Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ‘sold’ sign goes up outside of the pub a week after she’s ended things with Mack and she’s relieved, because now everyone is talking about that instead of her.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispers to Vanessa as they walk home together from the park. They tell themselves it’s for Moses and Johnny’s benefit – to give them a little more time together – and they almost believe it.

“Depends what it is,” Vanessa says, the tone of her voice a warning that Charity is pushing a little too much at the walls she’s built around herself.

Charity nods towards the sign as they pass it.

“I bought the pub,” she grins.

Vanessa looks up at the pub, a burnt out shell of a building that had once been the beating heart of the village. And then she looks at Charity with suspicion in her eyes.

“Why?”

Charity wrestles with her conscience. She wants to tell Vanessa the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But she also doesn’t want to scare her away.

“A few reasons,” she admits sheepishly. “First, because I wanted to prove Chas wrong.” She pauses, watching Vanessa’s face carefully for any sign of disapproval. Vanessa nods for her to continue, giving nothing away. “And because I wanted to prove that I can be a good mum, provide for my kids, without anyone else telling me how to do it.” She hopes that Vanessa won’t notice her omission.

“Prove it to who?” No such luck. Charity turns away from her briefly, pretending to check on the boys.

“Mostly myself,” she says, aiming for nonchalance.

This time, the omission is clear. Vanessa knows what is written between the lines, because she’s always been able to read Charity like a book. Charity waits for her to tell her she’s wasting her time, that she hasn’t a chance in hell of getting Vanessa back, or her approval. But Vanessa stays quiet and after a beat, Charity risks a look.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” is all she says, and though Charity is less gifted at reading between the lines, she knows the moment feels significant. Before she can get carried away, Vanessa shouts for Johnny and the boys say goodbye to each other and their other mother’s before heading off in different directions.

Charity looks back just in time to see Vanessa’s pony-tail disappearing through the door of Tug Ghyll and she smiles.

When the contractors begin gutting the pub, the village can talk of nothing else but who the mystery buyer might be. As tempted as she is to put them out of their misery, she likes having a secret just a little bit more. It’s even more fun when Vanessa is the only one who knows.

“I saw Kim Tate talking to them yesterday,” Brenda states confidently, when Charity approaches the counter.

“Good morning to you too Brenda, I’d like a latte please to take away,”

“Well, it’s got to mean something hasn’t it?” Brenda insists, busying herself with making the drink but managing to keep one eye on Charity through some inhuman act of contortion. Charity does her best to look serious. Of course, she already knows from talking to John, the site manager, that Kim was merely looking for a quote on roofing maintenance, but Brenda doesn’t need to know that.

“She might be looking to franchise,” Charity suggests and Brenda nods vigorously, miraculously managing not to send the jug of hot milk all over the place.

“Exactly! It wouldn’t surprise me if she ends up owning the whole bleedin’ village.” Charity bites her lip inconspicuously.

“Best keep a tight hold of this place then. No doubt you’ll be next on her list.”

She hands a terrified looking Brenda the right change and takes her coffee with a grateful smile. She manages to wait until she’s outside before allowing herself giggle.

She starts off, walking towards the scrap yard, when she notices Vanessa’s car parked outside the vets, and Vanessa sitting behind the wheel, looking like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Charity approaches cautiously, and taps on the window. Vanessa looks at her, sighs, and rolls it down.

“What do you want?” she snaps, and Charity bristles a little at the prickliness of it. She hasn’t heard it in a while and really hasn’t missed it.

“Just checking you’re okay, but don’t worry, I’ll leave you to it…” She turns to walk away but hears Vanessa sigh.

“Don’t go,” Vanessa says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

She hesitates for only a second, not wanting to get her head bitten off, but inevitably she turns back and waits patiently for Vanessa to speak.

“I have an appointment and Rhona was supposed to be going with me, but she’s had a call out.”

The word ‘appointment’ makes Charity feel as though her heart has been plunged into ice. She suddenly understands why she had been the last person Vanessa had wanted to see.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Charity asks anyway and tries not to take Vanessa’s laugh too personally.

“You?” she asks, her eyes accusing and cold. Then she checks herself and shakes her head. “Sorry… again.” It reminds Charity of the cellar when they had kissed for the first time. How Vanessa hadn’t been able to stop herself from insulting Charity and Charity had kissed her just to shut her up. She is completely aware that a similar strategy now would be a very bad move indeed.

“It’s okay. I get it,” she says softly, “but the offer is there. Is it a check-up or…?” She doesn’t want to finish that sentence, suddenly afraid of what the answer could be. Thankfully, Vanessa puts them both out of their misery.

“Check-up, and it’s fine, I’ll be fine, and you have work anyway.” Vanessa nods up the road in the vague direction of the scrap yard and Charity follows it with her eyes, thinking. She has phone calls to make, wages to pay, a Jimmy to torment, but none of it feels remotely important anymore.

“That can wait,” she insists. “I’d like to come with you, if you want me to of course?”

Vanessa nods and lets out a breath of relief before leaning over to open the passenger door for Charity.

Charity hates hospitals. She’d hated them before Vanessa got sick and she hated them even more now. Still, she tries not to make it too obvious. She asks about the vets and Johnny and if she’s heard from Tracy – trying to keep her mind from obsessing over the appointment. Vanessa seems grateful for the small talk, even though it’s really not something Charity’s very good at.

When the doctor calls them in, Vanessa freezes for a second. Charity, holds out a hand instinctively and Vanessa stares at it for a second as if Charity is asking her to sign away her soul in blood.

“Pretend I’m Rhona, or Tracy, if that helps,” Charity whispers and Vanessa reluctantly places her hand in Charity’s and allows Charity to pull her up. Neither of them mentions the electric shock that starts in their fingertips and runs straight to their toes.

The doctor is new, but friendly enough, trying his best to put Vanessa at ease. He’s an older man, surely pushing retirement, and he looks surprised by their hands when he notices them.

“Is this your friend?” he asks Vanessa, and Vanessa nods. Under different circumstances, Charity would have enjoyed telling the doctor that Vanessa was her future wife just to see him stumble over his internal homophobia, but she says nothing because Vanessa acknowledging her as a friend feels like more than she could hope for already.

“Well, Miss Woodfield, you’ll be glad to know that all your scans have come back completely clear,” he begins, and Charity feels the tension drain out of Vanessa. Her hand feels physically lighter in her own.

“Really?” she asks, breathlessly.

“Oh yes, no signs of cancer whatsoever. Of course, we’d like to keep checking, but we shouldn’t need to see you again for a year now, unless of course, you begin feeling unwell.”

Vanessa nods and offers the doctor a watery grin and Charity’s heart feels like it might implode at the sight of it. She wants to get up and hug the doctor herself for putting that smile on Vanessa’s face.

Vanessa is quiet on the drive back to the village. Charity isn’t sure if she should say anything or just let Vanessa enjoy her good news.

“Thank you,” she says eventually. “I don’t think I could have done that alone.”

“Any time,” Charity says.  

Chapter Text

Chas is furious when every attempt she makes to discover the mystery buyer’s identity gets her nowhere.

“I just want to ask if they’re looking for staff, maybe someone to run it…” she whines, her tea going cold on the table. Charity sips her own drink, nodding in the right places and feeling only a little bit guilty about the fact that she could put Chas out of her misery but isn’t.

“I’m sure they will, and in the meantime, you’ve got the vets…” she says, when Chas finally takes a breath.

“I don’t want to work at the bloody vets!” she yells, “don’t you think I hear enough about anal glands every night over dinner?” Charity thinks she should laugh, but is surprised to feel a stab of regret. She sort of misses hearing Vanessa talk cysts and infections over dinner.

