Julia Williams - Pastures New

This place, it was wonderful. When she had seen the details of the house Amy had had no idea it backed onto allotments, and it was the icing on the cake. She squinted in the sun, taking in the beauty of her surroundings. There were blackberries ripening in the late August sunshine, and beans, tomatoes and potatoes all coming into fruition. The odd hut was dotted about, and some plots seemed to consist of fruit trees. It had been a poor summer – today was one of the few hot days they’d had – but the trees seemed laden with fruit anyway. There was a sense of abundance, and ripeness – the time for harvesting near. Amy couldn’t help the catch in her throat, as she thought about how much Jamie would have loved this. Autumn had always been his favourite time of year – a golden time to catch his golden girl he had used to tease her. They had met in the autumn, nearly fourteen years ago, the early days of their courtship punctuated with long country walks crunching their way through leaf-strewn fields. If they had only been able to do this together.

Together . They would never do anything together again. A hard, familiar knot tightened in her stomach. It was nearly two years ago now, but the thought of never seeing Jamie again was still enough to take her breath away. She had promised herself she would be strong for Josh, but it took all her self-control not to let out the raw pain, which she concealed so well these days. She was determined to leave all that behind her. This was a new start for her and Josh. A new beginning, a way forward to slough off the pain of the past.

She took a deep breath and stared around her once again. She and Jamie had always dreamed of decamping to the countryside and living in an old farmhouse. A memory forced its way into her mind – a snapshot of a perfect day on a long weekend, not far from here, a sunny day in late summer, much like this, visiting Amy’s Auntie Grace in Aldeburgh.

Jamie strode ahead of her through fields of golden corn , with Josh on his back. The sun shone, but the air was crisp and bracing, a fresh wind coming from the sea .

‘ Isn’t this perfect?’ Jamie shouted into the wind as it whipped his hair, his eyes alight with laughter .

‘ We should come and live here,’ Amy said from behind a camera, taking a photo to capture the moment .

‘ We’d need a big house,’ Jamie said. ‘For all of Josh’s brothers and sisters .’

‘ And a big garden,’ Amy laughed. ‘With a vegetable patch .’

‘ And we’d have to have a dog .’

‘ We could keep chickens,’ offered Amy .

‘ I’d rather have a goat,’ replied Jamie with a smile .

‘ Now you’re just being silly.’ Amy punched him on the shoulder, and he grabbed her hands and pulled her to him .

‘ Still, it would be nice,’ she said .

‘ Wouldn’t it just,’ said Jamie, kissing her. ‘One day, I promise 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.