‘I’m not hiding from you, I’m shearing trees. There’s a matter of days until the farm opens and there’s a lot of work to be done. You taught me that.’
He nods and kicks at a drift of snow piling up around the bridge railings, his nose red in the freezing air, snowflakes settling in his dark eyebrows when he looks down. I want to tell him about potting up the tiny trees and selling them online, that I’m going to send one to Chelsea to make sure they can survive a journey, and I’m bubbling to tell him about the idea of renting Christmas trees and see if he thinks it’s something to be excited about too, and if he thinks it could be financially viable, but how can I trust anything he says?
‘Tell me what I’ve done?’ His voice breaks and I hate the way he swallows before he speaks again. ‘How can I fix it if you won’t even talk to me? Please, Lee. I thought we had something wonderful here, and something’s obviously gone horribly wrong. Don’t I even deserve to know what?’
I bristle at the words because I don’t know if he hasn’t realised what I’ve found out, or if he genuinely doesn’t comprehend that acting the way he has when he was the other bidder is not okay. ‘I don’t owe you anything,’ I snap. ‘No one asked you to do the things you’ve done for this farm. I’m sorry you won’t get any return on it now but you should’ve thought of that when you started your little scheme.’
‘What?’
We stare at each other for a few long moments, and then I jam my hands back into my pockets. ‘I have to go.’ My voice quivers as I brush past him and concentrate on getting as far away as possible, my thighs burning from the effort of pushing through the snow as I clomp further round the track, praying he doesn’t follow me.
I can’t talk to him at the moment. I’ve been constantly on the verge of tears since Friday, and I’m not strong enough to not believe his excuses. After I caught Steve and realised that he’d clocked how isolated I was and used it to his own benefit, I vowed I’d never let a man see my vulnerability again, that I’d never give anyone a chance to use my weakness against me, and mere weeks later, Noel caught me crying in the car and it started all over again.
‘Leah! What are you talking about?’ he calls after me. ‘I don’t understand!’
‘Of course you don’t,’ I mutter to myself. The only thing he doesn’t understand is that I’m onto him.
I know he’s still there without turning around. I open the gate of the Norway spruce field, pushing it against the huge blockade of snow it dredges up as it opens, and go in, ducking behind the hedge and crouching down so I’m out of sight. After a few minutes, the crunch of his boots echoes through the empty farm as he walks away.
I let out a sob and the tears fall as I sink to my knees in the snow. How did it ever come to this?
I want to run after him and brush the snow out of his hair. I want to go back with him, snuggle up in front of his fire with Gizmo and put everything back the way it was before Friday afternoon. He made everything about this place better, and without him, it feels as empty and desolate as the fields look lost under the snow.
Chapter 16
It’s Wednesday when it starts to rain, but it’s not just regular rain. These are huge pounding drops that beat against the roof and hammer on the boards blocking the windows, making me feel that the house is going to cave in under its force.
The main road is running like a river as the snow turns to water, and the drifts around the house that had reached an impressive size have melted and are surrounding me like a moat. If it wasn’t for the steps, I’d have to swim out.
It’s a weird day, everything feels bleak and miserable. There’s so much to do before the farm opens to the public on Saturday, but it’s too wet and too cold to get out and do anything. I told Iain and the two seasonal workers not to come in again today. It’s not safe. The Met Office has issued a red ‘risk to life’ warning and advised people to stay inside, and the wind is making the rain slam against the house in sheets, sounding like rounds of gunfire when it hits.
There’s been an emptiness since I walked away from Noel on Monday. I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t believe that anything he said was untrue. He was so genuine, so raw and open with me … how can any of it have been a ploy to get my trust? And what did he think he was going to gain out of it anyway? I’ve pored over the books I bought about growing Christmas trees and nothing in them contradicts any of the advice he gave me. In fact, most of the things he said are actually more sensible than what’s written in the books, and I keep thinking that I should swallow my pride and go over there and talk it through. I definitely miss him enough to believe him, especially when I think about the look of bewilderment and rejection on his face at the bridge the other day, which is stuck in my mind like a screensaver – it pops up whenever I’m inactive for a few moments.
Thinking about the bridge makes me think of the river and what Noel said about it flooding. It was frozen solid a couple of days ago, but with all this snow and rain … I’ve pulled my boots on before I’ve finished the thought. There’s no way that river can cope with this deluge of water. I shrug my coat on again, open the door, and immediately regret it. I have to hold the door with both hands to stop the wind crashing it shut again.
Outside, the weather is worse than it sounds from inside. The coat proves completely useless in rain this heavy because I’m soaked through before I’ve even reached the gate. The trees are obscured by a wet haze as I follow the track, which is running with so much water that it flops over the tops of my wellies within a few steps.
I know something’s severely wrong from the sound of rushing water. It’s so different from the usual gentle trickle of the stream. This is a thundering, pounding gush that reverberates through the earth itself, and I stop in horror as I round the corner and get to the bridge.
The stream is no longer a stream. It’s a crashing, swirling river, and the banks have burst.
