Julia Williams - Pastures New

Amy was still fuming when she reached the garden gate. If everyone was as rude as her unknown biker, then perhaps she shouldn’t move in here. It was a shame, as in every other way it was perfect. As she went to open the door, an elderly man passed her pushing a wheelbarrow and smiled, which immediately made her feel better. On the other hand, it would be foolish to throw up such a good opportunity for the sake of one grumpy man, whom she could avoid quite easily. And Josh seemed to have quickly recovered from his trauma. Amy had to admit that she had perhaps overreacted a little herself. All the worry about Mary had made her a little edgy, and she was always overprotective as far as Josh was concerned. Mary was right about that.

She and Josh made their way back up the garden path. Mary or no Mary, her mind was made up. Smarmy Simon was just coming off the phone when she walked up to him.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘I love it,’ she replied. ‘When can we move in?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, really it doesn’t.’

Pete’s words should have been reassuring to Saffron, but somehow they weren’t. She lay in the darkness, listening to his breathing and the snuffles of Ellie next to her in the baby basket, and fretted. She should be trying to sleep, but judging by the way she was leaking like an old milk cow (an unsavoury aspect to breastfeeding, which she particularly hated), Ellie was probably on the verge of waking up. Which would have put paid to any extracurricular activity anyway, even if she could have risen to the occasion.

Pete had been lovely about it, as usual, but she couldn’t help the gnawing anxiety which ate into her after yet another aborted attempt at sex. After all, that was what had done for her and Gerry in the end. And they had managed it a lot more often after Becky and Matt were born than she and Pete had done so far.

Pete’s not Gerry .

Now that was a better thought. Saffron smiled. Gerry had done her a favour really. Having dumped her for a blonde floozie, Gerry had floored Saffron completely for a while. With Becky only two and Matt a baby, life had been tough. Without the amiable and supportive friendship of Pete, whose allotment bordered hers, Saffron doubted whether she would have hung on to her sanity. She had always got on well with him, but during that dark period she came to value his steadiness and depend upon his gentle humour to lighten up her day.

Saffron hadn’t been looking for love. Her heart had been so shattered by Gerry’s infidelity she had thought she could never trust anyone again. But one day, looking across at Pete planting his runner beans, it suddenly dawned on her that love had snuck up on her when she wasn’t looking. After that, everything was simple. They moved in together and within months Pete had proposed. And when Ellie was born, Saffron’s happiness was complete. And here they were. Simple .

Saffron sighed. Things didn’t feel simple now.

She could probably count on one hand the number of times that she and Pete had made love since Ellie’s arrival. Despite Gerry’s taunts, being with Pete had proved to her that she wasn’t frigid. But now, for the first time since they’d been together, Saffron felt they were struggling. She was struggling.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was just – well, she felt betrayed by her body. For a start, she had forgotten how much she hated breastfeeding. She resented the fact that her nipples, previously portals of pleasure, were now so engorged with milk, cracked and swollen that they resembled an ageing cow’s udders. Anything less sexy she couldn’t imagine.

And the rest of her body wasn’t much better. Her stomach flopped and flapped about, lined with purple veins that seemed to have arrived from nowhere. From experience she knew they would fade in time and leave faint silver lines to go with the ones she already had from Becky and Matt. But now, she felt like a beached whale.

‘It doesn’t matter what you look like,’ Pete had declared the first time she had tried and failed to seduce him after Ellie was born. ‘You’ll always be a sex goddess to me.’

But it wasn’t enough. Her libido was practically nonexistent. Somewhere between getting pregnant, giving birth and coping with those enormously painful stitches (sitting on shards of glass might have been marginally more comfortable), it had gone AWOL. And with the added complications of sleepless nights, an ex-husband who kept causing her childcare headaches, and a business partner who had scooted off halfway round the world, it was showing no sign of returning in the immediate future.

The snuffles in the Moses basket got louder, indicating that Ellie was getting ready for a full-scale roaring attack. Saffron got out of bed, determined to pre-empt events – at least one of them could have a good night’s sleep. She picked the baby up, sorted her pillows out, and plonked Ellie on her breast. She didn’t even attempt to try and read, as she used to when Becky and Matt were small. This time around she had perfected the art of breastfeeding in a semi-doze, and, despite a slight anxiety that she might drop the baby, so far it seemed to have worked.

As she sat in a state of numbed stupefaction, trying not to wince when Ellie suckled too hard, Saffron thought about how different this week was supposed to have been.

Gerry had whisked the kids off to Florida. She hadn’t been too happy about it, particularly as it meant Becky missing the first week at junior school, but at least it had given her and Pete some much-needed time together. Pete had taken a week off work, and the idea was that they would relax and enjoy their new baby without the demands of the older two. But somehow it hadn’t quite worked out like that.

For a start, thanks to Caroline’s decision to bugger off round the world earlier in the summer, the business was in a huge mess. Saffron had been relying on Caroline to cover her for at least some of the early weeks with Ellie. As it was, because of Caroline’s departure, Saffron had ended up doing some minor jobs up until a week before Ellie was born. Now, eight weeks later, she realised that clients were haemorrhaging away from them at a rate of three or four per week. Their fledgling gardening business, Green Fingers, couldn’t afford to lose customers at such a rate. And given that summer should have been a time for gaining new business, Saffron was going to have her work cut out this autumn to make up the lost ground.

Bugger Caroline! she thought grumpily, quickly followed by the thought that she should have known better. When they had first met on the gardening course they had taken together three years earlier, Saffron had been dazzled by Caroline’s enthusiasm and creativity. But then, it was easy to be taken in by Caroline. She talked the talk so well. The reality, which Saffron had only realised once they became business partners, was that although Caroline was a great saleswoman, and had a genius for planning people’s gardens, she was also incredibly lazy, and most of the work had fallen onto Saffron’s shoulders.

And then, just when Saffron needed her the most, Caroline had decided to do her moonlit flit. Something to do with a bloke, no doubt, knowing Caroline, but she hadn’t thought it necessary to furnish Saffron with the details.

So instead of lazy days in the sun with Pete and Ellie (not that there had been much sun, but still …), Saffron had spent the week poring over figures and ringing disgruntled clients, to reassure them that yes, gardens would be weeded, hedges would be trimmed and lawns would be mowed – eventually. Pete had been a great help, going out on a couple of occasions to tackle some particularly difficult jobs in between his work as a marketing manager for a computer firm, but at best his help was a sop to the real problem. There was simply too much work for Saffron alone. Added to which, Caroline might be flaky as hell, but she had a good eye for design and the clients liked her. Her loss to the business was incalculable. And even supposing Saffron was to find a new partner who matched up, she probably didn’t have the funds to pay for the help anyway.