Alex Brown - The Secret of Orchard Cottage - The feel-good number one bestseller

April swallowed hard and adjusted her thoughts; now was not the time. Focus, this was supposed to be fun, not maudlin! Something else caught April’s eye. A bench. She made a beeline towards it, grateful to have a focal point to concentrate on, and remembered sitting on it with her mum and dad to enjoy a bag of chips from Moby Dick’s, the mobile fish and chip van that came to Tindledale every Friday evening. April wondered if the van still came, and made a mental note to ask her aunt later. But the bench was no longer made of boring wood, no, it had been transformed into a yarnbombed extravaganza of loveliness – a myriad of colours made up of hundreds of granny patches all stitched together by hand – it was amazing. A real labour of love – she ran a finger over the knitting and wondered if she might be ready to pick up her needles some time soon, but the thought was immediately followed by a pang of panic and April knew it was too soon. Another day hopefully. April thought about sitting on the bench instead and allowing herself ten minutes just to think about Gray, but a shrill voice filled the air and the moment vanished.

‘Excuse me!’ A woman wearing a dowdy beige mac and a flowery headscarf, with an old-fashioned wicker basket looped over her arm and a determined look on her face, came beetling towards her from the door of the bookshop opposite. April stopped moving and smiled at the older woman.

‘Hello,’ April said, shifting the flowers into her free hand so she could swing her handbag over her shoulder and tuck Molly’s pie dish under her arm, wondering what the woman wanted. Maybe she was a friend of her aunt’s, on the way to the tea dance, and had heard that April was visiting too and wanted to welcome her.

‘We like to keep this space clear for the disabled villagers!’ the woman announced, emphasising the ‘we’ as if verbally holding a placard above April’s head with ‘outsider’ emblazoned on it to make her feel unwelcome. Circumventing any pleasantries, the woman then pointed a disdainful finger to the blue Beetle with its jaunty plastic sunflower in the air vent on the dashboard.

‘Oh!’ April replied, taken aback. ‘I didn’t know … I, um, didn’t see a disabled sign anywhere or even on the road,’ she added, feeling like a naughty schoolgirl all of a sudden as she did a quick scan to check a nearby lamppost too. The woman continued to glare at the Beetle. And then April twigged. This woman, aka the village parking warden, surely, was clearly waiting for April to move her car to one of the other numerous patches of free parking space. But April felt ruffled and not in the least bit inclined to move her car. She hadn’t broken any laws as far as she could fathom, but it was just as well that Mark, the policeman from yesterday, happened to cycle past at this precise moment. He gave April a pleasant wave before bringing his bike to a halt at the kerb.

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