Summer At Willow Tree Farm: The Perfect Romantic Escape

‘Stop interrogating her, Arthur.’ Dee threaded her arm through Ellie’s and led her towards the farmhouse, and away from Art and his surly questions.

‘How long are you planning to stay?’ Dee asked, as they approached the farmhouse.

Lavender bushes, sunflowers and fire-red foxgloves spilled out of the flowerbeds by the door, giving off a heady perfume. A wisteria vine, clinging to the stonework, wound its way around the peaked portico.

‘Because you and Josh are welcome to stay for as long as you want,’ her mother added.

From the forbidding scowl on his face, she wasn’t convinced Art Dalton agreed.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t made any concrete plans yet.’ The only concrete plan so far had involved escaping from Orchard Harbor before news of Chelsea Hamilton’s pregnancy hit the local gossip grapevine – and turned her and Josh’s lives into a soap opera worthy of Argentinian daytime TV.

Ellie would have been able to cope with all the ‘well-meant advice’ and faux sympathy once the news was out, because she’d been doing that for years, but she wasn’t sure Josh could, without eating his own weight in Oreos. The truth was she hadn’t even had the guts to tell him yet that Dan and her were separating.

‘Then I hope you’ll consider staying for a while,’ Dee said, the generosity of the gesture making Ellie feel even more uncomfortable.

Her mother had been suggesting she and Josh visit for a while now, not long after that first tentative email with the subject line ‘Merry Christmas, Ellie’ had appeared in her inbox four years ago. But, prior to that, they’d lost contact for over a decade – separated by the huge chasm that had developed once Ellie had chosen to leave the commune after that one fateful summer and go back to live with her dad. And her mother had opted to stay put with her new girlfriend.

‘But there’s no need to make a decision yet,’ Dee added quickly, obviously picking up on Ellie’s reluctance, as she walked ahead past a rack of coats and jackets positioned over a crate full of scuffed sneakers and wellington boots. ‘All you and Josh need to do today is settle in, and relax after your long journey.’

The long journey had been a picnic compared to the week that had preceded it, but Ellie allowed herself to be led.

‘I’ll be serving dinner in a couple of hours,’ Dee said. ‘But I could get you something to snack on first if you’re hungry.’

Her mum’s voice drifted over Ellie. ‘I’m fine.’

She refrained from suggesting she skip dinner and crash now as her mother opened the door to the communal kitchen. It would be an ordeal attending the communal supper tonight. She didn’t find eating with people she didn’t know particularly relaxing, but it was the penance she would have to pay for being deranged enough to accept her mum’s invitation in the first place. And at least the people who lived here now didn’t have inappropriate piercings or judgemental scowls on their faces – every one except Art.

Then again, she hadn’t seen Art’s mother yet, or her mother’s girlfriend Pam. Reunions she was not looking forward to almost as much as the one with Art.

She raised her head to ask about them both, and gasped.

She recognised the sturdy butler sink and the scarred butcher’s block table – around which numerous discussions about whether Tony Blair was really a Tory plant had been conducted in her youth – but nothing else looked familiar. The boxes of pamphlets and home-made placards she remembered stacked in every available corner, the wolf-like dog that snarled whenever she ventured into the room and the teetering towers of dirty dishes in the sink were all gone.

The commune’s hub had been transformed from revolution central into the set from a country cooking show.

An industrial dishwasher stood in one corner next to the cast-iron splendour of a traditional Aga cooker. The flagstone flooring had been scrubbed clean. The door to the pantry – which had once housed an antique printing press – now stood open to reveal shelves groaning under jars of home-made preserves, while a collection of potted herbs stood in aromatic abundance on the windowsill over the sink.

The delicious smell of garlic and melted cheese drew Ellie’s gaze to the home-baked lasagne and tray of roasted vegetables resting on the Aga’s hot plate.

Ellie blinked, expecting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to pop out of the pantry at any moment and start demonstrating how to make sloe-gin ice cream.

‘What happened?’ Had she slipped into an alternative reality?

‘What happened to what?’ Her mother turned from the cooker, where she’d been taking another tray of vegetables out of the oven.

