Chapter Text
Ever since Charlie bought his little cottage in Ilkley, he’d worked hard on filling it with charm befitting its chocolate box picture exterior. It was built of the same solid grey stone as the rest of the town and, while a desirable property, sat right on the main A-road through towards Leeds, so traffic noise was a constant rumble.
He carefully set Kitty, a fluffy giraffe he’d won at a school fair and the Dulux dog that his mother had given him one year in a line on the windowsill of his bedroom. The latter had been a poorly executed attempt to placate him for not being willing to get a real dog even though he asked nicely. From their vantage point, they watched the traffic slog pass every day and for what it was worth, Charlie learned to sleep through the low murmur of it rolling past the front door.
One sunny afternoon, he was just taking a break after a particularly unproductive meeting with a new author- who was insisting that Charlie’s input was ‘pedantic and slowing down the process’- when he heard the post slip through the letter box and went to go and retrieve it before Piper got to it. Hearing her nails skitter on the hardwood floors as she leapt from her place on the sofa in his study, he reached down to stroke her head.
“I got to them first this time, good girl, I know how much you like to bring them to me. Next time.”
Growing up in the dawn of a digital age he’d had a mobile phone by the time he was thirteen and so had all of his friends. It meant that the art of writing letters was almost entirely lost on him. The extent of it was probably sending the obligatory postcards to grandparents whenever the family had gone on holiday when he was a child.
As such and as he strolled into the kitchen to put the kettle on, flipping through the envelopes as he walked, he was expecting nothing more than the usual circulars and maybe a gas or water bill to brighten his day. He was not expecting a postcard with a photograph of Leeds City Centre on the front. Who would be writing to him, from Leeds? He didn’t know anyone up here. Tao and Elle had moved to Paris after school, Issac was basically living in the libraries in Cambridge, he’d come up to the North to put some necessary distance between himself and his mother and it was working in their favour. Still, the card was there, in technicolour, and was definitely Leeds. He put down the other envelopes and poured the boiling water from his gooseneck kettle slowly over the coffee grounds in his carafe and waited for them to bloom. Once they had, he finished the pour-over process and waited again for the coffee to brew. He could resist no more and turned over the card.
To the Kitty, Giraffe and SheepDog in the front window
Alright, this was getting strange now, who was writing a postcard to his stuffed animals? Was this person a complete psycho or just really bored?
Hi! We pass by your lovely cottage every day when our owner drives to work.
He works in Leeds but fell in love with the moors and lives in Adingham. Anyway, we pass
this way every day and you always look out and you look friendly. We insisted
that he help us write to you all and introduce ourselves. I’m Bella and I’m a golden retriever,
there’s also Don and he’s a rainbow coloured Beanie Baby bear, and then there’s Micah and she’s a
ring-tailed lemur. We really hope that you’ll wave when we pass next. Our owner
drives a rather old silver Nissan Micra that he could absolutely upgrade if he wanted to.
Nice to meet you and we’ll be seeing you around.
Bella, Micah and Don from Nick’s car
Charlie poured himself a cup of coffee and moved into the conservatory, opening the sliding door wide to let Piper out for a romp around and let in the summer breeze. He looked out over the view that had made buying a house on a main road worth it to him. The vista spread right out over the valley below him, the ground plunging down and away from the stone wall at the bottom of the garden, down into a wide flat pasture to the river below, decorated with fluffy white sheep, and then up again on the steep slope of the other side to the moors beyond. He took a deep breath, inhaling the sheep mown grass and the coffee and then he stared again at the postcard.
He honestly could not figure out what to make of it. Clearly there are no soft toys writing postcards, which means that there’s actually an adult, apparently named Nick, who was bold, deranged or actually stalkery enough to pay money for the card and the stamp and sit down and write this. Maybe it wasn’t stalkery, presuming this Nick character hadn’t seen him, and the actual words in the card were innocuous enough. There were no questions asked, no requests other than that his own animals wave if they see a silver Micra pass by.
Given the poses his soft toys were in, Kitty was the only one who could be fashioned into a position that would make her look like she was waving. Gerry the giraffe and Bruno the old English sheep dog were both in poses where all four feet were together. They wouldn’t be able to wave.
