Jenny Oliver - The Great Allotment Proposal

And to top that off, there was Jack. Possibly the coolest, most laid-back character on the island. She remembered him lying on a hay bale at the festival, cigarette in one hand, cider in the other, the hazy light of the summer sun burning down as he stretched his arm out for her to come and lie next to him. Both of them squeezed onto the warm, sweet-smelling hay, him holding her tight to his side so she didn’t fall off, laughing because her hair was tickling his face, the smoke on his breath as he kissed her, the sun blinding them into shutting their eyes.

It was perfect. It was as life was meant to be. For Emily it was like the world had paused and said, it’ll be OK.

But then the crowds had come. And then the police had come. And then the rain had come. And the festival was over.

As she stood now, alongside Annie, watching as the guy in the hat dropped the paparazzo with a splash into the river and then turned and started walking back, his hands in the pockets of his black combat trousers, his white T-shirt dirty with mud, she said, ‘That’s not Jack. It can’t be Jack. Jack’s in Peru or somewhere.’

‘Jack was in Peru or somewhere,’ said Annie, turning to her and wiping some of the stray algae off Emily’s cheek with a tissue. ‘Here, use this, you’ve got loads more still on your face,’ she said before looking back towards Jack. ‘He’s come back. Hasn’t been around that long. And, to be honest, I only knew because other people told me. He’s living on a fishing boat apparently.’

‘What do you mean he’s living on a fishing boat? Is he a fisherman? I thought he was an engineer?’

Annie shook her head, ‘I have no idea, honestly. I just heard he was living on a fishing boat.’

‘Where?’ Emily asked.

Annie shrugged.

‘You ladies OK?’ Jack shouted as he got near.

Emily took a couple of steps closer and peered at him. Then, seeming to finally believe Annie when he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you?’

‘You’re welcome, Emily,’ he said, one side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile.

‘Did you recognise me ?’ she asked, taking another few steps forward as Jack went back to his allotment and picked up his spade.

‘Of course.’

Emily frowned. ‘Well you should have said hello rather than acting all mysterious and bearded. It’s unfair.’

He laughed. ‘You have algae on your face.’

Emily picked up the hem of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. ‘Is it gone?’

Jack glanced up from where he’d started digging, ‘No.’

She wiped her face again. ‘Gone?’

He looked up and shook his head.

Emily narrowed her eyes and then turned to Annie, who was untangling the hose to finish watering the plot. ‘Do I have algae on my face, Annie?’ Emily shouted.

Annie peered at her. ‘No.’

Emily looked back at Jack who had his head down and was supposedly concentrating on digging, but she could see the smirk on his lips. She opened her mouth to say something but didn’t know what.

No one. No one made her feel like Jack did. No one ever had. Like she was off balance. Not in control. Even his hair and his beard threw her off. Everything he did, everything he said, seemed to catch her on the wrong foot. It was all too calm, too slow, too all-seeing. He stood up and wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead, saw her still watching him and leant against his spade to watch her back. ‘Does that happen to you often?’ he asked, tilting his head towards the river were the paparazzo had been unceremoniously dumped.

‘Fairly often,’ Emily nodded.

‘I don’t know how you can live like that,’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘We don’t all want to live on fishing boats.’

He snorted a laugh. ‘I need to talk to you about that actually.’

‘Why? If it’s to ask me to sail away with you,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘Then the answer’s no.’

As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. Even in jest she knew it was an awkward, stupid thing to say.

He narrowed his eyes then sort of laughed, shook his head and went back to digging his hole.

‘Go on then, why did you want to talk to me about your boat?’ Emily said.

The soil cracked under the edge of the spade. ‘Because,’ he said with a pant as he dug deeper into the earth, ‘I’m kind of living on your property. On your mooring.’

‘Are you now?’

He stopped digging and looked directly at her, sky-blue eyes on a face dirty with sweat and mud. ‘Yeah. I didn’t realise the house had been sold.’

‘What, so I’m kind of like your landlady?’ Emily bit her nail. If she still knew Jack at all she knew that he hated being beholden to anyone. Almost as much as he hated rules and regulations.

‘Suppose so.’

‘Well I’ll have to work out some kind of rent, won’t I?’ she said.

‘Or you could just let me be?’ he said with a shrug of his shoulder.

A sly grin stretched over Emily’s face. ‘And where would the fun be in that?’

Chapter Four

Everything Emily remembered about Montmorency Manor had been destroyed by its previous owners.

When they finally completed, she didn’t even need a key to unlock the door, just a code punched into a panel that had been chipped into the Georgian stone.

‘Bloody hell.’ Annie’s boyfriend, Matt, stood in the centre of the hallway and looked all the way around him. ‘What have they done to this place?’

Gone was the sweeping wooden staircase that Emily had slid down in a bikini one summer to get Jack’s attention as he was talking to Wilf, in its place was a glass-panelled effort with silver handrails and two giant silver statue newel posts. Gone were the flagstones and the huge antique rugs and the marble fireplace next to which the giant Christmas tree had stood as the fire crackled. Now the hallway was carpeted in lime shag-pile and the walls and ceiling were painted black. They’d ripped out the cornicing and spray-painted silver skulls on the walls.

The front door opened and Matt’s teenage son, River, sloped in with their pug dog, Buster, and hovered behind Emily and Annie.

‘What happened to you?’ Matt asked, glancing round Annie to see him.

‘Nothing, I was on the phone,’ River mumbled. ‘Can I go to the loo?’

‘Yes,’ Emily said, mimicking his grumpy teenage voice, but he didn’t find it funny, staring back at her blankly. Pretending to be chastised, she waved her hand in the direction of the bathroom and he slouched off, the dog trotting behind him, the spotlights along the corridor changing colour from red to blue to green as he went.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Emily asked after he’d gone.

‘Girl trouble,’ Annie said. ‘He won’t talk about it.’

‘Ah, poor River.’ Emily did a sympathetic laugh.

‘Poor us, more like!’ Matt rolled his eyes as they walked through into the kitchen. ‘He’s a nightmare to live with.’

‘Don’t!’ Emily bashed him in the chest. ‘Young love is really hard.’

Matt just shook his head as if he’d had enough of it all and then whistled when he saw the kitchen. ‘Wow!’ he said, and went over to prod one of the huge leopard-print high stools bolted to the ground around a white island pod.

Emily put her hands over her eyes. ‘I know. It’s hideous,’ she said, remembering the open wooden shelves covered in Bernard’s paraphernalia from various trips abroad, the white pillar-box tiles, the Aga that they’d taken turns to see how long they could sit on as teenagers, the big wooden table covered with Bernard’s make-up equipment – tool-box style boxes filled with tubes of foundation, plastic pots of lipstick and glosses, tubes of mascara and leather pouches for brushes that were stained and marked from use. She remembered the first time he’d done her make up – the flick of the eyeliner, ‘ Follow the line of the bottom lash and fill in the curl from the top’ , the Russian Red on her lips, the tiny splodge of colour on the apple of her cheeks, ‘ You could be in the pictures, my dear.’