The Great Allotment Proposal (2 page)

Annie’s mum narrowed her eyes at the retreating figure, ‘He must be new, I don’t know him.’

‘I’ll do a bit of digging,’ said Emily, smiling at her little pun, and Annie’s mum put her hand on her chest and said, ‘Oh it’s just lovely to have you back.’

‘Come on. We’re up here,’ Annie pointed ahead. ‘By that big tree.’

‘It’s a damson, Annie,’ her mum said with a sigh, then added, ‘You girls, I don’t know.’ And went back to Valter and her planting.

All around them people were engrossed in their gardening. Digging, raking and hacking down branches, busying themselves with bonfires and trundling wheelbarrows. In the distance the attractive blond man in a black top was fiddling about in a greenhouse. In the far corner an older woman, Enid’s daughter, Martha, was lifting the slats out of a beehive with no protective clothing – she was clearly as tough as old boots. When they got to the damson tree, Emily saw the plot opposite theirs was being tended by a fierce-looking old guy with a black beard, long brown hair and a hat like Crocodile Dundee. His plot was immaculate. Like he’d built it with a set-square and protractor.

All around there were things that just didn’t crop up ever in Emily’s everyday life. Colourful pinwheels and little gnomes, swing seats and deck chairs. Earth and worms and cages of birds that might be quails.

She pulled a face at Annie, who shrugged as if to say, ‘I know!’

The guy with the Crocodile Dundee hat straightened up from where he was digging, wiped some sweat from his face with his gardening glove, staining his skin with mud in the process, and looking Emily’s way said, ‘All right?’

‘Lovely,’ Emily replied, shielding her eyes with her hand to try and see him clearer.

‘Know what you’re doing?’

‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Emily nodded. Then looked away, eyebrows raised unsure what to do next.

‘We just need to water it,’ Annie said. ‘That’s all she said, try and water it every day.’

‘OK then,’ Emily nodded, ‘Let’s water it.’ She paused and looked around, ‘What with?’ As she said it, Annie’s annoying brother Jonathan walked past carrying a black plastic bag full rubbish. He cast a look at their wilted plot and said, ‘You girls should quit while you’re ahead,’ and then trundled off with a snigger.

Annie watched him go. ‘We have to win something just to wipe the smile off his face,’ she said. ‘He went on a gardening course last year. Sees himself as a regular Alan Titchmarsh.’

‘I don’t know who that is,’ Emily said, leaning against the corner of the dilapidated shed as Annie went to unravel the hose.

‘He’s on the TV. Mind that shed, Em, it looks a bit wobbly.’

Emily ignored her but then the wood she was leaning against gave a loud creak. She glanced behind her and it wobbled. She went to stand up straight but the shiny sole of her high heel slipped against the mud and she couldn’t get purchase. She reached across to the big plastic water butt next to her to try and get more support but that, supported on just a couple of bricks, also swayed under her grasp. ‘It’s bloody moving, Annie,’ she said. ‘Help me.’

Annie tried to get back to her from where she had started watering but she got caught up in the knot of hose and shouted instead, ‘Just stand up, move away from it.’

‘I’m trying,’ Emily said, her eyes widening as the wooden planks cracked again and then one wall of the shed caved in.

Annie watched, horrified, as Emily fell back with it. Her hand was still hooked on the rim of the unstable water butt so, as she fell, it fell with her like a giant bear. Algae-fied rain water sloshed out the top as it rolled along the fallen wooden wall, over the top of Emily, and then down to the corner of the shed where it hit the earth and rolled to a stop by a small cherry tree, a stream of green water pouring onto the grass.

‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ Emily shouted, flattened to a heap on the broken shed.

‘Are you OK?’ Annie called as she yanked the hose from round her ankles and tried to get over to help her up.

But then suddenly a camera flashed, a shutter clicked maybe a hundred times and a man laughed and said, ‘That’ll do nicely, Ms Hunter-Brown.’

Emily scrabbled her way up to standing as the paparazzo photographer clicked a hundred more shots, his lips hitched up into a smile. She recognised him immediately as the good-looking blond guy with the wheelbarrow. He’d followed her here and been biding his time.