Dawn getting her job back at the Hop had been a stroke of luck for Chas and Paddy really, but Chas was clearly not cut out for office work. She’d done nothing but complain since she’d started there according to Vanessa, who was also finding it very hard to keep Charity’s involvement a secret when she has to listen to Chas all day at work.

Of course, Charity had every intention of offering Chas the supervisor role once she opened the place back up. She might not have trusted her cousin enough to share the pub with her, but she still wanted her to be happy and nothing made Chas happier than being in the pub.

“Don’t you think it’s weird though?” Chas asked suddenly, interrupting Charity’s thoughts. “That they haven’t been to check on the work at all since it started?”

Chas had had the whole family on lookout. There was a rota and everything. They had to call her the moment they spotted any new faces hanging around the Woolpack. Marlon, who had picked up a few extra shifts at the Hop thanks to Laurel, had the most shifts. Yesterday, Charity had caught him on a deckchair outside Smithy Cottage with a pair of binoculars glued to his face. The day before that, she’d been on the way to the café when something leopard print appeared out of a clump of shrubs. At first she’d thought something had escaped from the zoo, but Mandy had only wanted her to buy her a tea.

“Maybe they’re too busy to check up on it and trust whoever they’ve got running the renovations,” Charity suggests. “Could even be a Weatherspoon’s for all we know.” She hides her smirk behind her mug.

Chas’s jaw drops in horror at the idea. She’s about to start ranting again when there’s a knock at the door and Vanessa walks in with a pile of magazines in her hands.

“I got the…” she starts, and then stops when she notices Chas.

“Got what love?” Chas asks, craning her neck around to investigate.

“Oh, just some magazines I said I’d give to Charity when I’d finished with them,” she says, hugging them to her chest to hide the fact that they are interior design magazines.

Charity shakes her head a little and smiles. Ness has always been a terrible liar. Luckily, Chas is too busy thinking about the pub to be distracted for long.

“Have you seen anything today while you’ve been out love? Any new faces at the pub?”

“Actually, there was a nice BMW parked around the back about an hour ago. I don’t know if it’s still there though.” If Chas hadn’t been so desperate for even a crumb of information, she’d probably have figured out that Vanessa was lying pretty quickly. Dingles are notoriously good at sniffing out a con, having pulled more than a few of their own.

Instead, Chas is up and heading for the door in a heartbeat, yelling her goodbyes over her shoulder. When Vanessa closes the door behind her, Charity collapses into a fit of giggles.

“Oh my god, did you see her face?” she manages to get out, jumping up to look out the window and laughing even harder at the sight of Chas running at full speed up the road. She only stops laughing when she realises that Vanessa is frowning. “What?” she asks.

“Don’t you feel bad? Couldn’t you just tell her?” Vanessa drops the pile of magazines on the coffee table and sighs as she drops down onto the sofa.

“I told you Ness, she’s going to be second in charge when I’m ready to open. It’s going to be a family business. But if I tell her now, she’ll only try and take over. Now, what are these magazines?”

They spend the rest of the afternoon flicking through the magazines. Charity had asked for Vanessa’s help choosing the décor, not really expecting her to say yes but over the moon when she did. Of course she’d said it was only because she knew that Charity would blow her budget on something completely pointless like diamond encrusted toilet flushers.

The truth was that Charity knew she could manage it all by herself. She just really wanted to spend time with Vanessa and the friendship that they had begun to form.

She had never been friends with Vanessa before. Before their night in the cellar, they’d barely spoken two words to each other that weren’t “Pint please” and “That’s £3 ta”. Of course a friendship had developed over time, but it had always been secondary to the attraction and then the love that came after. But it had been her third favourite thing about being with Vanessa – that it was like having a best friend who also gave you great orgasms and didn’t walk away when things got tough.

Until she did, because Charity did.

Sometimes, she catches Vanessa watching her. She’ll be playing with the boys or making them a cup of tea, and the hairs on the back of her neck get all prickly and that’s when she knows that Vanessa’s eyes are on her. She tries not to let on that she knows and she avoids looking at her for as long as possible because she knows that the moment she turns around, Vanessa will look away.

But it’s hard, because when Vanessa looks at her like that, Charity forgets how to string words together and her knees feel weak. It’s insane to her, how a secret glance from Vanessa makes her feel so altogether undone.

She doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, as she is so apt to often do. Once upon a time, Vanessa had waited for Charity to say ‘I love you’ first. Later, she’d confessed to having loved her for months but had not wanted to scare Charity away. And of course, Charity had loved Vanessa long before she’d gotten around to letting Vanessa know, but ‘love’ wasn’t a word she’d wanted to throw around carelessly. She had known that Vanessa was important to her in ways that no other partner had ever been. She had wanted to get it right.

Love was so much more than a word with Vanessa.

Getting into the pub to actually check on the progress is a feat of great skill and ingenuity on Charity’s part. Thankfully, she has a lot of experience in the area.

“Is that the same…?” Vanessa stares, open-mouthed, as Charity descends the stairs after spending a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom. She finishes her sentence with a strange gasping noise. She immediately covers it up with a cough.

“It’s the only one the boys haven’t ruined by tying a string to it and walking it like a dog. Which reminds me, I’ve still never yelled at Noah for teaching them that trick.”

Vanessa’s cheeks colour then and something brief but clear flickers across her face before she collects herself.

“Well, it will have to be when neither Mandy nor Vinny are on duty…” Vanessa says, “… on account of they’ve seen you wearing that before.” Charity agrees, clueless to the effect the red wig and power suit were having on Vanessa.

“I’ll arrange a meeting for tomorrow then, Mandy’s taking Liv and Vinny shopping for their wedding outfits in Hotten.”

Taking out her phone, she turns to the kitchen window, checking on Moses and Johnny who are kicking a football around just outside. She’s almost finished arranging a meeting with John, when the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. After a childhood on the streets and then years looking over her shoulder for Bails, she knows when someone is looking at her. It’s like a sixth sense.

Aiming for casual, she turns slowly but still catches Vanessa look away quickly and start scrolling through her phone, apparently captivated by whatever she’s looking at.

Charity watches her then, only half listening to John as he witters on about the roof tiles. To the untrained eye, she seems calm and in control, but Charity knows better. She knows Vanessa’s tells. Her legs are tightly crossed, the way she always used to cross them when they were in public and Charity had whispered something inappropriate in her ear. Her cheeks were flushed and her teeth were clamped down pretty hard on her bottom lip.

Charity still couldn’t be sure, but she was beginning to get the impression that maybe she wasn’t the only one happy that they were spending more and more time together.

By the time John hung up, Vanessa was furiously typing away on her own phone.

“Well, he says we can go round at 2 tomorrow, see how everything’s progressing…” Charity told her after a short pause.

“Mhm,” Vanessa mumbles, almost inaudibly. She doesn’t look up.

“Says the flooring is almost finished and he reckons we’ll like it…”

“Right, yeah, good,” Vanessa nods, still engrossed by her phone. Charity frowns.

“Of course, he’s having some trouble with the pterodactyl nest in the attic…”

“I bet, yeah… wait, what?” Vanessa looks up, a little dazed.

“Never mind,” Charity grumbles. Whatever she had thought a few moments ago, doubt was already creeping back in.

“Sorry!” Vanessa jumps down off the stool she had been perched on and stuffs her phone back into her pocket. “Listen, do you think you could keep Johnny tonight?”

Charity’s eyebrows furrow. She hadn’t though Vanessa would suggest a sleepover so soon. “Sure, yeah... but why? Not got a hot date have you?” She laughs nervously, hoping it sounds like she wouldn’t care either way and immediately regrets saying it.

“Well, not sure about ‘hot’, but only time will tell. Thanks Charity. I’ll catch up with you about the pub tomorrow, okay? I’ll just say goodbye to the boys, then I best go and get myself ready.” She grins, and if Charity hadn’t been so stunned, she might have noticed that it was a little forced. Instead, she struggled to nod and mumble something like a goodbye, as her stomach knotted up uncomfortably.

