Pastures New

‘Still, it would be nice,’ she said.

‘Wouldn’t it just,’ said Jamie, kissing her. ‘One day, Ipromise you, one day …’

It was the photo from that day, which she still kept beside the bed, that had made her determined to make this move. In the early days, when she had cried herself to sleep every night, she could hardly bear to look at it. But of late, she had found the picture comforting. As if he were still with her, somehow. She couldn’t live the dream with Jamie, but maybe she could do it for him.

Amy had havered for months before taking the plunge. It was Auntie Grace who finally proved the catalyst. Actually a great-aunt, Auntie Grace had lived grumpily alone for many years in the depths of Suffolk. She wasn’t an easy person, but Amy didn’t have much family, so she had dutifully visited from time to time, though admittedly after Jamie had died, when every day had been such a trial, just getting up was difficult on some days, so the visits had tailed off. On the last occasion, a year ago, Grace had fixed her with a beady eye, and said, ‘It seems tough now, you know, but it will get better. Remember my motto: Always look forward. Never back.’

Amy had taken no notice of her at the time, but when, after Grace’s not unexpected demise at the age of eighty-nine several months earlier, she learned that her aunt had left her a considerable sum of money, it seemed like a sign. Jamie had died so suddenly, so young, he had left no will, and Amy had struggled to keep up with the mortgage payments ever since. Mary had been fantastic, prepared to babysit Josh at the drop of a hat, helping out so Amy didn’t have to pay childcare fees for the whole week, pushing Amy to carry on with the gardening course she had started before Jamie’s death, coming to the rescue when money was especially tight. Amy owed her a huge debt, both financial and emotional. Guilt flared in her chest once more at depriving Mary of Josh.

But now, fortunately, she had enough money to pay off the debts Jamie had left behind and even have some left over. Amy had finished her course, and she could actually afford to stop teaching and forge out a new career as she had always planned to do when Jamie was alive. Maybe it was time to look forward and not back. Living round the corner from Mary, whose grief had taken the form of a kind of suffocating blanket covering both Amy and Josh, she’d never be able to do that. Besides, she and Jamie had always talked of coming out this way. If only she could persuade Mary it was the right thing for them to do.

Apart from her brother Danny, who lived in Surrey, and Auntie Grace, Jamie and Mary had been her only family for years now. Her own mother had moved to the States when Amy was at college, and she and Danny had no idea where their father was. Amy’s parents had split up when she was fourteen. Her dad had just walked out one day, and though she and Danny had tried over the years to contact him, their efforts had been in vain. They’d both given up now. Although Amy and her mother Jennifer had never been close they had always stayed in touch, but Jennifer had remarried. Amy had long held the suspicion that her mum’s demanding new husband, who had several children of his own, allowed her little room for her own offspring. It hadn’t seemed to matter when Amy had had Jamie. He’d been all the family she needed.

Mary had been like a second mother to her – particularly since she had lost Jamie. Leaving her was going to be much harder than Amy had thought, and not just because of Josh.

Mary had made her displeasure so blatant that Amy still felt churned up about the decision she was making. What if she had got it wrong? But then again, what if she stayed and did nothing? Amy knew she was stifled where she was. She was frightened if she didn’t seize this moment to make some changes in her life, she never would.

‘And I’m doing it for you, Jamie,’ she vowed silently. ‘Josh and I will do this for you.’

Josh. A minute ago, he was playing at her side, and now he was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Amy knew she could be neurotic about Josh, but after the fright he’d given her that morning she wasn’t taking any chances. What if the hairy man she’d seen as she entered the allotments was some kind of weirdo? Then Amy heard the sound of a child yelling, followed by a dog barking. She started to run.

Ben was digging up spuds on the allotment. He always came here after surgery on a Friday, when he had the afternoon off. Particularly if it had been a bad morning. And today had been one hell of a morning. He had been running late for the whole of the session, and there seemed to be more than the usual number of timewasters bemoaning their lot. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out for this job. Doling out Prozac like Smarties and treating little old ladies’ verrucas hadn’t really been what he was thinking of when he’d decided to be a doctor all those years ago. And the only important thing he had had to do all day – find someone at his local Primary Care Trust prepared to give one of his MS patients a brand-new drug that was meant to work wonders – had met with a blank wall. If Ben’s patient, a seventy-year-old man, had lived in Essex, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But the postcode lottery of living in Suffolk meant that the patient’s particular PCT weren’t yet giving the drug out. Ben had had the unpleasant task of explaining the inexplicable to the poor man’s wife, who kept saying, ‘But Jane Merchant’s husband gets it, I don’t understand.’ Ben didn’t either. Sometimes this job made you want to weep.

