Catherine Ferguson - Green Beans and Summer Dreams

If I can make it work.

There’s a brief, digesting silence.

Anna and Jess are nodding earnestly, but I can tell they think I’m a crate of rotten apples short of a compost heap.

Then Jess leans forward. ‘So what is it about selling vegetables that appeals to you, Izzy?’

Her perplexed expression makes me want to burst out laughing. Apart from the fact that the question is gently patronising, she sounds like she’s interviewing me for an issue of The Good Life magazine.

‘Is it because you want to get back to a simpler way of living?’

‘Hmm. Yes.’ I nod solemnly and stare at the horizon (or what I can see of it through the coffee shop’s slightly smeary window). ‘Girls, I feel something profound tickling the very edge of my consciousness. An awakening, if you like. A realisation that I need to get back to nature.’

Ignoring Anna’s snort, I slap a hand to my chest. ‘I will de-clutter my life and eat only seasonal produce. I will turn my back on fashion and wear garments made out of the wool from my own pigs. I will throw my telly out the window and play board games instead.’

Jess looks startled. ‘Gosh, really?’

Sighing, I slump back in my seat and look sheepishly from one to the other.

‘No. It’s just the only bloody thing I can think of to get me out of this mess.’

My plan to get back to running regularly is not going well.

It’s a clear, blue-skied morning and a light frost glints on the hedgerows. But as I lumber past, in the lane outside my house, I’m in far too much distress to admire the scenery. Each time I leap over a pothole, every molecule in my body screams enough!

What seemed like a good idea in the warmth of the kitchen, cradling my early morning cup of tea and looking out at Jack Frost’s handiwork, now feels like complete insanity. It’s all part of a ‘turning my life around’ thing – but I have a feeling this could turn out to be a jog too far.

Draughts of icy air blast into my lungs, making my eyes stream, and my thudding heart lets me know precisely how unfit I have become.

I make it to the end of the lane and flump down on the grass verge. Then I lie flat on my back as my chest continues to heave up and down, feeling mildly indignant that two passing motorists haven’t screeched to a halt to offer emergency mouth to mouth.

Yesterday, I was counting on Jess and Anna to encourage the fledgling entrepreneur in me. But I suspect they thought I was grasping at straws, with a plan born of complete desperation.

I can’t imagine why they would think that …

Driving home from the coffee shop yesterday, my spirits were low. My lack of self-belief and the motherly concern of my friends was a recipe for disaster. I was effectively back to square one, terrified to commit to my plan in case it backfired and left me even worse off than I was before. As I parked on the gravel by the front door and let myself in, I wondered if I should forget the whole thing and apply for the job on Jess’s newspaper instead. But the position was only temporary. So in six months’ time I would be right back where I started.

I went round switching on lamps then sat at the kitchen table and took the advert out of my bag. Even if I got the job, the salary was so meagre that once I’d paid my bills every month, there would be barely anything left. And the trouble with living in a quirky old farmhouse that has almost been refurbished, but not quite, is that things keep needing to be repaired.

I pulled on my wellies, unlocked the back door and stepped out onto the terrace.

Staring out over the vegetable plot to the sweep of lawn and the orchard beyond, a dead weight settled in my chest at the thought of having to sell up.

I adored the garden and read horticultural magazines the way some women devoured celebrity gossip. Despite never having grown my own vegetables until a year ago, it was undoubtedly a passion I’d inherited from my aunt.

From an early age, I was handling vegetables of all varieties, digging up carrots with their green leafy tops still intact, rubbing earth from tiny, earth-scented new potatoes and sitting beside Midge in the garden on summer afternoons, shelling peas that burst with sweetness in your mouth.

At lunchtime, we would pull up little gem lettuces, shaking soil from the roots and laying them in Midge’s straw basket alongside fragrant cucumbers and crimson radishes that made a peppery taste explosion on your tongue.

I crunched tart, home-grown rhubarb dipped in sugar and turned up my nose at supermarket tomatoes because they didn’t taste or smell anything like the perfect, blush-ripe beauties in my Aunt Midge’s garden.

By the time I came to live at Farthing Cottage, the vegetable garden was wildly overgrown, so I hacked everything back and started from scratch. I sectioned off an area in front of the terrace, and started planting the vegetables I remembered from my childhood. Last summer, we had a mad glut of green beans and ate them every day. But my all-time favourite was the home-grown asparagus, earthy and sweet, eaten freshly harvested and dripping with butter.

Standing there on the terrace, I gazed out over my little bit of paradise, past the slightly sloping lawn and the vegetable plot close to the house, to the two rows of fruit trees either side of a grassy path leading to the little wildflower meadow beyond. My eye wandered to the row of tall conifers at the foot of the garden that provided shelter from the northerly wind. And then to the field on my left, which Midge put to such good use, building a little shelter there for the donkeys she rescued.

I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the glorious ripeness of summer when I’d spent whole days tending my plants in the warm, herb-scented air, willing them to grow and labouring as happily as the bees until my body ached. The flower borders around the lawn lay dormant right now but in high summer, they were a riot of colour, filled with delicate pink roses, lilac-blue geraniums and my childhood favourite, pinky-purple foxgloves.

Suddenly I was hit by a feeling of loss so powerful I had to sink down on a patio chair.

Whichever way you looked at my predicament – and I’d studied it from every possible angle – the logical solution was to sell Farthing Cottage, pay off the mortgage and rent a flat in Fieldstone.

But logical solutions weren’t always the answer.

Sometimes you had to go with your heart.

To lose Midge was devastating enough. But the thought of parting with her house to some complete stranger was just horrible.

I remained there, motionless, until my gloveless fingers felt frozen. Then I retreated inside, levered off my wellies and went into the kitchen. I curled into Midge’s chair by the window, smoothing my hands over the arms. The leather was old and cracked now but I would never part with it. Midge had said that, whatever challenge she faced, if she sat there for long enough, staring out over the fields, an answer would always come.

It was worth a try.

I focused on my apple and damson trees and the fields beyond the garden. I kept on staring, willing a miracle.

But then raindrops began to spatter against the window and the sky darkened – and it was clear no answer was going to jump magically into my head.

I laid my cheek against the soft leather of the chair back and a warm tear leaked out.

Far from feeling closer to Midge, I felt more alone than ever.

I’m startled from my engrossing daydream, lying flaked out on the grass verge, by the blast of a honking fanfare.

I scramble to my feet as a gang of grinning workmen zoom past in their van, making assorted hand gestures. I feel stupidly flattered until it occurs to me that I’m wearing a top and Lycra shorts that are way too skimpy now I’m a size bigger than I was in my running days. And they are, of course, workmen. Cheering big bazookas is part of their job description.