Page 48 of The Village of Lost and Found

‘Me too.’

She looked across at him. Tom looked so bereft that for a fleeting moment she wanted to put her arms around him and give him comfort.

‘It’s not all you’ve got,’ she told him softly. ‘You’ve got your talent. You’re a great writer.’

To her surprise, he groaned in response and put his head in his hands.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘Do you feel unwell?’

‘How would you know what kind of writer I am?’ he asked, his words almost muffled by his hands.

‘Because I’ve read your editorials and they’re brilliant.’

He looked up at her through his fingers. ‘I’ve been recycling them,’ he told her. ‘They’re all pieces from years ago.’

Lucy was shocked but, on some level, she realised that she wasn’t entirely surprised. The underlying stress. The nervousness when she had looked at his screen the other day. It was all beginning to add up.

‘Well, that kind of talent doesn’t just disappear. Why don’t you write like that any more?’ she asked gently.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t. The words just don’t come any more.’

Lucy looked at him for a beat. ‘OK, well we can get past that,’ she told him, standing up. ‘The weekly editorial is not the most important thing right now. We have to fight.’

‘With what?’ he asked, still sounding defeated.

‘With everything that we’ve got!’ Lucy was suddenly intent as she began to pace up and down the lounge. She didn’t care that she was only in her pyjamas. She didn’t even feel the floorboards under her feet. This was Uncle Frank’s newspaper. And she couldn’t let it fail.

‘The trouble is that I don’t think that’s enough,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anything is going to help.’

‘Rubbish!’ snapped Lucy, stopping to stand in front of him. ‘Your problem is that you’ve lost your confidence. It happens to all of us, so do you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to fake it until you make it.’

The fact that he didn’t then make a joke or quip made her realise just how deeply upset he felt.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘there are things we can do.’

‘Like what?’ he asked.

‘Start a campaign! Something that will unite all the villages around here. Something worth fighting for thatThe Cranbridge Timescan be at the centre of.’

‘The quarry,’ said Tom, suddenly sitting upright.

‘Exactly! It’s all anyone’s talking about,’ she said, sitting back down in the armchair again. ‘Everyone’s really worried. If they had a central place where they could find out all the latest information. Then maybe they’ll see the newspaper as the place to go for all their news.’

‘Maybe,’ he repeated, nodding to himself. ‘But we really need some way of getting the word out.’

‘For a start, no offence, but your website is awful,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps we can get it redesigned somehow. Or how about an app? Then you need to get going on social media. It’s crazy that the newspaper isn’t on anything. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, you name it. The paper should be on it.’

He laughed for the first time that morning. ‘And who’s going to create all those posts?’ he asked. ‘There’s no way I can do that.’

‘Nor me,’ she told him. Then she had a brainwave. ‘I know. Give the job to Molly. Let her loose on social media. She’s all sparkly and positive. They’ll love her.’ She looked at him. ‘Start using her, otherwise she’ll leave eventually. She doesn’t want to, by the way. But things can’t go on like this.’

Tom looked around the lounge, deep in thought.

‘Come on,’ she said, softly. ‘We can do this. Wait, why are you smiling?’

‘Because you said “we”,’ Tom replied.

They locked eyes for a minute before she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Call it temporary insanity. It must be a side effect of Dodgy Del’s gin.’