Chapter 2
It’s an early rise the next morning, they’re woken up abruptly by phone calls from Fred and Rita asking them to quickly make use of the all-inclusive breakfast and to meet them in the dining area. Charity and Vanessa rush to complete their morning tasks, still a little tired from yesterday but the smaller blonde was clearly enthusiastic for the day ahead. They walk to the cereal area of the breakfast buffet, grabbing a bowl each and some juice.
“So you’re into all this animal loving malarkey then are ya?” Charity asks as they make their way to find seats next to the other interns, Vanessa sits down next to Rhona who’s across from Paddy and Charity plops down across from her.
“Yeah, I wanna be a vet when I’m older so this will be helpful on my CV and things, why aren’t you?”
Charity spoons a bunch of coco pops in her mouth after mixing the milk a little to turn it chocolate-y. “Mmm” she shrugs, “I just came for the holiday…” she swallows, “but I don’t hate animals, and I’ll be good at all the people talking stuff because I work in my cousins pub sometimes” Vanessa nods along, the two continue chatting between themselves until Rita and Fred call a silence amongst them all.
“Right guys, so today we’ll be going through the basics with you all, showing you the cleaning methods, the feeding, watering the animals…I have uniforms for you here” Rita holds up a pair of dark green overalls to which Charity turns her nose up at, making Vanessa hold in a laugh. “So if you can pass them down..”The packets of overalls are passed down the line, Vanessa and Charity receiving theirs last. “We’ll be in the animal sanctuary until lunch, then you’ll have a couple of hours free to grab food and to change clothes, then around 3pm we’ll be meeting back here where we’ll walk to the ‘Bebé and comö’’s which is the bar you’ll be working at until around 8, then you can do whatever you like…sound good?” There’s a simultaneous hum between the interns, some louder than others.
Rita and Fred head back to their rooms after giving their talk, leaving the interns to get to know each other. The smallest Barton, Finn, turns to the girls at the end of the table. “I’m Finn by the way, nice to meet you all”. They introduce themselves, Charity going last and still reserving herself a little from the rest of the group. She thinks Ross is a cheeky so and so, he’s already chatted each of the females up on this table after telling them he bagged a waitress’ number last night at the bar. Finn seems nice enough, he asks where each of them are from and about their families, usual chit chat. Turns out most of them are from Yorkshire, Charity is surprised to learn that Vanessa especially lives near her in Hotten. She tells the group she lives with her mum and Step Dad, and that she no longer sees her real dad for some reason she decides to leave out. She learns that Pete, Ross and Finn work on a farm with their parents, and that they’ve probably done business with her family once or twice. Apparently Rhona and Paddy travelled from their university in London and they’re already studding to become vets, something which Vanessa perks up at and asks them questions about. Charity tells them about living in a small village named Emmerdale and doesn’t really reveal much else.
Vanessa says to Charity they should head back to their room and change so they do, and Charity complains about the overalls more than once. They still have about 20 minutes before having to go and meet Fred and Rita again, the two sit on their phones, the silence lingering surprisingly comfortably between them until Vanessa sighs and throws her phone a little further down the bed.
“So you live in Emmerdale? What’s it like?” She asks, crossing her legs at the ankles and turning to Charity, her overalls slightly uncomfortable as she tries to lay sideways to look at the other woman.
“Small and quiet but decent yeah, how’s Hotten?” Charity turns off her own phone and turns to Vanessa.
“The opposite” she scoffs. “It’s always so busy, it’s weird really that my mum chose to live there, it’s not really her scene” Vanessa seems to tense at even saying her mums name, her fingers playing with her pony tail.
“What’s your mum like? I-I saw her at the airport, she seems…”
“-snobbish, uptight, bitchy?”
Charity’s eyes widen and her eyebrows raise. “I mean…”
“It’s fine, you can agree, most people do” she laughs.
“You’re not a fan then?”
Vanessa shakes her head, an almost sad look appearing on her face. “She’s just not a nice person really…anyways” she shakes her head. “How about your family? You didn’t mention much about them downstairs”
“Yeah…my mum is dead and my dads a drunk, don’t see him anymore”
“I’m sorry-“
“Don’t be”
Vanessa scoots further to the taller blonde, almost crossing over onto Charity’s side of the bed, offering support if needed without being smothering.
