The Sweetest Thing (19 page)

‘He’s here right now, digging up the garden and preparing the ground.’

‘Preparing the ground for what exactly?’ I can tell from her voice that Summer’s smiling. ‘Perhaps he has an ulterior motive. Perhaps he’s preparing the ground for some other reason. Romance, for example.’

By two o’clock in the afternoon on a hot Saturday at the beginning of the August bank holiday weekend, I’ve already delivered Mr Victor’s weekly chocolate cake order to his shop in town, tidied the house as best I can and baked bread and sausage rolls. I’m buzzing with excitement at the thought of seeing Summer, Karen and their families. Lucky starts barking and scampering from the front door through the lobby into the kitchen to the back door, and then back to the front door again. Whatever he’s on, I’d like some of it, I think, smiling, as he skedaddles about, only giving up when Sophie opens the front door.

‘Mum, there’s a car outside!’ she shouts. ‘It’s Summer and Jade. And Paul. And they’ve got Josh with them too.’

‘Will you show them into the yard, Sophie?’ I call from the kitchen. I slip my apron off, run my fingers through my hair, and perform a mental check through my recipe for a good party.

Clothes: flip-flops, shorts and loose-fitting top. Check.

Drink: gallons of scrumpy, and lemonade for those who aren’t drinking. Check.

Food: plates of sausage rolls, bowls of salad – tomato and couscous, and green salad, three farmhouse bloomers – freshly baked, butter, cheese and ham, marmalade cake, brownies, cherry and almond slices, and my trademark butterfly fairy cakes: buns with their tops cut off, halved and stuck back on with butter icing, to look – with the eye of faith – like butterfly wings. Check. Oh, and there are scones, jam and clotted cream too, in case anyone’s still hungry.

Adam, Josh and some of our other visitors, Guy, for example, have prodigious appetites.

‘Karen’s here too with Hugo and Chris,’ Sophie calls, slightly less enthusiastically, I notice. My sister has that effect on people. Her eleven-year-old son, Chris, has acquired her pessimistic nature. ‘Who else is supposed to be coming?’

‘Guy is. Granny isn’t.’ My parents have had an attack of the ‘olds’ as I call it, deciding they’re too old for this party, and leaving the younger generations to it. You might wonder if I invited David and Alice. I didn’t. I’m not quite that magnanimous.

I greet everyone in the yard. The chickens scatter and feathers fly.

‘Sophie, remember to close the gate. The last time we left it open, the cows came in.’

My best friend – Summer by name, Summer by nature – turns up, all long legs, blond hair down to her shoulders, blue eyes and bronzed skin. She refers to her nose as ‘the hooter’, being over-sensitive about its size and the freckles that adorn it. She used to use
lemon juice to make them fade. It never worked.

She’s wearing cut-offs, made from an old pair of jeans, and an embroidered sleeveless top which reveals her bra straps. She is artlessly bohemian.

I watch her look up at the house, her jaw dropping open in admiration.

‘Wow. It’s beautiful, Jennie,’ she says, holding out her arms for a hug.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’ She looks over my shoulder. ‘I can see why you fell in love with this place though.’ Then she turns to my sister who’s joined us. ‘It’s fab, isn’t it, Karen?’

My sister purses her lips. It’s strange looking at her – it’s like I’m looking at my own reflection, but not quite. Karen is three years older than me, fuller in the face and curvier in general. In fact, I would go so far as to say – although not to her face – that she’s beginning to look matronly. It doesn’t help that she looks as if she’s helped herself from my mother’s wardrobe – not that Mum is old-fashioned in her choice of clothes, but she does dress appropriately for her age, refusing to flaunt her upper arms and her bellybutton. Karen’s gone for a stark black and cream shift dress which doesn’t fit, being baggy at the bust and tight over the hips, and nude court shoes.

‘It’s such an amazing place,’ continues Summer. ‘The photos didn’t do the house justice.’ From her silence, I gather that Karen is less enthralled. Mind you, looking at Hugo, she never did have much taste. Actually, I’m being too harsh. He was quite good-looking in a chubby, cherubic way – as their son is now – but he’s running to fat, like one of Guy’s cattle that he’s rearing for beef.

