Julia Williams 3 Book Bundle

Lauren grinned.

‘Do you know, I’m enjoying all this. It feels like the first time I’ve properly used my brain since the girls were born.’

‘You’ve certainly gathered a willing workforce,’ said Kezzie, looking around as Lauren’s friends swept up glass, scrubbed off graffiti and disposed of chip wrappers.

‘They’ve been great,’ said Lauren. ‘Do you know Rose Carmichael?’ She pointed at a small, rotund woman, who was laughing and joking while she swept up. ‘Her husband works for B&Q in Chiverton and he got us a whole load of paint so we can make the playground look better until we get a new one sorted.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Kezzie. ‘And I’ve got some more good news for you. A gang of my mates are coming down in a few weeks to help plant out the borders that Joel and I dug over. In no time at all we’ll have the place looking fantastic.’

‘I just hope we can keep the vandals away,’ said Lauren. ‘Locking the gardens at night doesn’t seem to deter them.’

‘Well, a locked gate has never deterred me,’ said Kezzie, ‘but if we surprise them by being in the gardens, they might think again.’

‘What if they’re six feet tall and wielding an axe?’ said Lauren, wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew.

‘I’ll run like hell,’ said Kezzie. ‘But I reckon they’re just kids, and if we could only get them on our side, we might be able to turn it round and persuade them to help us make things better.’

‘You’re optimistic.’

‘Well, you never know,’ said Kezzie cheerfully. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before, but there’s always a first time.’

Kezzie and Joel sat in the park drinking a flask of tea. It was a chilly spring evening in March and they were both wearing warm fleeces and scarves. As arranged with Lauren, Sam was staying there for the night.

‘Do you really think anyone will come?’ said Joel. ‘After all there’s been a lot of publicity. They’ll probably go and find somewhere else to deface.’

‘I do think it’s likely to be kids,’ said Kezzie. ‘I feel quite sorry for them. They haven’t got anything to do or anywhere to go, so they’re bored and destructive. Heartsease could do with a community centre for teens. We should bring it to the attention of the committee.’

‘Can you imagine what Cynthia will say?’ snorted Joel.

‘“Ai really don’t think it is necessary. We are not some inner London housing estate,”’ Kezzie mimicked Cynthia’s modulated tones perfectly.

‘Still, I’m not that sympathetic with them,’ said Joel. ‘I was frequently bored as a teenager and I didn’t graffiti things.’

‘I did,’ admitted Kezzie. ‘The estate where I grew up was like that. You started drinking at thirteen, hung around with your mates, and knocked things down for fun. It was either that, or get into knife crime.’

‘So how did you get out of it then?’ said Joel. ‘I mean, you didn’t turn into a hardened criminal, did you?’

‘I was lucky,’ said Kezzie. ‘I had a couple of good teachers who spotted I was good at art, and encouraged me to go into design. Then I fell in with a bunch of guerrilla gardeners when I was at college, and realized what I really liked doing was gardening. But I needed to work, so I got a job in web design, but I never really liked it. I’d probably still be there now if it weren’t for Richard …’

Kezzie paused. There was something about the two of them being here, after dark, that seemed to encourage intimacy. A sudden memory of the kiss they shared made her flush in the dark. She hoped that Joel wasn’t thinking about it too.

‘Why?’ said Joel.

‘He persuaded me to retrain and do gardening properly. He’s a garden architect, and we were planning to go into business together.’ Kezzie sighed. It had been such a great dream. She was going to design a winning garden for Chelsea, and he was going to create the structures to go inside. Together she knew they could have been a winning team. That was never going to happen now.

‘What happened?’

‘I was a bloody idiot’s what happened,’ said Kezzie. She shivered, and thought about her chat with Lauren. Richard was in the past. Time to let go. ‘Never mind. He made it clear from that email he sent me. It’s over now, and I’m here, and here’s where I plan to stay.’

‘So you wouldn’t go back to London?’ said Joel.

A bleak look crossed Kezzie’s face.

‘Nothing to go back for,’ she muttered.

There was a rustling in the bushes. Kezzie shone her torch, and disturbed a fox, which looked quizzically at them.

‘False alarm,’ she said.

‘I think we might have frightened the vandals off,’ said Joel.

‘With any luck,’ said Kezzie. ‘I’d hate to see all Lauren’s hard work go to waste. The paint’s barely dry on the swings.’

They sat in companionable silence for another half an hour. It was nearly eleven.

‘I doubt anyone’s going to break in now,’ said Joel. ‘If it is kids, they should all be tucked up in bed by now.’

‘I never was,’ said Kezzie with a grin.

‘What a rebel,’ said Joel. ‘You clearly had more of a chequered youth than me.’

‘If you knew the half of it,’ said Kezzie.

‘So none of the patrols have spotted anyone at night. That’s great.’ Lauren was chairing a meeting at her house to update everyone on the progress of the clean-up operation so far. They’d been running the patrols for nearly a month, and it was now midway through April. Whoever had been causing the damage appeared to have been scared away. Which was something; though Joel privately thought the minute they stopped watching out for the vandals, they would be back.

‘I think our next plan should be to renovate the pavilion and see if we can’t turn it into some kind of community hall. I’m looking into seeing if we can get any lottery funds for it. I think if we can set up somewhere for teens to go, then we might not have such a huge vandalism problem.’

‘Great idea,’ said Rose Carmichael. ‘I know my lot get really bored of a summer’s evening. I’d love it if they could find something constructive to do.’

‘But who would run it?’ said Joel, thinking practically. ‘Presumably we’d need to get CRB checked, and there will definitely be things like insurance to consider.’

‘That’s true,’ said Kezzie, ‘but surely as a community we can all pull together.’

‘I’ve been a youth worker,’ put in Troy, much to Joel’s annoyance. He seemed to be everywhere Lauren was these days, and now it looked as if he could actually be useful, which was even more galling. Joel chided himself for being so petty minded, but he couldn’t help it. As far as Troy was concerned, everything annoyed him.

‘You? Really?’ Lauren looked at him in disbelief. Good, at least Lauren wasn’t totally blinded.

‘Yeah, me,’ said Troy. ‘I retrained last year and worked on an estate in Southampton. It was challenging and rewarding, and I’d love to do something like that here.’

‘I didn’t think you’d want to stay that long.’ Lauren gave Troy a look that was impossible to misinterpret, and Joel felt his heart sink. Blinded enough, though. She was going to end up back with the worthless sap, and had clearly fallen for that I’ve-changed malarkey. A sudden stabbing sensation of jealousy shot through him. Jealousy? Why should he feel jealous of Troy? It wasn’t as though he had even thought about Lauren in that way. But since Troy had been on the scene, Joel felt like he barely saw her. He missed the chats they used to have when he came to pick Sam up in the evening. If Lauren and Troy became an item, Joel would see her even less. Joel was used to Lauren being there, framing every day for him. She’d been his steady support system since Claire died. He couldn’t bear to think of that changing.

Troy said, ‘I told you I wanted to stay here.’ But to Joel his words were loaded with significance. Troy was using Lauren again, getting involved with her, trying to impress her. It was so damned obvious, but she clearly couldn’t see it.

‘Well, we can certainly look into that,’ said Lauren, ‘but I think to get things really up and running we need to put all this before the Parish Council, and we need to restore the pavilion first. It’s a mess. In the meantime, anyone keen to help Kezzie on Saturday, please come along to the Memorial Gardens at around 10 a.m. We’re going to need people with green fingers.’

‘And depending on how much we get done,’ said Kezzie, ‘it’s all back to mine for drinks afterwards.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ said Troy.