Appleby Farm (29 page)

‘Tilly!’ I leaped up and down on the spot.

‘Freya! It is so lovely to see you!’ she cried, letting go of her case as we flung our arms round each other’s necks. ‘And I could murder a nice cup of tea.’

‘Now
that
is easily arranged.’ I took charge of her suitcase and guided her to the car park.

‘What would you like: Darjeeling, Rooiboos, English Breakfast, Earl Grey,
Lady
Grey …?’

By late afternoon I’d given Tilly a tour of the farm. She’d stroked the noses of Gloria, Gaynor and the calves, we’d walked through the orchard, I’d pointed out the Hereford herd and told her the sad story of losing half of them, and she’d brought me up to date with everything that had been happening in Kingsfield. Neither of us had paused for breath and now that the builders had knocked off for the day we were sitting in the barn on crates, having yet another cup of tea.

‘I think I’m in love with Appleby Farm already.’ Tilly sighed dreamily. ‘No wonder you abandoned us. I think I’d have done the same given half the chance.’

I winced. ‘I know, it was all a bit sudden, wasn’t it? To be honest, most of my moves have been like that. I’ve always had itchy feet.’

The sound of whistling interrupted us and we both looked over to the doorway where Harry was walking in backwards, straining under the weight of a stack of chairs, piled up on a hand trolley. My heart pinged at the unexpected sight of him.

‘Oh goodness, Harry, let me help you,’ I cried, jumping to my feet, feeling hot all of a sudden.

He rested the trolley on the floor, rubbed his forearm across his brow and puffed his cheeks out with exertion. ‘You can get cream for that, you know.’

I looked at Tilly, whose mouth and eyebrows were already twitching with curiosity. She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Cream for what?’ I asked.

‘Itchy feet.’ He grinned.

‘Ha ha,’ I said, hands on hips.

‘Sorry, couldn’t resist,’ he chuckled. ‘Anyway, where do you want these?’

I’d picked up a job lot of pine chairs and tables at auction for a song, and Harry had offered to fetch them for me a few at a time in his trailer whenever he had a spare half-hour. Between the three of us we unloaded the trolley and stacked the chairs at the side of the room while I made the introductions.

Harry went back out to the yard to reload the trolley and Tilly poked me in the ribs.

‘He is lovely,’ she whispered.

I nodded. ‘He’s our next-door neighbour. I’ve known him for years and he’s like a son to my aunt and uncle.’

Harry poked his head back in. ‘Can you two give me a hand with this table?’

Tilly and I went out to the trailer. Ten minutes later the furniture had all been unloaded and Harry went on his way.

‘Actually, I think I’ve changed,’ I said, pouring us both a fresh cup of tea. ‘I don’t have that restless urge any more.’

‘I can see that.’ She smiled. ‘You’re still the same ball of energy that you’ve always been, but there’s an air of purposefulness about you now.’

I sipped my tea and smiled at her wistfully. ‘I can imagine being happy here for the rest of my life. Does that make me sound really boring?’

‘It makes you sound happy,’ said Tilly, squeezing my hand across the table. ‘I tell you who’d absolutely love it here – Aidan. Did I tell you about his new TV show,
Woodland Habitats
…?’

I grinned as she began yet another story about her boyfriend Aidan and his job as a TV director. Not that I minded. I was thrilled for her.

Charlie had met Tilly on her first day at the allotments and he’d told me what a delicate thing she had been, with a face as pale as a ghost and a pain behind her eyes that had been impossible to miss. By the time I’d met her in November she had started to heal, but it wasn’t until she fell in love with Aidan that she really came back to life. Now she was as sunny as a daisy and the only remaining signs of her painful past were the fine silvery scars down her shins from the car accident that had made her lose her baby and had taken her husband James’s life so tragically early.

It was amazing what love could do to a person, I thought, watching her eyes light up as she told me about the house she and Aidan had found together.

‘Now, then.’ She arched her eyebrows at me sternly. ‘I thought you were going to be working my fingers to the bone and apart from moving a few chairs, I’ve been sipping tea like the queen. What can I do to help?’

I lifted my hair off my neck, twisted it up into a bun and let it fall again. ‘Blimey. Where to start? OK.’ I sat up straight. ‘Be honest, what do you think of the décor? Is it “vintagey” enough?’