Hugo joins us, having previously been engaged in conversation on his BlackBerry. He slips it into the pocket of his shorts, and makes a point of giving me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Hello, Jennie,’ he says. ‘You’re looking as lovely as ever.’

‘Thank you, Hugo.’ I glance towards Karen. She’s watching, but there’s no visible reaction from her.

‘Look at the chickens,’ Summer goes on. ‘Aren’t they cute? Do they lay lots of eggs?’

‘Not many yet,’ I say. We’re lucky if we get one or two a day at the moment.

‘That one’s going bald,’ says Karen. ‘Like my husband,’ she adds, with a wicked smile, and I think, That’s more like it. She’s decided to enjoy the weekend, after all. ‘Good grief, Jennie, look at your nails and your hair,’ she adds.

‘I still need to find a decent hairdresser,’ I say ruefully. Fifi helpfully left me the name of the salon she uses, but I’m not ready for a wash and set just yet.

‘Have you invited anyone else? Your neighbours?’ Karen says.

‘I only have one.’

‘This farmer bloke?’

‘Yes, Guy.’ I hasten to add that I’ve invited him in exchange for finding us the chickens. ‘It seems to be how it works around here. You have to barter in goods and services, not hard cash.’

‘You don’t have to explain, Jennie,’ Summer says teasingly, touching my shoulder. ‘We can guess why you asked him. I just hope he’s as delicious as you’ve said.’

I notice the way she glances archly at Paul and how he smiles back, secure in the knowledge that Summer
would never let him down. Fit, sporty and with excellent people skills, he works in retail, manager of a large branch of a well-known supermarket, but he could easily find gainful employment as a Beckham lookalike.

‘Oh, a veggie patch,’ Summer exclaims. ‘You’ve really gone to town – that’s an inappropriate phrase, isn’t it, when you’ve actually gone and moved to the country?’

‘But there’s nothing growing in it,’ says Karen.

‘I haven’t planted anything yet.’

‘Do you remember your attempts to grow tomatoes on your windowsill?’ she says. ‘You lavished all that attention on them and they didn’t produce a single tomato.’

‘When I talked to them, I can’t have talked kindly enough.’ I think Karen’s jealous. I remember how she tried to dissuade me when I first mentioned this project. We were sitting in a coffee shop, having met in town.

‘I still can’t believe you’re going through with it,’ she’d said, tapping her spoon against the side of her cup. It was black coffee with artificial sweetener and she’d declined my offer of cake to go with it, because she was having one of her fat days. I wasn’t surprised – she’d just bought another pair of trousers from Next in a size twelve when she should have known from bitter experience that she was a size fourteen. I was pretty sure she’d be taking them back tomorrow.

Karen’s expression turned deeply serious and I knew I was in for a lecture.

‘Are you sure you aren’t doing this just to get back at David?’

I pressed my hands to my ears.

‘I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear this, Jennie, but it has to be said. Is it some kind of revenge?’

I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know for sure that there wasn’t some truth in what she said. I was moving the family to Devon to follow my dream, but inevitably it would make it more difficult for David to see the children.

‘It’ll be a long drive for him to collect them on a Friday night and drop them off again on a Sunday,’ Karen pointed out. ‘He’ll expect you to meet him halfway.’

‘And that’s what I intend to do. I have thought it through, Karen, and I don’t know why you aren’t happy for me.’ Having been drowning in the depths of despair, I felt as if I had surfaced at long last. ‘Is it really such a shock?’

‘Well, yes, it is, Jennie. You’re usually so sensible.’

‘I’m fed up with being sensible.’ If I hadn’t been so rational and restrained, I might have left David before and lived a different, maybe happier, life. ‘Anyway, this feels right. And if it doesn’t work out, I can always come back.’

‘Well, you definitely can’t go with
that
attitude. That makes it sound as if you’ve already decided you’ll end up back here … so why go in the first place? It’s a whim, Jennie. Please don’t rush into it. You’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.’