“Piper,” he said as she came back in from the garden, a contented expression on her face at a successful surveillance, and at not having come across Rosy, the mad red setter who lived next door. “What am I doing? Why am I considering this, why am I dwelling on how I’m going to make them wave? Why is it important that this Nick character knows I got his card? It isn’t even to me, it’s to the damned stuffed toys on my windowsill.”
Piper looked up at him through her lashes and he bent to rub her ears.
“You’re right, baby, time to let it go!”
He shook himself, put the card down on the table and made his way back into his study, armed with caffeine and a renewed vigour to forget the randomness of his soft toys receiving a postcard from a stranger. Piper padded back in after him and took up her position on the sofa, her head resting, as always, on the arm of it.
Having a difficult author who was absolutely not taking to working with an editor who wasn’t just fawning over his every flowery phrase did mean that Charlie was able to stay distracted for the rest of the afternoon, eventually shutting down increasingly strident Teams chats with a promise that they could pick this all up again the following day.
He stretched his aching back, went upstairs and changed into his running gear. The summer light was going to mean he’d have light for a good while yet and he needed to get out of his head and into his body.
“Piper!” he called out, holding her lead out and waiting for her to sit before clipping it onto her collar. “You ready for a run?”
Her tail wag indicated her excitement and the pair set off up the steep drive and left out along the narrow pavement. The first part of the run was the least enjoyable, out along the busy road, but soon enough there was a road to the left where they could turn off and down a steep hill towards the river path and the fields below the house. Piper knew the route and kept pace with Charlie as his strides lengthened and he settled into his pace.
He wasn’t on a mission today, just wanting to put in some miles and clear away the cobwebs. The river was low, bubbling gently over the weir at the base of the comforting stone pedestrian bridge that carried the pair of them over the water and out into the fields beyond. He slowed and held Piper back as a young child, probably no more than five, was lifted up to see over the stone wall, dropping in a stick at the same time as their dad, and then placed down to run pell-mell to the other side to watch them come out. He wondered if he’d ever played Pooh Sticks. He couldn’t recall. It would have been a game that he and Olly would have played, not really Jane’s speed. The father gave them a wave, and a quick sign of appreciation for letting the child run unimpeded as Charlie and Piper set off again down the other side of the bridge.
They took a left at the bottom and wound their way along the path beside the river, heading for the suspension bridge a mile or so further down. The route took them down beside the sports fields and Charlie was unapologetic about the fact that running at this time meant that rugby practice would be in full swing. The pert bums in short shorts held up by thick thighs were the icing on a decadently sedate run and he was here for the clearing of his mind.
They reached the suspension bridge and, with no one around, Charlie let Piper off her lead as he let himself walk along beside her. She headed down into the water, tooling her feet and lapping up a drink before heading back to him and sitting, ready to set off again.
“‘You sure you got enough to drink?” Charlie asked her, clipping her up once she stayed seated and didn’t make a move back down the banks into the water. “‘You ready to go home?”
He could swear she nodded at him and he grinned down at her and stroked her head as they set off again, across the bridge and back down the other side of the river, through the park and back up the steep slope to the main road and home.
Piper headed straight for her water bowl and Charlie sat on the back steps, doing some gentle stretching while he cooled down enough to get a shower. Piper came and inserted her head under his arm, lying down next to him.
“That was a lovely run, Pip, thank you for coming with me.”
The two sat and watched the cloud skud along the valley until Charlie got up and headed inside to clean up. His eyes caught on Kitty and the others in the window. He didn’t let himself linger, heading into the bathroom and putting all thoughts of the postcard out of his mind. Except he couldn’t. He knew what he was going to do and as he dried himself and wandered into his room to get dressed he reached for Kitty, taking her left front paw and holding it up in a wave and pressing it up against the glass to hold it in place. As he’d suspected, Bruno and Don didn’t have the capacity to wave, so he worked on a more jaunty angle for them in general and then shook himself and went downstairs to settle in for an evening with a glass of wine, pesto with pasta and sugar snap peas, and a few episodes of Jonathon Creek. Piper rested her head on his lap when he put down his bowl, and Charlie let himself relax.