She had already told me she loved it when we’d walked in. I loved it too, with its duck-egg-blue shelves behind the counter ready to be stacked with all my colourful china as soon as the builders had gone and the collection of bevelled mirrors I’d hung in the darkest area of the barn. There were other little things still to be done too, like hanging the floral bunting and adding old-fashioned glass bottles to each table to hold posies of fresh flowers. But the barn was so cavernous that I was worried we didn’t have enough big stuff to make a ‘vintage’ statement.

Tilly took her time to look round the barn, tapping her finger against the end of her nose thoughtfully.

‘Oh,’ she pronounced suddenly. ‘Art. That’s what’s missing in here. All these lovely exposed stone walls are crying out for some adornment. A few big pictures dotted here and there would finish the place off. Maybe some of those retro advertising posters, or “Keep Calm and Have Another Cupcake” type of thing?’

‘Ooh, yes, you are spot on, Tills!’ I beamed at her. This was exactly what I needed: a fresh pair of eyes on the place. I was so close to it that I was pouring cups of tea in my sleep at the moment. ‘They’ll have to be cheap, though. I’m running out of money fast.’

The two of us stood up and were trying to work out how many pictures we should have and how big they needed to be when Lizzie arrived.

‘Tilly!’ she squealed, jumping in between us and squeezing us in a rugby-scrum-style hug. ‘I’m Lizzie over the Moon to meet you.’ She released us and beamed from one ear to the other. ‘We are going to have so much fun together. We can be like Charlie’s Angels!’

Awkward moment. Tilly looked down at her fingernails, I blinked at Lizzie and she clapped first one and then the other hand over her mouth.

‘I could slap myself,’ she muttered eventually. ‘In fact, you slap me, Freya, I’m so stupid. I nearly said Three Musketeers, too. Why didn’t I say Three Musketeers?’

‘It’s fine.’ I laughed. ‘We can’t keep tiptoeing around it. Charlie and I are finished and that’s that. How is he, Tilly?’

I’d wanted to ask before, but hadn’t in case he was really miserable and then I’d feel terrible.

Tilly frowned and gazed up to the ceiling. ‘Er … he’ll be fine. He’s just moping a bit at the moment. Whenever I go to the allotment, he plonks himself down on my bench and just sits there, watching me. And he says he’s not entering the Allotment Annual Show next week and he’s always up for that. You know how competitive he gets about his runner beans.’

I swallowed and nodded. Poor Charlie.

‘He needs to start dating again,’ said Lizzie sagely. ‘Get back in the saddle.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘He deserves someone lovely. Rack your brains, Tilly, who do we know?’

Tilly and I exchanged looks. It was a bit of an odd conversation; she’d fixed him up with me and now I was asking her to do it again, albeit with someone else. This must be the ultimate milestone in an amicable break-up, I realized.

‘Funnily enough, I suggested to him that he should start dating again.’ Tilly shot me a nervous smile. ‘But he said he only meets firemen at work, there’s no one suitable at the allotment and that he never goes anywhere else.’

‘I’ll ask Anna for advice; she could introduce him to internet dating. She’s the expert in that area,’ I said and instantly my pulse began to race. Anna the homebird. Anna, who had no intention of leaving Kingsfield, ever. Anna, who had always had a bit of a soft spot for Charlie … Goodness, that was something to think about. ‘Now, can we change the subject, please? Fixing my ex up with a new girlfriend is making me feel a bit weird.’

‘Absolutely.’ Tilly clapped her hands. ‘Let’s think artwork for these walls.’

‘Ooh, I know!’ Lizzie put her hand up. ‘Make some frames out of that wood,’ she said, pointing to the pile of timber. ‘Buy a roll of vintage-style wallpaper and frame it.’

Tilly and I blinked at each other. Perfect.

‘You,’ I said, plonking a smacker of a kiss on Lizzie’s cheek, ‘are as clever as you are crazy.’

Auntie Sue’s veggie patch was in full ‘summer excess’ mode at the moment, so dinner was a huge freshly picked salad with warm roast chicken, followed by mixed berry Eton mess. Everything was from the farm, even the chicken, although I whispered to Uncle Arthur to keep Tilly in the dark about that bit.

‘That was so delicious, Mrs Moorcroft,’ gushed Tilly as we settled ourselves in the garden in the warm evening sun with a bottle of wine. ‘You’ll have to give me the recipe for that pudding.’

Auntie Sue flapped a hand. ‘Call me Sue, please. And that’s not my recipe; I got it off the web.’ She tried to pull off a nonchalant smile, but she looked like she might burst with pride. ‘Are you a keen cook, Tilly?’

‘What I lack in skill I make up for in enthusiasm.’ She smiled, sipping at her wine. ‘But the kitchen in our new house is lovely, so I’m planning to do a lot more entertaining.’

