The Great Allotment Proposal (10 page)

‘Believe me, I’m truly OK about it. They have a kid for god’s sake. A really cool little kid.’

‘Well I think you need to tell them,’ Emily said as they got to the ground floor and stood opposite one another in the big moonlight hallway.

‘Well I’ll think about it,’ he said.

Emily nodded. They stayed where they were for a second, looking at one another. She noticed a tiny feather from her pillows had caught in his beard and stepped forward to brush it away. As she did, he stepped back, almost with a flinch.

‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I’m not about to kiss you or anything. I’m just getting rid of this.’ She held up the feather.

‘I didn’t think you were about to kiss me,’ he said, clearly lying from the sudden redness on his cheeks.

Emily narrowed her eyes. ‘I didn’t want to kiss you.’

‘I know. I didn’t think you did.’

‘But I’m interested in your reaction. You flinched.’

‘I didn’t flinch.’

‘You did.’

Jack rolled his eyes and turned away to look at her staircase.

‘I wouldn’t want to kiss you with that beard anyway.’

He glanced back, one brow raised. ‘You don’t like my beard?’

‘No, I think it’s horrid.’

Jack huffed a laugh. ‘At least you’re honest. OK, I’d better go.’

‘OK.’ She walked over to the door with him and held it open.

‘You’ll be all right here on your own?’ he said as he stepped outside.

Emily frowned. ‘Of course. I always am.’

‘I read that article today, about you. It’s bullshit. All of it.’

She swallowed. ‘I know.’

‘Just…’ He paused, walked backwards down the first couple of steps. ‘Just don’t believe any of it.’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t.’

He nodded. ‘I didn’t flinch by the way. I was just caught off guard.’

‘Well I wasn’t trying to kiss you anyway.’

He laughed and, turning around, jogged the last couple of steps down the path. ‘I’ll see you at the allotment.’

Emily watched him as he looped round to the back garden in the direction of his boat. The urge to follow him making her close the door quickly and practically run upstairs to her room so she didn’t.

Chapter Twelve

The allotment was buzzing with people that weekend. Everyone hard at work, pausing only for a little glimpse of other people’s treasures. Annie’s mum had a tomato that was growing in the shape of a cow – four little legs and a head sprouting off a huge body – and was definitely a contender for the ugliest vegetable. Jonathan was keeping all his plants under wraps, swathing them in netting and some old lace curtains. Jack’s strawberries were by far the best on the whole allotment – all cultivated from plants he’d brought back from Spain on his boat. Annie, Emily and Jane didn’t have anything that looked like it might win a prize.

‘Our courgettes have all gone white,’ said Annie, prodding a leaf with the tip of her hoe.

Jane bent down with her secateurs and started chopping off the affected leaves. ‘It’s mildew. I think they’ll be OK, but all our beans are ruined. Look, the slugs have had ’em.’

They all peered over at the runner beans and sweet peas, the plants decimated.

‘Well who was meant to put the slug pellets down?’ Annie frowned.

Emily made a face. ‘I think that was meant to be me? I hate it though. They get all shrivelled up and die.’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘That’s the point of a slug pellet.’

‘Well I’d rather they ate the beans and didn’t die.’

‘That’s so ridiculous.’ Annie stormed off to where all their equipment was being stored in one of Emily’s old removals boxes and came back with the pellets. ‘I’m not coming here every day after work for some bloody slugs to eat everything.’

‘You don’t come every day,’ Emily said.

‘I come more than you. You weren’t here at the beginning of the week – that’s why the beetroots and the carrots look so shit. They’ve dried up.’

‘OK!’ Jane held her hands up. ‘Stop it. Stop arguing. The beetroots are fine. The carrots are fine. The sunflowers are fine.’

‘They’re not as good as anyone else’s here though. Have you seen Annie’s mum’s? And Jack’s?’ Emily pointed over to Jack’s allotment where ten or fifteen sunflowers were standing tall like cadets, their big heads straining to get more of the blistering sun. ‘I’m hot,’ Emily added, walking away from the other two to stand under the shade of the damson tree.

Annie made a big show of scattering slug pellets far and wide, while Jane carried on sawing off the fungus-ridden courgette leaves.

‘Oh my goodness, look at this!’ Emily suddenly shouted. ‘Look! Look at this!’ She was pointing furiously at the stakes in front of her. ‘Look we have a dahlia! We have loads of bloody dahlias.’