Of course, I knew that it wouldn’t be. I’d already made the biggest mistake of my life in marrying David.

‘And what about Mum and Dad?’ Karen said. ‘They’ll be devastated.’

That was something else I’d worried about, leaving them behind.

‘They can spend their holidays with us – you know how much they love Devon,’ I told her. ‘Look, I’m forty and I haven’t made anything of my life as yet.’ I could see Karen frowning. She didn’t understand. ‘This is something I have to do.’

‘What about the children?’

‘I want them to have more freedom. I want them to be able to go out and forage for blackberries in the hedgerows.’

‘You can forage through the bins at the back of Tesco if you really must,’ Karen said. ‘I’m sure this back to nature stuff is overrated.’

‘Shall we go inside?’ I ask, returning to the present. ‘You can bring your things from the cars and get settled, if you like.’ I ask Adam to sort out drinks and cakes for the children while I take the adults around to the front of the house so that I can show off the oak-panelled hallway.

‘I imagine it’s draughty in winter,’ says my sister.

‘I don’t know about that yet.’ I push the front door open. ‘It’s lovely and cool inside now. Come on in.’

‘I want to see this Aga first,’ Karen says.

‘I’d rather crack open a bottle,’ says Hugo. ‘I could do with a drink.’

‘There’s cider and some white wine in the fridge,’ I say reluctantly. I’d love a glass of wine to get the party started, but I’d prefer Hugo to stay off the booze for as long as possible, after what happened at my dad’s seventieth.

‘Oh, no. I think today calls for champagne.’ He grins. ‘I’ve brought six bottles of Bolly as my—’

‘
Our
contribution to the party,’ my sister corrects him quickly.

‘I hope you aren’t planning to get too drunk tonight,’ I say lightly.

‘As if,’ Hugo says, looking at me for a fraction of a second too long.

‘The kitchen’s this way,’ I say, shifting away.

‘I’m thinking of getting one when we have the kitchen done,’ Karen says, looking at her husband as she checks out the Aga. ‘It looks great, doesn’t it? Really retro.’

‘Retro as in retrospective or retrogressive?’ Hugo says drily. ‘The question is, does it cook food better than a twenty-first-century appliance?’

‘Does that matter?’ says Karen. ‘You can always have an Aga and a contemporary oven and hob.

‘What, both? That’s ridiculous,’ he says.

‘Some people do,’ I say. ‘The Aga is on all the time and it can get pretty hot in summer. I can’t see that it’s any different from having a vintage Porsche and the current Mercedes at the same time.’

‘Touché,’ says Hugo.

‘Forget the Aga,’ Summer interrupts. ‘Where’s this handsome farmer? I can’t wait to meet him.’

‘He won’t be here until later – he’s milking the cows.’ I change the subject away from Guy. ‘I’ll show you the drawing room next.’

‘That sounds so grand,’ says Summer.

‘A drawing room, but no en suite, I gather,’ says Karen.

It’s gone four by the time we’ve finished the guided tour of the house and grounds, having spent quite a while at the pond where Hugo talked at length about a proposal he had for a trout fishery. We’ve shared a bottle and a half of champagne and I’m already feeling slightly sozzled.

‘Tea and cakes, or scrumpy and savouries?’ I ask.

‘Scrumpy and cakes, I think,’ says Summer, and we set up a buffet in the kitchen, keeping half an eye out for the younger children who are playing in the paddock while Hugo and Paul go and help them put up the tents where they’re going to sleep – I’ve left the girls’ bedroom free in case they should decide sleeping outside is too scary halfway through the night. Sophie and Georgia are in their element, showing off the chickens and the dog. Adam helps himself to a picnic and disappears off with Josh into the copse where he’s planning to build a wigwam in which they can spend the night.

‘Are you sure they’ll be all right out here?’ Karen says, as we help ourselves to food.

‘They’ll be fine. Lucky’s a great watch dog – we’ll soon hear if someone is creeping about who shouldn’t be.’ I’d never have let them sleep outside when we lived in London.

‘Well, here’s to the new house, Sis.’ Karen holds up her glass.