“I’ve got other family, I live with my older cousin Chas, the one who I work for, and her son Aaron, then I’ve got Lisa and Zack who’re basically my replacement parents-“ she scoffs, “they’re the ones that told me about this internship thing, they said it’s be good to get away for a bit and…’try and find myself’ apparently” Charity rolls her eyes at that.
It’s true though, deep down she knew she needed to escape for a while. After all that’s gone on for the past…well forever, she needed a couple weeks in the sand and the sun to be able to begin healing. To have fun and be a teenager, she’d missed out on her early teenage years, after all living on the streets and working as a sex worker wasn’t exactly making the most of her teen years. Then having to cope with living with her alcoholic and mentally abusive dad didn’t exactly give her the best childhood. At least now, living with the other Dingles she was free physically from her past life. Mentally though, it’d always haunt her. Cold nights spent huddled next to a park bench. Aches spiralling through her body after yet another client.
She shakes her head, as if shaking away the memories and focuses on the blonde woman in front of her who’s looking at her weirdly, like almost as if she’s gazing into her deep and damaged soul or something. The smaller woman just smiles though and then stands. “I’m glad you did come”
Charity nods. “Me too”
*
She swears she’s gonna end up killing Ross by the end of this trip, he’s been grinding on her nerves ALL day, practically begging her and Vanessa to be in his bed by the end of the night. He’d taken his top off slowly, teasingly, baring his muscly shoulders underneath his overalls. Vanessa had just laughed at him and rolled her eyes, patting his shoulders and whispering a ‘dream on love’ to him as she passed by. They were in a group with Ross and his taller brother Pete, and were assigned to the farm animal area of the sanctuary. There were pigs that stunk the whole area out, Charity gagged every time she walked by them and Vanessa had laughed at her for it. She should be used to it, after helping Lisa and Zack feed the pigs back at home, but that was only a few, there were dozens and dozens here, even tiny baby ones who made annoying little noises throughout the day. They’d cleaned the pens, much to Charity’s disgust, and had refilled their water and food. The goats were more manageable, she even found one almost quite cute, it was a caramel colour and it came up to her all the time, nibbling on her fingernails. Vanessa had loved every second of it, she’d told her loads of facts about each and every animal, “did you know that you can teach goats to come to their name like a dog would?”, Charity would go along and pretend she didn’t know any of the facts (she did know some obviously, like the fact that cows drink water and not milk despite the association with it) and that Vanessa had told her something extremely interesting and enlightening.
It’s almost lunch time now and they’re nearly finished refilling the food and water for the meerkat pen. A particular one has been getting all up close and personal with Vanessa for the last ten minutes, not that Charity’s been starring at her or anything. Ha.
“Hello there little one…-“ Vanessas cooing to the little thing, making faces at it as if it was a baby or something. She’s holding food out in her hands and the meerkat snatches it from her palm and runs to hide it somewhere near the bushes further into the pen, it runs back after to Vanessa again, waiting for more food that she’ll no doubt give it.
Charity contains a laugh as the meerkat nips Vanessa’s behind, grimacing a little when Vanessa let’s out an ‘ow!’ and then trying to turn away as if she’d been caught watching her when Vanessa rubs at the sore spot on her bum.
Vanessa comes over to her then, carrying an empty food bowl in her glowed hands. “You all finished?” She asks Charity.
“Yep, think they have too so we might be able to have lunch early” Charity nods towards Pete and Ross, who’re sat off to the side taking selfies with some of the meerkats. Vanessa laughs at them and starts walking out of the pen, quickly closing the gate behind Charity.
“All done lads?” Fred shouts, peering over Ross and Petes shoulders with a stern look on his face. The boys put their phones away laughing a little as if they’re school boys who’d been caught texting in the middle of class.
“Sorry Fred” Obviously Pete apologies, while Ross rolls his eyes and asks when lunch is. Fred allows them all an extra quarter of an hour for lunch and tells them to be back at the hotel for ‘three on the dot’ with suitable clothing for working behind a bar.
