Appleby Farm (34 page)

But
Victoria Moon
?

The discovery of the two of them had sucked all the joy out of my day.

He deserved someone better than her. And if that was the sort of woman he went for, well, he wasn’t the man I thought he was.

But I was not going to cry. I wound down the window to let the damp air in and inhaled a big breath.

The track leading to Appleby Farm came into view. I turned in, parked up in the yard and walked wearily up the path to the farmhouse. There was no one about and for once I was grateful not to have to make conversation. I was about to go upstairs and run a bath when the phone rang.

I flopped down in the office and answered it.

‘Freya? This is Aidan, Tilly’s boyfriend. She’s just called me from the train. This might sound crazy, but I’ve got a proposal for you.’

My face broke into a weary smile. ‘Go ahead, I love crazy.’

Thirty minutes later, I lay in the bath with a cold glass of wine, my head spinning with ideas. Aidan had sworn me to secrecy. His proposal was crazy – but brilliant crazy – and I couldn’t wait to talk it over with Tilly. But even more exciting than that, I had the makings of a plan to keep Appleby Farm in the Moorcroft family. And it just might work.

Until I moved back to the Lake District, Sunday mornings (or the tail-end thereof, which was all I used to see) went like this: wake up, grope for my glass of water, take that first sip that tastes like nectar, make yet another fervent promise to myself never to drink flaming sambuca again and then ease myself in to the day, praying that the pictures of me twerking like Miley Cyrus haven’t made it to Instagram.

Not any more.

Now you’re far more likely to find me at my converted sewing table in the office by eight o’clock, ordering tea or napkins or something equally glamourous. Or I might be checking the website for hits, replying to emails for party bookings and jotting down things on my new wall planner. And do you know what? I totally love it. My life isn’t perfect, whose is? But for the first time I feel as though I’m exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I want to do.

Home
. Such a tiny little word. And yet at the same time, it means so much.

On this particular Sunday morning, the weather outside the office window was bright, sunny and as crisp as an autumn apple. It was the middle of September, with two weeks to go until some very important dates, and fourteen weeks until – drumroll please – the wedding of Tilly Parker and Aidan Whitby. YAY!

And what was even more heart-claspingly joyful was that their nuptials were only going to be bloomin’ well celebrated at Appleby Farm. Double YAY! Yes, I had been given the very great honour of being in charge of their special day and I was so overwhelmed by them placing their trust in me that I kept having to pinch myself!

It all started when Aidan called me on the day of the tea rooms’ opening. He was whisking Tilly off to Venice the following day and had planned a secret marriage proposal. What he also wanted to do was take all of the stress out of organizing the wedding for her so that it was as different as it possibly could be from her wedding to her first husband. I didn’t know Aidan that well but by the end of that phone call not only had I agreed to host their wedding at Appleby Farm, I also absolutely adored him; he was possibly one of the sweetest, most thoughtful, romantic men I’d ever met.

Tilly had phoned from Venice the morning after Aidan proposed and in between the squeals and sobs I managed to work out that he’d arranged for a gondolier to pick them up from the jetty of their canalside hotel just before sunset. Under the Bridge of Sighs on the Rio del Palazzo, Aidan had asked Tilly to make him the happiest man in the world and marry him. She’d replied that she would be honoured to, as long as he got back up off one knee because the gondola was wobbling furiously and it was making her nervous. Aidan had slipped a ring on her finger, the gondolier had popped open a bottle of champagne and the gondola had glided magically through the water to a
bacaro
(which is Italian for wine bar), owned by the gondolier’s sister, where they whiled away the rest of the night feeding each other warm crostini and drinking bubbly.

What an absolutely gorgeous proposal!

And they were such a gorgeous couple that I only felt the smallest twinge of jealousy at Tilly’s current state of euphoria.

‘The thing is,’ Tilly had gushed, ‘as soon as I got on the train after leaving you in the Lake District, I phoned him and told him all about the farm and the woods, how beautiful it was, and you selling bluebells to the people coming out of church, and he asked for your number. I was convinced he wanted to come and shoot his new TV show
Woodland Habitats
in Lovedale. But this is even more exciting, I’m so happy!’

