I don’t remember seeing here. And’—he looked back at the page—‘I’m sure I would have…’

‘No. She left in rather a hurry,’ I said. And told him the story of how she had jumped out of the window and down into the street.

I expected Jake to laugh. Instead he was furious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’ he asked so fiercely that the family at the next table paused in the middle of chomping through giant burgers, nudged each other and stared at us.

‘Because the princes arrived, and everyone was buzzing round them,’ I said, astonished at his reaction. ‘It just put it out of my mind. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so interested.’

‘Of course
I’m interested.’ He looked at me as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘A top model jumps from a toilet window in a club full of Premiership footballers and royal princes. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit interesting?’

‘Well, yes, of course it is. But so was everything else that was going on. I just didn’t think…I mean, I just don’t understand why you care so much. What are you doing? It’s not the sort of story you normally do. I thought you were writing about dodgy millionaires. Or are you selling celebrity stories now? What’s happened to your famous principles?’

That was, I know, a bitchy thing to say. And I regretted it immediately. But too late.

Jake stood up. Very quietly, deliberately, he gathered all the papers, left his half-drunk coffee and walked out. I picked up my bag and ran after him. ‘Shall I drive now?’ I asked when we got to the car. But he just glared at me and got in the driving seat. We drove on in the rain and silence.

He was frowning, but I don’t know whether that was because of the weather or because of me. I never seemed to measure up to Jake’s standards. Even back at journalism college, where he was the star of the course. I always thought he would team up with one of the very bright, scary girls, like the Staveley twins, Felicity and Arabella, who were heading straight into television or national newspapers. But they all went their own ways and somehow it was just Jake and me and it seemed fine, even if I went into food writing, which for Jake didn’t count as proper journalism.

Jake practically lives at my place, but he still keeps his old bedsit, a few miles away, where the cupboards are full of his neatly labelled files and a few basic clothes hang on a hook at the back of the door.

As we headed north, I could feel the silence between us, and wondered why he was suddenly so concerned about models and footballers. But somehow I didn’t think he was going to tell me. He didn’t tell me much any more.

We left the motorway and turned onto a road that led through small towns, then large villages, then small villages, then just about nothing at all. The rain had finally stopped, which was just as well, as we seemed to be climbing higher and the road was little more than a single lane as we kept tucking into hedges to let cars and tractors pass. Soon there weren’t even hedges, or many trees, just a few scrubby bushes, bent from the wind, and dry-stone walls. And no more villages, just occasional houses spread out over a vast, empty moorland, dotted with sheep.

‘Where now?’ asked Jake. It was the first thing he’d said for an hour.

I scrabbled in my bag for directions. ‘We come to a place called Hartstone and, just past the pub—that’s good, it’s got a pub—and the old chapel, there’s a track marked “High Hartstone only”. We turn up there and in about a mile there’s a farmhouse and that’s where we go to collect the key.’

The narrow road suddenly rose so steeply that it was almost perpendicular. Then, as Jake steered carefully past a large jutting boulder and rounded another bend, I gasped. ‘We’re on top of the world!’

After all that climbing, we were now on a plateau. To left and right the moors stretched out for miles. Ahead was a small group of buildings and beyond that the road tumbled down and we could see another valley, a stony blur of blues and greens and greys stretching out into a hazy purple distance.

Never before had I had such a feeling of space and distance. I don’t think I’d ever been in such an empty space. Bit of a shock for a city girl. Even Jake in his foul mood looked momentarily impressed, and slowed the car to take in the vastness of the view. Then we drove past the pub, grey and solid and hunched against the weather, saw the old chapel, which now seemed to be an outdoor pursuits centre. Or had been. It was boarded up and looked sad. Apart from that there was only a handful of houses. Where were the people who came to the pub? Where were the people who had come to the chapel? Were there even any people up here?

I spotted the ‘High Hartstone only’ sign and we turned and bumped off up the track, which twisted across the vast open space of the moor. It seemed a long mile.

Suddenly we could see a small collection of buildings,
dropped down at the base of another high hill that seemed to soar right up to the sky. The road led straight into a farmyard and stopped. That was the end of it. Literally the end of the road.

‘Is this it?’ asked Jake.

‘I suppose so,’ I said, having no idea. With that a woman emerged from one of the barns across the yard. She was tall, striking, with a heavy plait of greying auburn hair and, although dressed in jeans, wellies and an ancient battered waterproof, moved with a casual sort of elegance. I’d never seen anyone quite like her before.

Jake sat in the car, arms folded and a deliberately blank expression on his face as if to say that this was nothing to do with him. So I got out of the car, stiff from the journey, and walked towards her. She would have been intimidating, if she hadn’t been smiling in welcome. ‘Mrs Alderson?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Hello there!’ she said cheerfully. ‘You must be Miss Flint and’ she glanced towards the car, ‘Mr Shaw?’