There had been no one else since Fiona. No one that Charity knew about anyway. Charity had never even entertained the idea that Vanessa would date again, though it shouldn’t surprise her. Vanessa had always had a more than healthy appetite in the bedroom and it wasn’t like she’d taken a vow of abstinence just because she was single.

The jealousy sticks in her ribs, sharp and angry.

Chapter Text

The boys fall asleep quickly, tired after a long day of school and penalty shoot outs. Charity stands, leaning against the door frame, listening to their little snores and smiling at the sight of them both sleeping in the same room again. Johnny was sleeping at the bottom end of Moses’ bed, but neither had complained.

It had reminded her of all the times she and Vanessa would go to bed with them both in their own beds and wake up to find that one had inevitably woke in the night and climbed into bed with the other. It had been sweet back then, seeing them curled up like puppies and more like Siamese twins than step-brothers. But now, they were getting too big. She would have to invest in bunk beds soon so that Johnny could keep spending the night there.

Closing the door gently, she stood for a moment on the landing, looking at her own bedroom door. If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe that nothing had changed at all and that if she only opened the door, Vanessa would be there, on her side of the bed, reading a book or playing a game on her tablet. Charity would change into her pyjamas, the tartan ones that Vanessa had bought for her one Christmas, and crawl into bed. Usually, Vanessa would put down her book, turn out the light and they would find each other in the dark.

She won’t allow herself to remember anything more. How Vanessa had made her feel so beautiful and kissed her like her life had depended on it. It was too painful. Especially tonight, knowing that Vanessa was out there somewhere, with another woman.

Back downstairs, she reached instinctively for the wine and picked her phone up off the kitchen counter to find a message from Vanessa.

‘Is Johnny okay? We are just at the Hop, getting food and drinks, so not far if you need me.’

Charity considered faking an emergency. Something small like a slight fever, just to make Vanessa come back. But Charity didn’t want her to bring the date back too, so though it pained her greatly, she did the right thing for a change, rather than the thing that would make her happy.

‘All okay here. Both boys sleeping soundly. Enjoy your evening.’

Almost immediately, the three dots appeared.

‘Oh that’s good, this wine has gone right to my head! See you in the morning.’

Charity stared at the message for a moment, feeling that something was ‘off’ about it, but not quite sure what. It took a moment for the penny to drop but eventually, she realised that Vanessa had never once, in the whole time she’d known her, sent a coherent or grammatically correct text whilst inebriated. Her ability to text in English was the first thing to go when alcohol had passed her lips. And then, of course, there was the fact that she'd text back so quickly when Vanessa wasn’t the type of person to be on her phone when she had company.

There was probably a perfectly good explanation for it, Charity thought, but she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the date was going badly and Vanessa was looking for an excuse to get away without hurting the other woman’s feelings. But that didn’t make sense either, because Vanessa wasn’t the sort of person who suffered fools. She wouldn’t sit through a bad date out of politeness.

Still, Charity thought, there was something not quite right.

By the time Sarah got home at 9, Charity had almost worn a groove into the living room floor with all her pacing. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t adding up. And of course, it had occurred to her that she was probably just thinking this way out of jealousy. She was at least self-aware enough to realise that the idea of Vanessa being with any woman that wasn’t her made her feel sick to her stomach.

“Hey, Sarah… can you keep an eye on the boys for ten minutes? I just need to get some fresh air.”

Sarah looked at her, puzzled, then shrugged and headed up the stairs to her room. Assuming that that had been a ‘yes’, Charity grabbed her coat and headed out into the night.

It was March, but still pretty cold, so Charity snuggled into the collar of her coat and stuffed her hands into her pockets for warmth. She was about to head off in the direction of the Hop, when she glanced up at Tug Ghyll and saw that the light was on. Charity pondered the sight for a moment, wondering if perhaps Vanessa had left the light on by accident in her rush to meet up with her date. Before she could convince herself that energy-saving Vanessa might make such a mistake, she saw the outline of a person moving around inside.

Vanessa had yet to find a suitable roommate to help her pay the rent, but had admitted to not being in a hurry. She was quite enjoying having the place to herself, which meant that either Vanessa had suddenly decided to come home early, or someone had broken in.

Deciding to investigate further before jumping to conclusions, Charity made her way across the road and up the path to Tug Ghyll. She didn’t knock, not wanting to spook the potential burglar; instead, she crept towards the bay window and tried to peek inconspicuously through the gaps in the blinds.

She was surprised to see that Vanessa was there – sat on the sofa, in her cosiest pair of pyjamas and giant, fluffy rabbit slippers. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun and had clearly just been washed. And to top it off, there was a weird greenish hue to her face which Charity recognised as Vanessa’s favourite face mask. There was no way that she had gotten home early, showered and done her face mask in the hour since she’d last text Charity. And there was no way that Vanessa would be dressed in her comfies if she’d invited someone back to the house after a first date.

There was only one logical explanation. Vanessa was lying. What Charity couldn’t figure out, was why?

Deciding to confirm her suspicions, she switched her phone to silent and tapped out a new text message to Vanessa.

‘If Marlon’s working, could you tell him that Noah loved the game he got him for his birthday.’

Again, almost immediately, the three dots appeared. Peeking through the blinds, Charity watched Vanessa typing out a reply that appeared on her phone a few seconds later.

‘Will do if I see him. He’s been pretty busy.’

Puzzled as to why Vanessa was lying, but also relieved that she was lying about the date, Charity headed back to Jacob’s Fold, making a mental note to try and get to the bottom of things tomorrow.

After dropping the boys off at school the next morning (and smiling sheepishly at Mrs Pitt), Charity called into the café on her way home for a coffee, surprised to find Vanessa and Rhona whispering conspiratorially in the corner. The second they spotted her, the conversation was over.

“Hey,” Vanessa called brightly, “did everyone get to school okay?”

“With book bags, PE kits and packed lunches,” Charity said, joining the small queue. “Was it a good night?” she asked, curious as to whether Vanessa could lie to her face. As suspected, Vanessa’s cheeks began to flush and Rhona had to come to the rescue.

“Hey, Ness, we’re late for Mr Thompson. He’ll be asking for a discount if we don’t get a move on.”

Looking incredibly grateful for her friend, Vanessa nodded and grabbed her bag.

“I’ll see you at lunch though, right?” Vanessa asked, eyebrows raised.

Lunch was when Charity was planning to meet up with John at the pub, all kitted out in her disguise, and Vanessa seemed to be suggesting that Charity might need some help with that. A little put out that Vanessa hadn’t admitted to her deceptions, especially after all the lectures she’d given Charity over the years about lying, Charity wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her to spend time with Vanessa that day.

“You know, I’m sure I can manage. You should see if you can get a coffee date with what’s-her-name instead.”

Vanessa looked crestfallen, but Charity chose to ignore it. Instead, she moved forward in the queue and left Vanessa and Rhona to it.

“Come on, Ness,” she heard Rhona mutter behind her as she smiled at Brenda and asked for her usual. When she turned back, both women had gone.

John didn’t recognise her at first. All their meetings so far, she’d turned up as herself as they’d always met in Hotten, somewhere she knew she wouldn’t bump into someone she knew. In the end, she had to drag him inside and pull her wig up slightly to reveal her blonde hair, before he would accept that she was telling the truth.

The outside had been power washed and painted; the roof was completely retiled and the windows had all been replaced. Inside, was a different story. Everyone was still working on cleaning up the damage done by the explosion. At the moment, they were tearing up the old floor and fitting new boards. The bar itself was gone, but the empty optics were still on the wall.