Her hair was dripping with green algae-water, it was in her mouth and her eyes and on her skin. Her ribs felt crushed from the giant water butt, but all she could think was that she didn’t want this guy here. She was used to being papped. Used to seeing a photo of herself just about to take a bite of a massive burger or sunbathing in a bikini – the magazine circling her cellulite in red, but she didn’t want them here. This was her place.

‘Oh god, can you just leave me alone?’ she shouted, pushing her soaking hair back from her face.

‘Just doing my job, Emily,’ he sniggered.

‘Well you’ve got your shot, can you go away now?’

‘Come on, Em,’ the paparazzo shouted, ‘Can’t you give us a quick pose? Be a good sport?’

In the past she knew she would have wiped her face clean of the algae, tied her hair up and blown a kiss for the camera, or maybe turned and given them a quick cheeky wink over her shoulder. Anything so they wouldn’t be horrible about her. She’d found it was the best way to divert any negative press. Give them what they want and they’d support her. But she just couldn’t. She could feel people looking from where they were working on their allotments. She could sense them exchanging looks and thinking about whether to come over. She could almost hear their split-second thoughts – she’s back and she’s trouble.

‘Please?’ she said. ‘Please just go.’

But the guy shook his head and, lifting up his camera, started snapping again, over and over the thrumming sound like a big fat moth caught in a jam jar.

Then, suddenly, there was a hand on the paparazzo’s shoulder and the man with the beard and Crocodile Dundee hat from the allotment next door said, ‘You heard the ladies, this is private property. You’re trespassing.’

‘Get your dirty hands off me,’ said the photographer, twitching out his grasp.

Emily couldn’t really see the man’s face clearly, but she could tell from his arm muscles and the bit of un-muddied skin on his face that he was younger than she’d first thought.

‘I said, this is private property. You have no licence to take photographs on this land.’ The man’s voice was calm and steady.

‘You gonna stop me, cowboy man?’

The man pulled off his gloves and ran his hand across his lips as the paparazzo started firing off more shots in his direction. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘You touch me, mate, and I’ll get my lawyers on you.’

The man laughed and took another step closer. The paparazzo rolled his eyes as if this bearded gardener wouldn’t have the guts. Then, quick as anything, the paparazzo was pinned up against the cherry tree, held in place under the neck by the man’s muddy forearm, his legs squirming an inch or two above the ground. The guy tore the paparazzo’s camera out of his hand and chucked it into the puddle of water where it slowly sank, then he threw him over his shoulder and walked off in the direction of the river.

Emily watched in fascination. The sun beat down like a beast. Annie stood with an open-mouthed smile while the man strode off like a giant, the paparazzo’s legs waggling over his shoulder. Emily looked at Annie. Annie looked back at Emily.

‘Who the hell was that?’ Emily asked.

‘Are you kidding?’ Annie said.

Emily looked blank like she had no idea.

‘Emily!’

‘What?’

‘It was Jack Neil,’ Annie shook her head as she said it. ‘How could you not recognise him? You went out with him for a year!’

Chapter Three

‘No way was that Jack Neil!’

The last time Emily had seen Jack was at what was meant to be the inaugural Cherry Pie Island Festival. Jack and her brother, Wilf, had set it up the year they’d finished school. They’d had the best day of their lives until night fell and the island was swamped with over-eager partygoers with counterfeit tickets that their limited security couldn’t cope with.

In retrospect, the festival had been the peak of Emily’s childhood. They were living at Mont Manor with her mother’s fourth husband – Bernard – a camp, eccentric old make-up artist who had clearly only married for the companionship. Bernard had absolutely no interest in anything remotely parent like, threw wild, lavish parties and was often found lounging by the pool with a neat gin and a cigarette as the sun rose.

