‘What if that generation, and those who come after them, know Ferrington as the place that for over a thousand years was the top crossing place on the Maddon? That before the bridge, the ferrymen ensured vital goods were able to reach the towns and villages across the region? James Black once transported twenty-seven sheep in his boat in one crossing. Roundheads used it to escape the advancing Royalists in the civil war. Some even argue that Ferrington Bridge is the real location for Robin Hood’s infamous battle with Little John. What if your children grow up to be proud of this village, and all that it’s achieved? Rather than believing it’s a washed-up ghost village, only surviving on the bitter remains of anger?

‘No one, this town included, deserves to be known for its lowest, ugliest moment. Why don’t we remember Ferrington for its finest? I propose that we build a new bridge. A peace bridge. Signifying reconciliation, and forgiveness. A brighter future, that honours and remembers the past, but won’t be defined by one chunk of it. You don’t have to be an ex-mining town, known for what you’re not. Let’s decide who we are, and who we want to be, and let that be what counts.’

I paused to take another breath, my heart pounding. Daniel, Becky and Alice started clapping.

No one else joined them.

‘I think we’ve all decided what you are!’ Sue Johnson, the New Sider who’d started all this, had the audacity to shout.

‘Yeah, and it’s not one of us!’

‘How dare you call us washed-up!’ someone else cried. ‘A ghost town? Living in the past? Those New Siders are just as much a load of treacherous bottom-feeders as they ever were!’

‘Yeah! Bottom-feeders who belong on the bottom of the Maddon!’ The older woman with the pointy finger then tossed her drink in my direction (it landed several metres short, splattering her own coat), and hobbled out, deliberately shoving into Geoff as she passed him. Within a matter of moments, a stream of villagers, Old and New, trooped after her.

In the end, only Ziva and her husband, Becky and Alice, Daniel and five other people remained. Three of them looked to be in their twenties, the other two were Geoff and Sue.

‘For what it’s worth, we appreciate what you were trying to do,’ Sue said, her arm tucked into Geoff’s. ‘But you had no place, tricking us all into coming here and not being up front and honest about it. Even if you were right, with all that stuff about money and pooling resources, and yeah, maybe it is time to lay the past to rest, give the next generation a chance. But this was not the way to go about it.’

And with that, the Johnsons turned and left too.

I retrieved a crumpled tissue from my pocket and wiped my forehead.

‘Um,’ one of the remaining guests cleared their throat. ‘We didn’t get our last two samples.’