Annie and Jane stopped what they were doing and came round to have a look. Sure enough, the dahlias, against everyone’s better judgement, had started to grow into strong, lush plants. Little football heads of tucked-in petals were just waiting to pop dark red and crimson. Annie reached out a hand and stroked one of the waxy leaves. Jane cupped the head of one of the buds, the petals just starting to fray, the tight curls of colour like cherries against her skin.

‘Come on, guys,’ Emily said with a laugh. ‘We’re dahlia experts. Who knew?’

Jane bent down to examine the flowers at eye level, then said, ‘They do look like they might have potential.’

Annie bit her lip, her eyes bright at the sight of the big, healthy flowers.

‘We should phone Holly – show her on Facetime.’ Emily got her phone out. ‘See we’re not completely useless. Holly?’

The call connected and suddenly a very pregnant Holly was there on the screen of Emily’s iPhone, behind her they could see the double doors of Wilf’s new restaurant in the South of France.

‘Hello?’ Holly said, peering into her phone. ‘Emily, is that you?’

‘No, Holly, it’s a dahlia,’ said Emily. ‘I’m showing you our potential prize-winners. Look–’ She moved the phone between the caned stalks.

‘Blimey. Very nice, well done.’ Holly laughed. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘So you bloody should be,’ Emily said, turning the phone round and holding it at arm’s length so Holly could look at the three of them. ‘You didn’t think we had it in us, did you?’

Holly made a face, clearly deciding whether to lie or not and then said, ‘No, you’re right. I admit I didn’t. I’m sorry. So what else have you grown?’

Emily sucked in a breath. ‘That’s where we possibly don’t have it in us.’

Holly shook her head with a laugh. ‘Well, if you can get the dahlia’s award, Enid will be proud. Hey, have you read those diaries yet?’

‘I’ve started,’ said Jane. ‘But I haven’t had much time.’

‘I’ve said just skip to the juicy bits,’ Emily cut in.

‘Emily, it’s a story,’ Jane sighed. ‘It’s someone’s story. You have to read it all.’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Well where have you got to?’

‘Enid’s just started working as an ambulance driver in the war.’

Annie made a face. ‘I didn’t know she was an ambulance driver.’

‘No, neither did I. There’s a tiny mention of Fred – that was her husband’s name, wasn’t it? – he’s at the boat yard where they built the torpedo boats.’

Emily glanced up from the phone to where Martha was working on her corner patch in the distance, dealing with her bees. ‘Have you told Martha all this?’ she asked.

‘She knows, apparently. She told me I shouldn’t read them. Let the past be in the past but, well, I found a mention of my granny. Her and Enid were really close apparently and I didn’t know that.’ Jane looked between them all. ‘I don’t have any family left and it’s quite nice to learn about someone new. I never knew her. Do you think that’s bad? Reading when Martha’s said not to?’

‘No,’ Holly said from the iPhone. ‘No, I think Enid would want you to do whatever you liked. Keep going. Martha’s just nervous.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Jane said. Then she looked up from the phone and saw something that made her catch her breath.

‘What?’ said Annie, following Jane’s stare. ‘Wow.’

‘What are you looking at?’ Holly asked from the iPhone. ‘What’s going on, Emily, what are they looking at?’

‘I don’t know.’ Emily frowned and looked from Holly to where Jane and Emily were staring at a person wheeling a barrow full of compost along the path by their allotment. ‘Oh my god!’

‘What!’ said Holly, ‘Turn me round. What are you looking at?’

‘It’s Jack,’ Emily murmured, turning the phone round so Holly could see. ‘He’s shaved off his beard.’

Jack glanced their way, the sun bright behind him. When he saw them all staring he gave them a two-fingered salute, a smile spreading across his face. The beard was gone and in its place the smooth line of his jaw. The hair was gone as well, shorn off like he’d cut it himself with the shears, messy and black and half flopping over his eyes. Eyes that still gleamed the palest blue but now even more so because you could see his skin, the angle of his cheekbones and his jaw, and it was suddenly like Jack was back. The cool, cocky character who’d lain on the hay bale at the festival, an aura of calm and a glint of mischief.

Emily found she couldn’t stop smiling when she finally breathed out.

Chapter Thirteen

As the day of the show approached, Emily went to see her dahlias every day. Sometimes twice a day. Nurturing it with some hideous smelling Fish, Blood and Bone, and protecting it with a giant bamboo structure that the three of them had built while mumbling under their breaths about Jack’s absent beard. When it rained one night she put her new poncho on and her wellingtons and ran to the allotment with her torch, covering the precious buds with a piece of see-through plastic clipped in place with some flash EHB hair clips because she didn’t have anything else. The last thing she wanted was the water to snap her pride and joy.