“How’s upstairs?” Charity asked. She had no intentions of moving back into the Woolpack once the work was complete. She fully intended to let Chas and Paddy live there instead as she was happy enough at Jacob’s Fold. Besides, the rent Chas paid would only help her to recover her losses even faster.

“It’s coming along. Carpets went down yesterday,” John tells her.

She’s about to ask to go and look when she hears one of the builders yelling. “You can’t go in there miss, it’s not safe!” he says, as a woman strides into the building ignoring him. She’s short, with a neat, brunette bob and a pair of sunglasses on that she doesn’t remove, despite the lack of natural light inside.

“Who are you?” Charity asks, confused. The woman smiles and lowers her glasses just enough so that Charity can see Vanessa’s blue eyes sparkle.

“I’m from the council,” Vanessa says in a posh accent that doesn’t quite sound right. “I heard you were going to be here today and wanted to run through some paperwork with you.”

Charity is completely baffled, and looks at John, exasperated.

“Is the kitchen safe?”

He nods, and Charity grabs hold of Vanessa’s arm and drags her into the back rooms.

There’s nowhere to sit. As the point of the explosion, it took the most damage and as a result, literally everything has had to be removed. Still, they’ve laid a new floor and plastered the walls and the place no longer stinks of smoke.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” Charity hisses at Vanessa, closing the door behind them. “This was not part of the plan.”

“I wanted to see it for myself,” Vanessa pouts. “You’re not the only one who can play dress up you know!”

Throwing her hands into the air, Charity can’t help but laugh. Of course she had known that Vanessa hadn’t always been a perfect goody-two shoes. When she’d first come to the village, there’d been many a tale about her drunken antics and of course there had been the whole ‘Who’s the daddy?’ fiasco. But between the lies and the wig, Charity was beginning to wonder if she’d ever really known the whole Vanessa.

“And last night?” she asks, “When you said you were on a date but you weren’t?” Vanessa’s eyes widen before she tries her best to look indignant – shocked that Charity would even suggest such a thing. “And I saw you Ness, before you even think about lying to my face again. What the hell is going on?”

Vanessa looks like she’s suddenly about to cry and Charity immediately hates herself for blurting it out like that. She suddenly knew why Vanessa had always hated being lied to by Charity. She did not like being taken by a mug at the best of times, but it was even worse when it was Vanessa doing it.

“I… I can explain,” Vanessa gasped, and Charity folded her arms and raised her eyebrows.

“Great, go ahead,” she said. Flustered and seeming to be willing the ground to open up and swallow her, Vanessa looked like she was going to burst into tears.

“I did have a date. I just, couldn’t face going in the end so I sent her a message and cancelled. I didn’t want you to know, I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean you didn’t want me to know?”

“Because I figured you would think that I didn’t go because of you.”

“But, why? Why would I think that? You’ve made it quite clear that we have no future together Vanessa, so why on earth would I think you aren’t dating because of me?”

“Because it’s true, okay! I couldn’t go on that date because I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to be with anyone who isn’t you and I hate myself for that so I lied!”

The words turn to bullets in the air, and Charity feels each one enter as her stomach drops. She knows what Vanessa has said, and she knows what it sounds like, but she can’t quite allow herself to believe that it’s true. That Vanessa still has feelings for Charity beyond friendship.

“I don’t understand,” she says, and Vanessa is crying for real now. Tears of anger and frustration and she seems to resent each tear personally.

“Of course you don’t understand, Charity! You moved on. You had Mack, you’ll probably have a string of other men soon too. I tried to move on with Fiona but I could never really do it. I was almost glad when I found out she’d slept with Nate because it meant I had a good reason to end things for good. And I don’t want to want you, Charity, do you understand that? You hurt me, and I hate you for that, but I also still love you, because I can’t just switch my feelings off like you can and it’s killing me!”

By the time she’s finished, the tears are streaming and Vanessa hides her face, embarrassed. Charity stares at her, open-mouthed, unsure of what she’s just heard and whether she’s imagined the whole thing. She’s certainly had enough daydreams that have been quite similar.

Moving slowly towards Vanessa, she peels her hands away from her face and forces the smaller woman to look at her. Her eyes are brighter, the way they always are when she’s upset or angry, so blue that Charity feels like she could swim in them.

“Ness,” she whispers, “don’t cry…” Charity thumbs away a rebellious tear from beneath Vanessa’s eye, smearing her mascara even more. “You’re going to look like a panda.”

Vanessa laughs a little at that and uses her sleeve to dab at her face. Her voice is small and trembling when she speaks.

“It’s all the wigs fault,” she says, nodding towards Charity’s head.

“Huh?”

“Yesterday, you just looked so good in that wig and I was scared I was going to say something or do something and make a fool of myself so I arranged that date. Only I couldn’t go…”

Charity knows that Vanessa has said so much and that everything is beyond complicated. But she can’t help but focus on just one of the words Vanessa had used.

“You still love me?” she asks, inching a little closer.

Vanessa nods, meeting Charity’s gaze tentatively and looking surprised at what she sees there. Charity knows that her feelings are plain as day on her face when her gaze drops automatically to Vanessa’s lips. Without thinking, she leans in.

Vanessa’s lips taste of tears, but they still feel as soft as she remembered. At first, Vanessa doesn’t return the kiss, but after a split second, her lips part slightly and she allows herself to let go. Charity clutches at Vanessa, pulling her closer, until their bodies are pressed together so tightly that it’s hard to know where Charity ends and Vanessa begins.

And Charity knows that she’s crying, but she doesn’t stop until Vanessa pulls away, breathless and terrified. Charity watches the look of horror set on Vanessa’s face as she backs away a few steps before rushing out the door.

Chapter Text

Vanessa managed to avoid her for exactly two days and three hours. Considering it was such a small village, and the fact that Charity had bombarded with her text messages and sat on her doorstep until her bum had gone numb, this was still pretty impressive.

Ness, I’m sorry okay. I didn’t mean to kiss you. I wasn’t thinking. Please can we talk about this.

Ness, I’m outside, please talk to me.

It won’t happen again, I swear. We can pretend it never happened. Just talk to me… please!

You can’t avoid me forever. It’s a tiny village. We might as well talk…

And then Charity had thought about the last time she’d upset Vanessa and the lengths that Vanessa had gone to to avoid her, and she panicked.

I’ll do anything okay. I’ll never speak to you again if that’s what you want. Just please, please, please don’t leave and take Johnny.

Johnny has to go to school at some point Ness, we might as well talk and just get it over with. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.

Come on, this is silly. We just got caught up in the moment. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.

Okay, look. I’m going to stop texting, but please don’t leave the village. If you can’t be here because of me, then I’ll leave okay? Everything is all my fault anyway.

Sticking to her word and not texting was difficult. In the end, she asked Noah to hide her phone somewhere in the house and not give it her back for 24 hours, which he thought was pretty hilarious and was more than happy to oblige. Of course, she was begging him to give it back after 20 minutes, but he took great pleasure in refusing. All of her threats had become meaningless since he’d turned 18 and had his own job.

The next morning, after he’d left for work, she scoured the entire house looking for the phone. She enlisted Moses to help her, but he ended up getting distracted by his Lego. Sarah was no help either. Noah had obviously gotten to her first, because she said she was heading into town with Chloe to do some shopping and had told her to stop being such a teenager.

After an hour of turning each room upside down, she threw herself onto the sofa dramatically and screamed into a cushion.

She didn’t get up again until Moses emerged from his bedroom demanding sustenance. It was only then that she realised just how much of a mess she had made. She was halfway through making a jam sandwich when there was a knock at the door.

“Moses!” Johnny cried, running in. Charity whirled around at the sound of his little voice and saw Vanessa stood at the door looking sheepish and nervous.

