Page 14 of A Sky Full of Stars
Charlotte had been raised in the Church of England, in so much as she’d attended a C of E primary school, and she still retained an affection for ecclesiastical buildings. Although she hadn’t set foot in a church since her grandfather had died five years ago, she liked the idea that a church, and a graveyard in particular, could be grounding. She spent so much time looking at the stars, and trying to harness accumulated knowledge of the cosmos, collected by countless astronomers, that a sense of perspective about her place in the universe was comforting.
Not in any particular rush to get to the shop, she decided to take Comet for a detour. It would be lovely to get a closer look at this rather wonky church. If it was locked, she’d just amble around the grounds.
As she pushed open the wooden gate that led to the churchyard, Comet gambolled ahead, nose on alert for anything interesting, and legs running nineteen to the dozen over the grass. The graveyard looked well-tended, which suggested the church was still in use, and the close-cropped turf seemed safe enough for the dog to walk on, although Charlotte did call him back every time it looked like he might scamper too close to the gravestones. There was no one else around, but she didn’t want to appear disrespectful.
Walking idly up to the heavy, curving oak door of the church, she wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Most were, these days, and she suspected that even Lower Brambleton wasn’t immune to the odd bit of rural criminal opportunism. She turned back down the path and decided to spend a few minutes reading the gravestones. She’d almost done a joint honours and included history in her degree, and remembered well the local history part of her A Level, where she’d spent a lot of time researching the stories behind the names on the memorial plaques inside her local church. While her mates had bunked off for a cigarette behind the enormous yew trees in the graveyard, she’d been captivated by the names of those who’d gone before, and whose families had memorialised them in stone plaques on the church walls.
Although she couldn’t get inside the church today, she satisfied her curiosity by ambling down the path, reading the names and inscriptions as she went. Many of the graves nearest the entrance to the church were lost to time and the driving rain of the West Country, and were illegible, but here and there she spotted names, dates, some heartbreakingly short and some evidence of long, prosperous lives. She was particularly amused by one for an Edmund Grimes, which read:
Here lies Edward ‘Wanderlust’ Grimes,
Who roamed the world and had great times.
He walked with adventure, and now with God,
‘Seek and ye shall find,’ says the Lord (Matthew 7:7).
Charlotte wondered if it had just been travel that had enthralled Edmund. In his ninety-eight years on the planet, he must have seen a lot.
Moving back towards the gate, the headstones were getting newer. She was in the 1960s now, and then the seventies, until she reached the newest additions. The nineties were clearly when the churchyard had run out of accommodation, as graves she passed were dated 1995. But in truth, it wasn’t the date that caught her attention on the last plot before the gate. The white-coloured marble was as clean as it must have been when it had been erected; the black engraving clear against the stark background, with no humorous verse to distract from the sadness that it signified. The names, now familiar to Charlotte from the conversations with Brian and Lorelai, were in sharp relief in the strong morning sun. They read:
Here lie Laura and Martin Ashcombe,
Stargazers together in life and in death.
Taken too soon on 15 January 1995,
Now they explore the heavens side by side.
Charlotte could feel her pulse speeding up as she read the inscription. It was pure coincidence that she’d decided to explore the churchyard, but it felt as though something had been leading her to those names again. The tragedy of their loss, and their intimate connection with the observatory would inevitably charge her research with emotion, and as she looked at the gravestone, she began to feel the weight of that responsibility. It was all too easy, when she was handling historical documents and entering them into a database, to forget that there were lives connected to the information. Living under the same roof as Lorelai, that reminder was all too clear.
16
With a thousand thoughts hurtling like shooting stars through her mind, Charlotte hurried out of the churchyard and resumed her walk to the farm shop. To get to the store, she needed to walk through the centre of the village, and it was a good opportunity to get her bearings. When Gemma had dropped her off, they’d arrived at Nightshade Cottage via a series of labyrinthine back lanes, and hadn’t come through the village centre. Because she didn’t have a car, she hadn’t really had the chance to explore. Now, as she walked in the direction of Saints Farm, she began to notice how pretty and charming Lower Brambleton really was.
