Ivy Lane: Winter: (7 page)

‘Is that allowed, bunking off?’ I said before he asked me any more details about my disastrous night out.

He shrugged. ‘My shift finishes in a few minutes anyway. Come on.’

‘I’m absolutely fine on my own, but if you insist.’ I smiled and shrugged, feigning indifference, although secretly I was pleased to have company.

We began to walk, my clip-cloppy heels echoing along the pavement while his black boots didn’t make a sound.

‘Freya’s very nice,’ I said.

‘Hmm,’ he replied in a non-committal sort of way that I couldn’t interpret.

‘She asked me to put in a good word for her with you.’

He laughed softly and shook his head. ‘Nah, not my type.’

I watched the breath swirl around his face in the cold air and bit back the words on my tongue. I had a pretty good idea what his type was. I shivered and he held out his elbow for me to take. I looped my arm through his and leaned against him, savouring his warmth. We walked along in companionable silence for a few minutes, with me contemplating how on earth I’d managed to go from a pamper evening in front of the TV to a cold walk home with a fireman.

Charlie and me.

It would be so easy.

Me and Charlie.

I could ask him to come in with me and he would. I could ask him to stay the night so that I wouldn’t have to be alone and he probably would.

But that wouldn’t be fair. I wished I was in love with Charlie but I wasn’t. He was, and always would be, the big brother I’d never had.

We were nearly at my house and I reached into my bag to get my keys. His next question nearly made me choke on my own breath. ‘So what’s the story with you and the TV guy, any news?’

‘Who? Aidan? Oh, gosh no’ I laughed, shook my head and rolled my eyes. ‘No, that’s all ancient history, water under the bridge. Gosh no!’

It was a good job it was dark, even if my words convinced him, which I doubted, my blazing cheeks would certainly have betrayed me.

Charlie sighed, whirled round to face me and rubbed his hands over his face. I heard the rasp of stubble against his fingers. I jingled the keys in my hand and stared at my feet.

‘I am so sorry for what I did, Tilly. If I’d known what a mess I would make of everything . . . He’s a nice bloke and I had no right to come between you. If there’s anything I can do to help, you know, put in a good word . . .’ His face softened into a smile and I smiled back sadly.

I remembered the girl who had answered Aidan’s phone earlier and shook my head.

‘You’re not to blame. I’m the only one who made a mess of things.’ I sighed. ‘It’s too late for Aidan and me, Charlie, but thank you for the offer and thank you for walking me home. Goodnight.’ I stood on my tiptoes, kissed his cheek and let myself into the house, leaving him standing there in the moonlight with his hand still rubbing his face.

Next morning after a rather restless night’s sleep I made myself a cup of tea, perched myself on a kitchen stool and called Gemma, thinking as I dialled that I probably wouldn’t be able to do this for much longer; she would be far too busy with a new baby in the family to deal with my dating dilemmas. But at least at the moment she was fully recovered and hopefully would have time to talk to her single friend.

‘Ah, sad face,’ Gemma said with a sigh, after I’d regaled her with the events of the previous evening, from Cally’s impending fatherhood to Aidan’s new woman. I left out the bit about how Charlie leapt from his fire engine to chaperone me home. I wanted sympathy, not speculation.

‘To be honest, you don’t know how lucky you are, being single,’ she added.

She must have heard me gulp.

‘I’m sorry, Tills, I know that probably sounds insensitive.’

It did rather. I made a polite soothing noise all the same.

‘But last night, I swear, Mike snored from the second he turned out the lights until the birds started twittering this morning while I lay there propped up on three thousand pillows, trying to ignore him and my flippin’ heartburn. At one point I found myself looming over him holding one of my pillows inches from his face. I was tempted, I can tell you.’

‘Poor Mike!’ I couldn’t help giggling at the image of an exasperated Gemma being driven to suffocate her mild-mannered husband for the rather innocent crime of snoring.

‘Poor me, more like!’ I could hear the pout in her voice. ‘What I wouldn’t give to have a double bed all to myself for one night.’

I’d had a double bed all to myself for over two years and frankly enough was enough.

‘Oh God,’ I groaned, ‘what I
wouldn’t
give to be kept awake all night by someone in bed with me. I need some loving. Does that sound desperate?’