After quickly heading back to the hotel to change, Charity into a pair of denim shorts and a t shirt and Vanessa into a yellow summery dress, the two head into the town to see what food is on offer. Just their look to see Rhona and Paddy on the way, Charity grumbles internally.
“Hi!” Rhona shouts. “You looking for somewhere to eat?”
“Yeah we are, all I can see so far though is night clubs and posh restaurants” Vanessa says to them, her hand coming up to cover her eyes from the sun.
Paddy then points towards a van selling a variety of Mexican food and they all head there together, Vanessa turning around to make sure Charity is following them. They all choose a simple taco, but Vanessa has one with chicken instead, and it comes with a drink of their choice. Rhona suggests eating it on the beach, there’s a few rocks near the top of the beach so they park themselves there to have dinner.
“So how was your morning?” Rhona asks from the rock across.
“It was fun yeah! We got to feed the baby goats and hold all the little piglets, how was yours?” Vanessa replies enthusiastically, muttering a little ‘oops’ when some of the taco filling falls into the sand.
“We got to watch the pandas, they were so cute and cuddly and one even looked a bit like me because it was really chunky and clumsy…”
Paddy trails off, Vanessa smiling at him. Charity can’t help but smile a little at his enthusiasm.
“I hope we get to do that soon” Vanessa says, going back to her taco.
Charity finishes her food and wraps the paper up in a scrunched up ball and holds it in her lap. “So uh, you wanna be vets?” She asks the two across from them.
“Yeah, we met on our veterinary course university, what do you…do you do anything?” Rhona asks awkwardly.
“I’m a barmaid” Charity deadpans, her hands cheering and face grinning sarcastically, “whoop whoop”
“Hey don’t put yourself down, maybe one day you’ll own a pub and employ your own landlady’s” Vanessa says from beside her. Charity turns to her, a look on her face as if to say how can you be so positive about everything.
“Doubt it babe, wouldn’t know the first thing about owning a business me” she twiddles her fingers together, distracting herself from Vanessa’s optimistic face.
“Right now you don’t, but I bet you ya could one day” Vanessa says, a hopeful grin on her face beaming at Charity’s face before going back to take a bite from her food.
“Vanessa’s right, you’ll probably learn loads of skills here, and you never know what could happen in the future” Rhona points out.
Who are these people and why are they all so nice to her? It’s sickening yet feels like a warm blanket warming her cold heart. If she were having this conversation back at home it’d be mocking scoffs and insults being thrown her way, not encouragement. Cain would be turning his nose up at her and Chas would be cackling. Charity wouldn’t care though anyways…
“Maybe…but so far all I’ve learnt is that animals smell like a room full of garbage and that meerkats can bite peoples arses” Charity smirks over at Vanessa, who laughs back.
*
“Does this look alright?” Vanessa asks. They’re back at the hotel changing into something more suitable to work behind a bar in. Vanessa’s got grey jeans on and a black vest, there’s also a flannel tied behind her waist.
“Course it does, why you asking me for?” Charity’s busy folding her overalls after changing into a shirt sleeve red blouse and black jeans.
“Well you’re a barmaid aren’t ya, do I look ‘barmaid-y’ enough?” Vanessa does a twirl.
“You look great babe, and because of your pretty little face you can get away with not having to look like a sleaze”
“Eh?” Vanessa frowns.
“Well all people care about at bars is drink, music and the hot women serving them, trust me, if you haven’t got the face” she waves her finger in a circular motion at her own face, “then you’ve gotta have the bust” and as if emphasising her point she undo’s the button on her blouse, pushing her own pair up and shrugging.
Vanessa steps forward, “well thanks…I think” she steps closer until she’s stood in front of the taller blonde, who’s especially taller now because of Charity’s heals. Vanessa has to crane her neck backwards to look at her. “…but you’re pretty too, gorgeous even, so..” She slowly reaches her arms forward, her dainty little fingers fingering the button Charity had just clasped shut on her blouse and fastens it, a symbolism of some sort.
“Better” Vanessa steps backwards after running her arm down Charity’s arm, the latter woman stood frozen in the middle of the hotel room. She thinks her hearts thumping, a strange feeling crawls it’s way through her chest. She tilts her head and watches as Vanessa goes back to the bed causally to begin applying her makeup. Yep, she definitely likes this Vanessa.