And I was happy too. Their wedding was to take place on the twentieth of December at the church on the other side of Colton Woods with the reception in the tea rooms. I was literally counting down the days. Tilly had said she was happy to leave the flowers, the catering, the photographer, the wedding car … in fact, everything except her dress – to me. It would be a small wedding – close friends and family only – and she had asked whether I minded that Charlie would be coming. ‘Not at all!’ I’d reassured her, ‘Charlie and I have both moved on; it’ll be fine.’

Given that things hadn’t worked out as I’d planned between Harry and me, that wasn’t strictly true. But Charlie at least seemed to be making progress on the relationship front.

He’d sent me a text on the opening day of the tea rooms asking me to get in touch. Which I did. He’d wanted to let me know that he had been thinking of me on my big day. We’d got chatting about this and that and I’d wheedled it out of him that he’d been feeling a bit lonely. I spotted my chance and persuaded him to go for breakfast at the Shenton Road Café when I knew Anna would be working. And the very next weekend he went along and took Ollie with him, too.

Unbelievably, the three of them had got chatting and Ollie, bless him, asked Anna to come to the park with them to fly his kite. And then, according to Anna, who called me later that day, ‘one thing led to another’. They were taking it slowly, she’d said, and it was still early days. But she had wanted to tell me straight away in case I heard the news from other sources and did I mind?

We’d both had a girlie sob down the phone, but I’d promised whole-heartedly that I was delighted for them. They’d be good for each other, I just knew it. Besides, Anna was so happy that it would have been selfish of me not to have given them my blessing. It was just, you know, still a bit new so, for the moment, I was doing my best to keep both men – Charlie and Harry – out of my thoughts.

Staying away from Harry was proving difficult. He seemed to spend more time at our farm than his own these days. He’d handled the barley harvest for us and this week he’d been helping Eddy prepare the cowsheds ready to house the cattle over winter. I hadn’t seen Victoria at all – thank goodness – and so luckily hadn’t had the misfortune of seeing the pair of them together since I’d spied on them at Willow Farm.

Lizzie doubted that there was anything going on between them. ‘Except in Victoria’s head.’

‘But I’ve seen them,’ I insisted. ‘They were on the verge of kissing.’

And we’d both shuddered at poor Harry’s fate.

When Harry was here on the farm working, he usually popped into the tea rooms at some point. But this week I’d hardly seen him. Once, his visit had coincided with a hen party that’d arrived for afternoon tea – he only stayed for thirty seconds. And the following day a huge group of silver-haired ramblers had descended on us in need of refreshment. I’d been too busy to chat, which was sad because I missed his smiley face, his bad jokes and his teasing reminders of my teenage antics.

And I missed that little frisson of excitement that I felt whenever he was near.

Anyway … So, back to the wall planner.

I picked up my special marker – blue for a booking – and jotted down the date that had just come in via email: a birthday celebration afternoon tea. General trade at the Appleby Farm Vintage Tea Rooms was steady, but the party bookings were starting to come in thick and fast. We were proving to be a big hit with the mother and toddler brigade, who adored buying the little Appleby Farm bags of corn and feeding the hens.

My eye fell on the last day of September where ‘TB’ was written in black. It was D-Day for the cattle. This was the second round of tests since the TB outbreak in May. Hopefully this time, the vet would give us the all-clear and then Uncle Arthur could decide what he wanted to do with the beef herd. Whatever he did would bring him and Auntie Sue a step closer to their retirement.

But the day after was the biggie: the first of October was marked with a big black cross. That was the date by which Uncle Arthur had promised to give Julian an answer about selling the farm to his buyer.

My stomach lurched. I’d got ideas – plenty of them – I just couldn’t quite get them to stack up financially. I was reaching into the drawer in my makeshift desk for my little – and unfortunately, I mean little – folder of business plans that might prevent the farm falling into this secret buyer’s hands, when there was a sharp rap at the window. I looked up with a gasp to see Lizzie sitting on Skye’s back. The two of them were outside the office window, standing between the raised beds that Charlie had made in Auntie Sue’s veggie patch.

‘Flippin ’eck! You frightened the life out of me!’ I cried, opening the window and leaning out to rub Skye’s white and chestnut nose.