‘A bit.’ She giggled. ‘Ooh, I know, Date Me dot com!’ she exclaimed.

‘Er, I’m not sure I follow you.’

‘The internet dating site, you know?’

‘Oh right.’ I sighed with relief. ‘For a moment there . . . oh, never mind. But no. Thanks for the suggestion, but definitely not.’

Internet dating had ‘dodgy men’ written all over it and I think I’d suffered enough failures in the romance department this year already.

‘It’s quite safe, Tilly, my hairdresser has been on loads of dates that way.’

My point exactly.

‘Mmm. Thing is I don’t want “loads of dates”. I just want one really nice one.’

Preferably with a man with intelligent brown eyes and a broad nose and thick wavy hair . . .

I snapped my eyes shut.

Forget about Aidan like he’s forgotten about you.

‘Actually, Marcia, one of the teachers at school, keeps trying to set me up with her brother,’ I said brightly.

‘A blind date!’ Gemma squealed down the phone. ‘That was how me and Mike got together and look how that turned out!’

I pressed my lips together and decided not to mention last night’s near miss with the pillow.

‘You should go for it, what have you got to lose?’ she added.

‘Apart from my dignity in the staff room, you mean?’ I sighed. ‘Marcia showed me a picture and he didn’t look too bad until she admitted that he still lived at home with their parents, sleeps in a single bed and kisses his Kylie Minogue posters before going to sleep each night.’

‘Oh dear,’ she sniggered. ‘Sounds like that film,
Failure to Launch
.’

We both fell silent, thinking about Matthew McConaughey’s tousled hair.

I cleared my throat. ‘Anyway. What are you up to for the rest of the day?’

I heard her shuffle in her seat. ‘Well, Mike and I are doing some planning for next year.’ She sounded all excited and happy.

I smiled, glad she was over her desire to strangle him.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I’ve ordered some seed catalogues and I’m going to pop down to the allotment later and make a list of everything I think I should grow next year. I’m toying with the idea of setting up a gardening club at school, too. I thought I might ask your mum for some advice. I think the children would love growing their own vegetables.’

‘Ah, that’s a terrific idea and I’m sure she’d love to help. We’re planning on knocking through the kitchen into the dining room, to make the downstairs more open. It’ll make it easier to keep an eye on the baby when I’m in the kitchen if we’ve got one big room. And then Mia can be in the living room watching telly or revising. Hmmph, although I’ll believe that when I see it.’

My smile slipped away and I swallowed. ‘Sounds perfect,’ I said, forcing a lightness that I didn’t feel.

My plans sounded like the plans of a single lonely person. Hers sounded like the plans of a growing family. Which was true, of course.

I rang off with promises to see her soon as I needed to get on. I had an appointment with a hoe and some errant weeds at Ivy Lane. Besides which, I wanted to see who was around. Funny how I’d taken on the allotment to give myself some peace and quiet and now I made it my destination whenever I needed company.

But that was the thing about life, I mused; no matter how diligent you are, it never does quite go to plan.

Two weeks later, we were halfway through December and I was still relying on Ivy Lane for my fix of social contact. Our numbers were rather depleted, though, I thought sadly as I looked across the allotment. Shazza was here, but no Karen. I’d spotted Christine in the pavilion office and Liz was in her polytunnel. But that was it. Roll on summer when Ivy Lane was teeming with colour and people and life . . .

I pushed the spade into the soil, rested my foot on it and took a breather. Despite the temperature, which was barely above freezing, I was hot and out of breath.

Today I was digging the area that Brenda had had her potatoes in. I hadn’t really done much digging on my plot all year. Since Charlie had ploughed it all up with the rotavator in March, I’d managed to keep it ticking over with a fork and a hoe. But now that I was virtually a gardening expert, I knew about leaving clods of earth for the winter frosts to break down to give me a good start next spring. The next job would be to cover all the bare earth over with manure. I was in no rush to do that bit.

It was back-breaking work but fairly mindless, which was just as well because my head was crammed full with all the things I still had left to do before Christmas.

‘Tilly!’ I looked across to the road to see Christine bustling towards me waving a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Are you busy next week?’ she called.

I bit my lip and smiled. Ask any teacher if they are busy in the run-up to Christmas and they are likely to stare at you, gimlet-eyed, before either bursting into hysterical tears or charging at you with the nearest blunt instrument.