The dahlias grew and puffed. But one of them puffed more than the others. A giant great ball just waiting to explode.

All around them, the fruit and veg and flowers were ripening. Glossy marrows with giant yellow flowers, cherries so dark they looked like plums, tomatoes ripening on bunches so heavy they snapped their stems, bitter little gooseberries and lines of rich emerald spinach. Layer upon layer of lettuces, beetroots that oozed like blood when sliced, onions pushing proudly from the earth. Growers praying that their carrots with golden crowns just visible hadn’t been decimated underground.

Word of Emily’s dahlia had spread. Jack would come over and inspect it. Pretend to reach out and touch it as she bashed his hand away. She had started to wear cut-off jeans and old T-shirts to the allotment instead of her normal clothes, her hair tied off her face with gardening string on top of her head. She had cups of tea out of the aluminium kettle with Annie’s mum and flicked through Enid’s diaries with Jane while they kept guard over the dahlias.

In the early afternoons they swam in Emily’s pool – Matt and Annie, Jane, Jack and River while Buster the pug sat curled up under a lounger. And afterwards would eat tapas at the Dandelion Cafe, Ludo the chef testing out his new recipes – his lightly fried salt and pepper squid, slices of pulpy fresh aubergine griddled with rock salt, freshly battered miniature fish fingers, tuna tartar and cumin-laced chickpea and allotment spinach – and drink wine from little glasses outside under the strings of white outdoor bulbs.

‘How’s your love life?’ Emily asked River one night, who blushed and hung his head and said, ‘It’s OK.’

‘OK, huh?’ Emily said, leaning forward with her chin resting in her palm. ‘That’s better than a few weeks ago.’

‘Yeah, well I did what you said,’ he mumbled.

Matt and Annie had to roll their lips together to keep from smiling.

Jack frowned and moved forward from where he’d been lounging against the booth seat. ‘What was it she said to do?’ he asked.

River scratched his chin, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. ‘Just that…’ He paused, looked around embarrassed. ‘That I should try harder. Keep trying, you know?’

Jack nodded. ‘I know what you mean, mate. Many times have I not tried hard enough.’

Emily glanced at Jack and then back to River. ‘What did you do?’

‘Just stuff. Bought her flowers but she said that was a cliché.’

Jack barked a laugh and, leaning back again, said to Emily, ‘Didn’t you once say that to me?’

‘I said roses were a cliché. Not flowers. I like flowers.’ She winked at him and said, ‘You can buy me flowers any time.’

Jack rolled his eyes and said to River, ‘So what swayed it?’

‘I sang outside her window.’

Matt looked puzzled. ‘Did you?’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘The other night.’

Annie smiled. ‘That’s so nice. You serenaded her and she forgave you.’

River winced. ‘Wasn’t quite like that. I only did it really because I knew her dad would go mad, so it kind of made her come out and talk to me. There wasn’t much singing.’

Annie frowned. ‘I can’t work out if I’m impressed by that or not. Why did she forgive you then?’

He shrugged. ‘I just kind of told her that I’d made a mistake. That I… I dunno… that I really liked her and I didn’t want her ever to get hurt. It’s shit, isn’t it? Knowing you’ve hurt someone?’ River looked around the table, almost for confirmation, but found that both Jack and Emily were looking anywhere but him and each other.

‘Well, I’m proud of you, son,’ Matt said and River rolled his eyes at the endearment.

The bell on the door chimed and they looked up to see Ed and Josephine walk in. When they saw Jack at Emily’s table, they both stiffened and Ed did a sort of wave then said, ‘We were erm… We’ll go somewhere else.’ And started to back away out the door.

Emily gave Jack a kick under the table. ‘Now. Do it now,’ she whispered.

‘No,’ he whispered back. ‘They’re on a date, they don’t want us here with them.’

‘Oh for goodness sake, for someone so clever you’re really bloody blind,’ she said and, crossing her arms, turned to look out the window.

Jack watched the door as it closed and then jumped up out his seat and said, ‘Ed! Ed, mate, wait.’

Ed and Josephine exchanged wary glances.

‘I er…’ Jack hadn’t had time to prepare what he wanted to say. ‘I er…’ he said again.