Page 1 of All Wrapped Up
Chapter 1
When I woke, with the sun streaming through the bedroom curtains, on the Sunday of the August Bank Holiday weekend, feeling surprisingly light of heart and happier to be alive than I had in a long time, I had no inkling that now my grief was fading further into the background, it was about to be replaced with yet another emotion. And an unwelcome one at that.
However, by the time I had eaten breakfast, with the radio happily babbling, the back door wide open to let in the breeze, and posted something suitably sunny on my successful Insta account, AutumnEverything, I could sense a slow puncture in my previously buoyant mood and knew that I was destined to traverse yet more tricky emotional territory.
It took me a further few minutes of thinking as I plumped cushions, twitched curtains and tidied magazines to work out what I was feeling and it was the hollow echo of my feet on the scrubbed and sealed wooden floorboards that finally revealed the sensation I was experiencing.
All the while I had been renovating Rowan Cottage, my focus had been divided between coming further to terms with finding myself a widow before the age of thirty and creatingmyself the perfect solo sanctuary, but now the changes to the cottage were complete, nowIwas finally beginning to feel more complete, there was a vacancy in my life and it had been filled by a wholly unexpected sense of loneliness.
‘Oh, my goodness.’ I sighed, as I reluctantly accepted the sensation. ‘And just when I thought I was finally getting somewhere.’
I had become quite the recluse since my move to the Fens and hadn’t yet made a single friend in the area. I hadn’t felt concerned about it before, but clearly it was time to find the courage to embrace yet further change in my life now that the spectre of loneliness was loitering.
‘Best foot forward then, Clemmie,’ I attempted to encourage myself. ‘Because something will have to be done to remedy this.’
As the cottage renovation had neared completion, time spent working in the garden and learning about the local birdlife had stepped in to further help distract me from memories of what had happened to my husband, Callum, and I headed outside to immerse myself in the sunny morning in the hope that it would help dispel the impending sense of being utterly alone.
Three years since Callum’s tragic death, I no longer plummeted headlong into the deep well of grief on a regular basis, but sometimes darker thoughts would creep up on me, and the garden and my feathered friends had become a welcome refuge when I needed to dig deep – no pun intended – and find the light again.
That morning however, and in spite of the sunshine, the clear blue sky and my best efforts to focus on the dead-heading andbird table propping up (I really needed to treat myself to a new one), it wasn’t proving enough to shake the loneliness off. I took a breather and turned to look at my beloved sanctuary.
Set in the flat Fenland landscape, Rowan Cottage was picture perfect. Renovated, predominantly by my own fair hands, everything about it was idyllic. The wood and brick porch had a profusely flowering and highly scented old-fashioned rose clambering over it, the symmetrically set, freshly painted windows were dressed with pretty patterned curtains. The rooms were all filled with quirky and collectable treasures, and the façade and most of the garden was now every bit as pleasing as the inside.
With the finishing touches to the interior added just a few days before, the question of what I was going to do next had already started to raise its head. The last eighteen months had been a whirlwind of knocking down walls, replastering others, hanging wallpaper and picking out tiles. The work was finally complete, but I hadn’t yet worked out what I was going to do now it was done.
I couldn’t bear the thought of selling up and starting again, but suddenly, and shockingly, I knew with devastating clarity that Rowan Cottage alone wasn’t enough. I quickly turned back around to look at the soothing view beyond the picket fence.
My parents had described the landscape as barren the first time they had visited and with barely a tree in sight across the Fens, they were right. However, whereas they had cited that as a fault, I had always adored the emptiness. With uninterrupted views to the horizon, there was nothing that could creep up on me here. No hidden nasty shocks waiting to pounce andthat made the thought of trying to find somewhere new to live but with a similar outlook feel insurmountable.
Even though my happy home and its ideal setting suddenly didn’t feel like the be all and end all, I knew beyond any doubt that it had become an essential part of who I was and I definitely wanted to keep it. Therefore, I would have to find something else, which didn’t involve the services of an estate agent, to enthral me…
‘Perhaps then it’s finally time you rejoined the human race, Clemmie,’ I mused aloud. ‘Maybe it’s time you stopped talking to yourself and found yourself an actual… friend.’
So immersed in my thoughts, I hadn’t heard a car pull up on the drove road next to the cottage or the driver climb out.
‘Hello!’ the unexpected visitor called cheerily and I spun around, my heart hammering because they had made me jump. ‘Hi!’
The woman, who I had seen stop by before, had a head of red curls and was wearing a vintage floral sundress. She had already opened and walked through the wooden gate and into the garden.
‘I’ve caught you at last,’ she laughed, unaware of how accur-ate her words were. ‘I’ve stopped by at least half a dozen times before, but you’re never in.’
That wasn’t strictly true. I had been in, but I had chosen not to answer the door to her. Since the day I arrived, I had preferred to keep myself to myself. I had only ventured into the nearby town of Wynbridge, early in the morning or late in the afternoon when I knew it wouldn’t be busy and, politely staving off any friendly overtures, I hadn’t properly introduced myself to anyone local, aside from a few essential tradespeople and the postwoman.
However, having literally just acknowledged that my solitary existence needed shaking up, and finding someone in my garden at the exact moment I had uttered the words, felt almost like a wish come true, most certainly a timely nudge from the universe, and I felt duty bound to embrace it. Even if I was rather out of practice when it came to playing the host.
‘Hello,’ I therefore tentatively smiled. ‘Hi.’
‘I’m Lizzie,’ the woman said confidently, walking further along the path, ‘Lizzie Dixon.’
‘Clementine,’ I said back, brushing my grubby hands down my shorts, before I pushed my glasses up into my messily tied up sun-streaked blonde hair.
‘Clementine,’ the woman I now knew as Lizzie Dixon, repeated.
‘Though everyone calls me Clemmie,’ I amended.
I had almost said that my friends called me Clemmie, but given how I currently didn’t have any, that would have been a stretch and a dishonest start to my first purely sociable interaction in months.
‘Clemmie.’ Lizzie beamed, as she clasped her hands to her heart. ‘Oh, my goodness, that’s the prettiest name.’