Much smaller than Roseford, its near neighbour, Lower Brambleton had a sleepy charm. The main road meandered through the village centre, and the dominant feature was a low-roofed thatched pub called the Star and Telescope. A couple of benches sat outside, and the front door was open, but it was difficult to see into the cosy darkness within. On the other side of the road was a small, independent charity shop called ‘The Purrfect Paws Rescue’, whose window was charmingly dressed with a selection of cat-related products and other donated items, including a particularly vibrantly patterned summer dress. Further down the road was a tea room and what looked to be a small corner shop, with a newspaper board outside bearing an eccentrically adorable headline about a rescued otter.
Lower Brambleton was small, pretty and the epitome of Somerset charm. However, there seemed to be very few people about to enjoy it, especially on a Saturday morning. She hated to admit it, but she could see why planning permission had been granted on Observatory Field. It felt as though the village needed an injection of new blood. If nothing else, a hundred houses above the woodland would achieve that.
A rumble from her stomach made Charlotte pick up her pace in the direction of the furthermost boundary of the village. It didn’t take long until she spotted the rustic looking outbuilding that served as the public, commercial face of the Saints Farm enterprise, and as the road widened out towards a more major thoroughfare at the boundary of the village, Charlotte hoped she’d find some enticing things to buy. The fresh air of the countryside was making her appetite increase, and she couldn’t wait to fill a basket with some locally produced, delicious food.
As she drew closer to the shop, she saw boxes and racks of fresh fruit and veg, their colours in strong relief against the pale oak of the building’s construction. Crates of reddish-brown potatoes, the first of the season, grown in the dark rich Somerset soil were piled up to one side, and on the other were various succulent soft fruits, including dewy raspberries in punnets and irresistible strawberries. Lower Brambleton was only a couple of dozen miles from the village of Cheddar, the home of English strawberries, and the sign on the shelf where they lounged enticingly in their small cardboard punnets proclaimed them to be from there. Charlotte immediately picked one up, ready to put in her basket when she got through the door.
‘Right, Comet,’ she said firmly, looping his lead over one of the hooks on the wall to the left of the entrance. ‘I won’t be long. Be a good boy while I get us something to eat for later.’ She noticed, with a smile, a stainless-steel bowl of water on the ground next to where the hooks had been fastened, for the shop’s canine visitors. It looked fresh, too, so Comet gratefully dunked in his snout and took several large slurps.
Entering the low-roofed wooden building that, from the outside, resembled a rather upmarket barn conversion, she was immediately assailed by the sights and scents of a well-stocked farm shop. Wafts of fresh bread drifted enticingly from a rack to her right, and to her left, lining one wall, was a fridge unit full of local cured meats and cheeses. On the back wall were several thick wooden shelves full of preserves and pickles, and in the two aisles in the centre were yet more local delights, including more vegetables, fruits and several varieties of confectionery and locally produced biscuits.
What a treasure trove, Charlotte thought, and immediately regretted not having a car to ferry her purchases back to Nightshade Cottage. She’d be limited by what she could carry, today, and she’d only brought her backpack.
‘Good afternoon!’ A cheery voice rang out from behind the counter, which was off to the right of the door. ‘How can I help you today?’
Charlotte turned from her perusal of a particularly appetising jar of pickled beetroot and saw a pretty, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties smiling back at her. She was wearing a blue apron that had ‘Saints Farm Store’ embroidered in gold lettering on the front, and as Charlotte smiled back, she continued talking.
‘Gorgeous dog you’ve got there – I’m sorry we can’t let him in the shop, but after we had a Great Dane through the door who slurped up all of the samples of the local charcuterie’s taster, we decided it was probably best to keep our four-footed friends outside!’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘Comet’s not quite tall enough to get into your cabinets, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try!’
‘I’m Annabelle Saint,’ the woman went on, as she bustled about behind the counter, tidying away a few things. ‘Feel free to ask if you need any help – or any recommendations.’
