her life for. Will was her forever man.
She sat back and sighed, the noise and bustle of a busy Hunstanton café surrounding her. Dilys and Ernie, who’d leapt at the opportunity of grabbing a lift into ‘Hunny’, were running errands while Clancy emailed her parents to update them on the past weeks, though the remote village in Namibia where Brenda and Gerry Moss were working was almost as technology-deprived as Nelson’s Bar. There, all communications were via satellite and easily affected by weather.
Luckily, Clancy’s superpower had always been not needing parental support.
As she’d tried to make good her intention to throw herself into her new life, the week had sped by without her moving out of the village and into a signal or Wi-Fi area. She hadn’t liked to press Aaron about using his satellite broadband, especially when it wasn’t for Roundhouse Row matters. Instead, she’d readied the rentals for occupation, including mowing lawns and tidying borders, and found her feet with the paperwork side of her caretaking duties. She’d also cooked more than she’d had time for in London, and a couple of times invited Dilys and Ernie to share the results.
But now she felt guilty, especially when she thought of those texts from Asila and Tracey, which she’d ignored. She replied to Will quickly, noting his comments on financial arrangements. Then she began another message.
To: Asila Memon, Jon Montagu, Tracey Murland, William Martin
From: Clancy Moss
25 May
Just to let you know I’m OK. I didn’t deliberately blank your texts/emails but I’m staying somewhere that doesn’t have mobile signal or broadband.
She thought of the years they’d worked together from the first idea, which had been Monty’s, making enthusiastic plans over takeaways at kitchen tables, beginning with rented equipment in a tiny enterprise zone, building their client list and their reputation and eventually moving to the offices in Islington. Until Will got caught with his pants down she’d considered it her life. After reflecting on their years as friends as well as colleagues she added, Hope you’re all OK.
Then she began a new email.
To: Alice Nettles
From: Clancy Moss
25 May
Subject: Nelson’s Bar
Alice, just to update you:
Clancy spent twenty minutes explaining how she’d come to move into the Roundhouse.
Then she rounded off:
As I’ve been looking after things for you I didn’t think you’d object, but I thought I’d tell you I’m here. Are you still in the US? Are you having fun? Send me a lovely long catch-up. I haven’t even seen you on Insta lately.
It’s funny being in Nelson’s Bar without you, living in the Roundhouse where you used to live with Lee, but it’s a sweet village.
After adding love and kisses, she shut down and went off to stow her laptop in the car and shop for readymade curtains, thinking of Alice and wondering if her travelling days would ever end. Funny how they’d become the antithesis of each other. Alice had spent her early years in England but had developed itchy feet. Clancy, with travel-bug parents, had been relieved to come to the UK and put down roots, roots that had eventually come to mean Will and IsVid. She wondered what she’d find to replace them.
It was late afternoon by the time she drove Dilys and Ernie back to Nelson’s Bar, thinking how odd it was they lived apart when they seemed to get on. Then Ernie told Dilys she was very wrinkly and she snapped at him to shut up, and she thought maybe they knew what they were doing after all. As they came into the village, they passed a tall figure walking a big dog and Ernie and Dilys broke off their argument to exclaim, ‘There’s Aaron!’
Clancy drove carefully around the pair while Ernie and Dilys waved out of the car windows.
As she parked outside the Roundhouse, Dilys said, ‘It’s the village meeting at De Silva House later. Are you coming, Clancy?’
Clancy pressed the button that opened the boot so they could access their shopping. ‘I don’t think so.’ She didn’t know anything about the meeting but it didn’t sound appealing.
Dilys pulled herself out of the car. ‘Official village matters are dealt with by the Village Committee through Parish Meetings, but this is a village meeting, which is sort of unofficial.’
Clancy shook her head as she opened her door and hopped out with more agility than Dilys. She’d done pro bono work with a rural charity and had heard enough about the intricacies of Parish Councils, Village Councils and Parish Meetings to feel them best avoided – and that was without considering her prospective welcome at De Silva House. ‘I don’t think I’d have anything to contribute.’
‘You would!’ Dilys cried, sounding disappointed. ‘It’s about improving the village. I want to get internet and you know about it.’
‘No more than many people who’ve used the internet on a regular basis,’ Clancy replied firmly. ‘We’d better get our shopping in. Come for coffee tomorrow and you can tell me about the meeting then.’
‘What good’s that?’ Dilys, instead of taking her bags from Clancy, planted her fists on her hips. Then her face brightened as she looked over Clancy’s shoulder. ‘Aaron! Come and tell Clancy about the village meeting.’
Clancy turned to see Aaron bearing down on them, Nelson with his ears back and tail wagging. Aaron glanced at Clancy.
‘Do you want to come to the meeting?’ he asked in much the way he might have said: ‘Do you want to eat worms?’ Stubble darkened his jaw as if he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days.
‘No,’ answered Clancy obligingly, though nettled at his tone, which she assumed sprang from the fact that the meeting would take place in his parents’ home. It was as if someone had arranged for her to be permanently in the wrong. Will began an affair with Renée; Clancy was asked to leave IsVid. Alice did a runner on her wedding day? Clancy should be kept at arm’s length.
Dilys seemed unaware of the undercurrents. ‘We need the internet. We need to be able to order groceries to come to our houses, and do our banking without having to go into Hunny.’ She clapped Clancy on the shoulder. ‘This girl, she knows all about it. She should tell everyone.’
Aaron looked anywhere but at Clancy. ‘Um … you could always give the information to me to be shared with the meeting.’
It was so obvious he hoped Clancy would go for that option that she nodded. ‘OK. As it happens, I have a little understanding of the problem of connectivity in rural areas because I once worked with a rural charity client.’ She drew a breath and delivered a rapid stream of facts about the need for affordable, fast broadband for working from home, networking, advertising, education and socialising. ‘Unfortunately, the commercial reality is that big providers are not necessarily interested in small communities,’ she ended. ‘Good luck.’
Then she deposited Dilys and Ernie’s shopping on their respective doorsteps; returned for her own bags, offered the three still standing in the lane a goodbye smile and sailed indoors.
It was after a couple of hours of hanging curtains that Clancy realised she was short of curtain hooks. Knowing she’d bought plenty, she trotted out to check her car boot. Sure enough, two packs had found their way into a corner and she had to move to the offside of the vehicle and stretch in to reclaim them.
She’d just straightened up when a white van rounded the bend and came flying up the lane, forcing her to leap out of its way. She dropped the packs in the dust in her fright. As she retrieved them, muttering under her breath, she heard the sound of the van halting and a door opening and closing.
‘Sorry,’