Not only that, he had nearly run over a kid on the way home from work. He hadn’t been going fast, and the kid had run out in front of him – but still. Inevitably, he thought about Sarah, and as a result he had been more angry with the kid’s mum than he should have been. But then – there had been something about her that touched him. An air of vulnerability that had made him want to protect her. He shook his head. He’d clearly been on his own too long. Perhaps Caroline was right, and he should have chucked it all in for a while and gone travelling with her.

Caroline. Despite his best intentions his thoughts still strayed back to Caroline. Enchanting, infuriating, mercurial Caroline. Why had he let himself get involved with her again? He’d known it would lead to trouble. But it had been hard letting go of the only person he’d ever really talked to about Sarah. Harder than he’d let on to anyone. It was the sympathetic way Caroline had listened when he’d first opened up to her about Sarah that blinded him to her faults in the first place. Caroline seemed to show such intuitive understanding, and when she’d cried about the day her father had left, it seemed their shared pain had given them a lasting bond. However, it hadn’t taken Ben long to realise that although Caroline did genuinely believe herself to be caring and thoughtful, in reality she was too selfish and spoilt to think too hard about anyone but herself.

To a degree, Ben didn’t blame her – her mother had remarried a rich banker, and while Caroline had never wanted for anything materially, her mother and step-father’s lack of emotional support meant she was appallingly needy. Caroline’s response, when she and Ben had split up, had been to flaunt a variety of different men in Ben’s face. To his eternal shame, the ploy had worked, and when she’d announced that she was leaving, he’d found himself back at her place on more than one occasion. He always regretted it, but Caroline just had a way of getting to him.

It had been a great relief when she’d finally gone off travelling, presuming he would follow her. But Ben had just taken up a temporary contract working in practice, and after spending too long kidding himself he was going to be a surgeon he couldn’t afford to lose time now if he was going to make partner in the next few years.

Ben had thought that would be the last he’d hear of Caroline, but a succession of emails meant he was fully apprised of her doings. He had received one this morning, which annoyingly had caused a reaction he really thought he’d got beyond by now.

She was working in a bar in California, having a great time. Too busy to write much, she said. Mustdash, C U! And then a casual PS: Attached are somephotos of me and Dave behind the bar. There were some jpeg attachments, and he opened them to see photo after photo of Caroline with a tall, brawny bloke who had a deep tan – presumably Dave Behind the Bar.

He knew why she’d sent them. It was to make him jealous. She had always flirted with other people when they’d been together. It was one of the many things about her that had made Ben realise he had to walk away. DBtB was probably nothing to Caroline, and she had only sent the picture to get a reaction. He hated himself for having it.

He dug furiously, trying to shake off unwanted images. He didn’t want Caroline any more. If she were here now, she would drive him mad. The trouble was that Caroline, for all her faults, her selfishness and her ego, was also bewitching and dazzling by degrees. And pathetic as he was, he couldn’t quite get her out from under his skin.

Ben vented his frustration on the ground and dug even harder, while Meg, his black Labrador, sat beside him, panting softly in the late summer heat. It was one of the hottest days of the year so far. Ben stripped off his shirt, and used it to mop his brow. He took a swig of water, and glanced, out of habit as much as anything else, towards Caroline’s garden gate. How many times had he seen her emerge from there, spade in hand, wearing her old gumboots and dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt, effortlessly managing to combine a wild sensuality with an earthy practicality? It was an image that was never far from his thoughts when he came out here.

He was about to turn back to his digging again when the garden gate opened. For a moment his heart leapt – maybe? – before his head kicked in. Caroline was unpredictable, it was true, but even she couldn’t make it back from California in under twenty-four hours. Maybe her rather useless letting agents had rented the place at last.

It wasn’t her. But it was a woman. And an attractive one at that. Her long fair curls tumbled casually over her shoulders. She was slim and wore a plain strappy summer dress and flat sandals. She had a little boy with her. It was the woman from this morning; the woman whose son he had nearly knocked over. Perhaps they were going to move in. He shook his head. He returned to his digging and dismissed them from his mind.

