Julia Williams - Pastures New

‘Are you all right in there?’ the ten-year-old called. ‘I can get you a size sixteen if you want.’

‘Over my dead body,’ muttered Saffron, before calling, ‘Fine, thanks.’

Size sixteen? Size sixteen? She was buggered if she was going to buy size sixteen. What did it matter what she looked like anyway? Pete was only going to take the wretched thing off. Well, with any luck he was – that was unless he’d died laughing first. With the last remaining shreds of her dignity just about intact, Saffron swept out of the changing room, saying, ‘I’ll take it’, and in a totally unwarranted spirit of bravado she grabbed two pairs of silk stockings, some Licked Up Love Juice and a bottle of Pump Up Your Volume Potion, while staring the ten-year-old out. The ten-year-old, sensing the change in temperature, sensibly demurred, and if she had been going to point out the missing button, she was quickly stilled by Saffron’s icy look. Saffron grabbed the bag, and shoved it under the pram, before walking out of the shop with her head high. It was only when she rounded the corner that she glanced at the receipt. Christ, she’d spent a fortune. She just hoped Pete would think it was worth it.

‘So, you’ve no idea what caused Amy to run off?’ Harry and Ben were sitting in Harry’s shed on the allotments sharing a cup of tea, staring out onto the plots, which were bathed in the cold bright light of a low winter sun. Ben had had a late surgery that morning and had sought Harry out.

‘None whatsoever,’ said Ben. ‘One minute we were getting on like a house on fire, the next she’d run off. She seemed to be upset about Josh going on my motorbike.’

‘There must be some reason,’ said Harry. ‘Amy doesn’t strike me as the hysterical type. But she has been through a lot. Maybe there are things we don’t know.’

‘You might be right,’ Ben conceded. ‘She tore my head off the first time we met because I nearly ran Josh over on the bike.’

‘Amy’s very vulnerable,’ said Harry. ‘She could do with the support of a fine young man.’

‘Harry, if I didn’t know you better, I’d suspect you of matchmaking,’ said Ben.

‘Now would I do a thing like that?’ replied Harry, his eyes twinkling. ‘Mind you, now you come to mention it, you’re a good-looking young chap. She’s a beautiful young woman …’

‘A beautiful young woman who is also still grieving,’ said Ben. ‘I doubt very much she’s even thought of me like that.’

‘There’s always time,’ Harry reassured him.

‘As I haven’t heard from her since Sunday, I think it’s unlikely she’ll be speaking to me again in a hurry,’ said Ben.

‘Hmm, that is a pity,’ said Harry. ‘Joking aside, I do think Amy needs help. Maybe you should make the first move?’

Ben, who had been thinking exactly the same thing, but who had been too anxious about Amy’s reaction if he had called round, shook his head.

‘Harry, you’re incorrigible,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right. I’ve got to go and walk Meg before work, but I’ll try and catch her later.’

‘Good man,’ Harry replied. ‘Ah, Bill, have you got some elderberries for me?’

One of Harry’s winemaking buddies was poking his nose round the door, so Ben made his excuses and left. Harry was right. Amy was vulnerable. Something had set her off like that. It wouldn’t do any harm to discover what.

Amy sat on the bench in the graveyard overlooking town. It was a peaceful spot, high on the only hill in the area, and from her vantage point she could see the River Bourne gleaming brightly in the bright winter sunlight. The graveyard itself was ramshackle and meandering, with old paths winding their way between moss-stained graves. The bench she was sitting on was under an ancient yew. Amy found it restful here, so different from the sterile modern cemetery where Jamie’s urn was interred in a wall, with just a simple plaque to remember him by. She wished she’d stood firm against Mary and buried Jamie somewhere like this, but like so many things she and Jamie had never discussed their preferred method of interment and Mary had insisted cremation was more practical and what Jamie would have wanted. At the time, Amy hadn’t thought it mattered.

Amy had been sitting here for an hour already, but she seemed unable to move from the spot. She’d had a fairly useless start to the day. Josh’s teacher had called her in to tell her that Josh didn’t appear to be settling very well, and, worse still, seemed to be hitting a lot of the smaller children. Amy was shocked and upset. Josh had never behaved like that at nursery. The move must have unsettled him more than she had thought. Promising to have a word with him, Amy had gone home to start work on Saffron’s leaflet, only to discover her printer had run out of ink. So now she was ostensibly on the way into town to get some more, but the need to sit still and think had become overwhelming.

So she had sat down and stared at Nevermorewell below her, wondering again if she had made the right decision to come here. Josh was unsettled. She was unsettled. Her reaction to Josh sitting on Ben’s bike now seemed over-the-top and hysterical. Was she losing it completely? Meeting the first person she had even liked since Jamie’s death had set her out of kilter somehow. Ben was a magnetic presence, and despite her embarrassment at the thought of seeing him again, she knew that she did want to see him again. And that inevitably created a conflict. Could she allow herself to be attracted to Ben? She’d never thought there would be anyone but Jamie. And now suddenly there was. And Jamie wasn’t here …

Ben was walking Meg through the graveyard, as he normally did, when he stopped short. Sitting with her back to him, on the bench, below the tall yew tree that dwarfed the graveyard, was Amy. Ben paused. She might not want to see him. He should turn round and go before she noticed he was there. Then she turned to look at him, and the look pierced him so completely that it no longer mattered whether she wanted to see him. He wanted to make things right between them more badly than he had wanted anything in a long time.

‘Sorry, I’m disturbing you,’ he said.

‘It’s okay,’ Amy replied. ‘I was just thinking I owed you an apology.’

‘What for?’

‘The other day,’ said Amy. ‘I’m really sorry I overreacted.’

‘I suppose you did a little,’ said Ben.

‘A little is very kind,’ said Amy. ‘But I think I owe you an explanation.’

‘Explain away,’ said Ben, hovering awkwardly, before Amy motioned for him to sit down.

‘I never told you how Jamie died, did I?’ Amy said.

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Jamie was always keen on bikes, you see,’ said Amy, dreamily remembering her first meeting with him, when he’d roared up to the pub she was sitting outside, astride a Suzuki, a vision of unrepentant bad-boy glory. She was pretty much smitten from that moment, and when the bad-boy bit turned out to be an act, it made her like him all the more. ‘He’d always ridden them. The bigger the better. I used to get a buzz out of it when I was younger, but I don’t know, as time went on I got more nervous about the bike, and kept hoping he would grow out of it – especially when Josh came along.’

‘But he didn’t?’ prompted Ben.

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Amy. ‘More’s the pity. If he had, he’d still be here …’ She trailed off. Was it ever going to be easy to tell this story?

‘… Anyway, to cut to the chase. He came off it one day. They said he died instantly, which was something of a comfort. I haven’t gone near a motorbike since. And I certainly won’t let Josh near one.’