Green Beans and Summer Dreams

But I always came to the same conclusion.

However attractive the idea of growing and selling my own vegetables might be, there wasn’t any real money in it. So gardening could only ever be a lovely hobby.

But I’d reached a place where I was happy with myself and my life. Jamie seemed to be thriving at work. We were living in a beautiful house in the country. Our future looked sunny.

I could never have anticipated what was to come next.

Afterwards, I’d look back and wonder why on earth I hadn’t realised what was happening. Had I been too wrapped up in the garden to spot the signs?

When Jamie came home from work one day and broke the news that he was leaving, it was so unexpected that at first, I was struck dumb. I remember watching the sentences floating out of his mouth but being quite unable to take them in.

Then he mentioned Emma and instantly I was hearing every word in magnified Dolby surround sound.

I sat down on the nearest kitchen chair, in case my trembling legs gave way.

Emma was Jamie’s work colleague. He’d mentioned her from time to time. Apparently they had tried so hard to resist the attraction between them but in the end it was impossible. Jamie gazed at me with infinite sadness, shrugged his careworn shoulders and said, ‘It was beyond our control. We were always meant to be. Emma and me.’

Hurt and anger boiled up inside me.

What an utter load of horseshit he was spouting!

Since when had Jamie been a believer in flaky concepts like Fate and Destiny?

The only thing that was ‘meant to be’ was me hurling the salmon en croute with asparagus at his stupid head.

But since I’m not a violent person, I did the next best thing and escaped to the bathroom.

I sat on the mercifully cool floor tiles, leaning against the lovely free-standing bath Jamie and I had chosen together.

I caught my reflection in the angled shaving mirror by the basin. Pale face. Sweep of reddish-brown blow-dried hair. Dark eyes bleak with despair.

The fabric of my brand new, poppy-red mini dress felt stiff against my bare thighs, tanned from the garden. I gazed at the cream, strappy sandals with the ruby jewel embellishments.

I was dressed for a special day.

And special days demanded sacrifices – whether it was heels that tortured your feet and gave you the calf muscles of a weightlifter or corset-type tops that made you wish breathing could be optional. In an ideal world, I would have changed out of my new outfit when the lightning bolt struck because now it just made me feel like a fool. But when someone who’s supposed to love you stands there, white-faced and barely able to look you in the eye, and says he’s sorry, but he’s decided to move in with someone a decade younger, it would hardly be normal behaviour to say, ‘Hang fire a sec, will you, while I slip into something more comfortable?’

I smoothed my hand over the knobbly surface of the floor tiles. A bathroom wasn’t the best place to hole up, from a comfort perspective, but it had one distinct advantage. A door that locked. So I didn’t have to look at his face and see his pathetic I’m so sorry but we just couldn’t help ourselves expression.

I loved those tiles. Tiny Mediterranean blue squares like the bottom of a swimming pool. They’d taken an age to lay. The rooms in this old farmhouse weren’t exactly small. But we’d both agreed it was worth the painstaking effort.

Tears stung my eyes.

He’d be picking out tiles with Emma from now on.

I thought of all the months of deception as Jamie pursued his tacky, clandestine passion and suddenly, I was furious again. I wanted to stick my head round the door and yell at him that bloody Emma was welcome to him. And could he please leave his key on the way out? I might even hurl his stupid top-of-the-range tablet at him as he went. The one I’d spent ages choosing then wrapping up in a big cellophane bow with little red hearts on it.

Take that, cheating gadget man!

But of course I wouldn’t. I’d keep it all in because in my top ten of Things I Loathe, confrontation was a clear winner (though currently jostling for the top spot with Jamie Evans, monster deceiver).

I thought of my friend, Anna. She wouldn’thold back for fear of unpleasantness and shouting. I shuddered to imagine what she would say to Jamie when she knew he’d been cheating on me for the past ten months; with a woman who, at twenty-two, had a full decade on me and whose biological clock could tick for another twenty years before the warranty ran out.

Jess, my other best friend, would be deeply shocked but instead of railing at Jamie, she would gather me close and let me sob.

Suddenly I longed for Jess.

‘Izzy? Are you OK in there?’

I froze, like an animal sensing the next few seconds could mean life or death.

‘Open up, Izz. We need to talk.’

I stared mutinously at the door handle. If he thought I was going to—

‘Come on, Izz, stop being so melodramatic. Oh, for God’s sake, we can’t do this through a locked door.’

My mouth twisted with scorn. He’d been shagging Emma for the best part of a year. Now they were planning a new life together. Exactly how was talking going to help?

‘Izzy, I’m so, so sorry. What else can I say? If you want me to go, I will. Do you want me to go?’

I pulled a ‘duh!’ face at the door.

‘Isobel! Talk to me!’ He blew out his breath, frustrated. ‘Look, we’ve had a good innings, you and me. Five years. But in the long run you’ll see this was for the best. Christ, you’ll probably thank me.’

A good innings? Trust him to default to his deathly dull cricket in a crisis.

I remembered the champagne chilling in the fridge. I’d smiled at the check-out girl as she removed the security collar on the bottle, all the while complaining that her boyfriend could never be relied on to remember special occasions. My smile was a little smug, because my boyfriend always did.

‘Right, I’m going,’ he announced, and the ice in his tone felt like a slap in the face. ‘You do realise you’ll have to sell the house.’

I swallowed hard. ‘No way,’ I called out, my voice catching a little.

This was my house! We weren’t married. Or even engaged. Aunt Midge would turn in her grave if she knew he and Emma were planning to lay some kind of claim to Farthing Cottage.

‘Well, you’ll have to pay the mortgage on your own then, won’t you?’

‘Fine!’ I yelled.

‘Come on, Izzy. You won’t need a house this big once I’m gone.’

I reached for some toilet tissue and blew my nose very softly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll – sell things.’

‘Sorry?’