Page 72 of Lost in Love
“Poor chap. How’s the damsel?”
Katherine rolled her eyes and began the walk home. “Unlikely to speak to me ever again.”
“Oh dear, what have you done now?”
“I kind of let rip.” Katherine winced as she recalled the previous day. “She’s still in complete denial about a care home for Harry. I had hoped his fall would have at least brought her around to the idea.”
“It’s an inevitability. Perhaps she wants to be the one to choose when it happens,” Rebecca said.
“No, that would make sense if it were the case. She just can’t accept that it must happen. I guess deep down she knows if Harry goes to a care home, he’ll die there, which he will, and she doesn’t want to be the one that put him there. Her mother died in a care home, and I think it still haunts her. You’d be proud, though. I even used the analogy of me driving a car despite losing Helena in one to try and convince her she was making the wrong decision.”
“Wow, we have come on.”
“I actually feel I have, Becks. I don’t know if it was letting myself fall for Anna that did it or just my new life here. I have so many ideas of things I want to do. Non-stressful things, before you lecture me. I can finally see a future.”
“And does that future include a certain tour guide?”
“Let’s say that’s unlikely. I said some awful things, Becks. I basically told her she was suffocating him.” Katherine closed her eyes at the memory of her behaviour.
“Shit, you’re a bad friend.”
“Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you the truth.”
Rebecca laughed. “Yeah, I know that one all right. If you’ve left the damsel to deal with her own distress, don’t you think when it all goes horribly wrong she’ll resent you for not being there for her? Or is your devious plan to rush in at the eleventh hour and save her?”
“GMC problem aside, she said she wants to deal with everything on her own now. I’m sure she’ll come to realise she can’t cope, and she needs to be alone when she realises it.”
Rebecca tutted. “You’ve thrown her to the wolves, and now you’re going to sit back with the popcorn and watch.”
“It’s the only way. I thought she was at a breaking point before Harry’s fall, but she seems more determined to manage now, like she has something to prove. I know she’s a bit messed up with what happened to her mother; she’s trying to avoid a repeat of it, but history repeats itself. We just have to learn to accept it.”
“Well, it sounds like it’s all happening in Nunswick,” Rebecca said sarcastically. “How about I come down at the weekend? I could use some entertainment.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll restock the cellar!”
“What are you up to today?”
“Did you know there is literally nothing for people to do in this village? No activities, groups, anything?”
“Oh lordy.”
“What?”
“Project Damsel is off, and so you’re on to something else.”
“I just think there should be opportunities in the village for people to meet and share interests, even get fit. They don’t even have anywhere to meet. The village hall burned down in the nineties and wasn’t replaced. The parish council meet at the church, which I might add doesn’t have a hall; they just sit in the choir stalls. This village is dead, Becks, full of walking zombies. The over-sixties only venture out at night to the pub, the over-eighties never seem to leave their homes, but then, why would they when there is nothing to do? Something needs to be done.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to build them a village hall?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even you know I couldn’t afford that. Anna did mention that the abbey are expanding their visitor centre. I wonder if they might have room for activities.”
“Sounds like a good place to start. Better go; I have an arraignment hearing about to start.”
“A new case?” Katherine asked as she approached her driveway.
“Yep, and it’s a biggy.”
“See you soon then.” Katherine hung up and, instead of making her way up the drive, walked into the abbey car park.