‘Freya Moorcroft, it’s your lucky day. I, Lizzie Moon, will work in the tea rooms with you today for free.’ She flashed a bright smile at me but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. It was the kind of smile I used when someone asked – as they did a lot round here – if I was courting and I pretended I didn’t have time for all that business.

‘Fab! Thank you. In that case, while you take Skye to the stables I’ll make us some breakfast. I haven’t eaten yet.’

She stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Don’t you want to know why?’

My heart melted for my friend. ‘Is it because Ross has gone back to uni?’

She leaned forward until she was lying flat against Skye’s mane and tutted. ‘Know-all. He called this morning. Says he’s already missing me. But I can’t stop imagining that he’s having a great time with the other students, and so I thought a day washing up and buttering scones would take my mind off my heartbreak.’

‘Well, I can definitely help there by keeping you busy all day, and you can help me sort out my ideas into a proper business plan for two weeks’ time.’

‘Why, what’s happening in two weeks?’

I held up my folder of ideas. ‘I need a cunning plan to foil my brother.’

‘Right you are. Make mine a fried-egg sandwich and I’m all yours. Come on, Skye.’

Lizzie clicked her tongue against her teeth, tweaked the reins and clip-clopped off to the stables.

I closed the window, gave the folder a last look before tucking it back in the drawer and set off in search of breakfast.

I was working on the principle that as the days ticked by and I was really down to the wire, I would have a brainwave and I’d come up with a rescue package that would knock spots off my brother’s farm proposal. I mean, his proposal didn’t make sense. An existing farmer who wants to take over Appleby Farm? Surely it could only be someone local and we hadn’t heard a dicky bird. I was convinced it was actually some shady development company pretending to be farmers, who would concrete over the entire farm and turn it into luxury holiday apartments as soon as our backs were turned. Well, whatever, or whoever, this mystery buyer was, they weren’t getting their hands on the farm at least until after the wedding. If I had my way, they wouldn’t get their hands on it at all.

Auntie Sue and Uncle Arthur had just finished their breakfasts and, judging by Auntie Sue’s lack of apron and Uncle Arthur’s best trousers, it appeared that they were on their way out.

‘Morning, everyone,’ I said, kissing them briefly and pressing a hand to the teapot in search of a brew. ‘Are you going somewhere?’

The kitchen table had its usual stacks of papers on it, although I noticed these days that the pile of old farming magazines had been replaced with assorted listings from all the local estate agents.

‘Morning, lass. Yes, we are, but don’t worry, your scones are already made and cooling. Have you got that brochure, Artie? Let Freya see where we’re going.’

Uncle Arthur sighed and made a show of sifting through the papers on the table.

I took a frying pan down from the hook above the Aga while I waited, set it on the hotplate, melted a knob of butter and broke four fresh eggs into the pan.

‘What do you think of this, love?’ asked Auntie Sue, wrestling a brochure from her husband’s grip. She joined me at the Aga and pushed the open pages towards me while I loosened the eggs from the bottom of the pan with a spatula. ‘“Oaklands Retirement Development, exclusively for the over sixties.” It’s got a social centre, a medical centre and a gym, and—’

‘What do I want with a ruddy gym?’ growled Uncle Arthur. ‘I’ve got a hundred and fifty acres of space to walk about here, right on me own doorstep. I want fresh air and views, not living cheek by jowl with a load of geriatrics.’

I cleared my throat to smother a giggle. If they let sixty-year-olds in, there was a good chance he’d be fifteen years older than some of the residents. I bit my lip and said nothing.

‘But we won’t have all those acres, will we, Artie? Not if we sell up.’

‘I’m working on the menu for Tilly and Aidan’s wedding today,’ I said, changing the subject diplomatically.

It did the trick. Auntie Sue sank back down on the bench next to Uncle Arthur and squeezed his hand. ‘Oh, lovely.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t wait to see the tea rooms all dolled up for the wedding.’

Lizzie let herself into the kitchen and sat down just as I slid our double-fried-egg sandwiches on to the table.

‘I’m trying to come up with something delicious, unique and easy enough to feed a crowd,’ I said.