The light from the window illuminated the streaks of grey in her mother’s dark blonde hair. In the shaft of sunlight, Ellie noticed for the first time the speckle of sun blemishes on her mum’s skin and the slight thickening around the waistband of her gypsy skirt. But otherwise, Dee Preston, unlike her kitchen, had hardly changed. With her sky-blue eyes, the thick tangle of hair tied up in a topknot, the collection of bangles on her wrist jingling as she basted the vegetables, she looked a good fifteen years younger than her fifty-nine years.

‘To the kitchen? To the whole place?’ Ellie felt a bit ridiculous when her mother sent her a quizzical look, as if she couldn’t imagine what Ellie was getting at. ‘It doesn’t look anything like I remember it.’

‘Oh, well, yes.’ Dee glanced around, attempting to locate the differences. ‘I suppose it is a bit less cluttered these days.’

‘Mum, it was a shit-hole,’ Ellie said. ‘There was that feral dog that lurked in the corner like the three-headed hellhound from Harry Potter.’

‘Fluffy?’

‘That dog was called Fluffy?’ Clearly someone back then had a sense of humour she’d been unaware of.

Her mum smiled. ‘No, the three-headed dog in Harry Potter’s called Fluffy. Laura’s Irish wolfhound was called Scargill, I think.’

That figured, because Art’s mum had been in the forefront of all the revolutionary bollocks Ellie remembered from the bad old days.

‘He died years ago,’ Dee supplied helpfully. ‘He’s buried in the back pasture.’

‘But it wasn’t just the dog,’ Ellie continued, silently hoping the Hound of the Baskervilles had died in agony, because it was the least the cantankerous old beast deserved. ‘No one ever washed up or cooked anything remotely edible, except you. The whole place stank of unwashed bodies and stale marijuana and it was a hotbed of born-again hippie anarchy.’ She swept her hand to encompass the scene before her now, which could have illustrated a feature article in Country Living. ‘Not home-grown herbs and home-made preserves and home baking. The place looks as if it’s been given a makeover by the Shabby Chic Fairy. Seriously, what happened?’

Because she wanted to know.

‘Well, Laura left us a few months after you did. And most of the activist element left not long after that, too.’

Laura Dalton had left? Nineteen years ago? So why was her son Art still hanging about? Ellie stopped herself from asking though, because she wasn’t interested in what had been going on with Art.

‘Where did Laura go?’ she asked, deciding that was a safe question.

‘She ran off with the local Lib-Dem member of the county council. His name was Rupert something.’

‘You are joking?’ This was beginning to sound like a Little Britain sketch. And not in a good way.

‘We were all a bit surprised to be honest, given that Laura had insisted even New Labour were traitors to the cause.’ Dee’s smile became rueful.

‘I thought Laura was a lesbian?’ She’d never managed to get to the bottom of how Art had been created, because no one had ever spoken about his father. But given how demonstrative Laura had always been with Delshad, her partner at the commune, Ellie had begun to suspect Art might have originated from a petri dish in a sperm bank.

‘So did Laura, I suppose.’ Dee tucked a stray tendril behind her ear and picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already pristine table. ‘But apparently she wasn’t. Or not where Rupert was concerned. She left a note for Art, explaining why she’d left, but he never told me what it said.’

Had his mum just left him behind then? With a note? He’d only been fifteen.

The spurt of sympathy though was blasted into submission by a disturbing memory flash of Art at fifteen. His lean wiry nut-brown body lying in the long grass by the millpond, the bloody ink on his left bicep rippling as he held his…

Heat blossomed in her stomach and crawled over her scalp, the same way it had all those years ago, when she’d watched him unobserved from her vantage point in the derelict mill house and realised what he was doing.

She cut off the memory. But the heat refused to subside as she had another memory flash, closer to home, of the same ink peeking out from the rolled-up sleeve of Art’s overalls a few minutes ago.

Note to self: jet lag, a failed marriage and a year with only the occasional duty shag can seriously mess with your mental health. Enough to delude you into fixating on an arsehole like Art Dalton and his tacky tattoo.

She needed to crash, and soon.

‘So Laura never came back?’ she said. ‘Delshad must have been devastated.’

Any sympathy for Art on the other hand would be misguided. She couldn’t imagine him being devastated. His mum had probably run off with Rupert the Lib-Dem – and jettisoned her political beliefs and her sexual identity in the process – to get shot of him. After all, he’d been more wild and feral at fifteen than that bloody dog.