“Can we come in?” she asked quietly.

Overwhelmed with relief, the best Charity could do was nod and grin. Quickly throwing the sandwiches onto a plate, she thrust them into Moses hands.

“Go and eat them upstairs, share with Johnny while you play…”

“But we’re not ‘posed to eat upstairs mum,” Moses said, confused.

“Well, new rule… you can eat sandwiches upstairs but only on Sundays.”

Moses thought about this for a moment as Charity nudged him towards the stairs, but in the end, decided that it was perfectly logical and dragged Johnny upstairs to play. Once they were out of earshot, and she and Vanessa were alone, Charity realised that she had no idea what to do. She wasn’t sure if she should apologise, deflect with humour or throw herself on her knees and beg Vanessa not to go.

In the end, all she could manage was “So…”

Taking a deep breath, Vanessa walked in, closed the door and took off her coat.

“We should talk,” she said matter-of-factly. “Can we sit?” Charity nodded dumbly, gesturing at the sofa and perching anxiously at one end of it. The seriousness of Vanessa’s tone was making her feel sick. A thousand scenarios ran through her mind, one after the other, like a swarm of angry wasps, and each one ended with Vanessa telling her she was leaving for good.

“Why did you think I would leave the village?” Vanessa asked, sitting down opposite. Charity swallowed what felt like barbed wire.

“I guess because it’s what I expect… if I mess up, the people I love leave…” she muttered.

“The people you love?” Vanessa’s eyebrows sprang towards her hairline. Charity watched the same look of panic flicker across the other woman’s features that she had seen in the pub and desperately tried to think of the right thing to say that would make it go away again.

“I mean, I know you don’t love me and I’m okay with that, we can be friends or whatever you want us to be, honest… I can keep my feelings to myself. I won’t ever kiss you again like that, without permission…”

Vanessa nodded, her lips shrinking to a thin grimace and she wrung her hands together in her lap, staring hard at them so that Charity couldn’t see her face.

“You think I don’t love you anymore?” she asked quietly.

“Well… I cheated on you so…” Vanessa’s shoulders tensed and she grimaced again.

“I know,” she sighed.

“So it’s fine yeah? I understand that we can never be like we were before. Honestly, it’s more than I deserve that we can be friends for the boys and I should have been happy with that instead of pushing for more…”

Vanessa stood then, hands still clasped tightly together. Turning her back to Charity, she looked at the photographs on the sideboard, trailing her finger over some of them thoughtfully.

“Our photos are gone,” she mused, almost imperceptibly. Charity watched her curiously, how she paused at the spot where their favourite photograph had been. Watched her look up to the breakfast table and the painting of a lake that hung where their faces had once been.

“Noah did it a few months ago, after Tracy let slip that you had a girlfriend… he thought he was helping me to move on I guess.”

Vanessa turned and stared. “What do you mean move on?” she asked. “You were happy with Mack weren’t you?”

Charity laughed then. She didn’t mean to, it just sort of bubbled up inside of her and spilled out. She’d been in such a state of anxiety since the kiss in the pub that she figured all of that adrenaline was starting to leak out of her unexpectedly and at all the wrong times.

“Sorry,” she gasped once she’d managed to get herself back under control. “I wasn’t happy with Mack until after I found out you had moved on. Even then, I don’t think I was ever really ‘happy’… not the way I had been with you. I was just… distracted.” The honesty felt good. Cathartic even. Vanessa, however, was only looking more confused.

“But you hooked up while I was at my mums… Tracy said you were an item…”

Another laugh threatened to escape and Charity swallowed it down. “We were never an item,” she insisted. “In fact, I hated him for the longest time… because of what he had cost me. Or what he had helped me cost myself I guess…”

“So, you’re telling me that you and Mack didn’t become an item until… September?” Charity nodded. Vanessa was now doing an impression of that meme Charity kept seeing all over social media. The one of the blonde woman trying to work out a really complicated looking math equation. “And you went from hating him to loving him because you thought I’d moved on?” she asked slowly.

“At the time, he was just about the only person being nice to me. I’d alienated most of the family by that point you see. Chas had kicked me out of the pub, the kids were barely talking to me, I was living with Diane…”

“So that’s how you ended up there…” Vanessa didn’t look scared anymore, Charity realised. The honesty, she presumed, was working.

“She was about the only person in the village who could see what was really happening with me I think.” She smiled remembering how Diane had given her the words to make sense of how she was feeling. Grief. The smile saddened. “I really miss her actually,” she added softly.

“What was happening with you?” Vanessa asked, sitting back down, a little closer this time.

“According to Diane, I was grieving. The drinking, the reckless things I was doing… it was all just grief. And then, after she said that I was looking up grief and I saw this quote… I can’t remember where… but it really helped.”

“What was it?”

“That grief is just love with nowhere left to go. So I figured I had to find somewhere to put it. Started with the kids and then family and then work. I guess it wasn’t enough though, which is why I eventually gave into things with Mack…”

There was silence for a moment and when Charity looked up, she was startled to see tears gathering in Vanessa’s eyes and an expression that looked like she’d been kicked in the lungs. Charity inched a bit closer.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it about me,” Charity said. “I know what I did was unforgiveable…” Vanessa looked at her sadly.

“I had no idea. Tracy didn’t tell me any of this. She made it sound like you had just gone back to your old ways and I figured that I had never been exciting enough after all and that you were happy to be rid of me.”

The words tumbled out of Vanessa then and for the first time Charity realised how different their understanding of things had really been.  Just as it had been her fear of Vanessa leaving her that had driven her to recklessly kiss Mack on the road that day, Vanessa’s fear of Charity leaving had led her to believe the absolute worst too.

“I should have been honest with you about how I was feeling,” Charity said regretfully. “Maybe none of this would have happened then.”

“I should have been honest with you too,” Vanessa added. “I think maybe you going out and kissing Mack that day was because you assumed the worst possible thing was going to happen. Just like today, with assuming that I would take Johnny and leave again.” Charity thought a moment and then realised that assuming the worst was in fact her default setting. For as long as she could remember, since her father and Bails, she had always assumed the worst and any time she’d tried not to assume the worst – with Jai and with Declan – she’d been hurt.

“I think you’re right,” she said. Vanessa nodded and held out her hand for Charity’s. Holding it gently, she moved her thumb soothingly over Charity’s knuckles and immediately Charity felt a wave of peace wash over her.

“You know, I had therapy while I was at my mums…” Charity looked at her surprised and Vanessa nodded. “I know… but I wasn’t sleeping because of nightmares and I realised that the cancer had been a distraction from everything that had happened with Pierce. When the cancer was no longer my priority, it was like I could finally see how much he had traumatised me.”

“Did it help?”

“Well, we can talk about that later… my point is, that I talked to Jean – that was her name – about how whenever Johnny was out of my sight, I assumed someone had snatched him or that Pierce had escaped prison and found us, and she said that it was a symptom of trauma… that when you’ve been through something so awful that you haven’t been able to ever relax, your default setting becomes to always be expecting the worst possible thing to happen.”

Charity nodded tearfully. It made sense. All of it. For both her and Vanessa. They’d both been through such awful things and had known exactly how the other was feeling, but instead of talking to each other, they had ran scared from each other. It all seemed so ridiculous and yet so inevitable at the same time.

She was just about to ask Vanessa more about her therapy when Moses and Johnny came running down stairs.

“Can we go to the park?” they yelled in unison.

Vanessa looked at Charity and smiled.

“I don’t know, can we?”

Charity smiled through her tears. She knew that what Vanessa was really asking was could they be friends.

“I’ll get the coats,” she said.

Chapter Text

The kiss in the Woolpack had opened Pandora’s Box.

Charity had told Mack once that Vanessa was the only person she could talk to, but it hadn’t always been that way. Towards the end, they hadn’t even been on the same chapter, never mind the same page.