It was a well-known fact that Emily’s mother had married men in the same way other people got promoted in their careers. She took them up a notch every marriage in order to give her kids the best start in the life. The problem being that she didn’t often see past the money to the character beneath. But Bernard was nothing like the previous stepfathers – he didn’t shout at Emily or try and be her friend or make her sit at the table in silence until she’d eaten everything on her plate, or sit next to her on the sofa a touch too close, or make them all take their shoes off before they came in, or make the dog sleep in a kennel outside, or get rid of the TV, or take her mum out for dinners and events every night so they never saw her. He didn’t have children of his own who would make comments under their breath about her mother the gold-digger, nor did he stand up at her mother’s birthday party and add something in his speech about how difficult she was to live with, but how most of the men in that room would understand what he was talking about. Instead, Bernard would take whimsical turns around the estate, dressed in a satin smoking jacket while her mother wore white linen and smiled a lot, and Emily would watch from the upstairs bathroom, delighted with her life. These were the years when she’d been expelled from every boarding school in the south and finally been allowed to go to the local comp and live at home in her own bed and wash in her own bath. The bare plaster on the wall and the peeling wallpaper, the Georgian glass windows with the howling draught and the Sellotaped-over cracks were all part of the fairy tale.

And to top that off, there was Jack. Possibly the coolest, most laid-back character on the island. She remembered him lying on a hay bale at the festival, cigarette in one hand, cider in the other, the hazy light of the summer sun burning down as he stretched his arm out for her to come and lie next to him. Both of them squeezed onto the warm, sweet-smelling hay, him holding her tight to his side so she didn’t fall off, laughing because her hair was tickling his face, the smoke on his breath as he kissed her, the sun blinding them into shutting their eyes.

It was perfect. It was as life was meant to be. For Emily it was like the world had paused and said, it’ll be OK.

But then the crowds had come. And then the police had come. And then the rain had come. And the festival was over.

As she stood now, alongside Annie, watching as the guy in the hat dropped the paparazzo with a splash into the river and then turned and started walking back, his hands in the pockets of his black combat trousers, his white T-shirt dirty with mud, she said, ‘That’s not Jack. It can’t be Jack. Jack’s in Peru or somewhere.’

‘Jack was in Peru or somewhere,’ said Annie, turning to her and wiping some of the stray algae off Emily’s cheek with a tissue. ‘Here, use this, you’ve got loads more still on your face,’ she said before looking back towards Jack. ‘He’s come back. Hasn’t been around that long. And, to be honest, I only knew because other people told me. He’s living on a fishing boat apparently.’

‘What do you mean he’s living on a fishing boat? Is he a fisherman? I thought he was an engineer?’

Annie shook her head, ‘I have no idea, honestly. I just heard he was living on a fishing boat.’

‘Where?’ Emily asked.

Annie shrugged.

‘You ladies OK?’ Jack shouted as he got near.

Emily took a couple of steps closer and peered at him. Then, seeming to finally believe Annie when he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you?’

‘You’re welcome, Emily,’ he said, one side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile.

‘Did
you
recognise
me
?’ she asked, taking another few steps forward as Jack went back to his allotment and picked up his spade.

‘Of course.’

Emily frowned. ‘Well you should have said hello rather than acting all mysterious and bearded. It’s unfair.’

He laughed. ‘You have algae on your face.’

Emily picked up the hem of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. ‘Is it gone?’

Jack glanced up from where he’d started digging, ‘No.’

She wiped her face again. ‘Gone?’

He looked up and shook his head.

Emily narrowed her eyes and then turned to Annie, who was untangling the hose to finish watering the plot. ‘Do I have algae on my face, Annie?’ Emily shouted.

Annie peered at her. ‘No.’

Emily looked back at Jack who had his head down and was supposedly concentrating on digging, but she could see the smirk on his lips. She opened her mouth to say something but didn’t know what.

No one. No one made her feel like Jack did. No one ever had. Like she was off balance. Not in control. Even his hair and his beard threw her off. Everything he did, everything he said, seemed to catch her on the wrong foot. It was all too calm, too slow, too all-seeing. He stood up and wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead, saw her still watching him and leant against his spade to watch her back. ‘Does that happen to you often?’ he asked, tilting his head towards the river were the paparazzo had been unceremoniously dumped.

‘Fairly often,’ Emily nodded.

‘I don’t know how you can live like that,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘We don’t all want to live on fishing boats.’

He snorted a laugh. ‘I need to talk to you about that actually.’

‘Why? If it’s to ask me to sail away with you,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘Then the answer’s no.’

As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. Even in jest she knew it was an awkward, stupid thing to say.