‘Why?’ I asked as she got closer. I’d learned my lesson with Christine. She would have to reveal her hand before I revealed mine.

She hugged me, smiled from underneath her bobble hat, and held out a mocked-up poster for the Ivy Lane Christmas party.

‘I need some ideas for the party and as you did so well with the cake sale . . .?’ She beamed at me hopefully.

I took a deep breath.

Before the end of term, which was less than two weeks away, I had the Christmas disco to supervise and the staff Christmas lunch to attend (think soggy sprouts, dry pre-sliced turkey and not even a sniff of sweet sherry to wash it down). My class had been chosen to sing carols at a local old people’s home, which I was assured was an honour, but the exchange of relieved looks between the deputy head and the reception teacher didn’t go unnoticed, and there were three performances of the whole school nativity to be organized and endured. And our ‘Mary’, a little girl in my class, had informed me two days ago that she wouldn’t be there for the show, because she was going to Tenerife with her whole family for Christmas.

All of this would be hard enough to cope with at any time of year, but now, with thirty children in full Christmas party mode in my charge, I was exhausted.

Nonetheless, I took the piece of paper from her.

The poster promised mulled wine, mince pies and the presentation of the prizes won at the annual show back in August. But apart from the refreshments, it lacked a certain ‘festiveness’.

‘Hmm, it doesn’t seem very Christmassy.’

Christine sighed. ‘Exactly. That’s just what I was thinking.’

She shoved her hands in her anorak pockets, rolled her lips inwards and frowned. I stifled a smile; with her red cheeks, bobble hat and earnest expression she looked like a little elf.

‘I think we need a bit more Christmas spirit,’ I said. ‘How about a Secret Santa? We pick names out of a hat and buy each other a present? And what about collecting a gift from each plot holder for the children that go to the soup kitchen? That would be a nice touch. And decorations . . .’ I twinkled my eyes at her. ‘Leave the decorations to me.’

‘Oh Tilly, I’ll leave it all to you if you don’t mind.’ Christine threw her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek.

I swallowed anxiously. I did mind really.

‘What with the baby coming soon, me helping Gemma out with the cooking and cleaning and trying to sort everything out at Ivy Lane . . . it’s all getting on top of me.’

I scanned her face. She did look tired and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a bit tearful too.

‘Of course,’ I said, squeezing her arm. ‘Anything I can do, just ask.’

‘Thanks, Tilly, love. I’m sorry it didn’t work out with you and Aidan, but his loss is our gain. You’d be too busy to help me out if you were courting.’

I watched her go, glanced down at the poster and exhaled.

Great.

At least my single status was useful to someone. I would probably end up alone, with no one but Cally’s offspring for company, but as long as there was someone to fiddle about with allotment posters, all was well with the world.

Which reminded me, I really should make an appointment at the vet’s for him. I’d bottled out of taking him to have the snip so far because I’d felt sorry for him, but he’d had his fun and I needed to be sensible about it before he impregnated any more fertile felines.

Poor Cally. I winced at the thought on his behalf. A life of celibacy probably wasn’t top of his Christmas list. I sighed and put the poster in my pocket.

Quite frankly, it wasn’t at the top of mine either.

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And despite being on my tiptoes on the top rung of a ladder on the porch of the pavilion, I had that warm tingling sensation in my stomach confirming that it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas too. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, I had broken up from school for a fortnight and put all the frenetic activity of the end of term behind me. All I had to do now was finish off the pavilion decorations for tonight’s party and then I would switch to relaxation mode for a whole two weeks. Hurrah!

I hummed happily to myself as I wound the last set of fairy lights along the edge of the porch. The pavilion was covered with the lights, which was as it should be. There’s no such thing as too many Christmas lights, as far as I’m concerned. I just hoped Nigel didn’t notice anything amiss with the electricity bill next month.

‘Right then . . .’ Right on cue Nigel appeared from the pavilion and tied a smart knot in his checked woollen scarf. His eyes lifted to all the fairy lights and I held my breath, wondering if he’d read my mind. ‘Oh, Tilly,’ he beamed, ‘this is going to be a marvellous Christmas party. I’ve never seen the place look so wonderful.’