Now, Charity felt like she could tell Vanessa anything.

Almost anything.

“So…” she began, sitting on the bench beside Vanessa once the boys were off playing. “…we should probably talk about the kiss.”

She felt Vanessa tense beside her for a second and Charity thought she knew suddenly how someone might feel after stepping on a landmine, in that split second before you lift your foot and get blown to bits.

“We did Charity,” she sighed. “We agreed, we got caught up in the moment, it shouldn’t have happened okay?”

Charity opened her mouth to argue. She wanted to tell Vanessa that it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing for her. That she’d imagined kissing Vanessa again every day since she’d left for her mums. That now she’d kissed her again, all she could think about was doing it again. Because in those far too brief moments, when she’d held Vanessa tentatively in her arms, it had felt as though someone had switched the world back on. The colours were brighter, she could breathe a little easier and for the first time in a long time, she felt the faint fluttering of hope.

She couldn’t force herself to appease Vanessa; to allow so colossal a lie pass her lips after all they had shared that morning. So instead, she sat there, struck dumb and paralysed. Not wanting to scare Vanessa away but not wanting to lie to her either.

“It wouldn’t work Charity, you know that…” Vanessa prompted her, her voice strained.

“You don’t know that,” Charity insisted quietly.

Vanessa was quiet for a moment and Charity risked a glance, out of the corner of her eye. She was staring intently at the boys, but Charity could see the brightness of her eyes, and knew that she was holding back tears.

“If you tell me you don’t love me anymore,” Charity offered, “then I won’t mention this ever again and will find a way to accept that we can only ever be friends. But I won’t lie to you and say that I don’t want you or that you’re not ‘it’ for me, because you are. You’re my person.”

When Vanessa turned to look at her again, Charity held her gaze, hoping that her eyes would say what words had always failed to communicate. Charity had never felt more vulnerable than when Vanessa looked at her like this, as though she could see every thought in Charity’s mind.

“I...I…” Vanessa began, and faltered, her eyes seeming to suddenly become aware of just how close she was to Charity. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“Like what?” Charity asked, taking Vanessa’s hand in both of her own. The pale band of skin around her ring finger was painfully obvious.

“Scared of how much I love you,” It was barely audible; little more than a breath, and yet Charity felt the heaviness of it. The weight of the damage she had done.

“I don’t want you to feel like that either,” Charity let Vanessa’s hand go, wrapping her arms around her body to keep them away. “You deserve to feel safe when you love someone and you need to trust them. I want so badly to be that person for you Vanessa, but if I’m not, then I can’t stand in the way of you finding that with someone else.”

It was the most selfless thing she’d ever said, and it took all of her strength to push the words out and now that she had, she knew she had to put some space between them. That if she so much as looked Vanessa in the eye, she’d go back on every syllable of it.

“Moses!” she yelled, “let’s go!”

She didn’t look back. Couldn’t look back.

If she had, she’d have seen the tears in Vanessa’s eyes finally fall.

Things were busy for both of them for a while after that. It was lambing season for Vanessa, and with the pub starting to really come together, Charity seemed to have a to-do list that was longer than her arm. It made it easier to deal with the feeling of distance between them whenever Vanessa dropped off Johnny for a visit.

The interiors were almost finished by the end of April, and John had suggested she find a way to come and look. She’d text Vanessa to invite her along, because so many of the ideas had been hers and it seemed only right, but Vanessa had made excuses and so Charity went alone.

She didn’t need the wig this time. Chas had run out of steam after Eve had caught chicken pox at nursery and given Faith shingles. Marlon had picked up more shifts at the Hyde and there had been a general consensus that they would simply wait until the place opened up again to find out who had bought it.

Charity couldn’t help but grin as John showed her around. It looked exactly like she’d imagined it would, down to every last detail. Somehow, they had kept the rustic charm of the original Woolpack but made just enough changes that it truly felt like a completely new pub at the same time. More than anything, it was the little touches that Vanessa had made that made her smile the most.

“When do you think I’ll be able to open?” she asked John, running her hand across the newly varnished bar.

“We’ll be done this week, so whenever you can get the fridges stocked I guess.”

It wasn’t easy. The brewery delivered during the day, and she paid John to accept the order and store the drinks in the cellar. She worked mostly at night and by torch light to avoid drawing attention to herself.

The week before she planned to open the pub, she had John put up a poster outside that offered all locals a free drink on opening night. She ran ads in the Hotten Courier too, but with a later opening date. She wanted the village to enjoy having its pub back for a bit first before she started pulling in customers from further afield.

The buzz around the village was electrifying. Everyone wanted to talk about the pub and its mysterious new owner. Bets were still being placed on Kim and as far as Charity could tell, she wasn’t even being considered as an outside chance. She was grinning quietly to herself in the café as Bob and Brenda gossiped with the customers when Vanessa walked in.

“You really are enjoying this, aren’t you?” she laughed, joining Charity on the sofa.

“Maybe,” Charity admitted with a chuckle.

“I wish I’d come with you to see it now,” Vanessa admitted, looking sheepish. “I just thought maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Charity looked at her puzzled, and then remembered the last time they’d been at the pub together.

“Oh…”

“Yeah, that.

“Well, you know, if you think you can control yourself now, I have the keys in my bag.”

Vanessa looked torn for a minute, but gave in quickly. Nobody noticed them leave as they were too deep in their conspiracy theories.

At the back door of the pub, Charity stopped Vanessa.

“I’m going to need to blindfold you,” she said, pointing to Vanessa’s scarf. Vanessa’s eyes flashed mischievously as Charity’s words sparked a particular memory and both women burst into a fit of giggles. “Not like that! I just want you to be properly surprised.”

Shaking her head, Vanessa pulled off her scarf and passed it to Charity who tied it securely around her head. She tried desperately to hide the shivers at every brush of Charity’s fingers, but Charity noticed anyway.

“Now, take my arm so you don’t fall okay? Do you trust me?”

Vanessa froze for a second and Charity realised what she had said. She was about to backtrack or say something inappropriate and humorous to shake off the tension, but after a second, Vanessa’s arm slipped into hers.

“I trust you,” she said, firmly and allowed Charity to lead her inside.

She waited until they were stood behind the bar with a bird’s eye view of the whole pub before allowing Vanessa to remove the blindfold. She couldn’t help the smug grin on her face as Vanessa gasped and held her hands to her face.

“Oh my god, it’s gorgeous!” she exclaimed, reaching out to spread her fingers out over the rustic bar top. So many of the things she had suggested had made it into Charity’s final design, and though Charity had some misgivings about the goat artwork and the mustard yellow feature wall, the smile on Vanessa’s face laid any and every doubt she’d had to rest. “I love it, Charity!”

“Look at these,” Charity said, motioning to the new beer pumps that the brewery had installed. “I got a local brewer to create some signature ales for us, what do you think?”

Vanessa’s eyes brightened as she saw the names of the custom ales, all named in some way after the kids. Tears formed when she read the last one, “The Woodfield?” she asked.

“Well, I had to include Johnny… and you. You’re family too.”

Vanessa seemed overwhelmed, unable to take it all in. Charity really had thought of everything and everywhere she looked, there were more and more tiny details that made Vanessa sob anew. On one wall, there were photos and plaques of everyone the village had lost – Lisa, Grace, Gennie, Donna, Finn, Val, Andrea, Ben, Leanna, Holly and Frank. Charity watched as Vanessa’s fingers traced the outline of her father’s face before turning to her with a watery smile.

“It’s just beautiful,” she gushed.

“There’s more,” Charity smiled, holding out her hand for Vanessa to take.

Vanessa took her hand, starting only a little at the shock it sent through her entire body and allowed herself to be led by Charity to the cellar door.

