✔️ COMPLETE
Naomi McKay is running away. After a catastrophic end to her three-year relationship, she needs to escape Hampshire to focus on what she really wants in life. St Ives, Cornwall seems like the perfect place for her, far away from everyone...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Certain feelings linger. No matter what you're doing, no matter who you're with, what you're feeling at that very moment, some emotions will stay with you. In the back of your head, or on your skin, in your nose, on your tongue. They wait for a moment to attack, when you're most vulnerable, and when they do, it's all you can do not to crumble to a million and one pieces. They'll linger until they decide not to, and then they paralyse you. You become a ghost, living in the past, in a memory or a feeling or with people who aren't part of your life anymore. You're haunted, and the haunting: torturing yourself with memories you want to and try desperately to escape, but can't.
Naomi was going through one of those moments when she sat with Bessie that Friday morning, looking at the flowers on the vines climbing the wall straight ahead in the back garden of the Inn. The flowers had triggered memories she should forget, memories of Harry and Gracie and the moors outside the lighthouse. Memories that should've been left alone, but that she simply could not.
"Naomi dear?" Bessie's voice brought Naomi quickly out of her reverie. "Are you quite alright?"
Forcing a smile onto her face, Naomi nodded ever so slightly, looking down at the cardigan in her lap. She slowly started sewing again, paying close attention to her work in front of her.
"I would say," Bessie started, taking her glasses off as she turned to the vest she was knitting. "I've known you for quite some time now, would you not agree, dear?"
Naomi glanced up at her again.
"And I can tell now when you're not yourself. You want to know how?"
"Yeah."
"You don't speak."
Naomi bit her bottom lip, glancing down at the fabric in her lap again.
"I'm therefore giving you one more chance to tell me what's bothering you, and if you don't want to say, you don't tell me, alright?" Bessie said, eyes narrowed as she brought the brown vest closer to her face. "Are you okay?"
It was weird how she hated how well the people in St Ives knew her. She hated that Bessie could tell when something was off with her, that Jessa went out of her way to find recipes Naomi would like, that Grace knew what flowers to pick her, that Fatima knew her revision routine, that Florence would show her to the new things in Vintage Divine she knew Naomi would love. The people here had made such a huge effort to get to know her, every single part, and with them, she would leave small pieces as well. With Bessie, Grace, Jessa, Fatima, Ellie, Dax, lolo. Harry. She'd leave her heart with him. It would be hard to go on without a life force within her chest, but that was the price to pay for giving it away and letting herself feel.
"I can't seem to get the hang of this new stitch," Bessie groaned, putting her glasses on to look at the guidelines in front of her. "How's the cardigan coming?"