I remember what Noel said on that day we crossed the trickling little stream on the way to the apple tree, about how it has never flooded, but it would be a disaster if it did. About how it would drown the Balsams and the Blue spruces. About how I’d lose them all.
The grass surrounding it is completely flooded. There’s so much water that it’s lying on the surface because everything is already too wet for it to drain away, and more water is pulsing out with every second, spreading further. It’s nearly reached the first row of Balsam firs and is edging towards the Blue spruces.
My first instinct is to call Noel for help. He’ll know what to do. But I can’t do that. That’s the point – I have to rely on myself, no one else.
I can’t just stand here watching the trees drown, their roots glugging as they gradually sink in floodwater. Come on, Leah, think.
A river ran through the village I grew up in, and it flooded all the time in winter. I remember seeing the council workers down there in the pouring rain, digging spillways to divert the water. That’s it! I turn around and splash back through the mud towards the barn.
There are loads of different shovels with different purposes, but I don’t know what they’re all for, so I grab as many as I can carry and try to map it out in my head as I race back. If I dig a channel across the top of the Balsam fir field, it would give the water somewhere to spill into before it reaches the trees.
It might already be too late to save them. I splosh through the puddled water and run to the other bridge and through the Blue spruce field until I reach the Balsam firs again from the opposite bank.
I start halfway along the riverside where the bank is at its lowest point and the most water is flooding out. I ram the shovel into the ground and shove my foot down, pushing it in deep and heaving up a huge clump of saturated earth and chucking it to the side. Water floods into the hole instantly, but I carry on, digging the same spot until I can’t get the shovel down any further and water from the river has pooled into it. I move on, overlapping the dig sites until they meet, moving slowly along the path of the river
. The ground is so wet that the shovelfuls of earth are too heavy to pick up, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. There must be at least two thousand trees directly below the river – the only thing that matters is saving them.
I pile the earth I take out onto the edges to create a barrier and start following a roughly parallel line with the river towards the border of my land. After that, it can flood anywhere it wants, I’ve just got to get it past the trees.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
I jump so much that I nearly fall over. I ram the shovel into the ground and use it as a pole to keep myself upright, slip-sliding in the mud as I turn around to look at Noel. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Came to make sure the river wasn’t flooding. Now I see I should’ve come earlier.’ He has to shout to be heard from the opposite side of the rushing water.
‘I don’t need your help, I can manage.’ I try to concentrate on digging and not look at him again, but the temptation is too much.
He takes his coat off and throws it aside, picks up one of the spades I’d dropped and starts towards the river.
Within minutes, there isn’t a centimetre of him that’s dry. He’s wearing jeans and only a long-sleeved undershirt with the sleeves rolled up, although I can’t tell what colour either of them started off as because they’re now dark with rainwater. His hair is loose around his shoulders, looking longer than usual with the weight of the water, and he’s covered in mud from the waist down, splashes of it covering his top too, being quickly washed away by the rain that’s still pummelling down.
‘What are you doing?’ I shout again.
‘You’re going to lose all of the Balsams and most of the Blue spruces if we don’t do something now. I don’t care how much you hate me, I’m not letting you lose these trees. You don’t have to handle things like this on your own.’
The passion in his voice makes me realise we can’t avoid the soaking wet elephant standing between us any longer. ‘For you or for me?’ I say before I can chicken out.
He stops and looks up. ‘What?’
‘You want to save them for you or for me?’
His dripping eyebrows furrow. ‘What are you talking ab—’
‘I know who you are, Noel. R-five-hyphens-81. I know you were the other bidder.’
‘That’s what all this has been about? That’s why you won’t talk to me?’ He makes a noise of realisation and smacks his forehead. ‘This is exactly why I didn’t tell you.’
‘Everything you’ve done—’
‘—will be irrelevant if we don’t drain some of this water away now. It’s flooding further with every second we waste here. We are going to save these trees – not for me, not for you, but for Peppermint Branches because this place is special, no matter who owns it.’
I know from the frantic tone in his voice and the panic on his face that this is more serious than I thought.
He jumps into the river and starts shovelling sloppy wet mud from underneath the water, waist-deep and flowing fast.
‘You shouldn’t be in there,’ I yell. The wind is so strong that it’s difficult to stay upright. ‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Raise the banks and straighten the channel. Water flows faster along a straight course, and the quicker we can move it away from the trees, the more chance they’ll have of not drowning.’
‘What about you? You look like you’re in with a pretty good chance of drowning!’
He looks over his shoulder and shoots me a grin. ‘Nah. Hypothermia, on the other hand …’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Why, because you care? You think I’m some kind of underhanded con-artist who’s befriended you solely for the purpose of stealing your farm, so don’t pretend to give a toss when you obviously think so little of me.’ He goes back to shovelling mud out and throwing it up onto the edges.
I hate the way it makes me feel because I care about him so much that I want to wade into the river and drag him out. I’m pretty sure that when rivers are flooded, the general advice is not to stand in them. ‘I do care about you, Noel. Why do you think I’m so hurt?’