“I hope the lock works,” she joked, only realising after she said it that she was only half joking.

Downstairs, the cellar looked almost the same as it always had. It had required the least work beyond a fresh lick of paint and a little modernisation. For a while, Vanessa stared at the shelves of wine and spirits, unsure what she was supposed to notice and wondering whether Charity expected her to get emotional over some new shelving units.

Until she saw it.

Looking more out of place now than it ever had, the slightly damp and certainly stinky old love seat on which they’d shared their first kiss remained in the same place it had always been.

“John asked me if he should throw it away,” Charity confessed as Vanessa stood speechless. “And I know I should have said yes, because it’s completely knackered and probably more of a health hazard than anything else. And it’s not like we… well, you know, we’re not together anymore so I knew I should tell him yes. But I couldn’t.” Vanessa looked at her, confused.  “I can’t just erase you and what you mean to me Ness. Even if it’s over for good and forever. Even if I never mean to you what I used to. You’re a part of me now. The yellow, the goats, this chair… I can’t lose them too.”

Vanessa’s fingers grazed against her own then, as they both stood, side by side, staring at the ugliest old chair to ever exist. Charity shivered at the touch but assumed it was an accident until Vanessa’s fingers slid effortlessly between her own and their palms met. Charity gulped audibly, her mind desperately trying to figure out what it meant that Vanessa was holding her hand.

“Charity, you haven’t lost me,” Vanessa said then, moving to stand in front of her and squeezing her hand tightly. “We lost sight of each other I think, but I don’t think it’s possible to lose someone who’s as much a part of you as you are.”

Charity tried to follow. She really, truly, honestly did, but metaphors had never been her strong suit.

“What do you mean?” she asked, and Vanessa laughed at the puzzled look on her face.

“I mean that I have been trying for nearly two years to stop loving you and I can’t. I’ve been waiting and waiting for the feelings to fade and go away. But all I’m doing is pushing them down and it hurts. It hurts me, and I think it hurts you too?”

“I’ve never felt pain like it before. I don’t ever want to feel it again,” Charity agreed.

“Right… and I thought that the only way to avoid that pain, was to move on and draw a line under us. But I can’t do it, Charity. I didn’t realise until I saw how much of me was in this place, that you can’t draw a line through yourself and still be in one piece afterwards. The only way for this to hurt any less, is to be honest about how I feel.”

“Which is?” Charity’s eyes were hopeful as Vanessa glanced over to the tatty chair and then back to Charity with a soft smile that Charity hadn’t seen in over a year.

“That I love you. Stupidly and completely,” Vanessa murmured, pushing up on her tip toes to close the distance between them.

And when Vanessa kissed her it was different. There were less tears for a start.

The last kiss had been a spark, and with the conversation afterwards, they had fanned the flames, but this kiss lit every part of Charity on fire. She didn’t clutch at Vanessa this time because something deep inside her told her she wasn’t going to run away this time. Her hands, instead, slid gently beneath Vanessa’s coat and jumper to the smooth skin of her waist and tugged Vanessa closer. Vanessa’s hands, meanwhile, cupped Charity’s face like she was holding something precious and priceless. Her fingertips danced along Charity’s jaw and into Charity’s hair.

The kiss didn’t end until their lungs cried out for air, but even then, Charity couldn’t bring herself to let Vanessa go. She had waited too long to remember how this felt.

“I love you too you know,” she whispered, touching her forehead to Vanessa’s and looking at her intently.

“I think I do,” Vanessa smiled, kissing Charity again, briefly, more chastely, and just because she wanted to.

“But what about everything that’s happened?” Charity asked, instantly hating herself for breaking the spell that the kiss had put them under but knowing she needed to. She didn’t want Vanessa like this if it wasn’t what was best for Vanessa.

“If you’re asking me if I trust you, the answer is yes. I think I’ve known that I could for a long time to be honest. I was just scared to admit it.”

“Are you sure?” Charity needed her to be sure.

“Stupidly and completely sure,” she smiled, pulling Charity towards the tatty chair.

Chapter Text

Charity woke up slowly the next morning, first smelling the hint of strawberry in Vanessa’s shampoo then feeling the tickle of Vanessa’s hair against her neck, before sensing the warmth of Vanessa’s body pressed against hers and the warmth of her breath against her chest.

She opened one eye, scared for a second that maybe it was a lingering dream and that the night before hadn’t really happened. But there she was. Arm wrapped tightly around Charity’s waist their legs entwined in a way that would be horribly uncomfortable and suffocating if she had woken up with anyone else.

Almost two years had passed, and in one night, they had slotted back together perfectly.

Charity didn’t want to move and disturb Vanessa, but they had agreed to wake up early. Neither of them wanted the kids to find out they were back together by barging in on them naked in bed.

So Charity ran a fingertip softly up Vanessa’s arm, tracing a path between the freckles and beauty spots until she reached her shoulder. Vanessa stirred and shifted when Charity found the ticklish spot behind Vanessa’s ear, but only burrowed herself deeper into Charity with a groan.

“It’s too early,” she whimpered, “five more minutes!”

Charity’s heart melted at the softness of Vanessa, the Vanessa that she remembered before grief and trauma had sharpened her edges and made her prickly. Charity’s fingers travelled south then, dancing over shoulder blades and the bumps of Vanessa’s spine until she reached the dip of Vanessa’s back and another sensitive spot.

“Not fair,” Vanessa whined, grabbing hold of Charity’s hand and interlocking their fingers so that Charity was forced to stop.

“Fine, I give up, we’ll stay in bed, who cares how the kids find out right?”

That did it. With a groan, Vanessa rolled onto her back and stretched before turning her face back to Charity, eyes barely open and bottom lip stuck out.

“You play dirty,” she complained.

It was just too tempting. The sight of Vanessa, naked and barely covered by the bed sheets in a room that smelled like sex. Their room. Charity moved quickly, straddling Vanessa and pinning her arms down before she could even figure out what was happening.

“I think you’ll find that this,” she whispered seductively, “this is playing dirty.”

Moses and Johnny were up first and they told them over breakfast.

“Cool,” said Moses, “does that mean Johnny can have his own bed here again? We’re too big for top to tail now.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed, “Moses’ feet are stinky!”

Charity looked at Vanessa. They hadn’t actually discussed moving back in together yet or really thought about a timescale.  Vanessa had Tug Ghyll, Charity had the Woolpack and then there was Jacob’s Fold. Each held both bad and good memories for them. Charity knew that Tug Ghyll was haunted metaphorically by Frank, while the Woolpack was where Vanessa had been stabbed. But Jacob’s Fold was where they had lost sight of each other and Charity wanted to start afresh.

“We’ll figure something out Johnnybobs, don’t you worry,” she said, and being only six, that vague answer was all he needed.

By the time Noah and Sarah had surfaced, they were curled up on the sofa watching cartoons with the boys under blankets as if nothing at all had changed. It felt so familiar and so right that they forgot, for just a moment that it was also new.

“Did I miss something?” Noah asked, startling them.

“We’re a family again Noah!” Johnny shouted, standing up to bounce on the sofa. “I’m your brother again!”

Noah stared at them for a second, stunned into silence, before a smile broke out across his face.

“For real?” he asked, to which both Charity and Vanessa nodded.

“Yes!” he shrieked, clenching his fist triumphantly before running to scoop Johnny up and onto his shoulders who squealed with delight and clung onto Noah’s head for dear life.

“My turn Noah!” Moses yelled, and so it was that the house devolved into chaos, eventually waking up Sarah who joined in with the insanity as soon as she realised the source of it.

“I think maybe they’re happy?” Vanessa laughed.

Charity grinned. Neither she, nor the kids had been this happy for a very long time. If it hadn’t already been crystal clear to her that Vanessa was meant to be part of their family, there was no denying it any longer.

