Page 75 of A Forever Home at Honey Bee Croft

‘What? Where’s he got that from?’

‘I don’t know. Obviously I didn’t correct him about the location but wasn’t that wedding near York? Have you put something on social media?’

‘Nothing! I’ve been really careful not to…’ I closed my eyes and groaned. ‘My new friends connected with me on the socials. They might have tagged me in some photos.’

‘That’s probably it, then. You might want to check there’s nothing connecting you to the holiday cottage. I’m guessing there isn’t with it being York he mentioned.’

‘Thanks for the heads up and I’m so sorry he turned up at your house. I never wanted you to get involved.’

‘I can hold my own with him so don’t you worry. I’ll let you go so you can do whatever you need to do to make sure he has no access to your information. But please, Poppy, call the police. This isn’t normal.’

The second I disconnected, I opened up Facebook. As suspected, I’d been tagged in several photos but they were all wedding-related with no mention of Whisperwood Farmhouse. The privacy settings on them were for friends and family only so Damon could only have seen them if we were friends and we weren’t… were we? My stomach lurched again. Maybe we were! I had a vague recollection of him sending me a friend request when I first moved back home but he never posted anything himself and had never engaged with the few posts I shared so I’d forgotten about it. Sure enough, he was there on my friends list. I removed and blocked him before double checking that my privacy settings were for friends only, which they were. Fennington Hall being tagged wasn’t going to lead Damon to me even if he had been poking around on my socials to see where I was and what I was doing. He knew I was in Yorkshire, but it was an enormous area and there was no way he could track me down to Whisperwood Farmhouse. I could relax. For now. Returning to Dove Cottage tomorrow would be an entirely different matter.

When Joel arrived, I was so grateful to have his strong arms around me as I told him all about Damon.

‘He doesn’t sound stable,’ he said. ‘I agree with your neighbour. I think you should let the police know he’s stalking you.’

‘Stalking? But he’s never threatened me.’

‘I’m not sure he has to. Hang on.’

Joel tapped something into his phone and brought up a page from the police website and scrolled down to the definition of stalking. The wordsobsessionandaggressivejumped out at me. Examples were given and several of them applied to Damon’s recent behaviour which Joel was quick to point out.

‘He’s repeatedly turned up at your home uninvited and he went to your dad’s care home knowing you’d be there. That’s not normal behaviour.’

Hearing him repeat Damon’s behaviour back to me made me view it differently. If a friend told me that someone had been doing all that to them, I’d have immediately called out stalking and urged them to go to the police. Why hadn’t I realised this before now?

Joel pointed to a section listing with the acronymFOURfor the four warning signs of stalking behaviour:Fixated,Obsessive,Unwanted,Repeated. Yes to all! I’d made excuses for Damon so far, heaping the blame on myself for not being clear enough with him, but how clear did I need to be? I’d said no more times than I cared to remember. I’d asked him to leave, I’d told him not to come to The Larks. Yes, he’d helped me and shown me kindness on one of the worst days of my life, but I didn’t owe him my life as a result.

‘I’ll call the police when I get back.’ I sighed heavily. ‘Stalking. I never thought… Or maybe deep down I did and I just didn’t have the headspace to deal with it.’

Joel hugged me. ‘You’ve got me and you’ve got Wilf. We’ll get it sorted.’

We moved into the kitchen to prepare the meal, but Joel said he had something to show me first. He handed me a letter he’d been given at work about the restructure.

I winced as I scanned down it. ‘That sounds harsh. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be, because I’m not. I’ve already told Eloise that I want to take the redundancy package and leave as soon as possible. It might take a while before she can get that confirmed, but I feel a whole lot lighter knowing I’m leaving.’

‘You sound really positive.’

‘I feel it. I’m thinking now that it’s the best thing that could have happened. It’s time for a change. I stayed way too long in something that was only ever meant to be a summer job while I decided what I wanted to do with my life.’

‘When Fizz dropped the food off, she mentioned that you were going to be a chef but she wouldn’t say anything more – said it was your tale to tell.’

Joel laughed. ‘That makes it sound exciting and it really wasn’t.’

He told me about studying catering at college and the intention to go into the family business but how working for his dad and uncle caused tension, so he ducked out to avoid a family rift.

‘Why didn’t you look for a job in a different restaurant?’

‘Looking back, it’s a stupid reason. The part that gave me a buzz and still does is experimenting. If my own dad was struggling to let me have free rein over dishes, what hope was there for me anywhere else? I’d have had to start right at the bottom and I couldn’t face it, so I ditched that career completely.’

‘Do you regret it?’

‘Occasionally.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘Regularly. Every so often, I thought about it but the reality was that working in a restaurant would be no better for Imogen than working shifts. In fact, it would be worse because at least shifts gave me some time off on evenings and weekends. In a restaurant, they’re the hours I’d have been needed so I’d have never got to see her.’

While our meal was in the oven, we moved into the lounge and I showed him the felt birds I’d bought at Bloomsberry’s and how the staff must have thought I was a little mad when I’d stood by the fridge for a while, smiling at the ready meals.

---