‘What about me? How do you think I feel?’ He’s shouting to be heard over the howling of the wind and the battering of rain. ‘I let my guard down with you, I told you things I’ve never told anyone before. I thought we meant something to each other, and one bloody rumour is enough to change all that.’
‘Is it just a rumour?’ I say, hope suddenly lighting up inside me. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong.
He doesn’t reply. That’s answer enough. I let out a sigh and go back to digging, and Noel moves along the river carefully, scraping silt from the bottom and earth from the sides of each bank to make them steeper, and piling it along the top to make the sides higher and try to contain the water.
Everywhere is slippery and the rain is still beating down, turning the already sodden earth into pure sludge. My wellies sink into it and I slip every time I move. I can feel his eyes on me. ‘Will you concentrate on not drowning, please?’
‘Only if you concentrate on not falling over.’
‘In case I fall in a puddle and get wet?’ I shake a dripping sleeve at him.
He throws another shovel of silt over his shoulder, seeming to have perfect depth perception as it lands exactly on top of the pile without him even looking. ‘I’m sorry I told you not to worry about the river flooding. You had instincts and I told you to ignore them. I wish you hadn’t trusted me.’
Me too. But I don’t mean about the river. ‘I thought this river never flooded.’
‘There’s a first time for everything. Weather like this has never happened before – not in conjunction with this much snow anyway. The biblical rain is bad enough, but coupled with the six-ish foot of snow that had settled all liquefying at once as the rain melted it … no watercourses could cope with this torrent. Put the news on when you get back – everyone will be in the same position as us.’
My coat is so heavy that it’s weighing me down and I understand why Noel got rid of his. I shrug it off and throw it out of the way, and keep digging, trying not to make it obvious how worried I am about him. If he loses his footing, he’ll be swept away.
I’m trying to dig the trench as fast as I can, slicing through the grass, the water following along with every shovel of earth I remove, cutting a line across the top of the Balsam fir field. We work in silence. The wind is still screaming past my ears, dragging my hair out of its tie and flapping it around, and the rain turns to hailstones that sting everywhere they touch. It’s too loud and the few words we do say have to be shouted to be heard, but I want to talk to him. I want him to explain. I want to say that the trees don’t matter as much as getting him out of that sodding river before he drowns.
I drive the shovel into the ground and watch as the overflowing water follows, each shovelful of earth taking it further away from the Balsam firs. Noel overtakes me in the river, moving slowly, using the shovel as a walking pole to stay upright against the flow of water. His face tightens in concentration every time he stops and scrapes the shovel up the left side of the bank, again and again. He gets to the edge of my land where the river disappears underneath a bridge of wire fence and earth, worn away naturally by the flow of the water, and uses his shovel to hammer at that and widen it too. When he’s satisfied, he turns around and trudges back, heaving earth from the right side of the riverbank now, and I can tell that what he’s doing is working. The water is flowing faster, and even though it’s washing back in some of the mud he’s piled at the edges, the extra height is slowing down the spill.
I wipe rainwater and sweat out of my eyes, only succeeding in spreading the mud from my hands further, and try to concentrate on the trench, the overflowed water now pooling so deeply in it that it’s started to rise above the edges.
The rain turns to hailstones again, pinging everywhere they hit and bouncing off, and I keep my head down and try to just keep digging, repeating the words l
ike a mantra in my head. When I get to the holly bushes that run along the edge of my land, I dig as far underneath as I can, until I can get my shovel under the wire fence that marks the border between Peppermint Branches and the unused grassland next door and dig a gap to give the water a place to run out.
I stand upright and put my hands on my lower back, unsure if I’ll ever be able to straighten it out again, and well aware that everything is going to hurt tomorrow. I turn around, digging my way back along the trench as I go because it’s already full of wet mud, pulled back in by the force of the water.
‘I don’t think there’s much more I can do in here,’ Noel says eventually. ‘Which might give you a chance to concentrate on what you’re doing and take your eyes off me for a second.’
I hate that I can’t say something flirty to him like I would have before. Instead, I watch as he throws his spade over the heightened bank and it splashes into the water pooling on the grass. He starts to move, shuffling through the river, the force of the water rushing towards him making it a struggle.
And then he slips and crashes down into the water.
‘Noel!’ I throw my shovel and rush over, skidding onto my knees right at the uneven edge, nearly going headfirst into the water too.
He’s splashing around on his back, trying to get back onto his feet.
‘I’m fi—’ Another rush of water hits him in the face, making him splutter.
I reach down to him. ‘If you don’t give me your hand right now, I’m going to kill you.’
He manages to get his feet back under him and struggles upright, his hands on his knees, bracing himself against the flow of the water. ‘That’s counterproductive.’
‘It’s not funny! People drown in floodwater like this. You could’ve already caught an unthinkable amount of life-threatening diseases.’
‘It’s melted snow and mud, Lee. What do you think is going to happen to me? I’ll start turning into a dirty snowman?’
Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm Page 28