The Fox’s Den: Kim Tate Circles the Woolpack as an Unraveling Charity Fights to Survive
The phone clicks and the deal of a lifetime hangs in the balance.
Charity Dingle hovers by the receiver like a gambler waiting for the dice to stop rolling, every nerve in her body stretched wire-tight. The conversation she just overheard—pleasant, professional, wrapped in the kind of smooth tones that accompany serious money—sounded promising. Very promising. Her eyes glimmer with desperate hope as she murmurs the thought aloud: Ooh, I really hope that’s about buying my pub.
She barely has time to savor the possibility before the door swings open without warning. In walks her mother-in-law, Faith—because, as the woman so bluntly observes, Dingles don’t knock.
“Is everything sorted?” Faith presses. “The sale gone through?”
“Not yet,” comes the reply, clipped and defensive.
“Then what’s taking so long?”
The questions come faster than the answers can keep up, and Charity’s composure begins to crack at the edges. She insists she’s not panicking—she says it loudly enough that it’s clear she absolutely is—but she just wants to sell her pub. The words tumble out in a rush, raw and unguarded.
Faith, calm as still water, asks for nothing more than the chance to finish a sentence. The solicitors, she explains, are almost done. The paperwork will be ready later today. Relief flickers across Charity’s face—finally—before Faith adds the crucial detail: she’ll send word when it’s time to come by and sign.
“And you’ve got the cash?” Charity asks, searching for certainty.
The answer is a quiet, confident affirmation. For a moment, the tension eases. Charity breathes. She tells Faith she’ll pop back when the time comes and turns to leave—only to cross paths with the one man in the village who sees through everything.
Jeeves. Or rather, Kim Tate’s right-hand man, whose presence raises immediate questions.
“What’s the hen doing in the fox’s house?” he asks, and the words land like a stone in still water.
But there’s no time to answer. In walks Kyle, silent as a shadow, and the atmosphere shifts. The boy hasn’t spoken all morning. Faith observes that he’s devastated—and none of it makes any sense. Cain follows close behind, his voice soft as he tries to reach his son.
“Hey. Oh, sweetheart, are you OK?”
Kyle insists he’s fine, but the word rings hollow. Cain presses on, offering hope: he thinks he’s found another Golf for him. They can go and look at it soon. The words hang in the air, an outstretched hand waiting to be grasped.
“Thanks,” Kyle mutters. “See you later.” And he’s gone.
The door closes, and the conversation turns sharp again.
“Kim Tate the publican,” Faith muses, shaking her head. “That’s something I never envisaged.”
She explains that Charity came to her desperate to sell, offering her share at a bargain-basement price. And Faith Tate is not one to pass on that kind of opportunity. The Woolpack, she reasons, will make a nice little addition to her portfolio.
But there’s a catch—or rather, a name. Ryan. Doesn’t he own the other half?
“He won’t be hard to buy off,” Faith says with the confidence of someone who has never met an obstacle she couldn’t dismantle.
The warning comes quiet but firm: things have only just settled with the Dingles. Is she sure she wants to go down that road?
Faith dismisses the concern with the ease of a woman who has always trusted her own instincts. She’s doing Charity a favor. A cash deal. Win-win.
But the questions don’t stop. Has she asked herself why Charity wants to sell so badly?
“Does it matter?” Faith counters.
It might. There might be more to this story than meets the eye. Nothing she can’t handle, she insists. But the warning presses deeper: she could end up in a mess she doesn’t want. The real question, the one that lingers after the words have been spoken, is whether the Woolpack is worth taking the risk at all.
Across the village, another scene unfolds in the pale light of morning.
“Where were you last night?” comes the accusation, heavy with disappointment. “I waited for ages.”
The response is defensive, almost apologetic. The speaker knows they look awful, and they offer no excuses. Just the hollow admission of another night lost to