About ten minutes later, he became aware of a rather insistent and annoying buzzing sound. He turned round and suddenly he heard a shout of, ‘Wheee! I’m an aeroplane!’ and a small bundle came flying over, stamping on his carrots and crashing into his runner-bean frame. Meg leapt up and started barking wildly, and the bundle burst into tears.

‘Bloody hell! Can’t you control your son?’

Really! This kid had got in his way twice in one morning. His mother clearly had no authority.

‘He’s only a kid!’ The woman came flying up in a fury. She knelt down and took the bundle of child into her arms, making soothing noises.

‘Then I suggest you take better care of him!’ Ben was still cross, but also a little embarrassed that he might have overreacted.

‘And I suggest you keep your animal under control,’ the woman shouted back, pointing at Meg, who was jumping up and down, still barking excitedly. ‘Josh is terrified of dogs.’

‘If your son hadn’t been trampling over my allotment Meg wouldn’t have barked at all. This isn’t a playground!’

‘I am aware of that,’ the woman retorted in stiff tones. She looked pretty when she was cross, Ben casually thought. ‘I’m sorry that my son trampled on your allotment. He was just playing.’

‘Is he okay?’ Ben felt guilty. The little boy couldn’t be more than five.

The woman looked at him in disgust. ‘He’ll be fine, no thanks to your dog.’

They glared at each other angrily for a moment, Ben furious with her for not taking the olive branch he’d offered.

‘’I think we’ve seen quite enough of each other today. It’s all right, we won’t trouble you any further,’ she said, and walked away.

‘Good!’ retorted Ben, sticking his spade into the ground in disgust, watching her walk back towards Caroline’s house.

Just at that moment, Harry Hartswood emerged from the garden next door, pushing a wheelbarrow containing a spade, a fork and some potato sacks. Harry’s allotment was next-but-one to Ben’s, and they were old friends, their friendship forged by a shared love of growing things, an interest in history and a fascination on Ben’s part with Harry’s plethora of war stories.

‘I see you’re getting a new neighbour,’ said Ben, nodding towards Caroline’s gate.

‘So it would appear,’ said Harry. ‘I heard her telling the estate agent she wanted to take it. I thought she was rather pretty myself.’ There was a familiar twinkle in his eye.

‘She may be pretty, but she’s got a foul temper. Her horrible little son has just trampled over my allotment and she had the cheek to blame me for not keeping Meg under control. So what if she comes to live here? I won’t be getting to know her, that’s for sure.’

Amy was still fuming when she reached the garden gate. If everyone was as rude as her unknown biker, then perhaps she shouldn’t move in here. It was a shame, as in every other way it was perfect. As she went to open the door, an elderly man passed her pushing a wheelbarrow and smiled, which immediately made her feel better. On the other hand, it would be foolish to throw up such a good opportunity for the sake of one grumpy man, whom she could avoid quite easily. And Josh seemed to have quickly recovered from his trauma. Amy had to admit that she had perhaps overreacted a little herself. All the worry about Mary had made her a little edgy, and she was always overprotective as far as Josh was concerned. Mary was right about that.

She and Josh made their way back up the garden path. Mary or no Mary, her mind was made up. Smarmy Simon was just coming off the phone when she walked up to him.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘I love it,’ she replied. ‘When can we move in?’

CHAPTER TWO (#ucbc138ca-5a91-5c68-9048-283e0ab6e0cf)

‘It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, really it doesn’t.’

Pete’s words should have been reassuring to Saffron, but somehow they weren’t. She lay in the darkness, listening to his breathing and the snuffles of Ellie next to her in the baby basket, and fretted. She should be trying to sleep, but judging by the way she was leaking like an old milk cow (an unsavoury aspect to breastfeeding, which she particularly hated), Ellie was probably on the verge of waking up. Which would have put paid to any extracurricular activity anyway, even if she could have risen to the occasion.

Pete had been lovely about it, as usual, but she couldn’t help the gnawing anxiety which ate into her after yet another aborted attempt at sex. After all, that was what had done for her and Gerry in the end. And they had managed it a lot more often after Becky and Matt were born than she and Pete had done so far.

Pete’s not Gerry.

Now that was a better thought. Saffron smiled. Gerry had done her a favour really. Having dumped her for a blonde floozie, Gerry had floored Saffron completely for a while. With Becky only two and Matt a baby, life had been tough. Without the amiable and supportive friendship of Pete, whose allotment bordered hers, Saffron doubted whether she would have hung on to her sanity. She had always got on well with him, but during that dark period she came to value his steadiness and depend upon his gentle humour to lighten up her day.