‘That’s us,’ I said, relieved, thinking how nice it was to hear a friendly voice after the hours of silence in the car. She had deep dark blue eyes and the most amazing skin, and her wrinkles were definitely laughter lines. Tucked into the neck of her jumper was a vivid jade scarf that lit up her face and contrasted sharply with the dingy mud of her jacket.

‘Good journey? Found us all right?’

‘Yes, fine, thank you. Excellent directions,’ I said, extra brightly to make up for Jake’s silence. She gave us both a quick look and I swear she knew that we’d had a row en route. But she just smiled again. ‘That’s the cottage up there,’ she said, pointing up the hillside behind the farm.

In the middle of its vast steep expanse of fellside, I could see a solitary grey stone house built into a hollow. It must
have been half a mile from the farm and the only building for miles, apart from a few tumbledown cottages and some abandoned stone barns, with high, dark doorways. It was a weird, empty landscape. What’s more, there seemed to be no road up to it. I began to wonder just what I’d booked.

‘You’ll have to back out of the yard and follow the track through the stream. Don’t try and get over the bridge. It’s built for horses and pedestrians, not cars. The key’s in the door. I’ve put the heating on and I think everything’s self-explanatory. But if not, just pop down and we’ll put you right. Anything you need, just ask. If I’m not here, I’m not far.’

I thanked her and we got back into the car and Jake manoeuvred it out and along the track.

‘A bloody ford!’ he muttered. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain much more or we’ll be washed away. You couldn’t have chosen anything further away if you’d tried.’

‘But Simeon Maynard’s grouse moor is just over there,’ I waved vaguely, ‘That’s why I chose it. Only a mile or so as the crow flies.’

‘I am not a bloody crow,’ said Jake through gritted teeth as we splashed and bumped through the ford, past the narrow packhorse bridge.

The stream…the ford…the packhorse bridge…

My mother’s voice echoed in my ears. This must have been where she came with her mother, my grandmother. This must be where part of her family—my family—had come from. So I wasn’t coming somewhere new and strange. I was coming home. What a thought. My ancestors had lived and worked in this strange, empty landscape. I tried to get my head round it and felt quite ridiculously excited.

Unlike Jake. ‘This track is going to do nothing for the
suspension of the car. We’ll be lucky if the exhaust doesn’t drop off before the end of the week,’ he grumbled as he pulled up alongside the cottage.

We sat in the car and stared at it. It wasn’t a pretty house. No roses round the door. No cottage garden. Grey and solid, it was a no-nonsense, take-me-as-you-find-me sort of house, looking down the hill and across the moors. The road was so steep I felt I could drop a stone down the chimney of the farmhouse far below us. We got out of the car into a gust of wind so sudden and strong I thought it would blow us away as we ran indoors, heads down and jackets flapping. I wondered where on earth we’d come to.

But inside the cottage was warm and welcoming. As well as the central heating, there was a wood-burning stove in the small living room, which was cheerful with brightly coloured curtains and rugs and a big squashy sofa. The kitchen was modern farmhouse, lots of terracotta and pine and a stunning view from the window above the sink. On the table was a tray with mugs, a teapot, a fruit cake and a wedge of cheese and a note saying there was milk and a bottle of wine in the fridge.

Relieved that there were at least some elements of civilisation in this wild and windblown place, I dumped my bag on the floor, switched on the kettle and looked at the huge folder of information.

Jake, meanwhile, was stamping round, clutching his mobile and muttering angrily.

‘No signal! No bloody signal!’

‘Try outside,’ I said, calmly, ‘it might work better there.’

But two minutes later he was back. ‘Not even one rotten bar. Absolutely nothing.’

I’d made some tea and was looking through the notes Mrs Alderson had left. ‘It says here that there’s Internet access from the pub.’

Jake looked horrified. ‘From the pub! The pub all that way across the moors? You mean we haven’t got it here?’

‘Nope,’ I said, still reading. ‘Problem with phone lines, or lack of them. Too isolated apparently.’

And that’s when Jake lost it. ‘You mean I’ve got to drive down the track and through that bloody stream to the pub every time I want to check my emails?’ he shouted. ‘That you’ve brought us to a place in the back of bloody beyond, that has no mobile phone signal, no phone and no Internet access and is halfway up a mountain in the middle of a bloody moor in the middle of nowhere? Tilly, I’m meant to be working here. This isn’t a bloody holiday! How can I work without the tools of my trade?’

‘Well, it’s not far to the pub,’ I said soothingly. ‘You can get a mobile signal there too, it says here. Come on,’ I continued, trying to coax him into a better mood. I seemed to have been doing a lot of that lately. ‘Have a cup of tea and some of this fruit cake. It’s really good.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ he yelled in a fury, ‘I can
not
work here. It is utterly impractical. Out of the question. We can’t stay here. End of. Put your bag back in the car. We’ll have to find somewhere else. Maybe the pub for tonight until we find something else. Come on.’ And he walked out of the warm, welcoming kitchen and back to the car.