“You make us happy,” she murmured into Vanessa’s hair, kissing her forehead.

News of them getting back together only temporarily took some of the attention off the pub, but as the opening night drew closer, the whole village was growing more and more obsessed. Not a single person Charity knew wasn’t planning to go.

“So, you and Vanessa are coming with me and Chas tomorrow right?” Paddy asked as Charity lingered in the reception area of the vets, waiting for Vanessa to finish neutering a cat.

“Why, where are we going?” she asked, feigning nonchalance.

“To the opening night of the Woolpack of course!” Paddy exclaimed, exasperated by Charity’s lack of interest. “Chas is climbing the walls at home. I dread to think what will happen if this new owner doesn’t need a bar manager.”

Charity smirked while Paddy’s attention was drawn to his computer screen.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll need plenty of help,” she said.

“Well, I hope so.”

The conversation ended there as Paddy grabbed his keys and headed out on a callout, leaving only Vanessa in the surgery as it was Rhona’s day off. Peeking her head around the door, she could see that Vanessa was cleaning up and that the cat was nowhere to be seen, meaning she was all finished.

“Do you remember that day you lost the ketamine?” Charity asked with a smirk.

“I didn’t lose it! Gabby stole it if you remember,” she yelled over her shoulder, busy scrubbing her hands clean in the sink.

“You say tomato…” Charity teased, “But I was actually referring to the part where you ran off embarrassed and I had to chase you back here,” she murmured, making her way across the room until she was stood directly behind Vanessa. She could feel the heat in Vanessa’s cheeks as the other woman remembered exactly what Charity was referring to.

“The memories a little fuzzy actually,” Vanessa lied. Charity knew it was a lie by the way Vanessa’s voice had gone up an octave. She slid her arms around Vanessa’s waist and rested her chin on Vanessa’s shoulder, finding Vanessa’s pulse with her lips.

“Maybe I should remind you,” she murmured, finding the buttons of Vanessa’s jeans and popping open the button so she could slide her hand inside.

“Paddy or Rhona could come in,” Vanessa gasped, but she only half meant it as she moved her legs a little further apart to accommodate Charity’s hand.

“Won’t be the first time they’ve caught us.”

Vanessa’s head fell back against Charity’s shoulder as Charity’s fingers found their destination.

One of the crew had set up a ribbon across the front door of the pub and a blanket over the plaque above the door. The pub was only due to open at five, but most of the village were assembled by four thirty, Charity and Vanessa among them. It was the perfect disguise, and Charity enjoyed feeling a part of the buzz.

When five o’clock came, she felt suddenly nervous.

“What if Chas hates me for this?” she whispered to Vanessa.

“She won’t,” Vanessa assured her, “Not when she realises that you want her as the manager.”

“Will you come with me?”

Vanessa’s hand slid into hers and squeezed. Charity felt calmer instantly and confidently walked up to the ribbon. There were murmurs in the crowd as they realised what she was doing.

“Charity, what are you doing?” Chas hissed, trying to pull her back from the door. “Don’t piss off the new owner please!”

Charity shook off her cousin’s grip and pulled the big pair of scissors from the inside pocket of her coat.

“I’ll try not to,” she laughed. “But I can be pretty annoying!”

The penny dropped slowly as gasps of surprise moved like a Mexican wave through the assembled villagers.

“Babe, would you do the honours,” Charity nodded to the string attached to the blanket which Vanessa pulled down with a grin. And there it was, on a shining, gold plaque.

Charity Dingle and Vanessa Woodfield are licenced to sell all intoxicating liquor on these premises.

Murmurs of surprise and urgent whispers spread through the crowd, but no one was quite as shocked as Vanessa who had not expected to see her own name on the plaque.

“Charity… I… I’m not a landlady,” she insisted, “I’m a vet!”

“Oh I know babe, and I don’t expect you to pour a single pint. But this is a family business, which means you get your name above the door too.”

Vanessa looked at her softly then, before throwing her arms around Charity’s neck and kissing her hard on the cheek.

“I love it!”

The moment was perfect and Vanessa’s reaction was exactly what Charity had hoped for, but the moment was soon broken by Chas.

“This is a joke right?” she screeched, so venomously that everyone around her took a step back. “You bought the pub? You’ve been renovating it all this time? You knew how upset I was and you just let me drive myself mad over it all without telling me!”

The more accusations that she added to the list, the higher and higher her voice became, until she was barely audible anymore. Paddy tried to put a hand on her shoulder and calm her down, but she lashed out at him and pushed him away, before charging up to stand right in front of Charity.

“You stole my business from under my nose and laughed about it behind my back!” she yelled.

Charity had been half expecting a reaction like this, but faced with the full force of Chas’ anger, she suddenly didn’t know what to do or say. Thankfully, Vanessa was there. The smaller woman stepped between the two cousins and stared Chas in the eye. For a second, Charity thought Chas might punch Vanessa in the face, but of course, Vanessa didn’t have a face that was as punchable as Charity’s and Chas instead, calmed down enough to listen.

“Charity saved the pub. If she hadn’t bought it, Al would be cutting this ribbon today remember. She bought it so that it could stay in the Dingle family. So that you and Marlon and any other Dingle that needed a job would have somewhere to go. She wants you to manage the bar and Marlon to manage the kitchen. Our names are above the door, but that bar is yours to run, isn’t that right Charity?”

Charity nodded. She had been ready to tell Chas to stuff it and get lost, but Vanessa’s calming influence had somehow diffused the tension and now Chas was stepping back and looking at her with a little less vitriol.

“Is that really why you bought it?” she asked, a hint of suspicion still in her voice.

“Yes,” Charity insisted. “I don’t want to run this place without you and Marlon so please say yes….”

Marlon, who had hung back a little, now flung his arms around Charity and nearly knocked her on her arse. A moment later, Chas joined the scrum. Taking the scissors from Charity’s hands, Vanessa cut the ribbon across the door and declared the new Woolpack open.

Chas wasted no time in serving the thirsty village, all of whom were in love with the new interior and were soon at home in the new snugs and booths. Marlon’s cries of delight could be heard all over the pub as he explored his new, more spacious and more modern kitchen. Occasionally, he popped his head out to thank Charity all over again, before disappearing back to his appliances.

Before long, Bob had found the karaoke and new speaker system and begged to set it up. Music filled every corner of the building and Charity didn’t think she’d ever seen the community so joyful. By nine o’clock, the till was full and Charity was already changing a barrel of the new ales.

She had just finished, when she heard the door to the cellar slam shut and turned around to see Vanessa standing there, looking at her like Charity had just unlocked the secrets of the universe.

“What?” Charity said, as Vanessa walked over and wrapped her arms around Charity’s waist. “What did I do? Tell me, so I can do it every day if it makes you this happy.”

Vanessa laughed and rolled her eyes. “You didn’t even mean to do it, did you?” She shook her head at Charity’s puzzled expression. “Shh, can you hear that?”

Charity paused and listened intently. She heard the music and Vinny crooning on the karaoke, she heard laughter and cheers from the customers, but nothing else.

“After everything the people in this village have suffered over the last year or so, this is exactly what they needed,” Vanessa said, “Meena tore so many of them apart, but you and this place, you’ve given them a place where they can feel welcome and loved.”

Charity thought about it for a moment and though she didn’t think that anyone upstairs was considering her some sort of local legend, but Vanessa had always been the one with the brains, and Charity had no intentions of arguing with her.

“Well, I guess I am pretty amazing,” she grinned, looking very much pleased with herself.

Vanessa pushed up onto her tip toes and kissed her then and Charity knew that deep down, she didn’t really care about making the whole village happy. As long as Vanessa was happy and hers, anything else was just a bonus.