‘Tilly and Aidan are buying a house together, Auntie Sue,’ I told her.

‘How lovely!’ She clasped her hands together. ‘Your first house. I remember moving into our first place like it was yesterday.’

‘Wasn’t it the farm?’ I asked.

‘Oh no, lass! Your grandparents were still alive then. Uncle Arthur was just a farmhand in those days. We had a cottage in the next village.’

‘Tell us all about it, Auntie Sue.’ I wriggled happily in my chair. I was a sucker for old stories, especially romantic ones, and judging by the sparkle in my aunt’s eye, we were in for a treat.

‘Right,’ she chuckled. ‘Well, in those days you didn’t move in together until you were married.’

She glanced sideways at Tilly, who blushed daintily.

‘But the cottage was all ready for us to move into when we arrived back from our honeymoon abroad.’

‘I thought you went to Wales for your honeymoon?’ I said.

‘We did.’ Auntie Sue nodded earnestly.

Tilly and I exchanged giggly smiles.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘we got off the train and had to catch two buses back to the village, and the second bus dropped us half a mile from the cottage. There was no such thing as suitcases with wheels in those days and Arthur, being a gentleman, insisted on carrying both of the cases all the way.’

At that moment Uncle Arthur appeared, wearing a clean shirt and his best summer flat cap, holding the dog’s lead.

‘Just taking Madge for a stroll,’ he announced. It was code for ‘going for a pint at the White Lion’ and it didn’t fool Auntie Sue for a second.

‘Oh, Artie, I was just telling the girls about when we moved into Forge Cottage.’

‘And you were a proper gentleman, we hear.’ I grinned.

Uncle Arthur took a seat and waggled his eyebrows. ‘In that case I’m going to stay and listen. Make sure you get your facts right.’

‘So anyway,’ she continued with a chuckle, ‘by the time we reached our new front door, he was out of puff and he’d lost the feeling in both of his arms.’

‘It was you with all those shoes in your case,’ Uncle Arthur grumbled. ‘We only went for four days!’

‘A girl can never pack too many shoes,’ said Tilly solemnly.

‘But despite the pins and needles in his arms, he was most definite about carrying me over the threshold. So I opened the door and he set the cases down.’

‘She was only a slip of a thing in those days,’ he hissed, ducking quickly out of Auntie Sue’s reach, as she swiped at him.

‘So Samson here hoisted me up in his arms. He just about had time to kiss me and then, boom. His arms gave way – down we went like skittles, hitting our heads on the stair banister as we came flying into the front room and landed on the floorboards with him sprawled on top of me.’

‘Oh, no! That’s terrible,’ I said, biting my bottom lip.

‘It gets worse.’ Uncle Arthur’s shoulders started to shake.

Auntie Sue covered her cheeks with her hands. ‘All our friends and family had hidden inside the kitchen to surprise us but when they leaped out, the first thing they saw was us on the floor in a compromising position. They all went silent except my mother who walloped Artie with her handbag and screamed, “It’s broad daylight and you’ve not even closed the door, you filthy animal!”’

We all burst out laughing at poor old Uncle Arthur’s treatment at the hands of his new mother-in-law until he stood up to leave for the pub. He leaned across and kissed his wife’s cheek.

‘But I managed to get my beautiful wife over the threshold and I’ve thanked my lucky stars ever since.’ And with that he ambled across the yard with Madge.

Aww! ‘I can laugh about it now,’ chuckled Auntie Sue, getting to her feet. ‘But at the time it was a month before I could show my face at the Women’s Institute.’

She wandered off into the kitchen, leaving Tilly and me to finish the wine.

‘We’re not planning to get married just yet,’ Tilly giggled. ‘But I’ll bear that story in mind for the future.’

I smiled but inside I felt a pang of loneliness. Seeing Tilly so loved-up and hearing Auntie Sue’s romantic stories made me feel more alone than I had since splitting up with Charlie. I missed being half of a couple, missed having someone to make memories with.

I thought I was doing a fair job of keeping my feelings hidden until Tilly nudged me and whispered, ‘Why don’t you call him? It’s obvious that you want to.’

‘No.’ I shook my head, hoping that my face wasn’t as red as it felt. ‘As far as he’s concerned I’m still the scrawny kid with the skinny legs who used to beat him playing conkers. He doesn’t even think of me as a woman.’

Tilly burst out laughing. ‘You and Charlie used to play
conkers
? Or is that a euphemism that I’ve never heard of?’