For the first time in forever, despite everything having turned on its head, despite the hideous threats, the turmoil and confusion about my career, I felt cocooned in peace. Maybe because for the first time in forever, I didn’t care about any of those things any more.

No wonder Charlie had loved it here.

It was only when I woke up the following lunchtime that I realised I’d never spoken to Lucy.

4

I have a secret identity, of sorts. More like a pen name, an alter ego? Except that for the past year this other me has adopted the physical face of my intern and friend, Lucy. It’s a long story…

After graduation, I managed to get a job working on our local newspaper, the Cumbria Chronicle, earning a generous twenty pence an hour over minimum wage, making tea, running errands and completing all other tasks that nobody else either wanted or could be bothered to do. Other people who’d got themselves an English degree with a dream of becoming a journalist might have worked to make something of this opportunity – chased down stories, left anonymous articles on the editor’s desk, hustled and strategised and begged if necessary for that one big break.

In my head, I was going to do all those things. Once I’d learnt a bit more, grown a little wiser. For now I was pootling along, helping out at the Tufted Duck to top up my income in order to afford luxuries like socks and petrol, and enjoying living in the most beautiful countryside in the UK.

And then Charlie came to visit, and everything changed overnight.

We had eaten out at a recently opened pub on the edge of the town. It was, to put it bluntly, outrageously terrible. The worst meal either of us had ever eaten, served by the most incompetent staff. And then they had the audacity to drop a card on the table asking for an ‘honest review’ on the Windermere Community Facebook group, in exchange for the chance to win a free meal.

Oh boy. The wannabe journalist in me was roused, fuelled by a nasty bottle of wine and my best friend. The review was most certainly honest: