Green Beans and Summer Dreams

by Catherine Ferguson

  My heart is hammering uncomfortably.

  Erik said she was suffering from psychological problems made worse when her fiancé called off the wedding. Perhaps she really does need help.

  ‘You’re nice and you deserve better,’ she’s saying. ‘Erik will break your heart. If he hasn’t already.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s true,’ she says simply.

  ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She presses a weary hand to her forehead. ‘You must have suspected.’

  My heart gives a little jolt.

  ‘Suspected what?’

  ‘That Erik couldn’t be faithful if his life depended on it.’

  She looks down at her hands again.

  Her hair is sleek and glossy. A lock of it has escaped the knot and slipped down over her cheek. I stare at it, mesmerised, my head reeling.

  Erik said she had a crush on him and implied she was unhinged. And now she’s lured me here under false pretences. Is that really the action of a sane person?

  Perhaps she and Erik once had a fling and now she wants him back.

  I swallow down a feeling of nausea. ‘Why are you saying this?’

  She looks up at me with her sad eyes. ‘Because it’s true and I think you ought to know. The others meant nothing. I could tell. But you’re different. He thinks you’re special.’ Her mouth twists with irony. ‘Just not quite special enough.’

  ‘The others?’

  Lottie nods.

  In the silence, a wasp bumps fruitlessly against the big bay window.

  It’s all so surreal. Sitting in a strange flat, with a woman I barely know informing me my boyfriend is a liar and a cheat.

  ‘Didn’t you suspect anything when I came to your house that time?’ she asks.

  ‘Well, obviously I wondered what was going on,’ I say slowly. ‘But Erik explained to me later all about your fiancé.’

  ‘My fiancé?’

  ‘Sorry, this is probably the last thing you want to talk about,’ I say apologetically. ‘With the wedding being called off and everything.’

  She breathes out incredulously. ‘My God, what else did he tell you? That I’m demented with grief and should be locked up for my own safety?’

  ‘So there was no wedding?’ I ask carefully.

  She laughs. ‘No. And no fiancé either.’

  ‘So were you and Erik … together?’ My voice sounds far away, as if it belongs to someone else altogether.

  She folds her arms and looks over at the window. ‘Not any more. I’ve had enough. He’s mucked me about once too often.’

  ‘So how long were you … ?’

  ‘Three years, on and off. God knows how many other women he’s been with in that time. I only knew about Larissa. And you.’

  Larissa?

  Is it possible that all the time I’ve known Erik, he was still seeing other women? But we were together practically all the time, especially at the beginning. And then he’s been down in Devon. How would he have had the time or opportunity?

  I shake my head firmly. ‘He’s only with me now.’

  ‘Oh, really.’ She gives a sad little smile.

  My heart lurches because suddenly, I know for sure that Lottie is not insane. And neither is she lying to me.

  ‘Hang on, though. This doesn’t make sense.’ I still can’t believe he duped me so completely. ‘You knew about me all along? And you claim there were other women as well as me?’

  She nods.

  ‘So why the hell would you stay with someone who lies to you and sleeps with other women behind your back?’

  Lottie’s mouth twists. ‘Because I love him? Because I’m utterly pathetic? Because I’m too weak to say no?’

  We stare at one another.

  Then I find my voice. ‘When you came to my house that time, was it because you’d just found out Erik was seeing me?’

  She laughs. ‘No. I knew almost from the start. He was away one Monday. He said he was watching the match with a mate but I knew he wasn’t.’

  ‘One Monday?’ I say slowly, remembering the day he helped me with my deliveries. No wonder he couldn’t stay when I invited him for supper. He had to get back to Lottie.

  ‘I convinced myself I’d been wrong. But then he bumped into your friend in town one Sunday; the weekend he was doing his living statue project for college.’

  ‘Jess,’ I murmur. ‘I’d been to visit my mother and she phoned me on the train to find out when I’d arrive at King’s Cross.’

  Lottie shrugs to show she’s not interested in the details of my life. ‘He needed somewhere to pose as Cupid. So after talking to – Jess – he had the idea to set up at the station and see if you recognised him when you got off the train.’ She smiles faintly. ‘Kill two birds with one stone if you like.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I ask. ‘Did Erik tell you?’

  Lottie slumps back on the sofa and stares up at the ceiling.

  ‘He stayed at yours that night and I didn’t see him for weeks. When he finally came round, he told me about you and begged me to give him another chance. He swore to me you were just a meaningless fling.’

  ‘And you took him back?’

  She lifts her head. ‘Why look so shocked? I bet you gave him a few “second chances”.’

  I sigh heavily because of course, she’s right.

  She folds her arms tightly across her stomach. ‘When I saw you that time in the High Street, in the car with your friend, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to warn you what you’d got yourself into. But I chickened out.’

  I absorb this in silence.

  I’m beginning to realise that Lottie and I are in exactly the same boat.

  ‘So what excuse has he given you for his latest absence?’ I ask at last. ‘He told me he’s visiting his family in Devon. God knows what he’s really up to.’

  Lottie swallows hard. ‘He was with me.’

  I stare at her, unable to speak.

  ‘We were on a drama course in Bath. We stayed with my brother and his wife most of the time.’

  ‘So you were with him all the time?’

  She nods.

  ‘And you were there … together? As a couple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Angry tears well up.

  I can’t bloody believe he told me so many lies; made so many excuses … and I swallowed the lot!

  My chest feels tight. I need to get out of this stuffy flat, breathe some fresh air.

  I turn at the door. ‘Who’s Larissa?’

  ‘Oh, some tart who works at his local,’ she says, with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘He says it’s finished. It never meant anything.’

  I stare at Lottie. We are linked, she and I. Erik has duped us both.

  But there’s one vital difference between us.

  ‘You’re going to stay with him, aren’t you?’ I say sadly. ‘Even after all that’s happened.’

  She sniffs and tosses her head. ‘No, of course not. I’m not that pathetic!’

  But she can’t fool me. I can see it in her eyes because I have been down that road myself. She will keep on taking Erik back, making excuses for him, until she finally comes to the realisation that having him will only ever make her miserable.

  I pull the door behind me and clatter down the stairs, suddenly desperate to put as much distance between us as possible.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At home, I park the van and go straight through the house and into the garden.

  My head is spinning from my confrontation with Lottie.

  A flashback to Erik and me lying in bed slips into my head. That first time he said he loved me. It was so sweet and unexpected. But now I’m wondering if anything he told me was actually genuine.

  I feel as if there’s a lead weight inside me.

  It’s nearly six but there’s still plenty of heat left in the sun. I go inside and find Midge’s diary. She wrote it in an old blue jotter
and I keep it in my desk drawer along with the important documents.

  I take it outside and sit on the terrace.

  As I re-read the diary, I have a clear picture in my head of Midge sitting in her old armchair by the kitchen window, feet tucked under her, notebook balanced on her knee, Murano glass brooch in her lapel as always, and a gin and tonic on the side table; sucking the end of her pen in contemplation, dark eyes roving cheerfully around the lamp-lit kitchen as she thought what to write.

  Just for that hour, it’s almost like having her back.

  I smile when I get to the bit about her talking to the lone apple tree. Because the tree’s stubborn lack of blossom has always frustrated me, too.

  I’ve often wondered why she chose to plant it right in the centre of the front lawn. I’ve read that fruit trees need to be situated near others of the same kind in order to pollinate but Midge obviously didn’t realise this at the time.

  I’m not entirely sure why it makes me so sad that it has never blossomed. It’s probably because I know it’s Midge’s tree. So many times, I’ve pictured her choosing the spot, digging the hole and carefully planting out the young sapling, all in happy expectation of it one day flowering and producing fruit.

  I suppose I’m still hoping – for her and for me – that one day, it might …

  Later, when it gets cooler, I go out to the shed to pack some boxes.

  The carrots look lovely with their green leafy tops. But when I reach for the leeks, I’m dismayed to find that they’ve turned slimy in the early summer heat and are now completely unusable.

  They were delivered by Banksy only two days ago.

  My mind starts racing. I think I’ve got more parsnips than I need. I’ll have to substitute the leeks with those.

  Then I look more closely at the produce and my heart plummets. It’s not only the leeks. I also have two boxes of red bell peppers that have shrivelled in the heat and five crates of broccoli that was lovely and green on Monday but is now, three days later, dry and yellowing, fit for nothing but the compost heap.

  With a trembling hand, I quickly calculate my losses on a scrap of paper. The cost of the wasted produce tops £100. A huge dent in this week’s profits.

  I can’t put it off any longer.

  I’ll have to buy a chill room.

  A nagging voice in my head whispers: And where are you going to find the money?

  But I haven’t got time to worry about that now. I have customers expecting a delivery tomorrow. And to my relief, when I phone Parsons Farm, Alison is still there and I’m not too late to buy in some fresh produce.

  It all takes time, though, and by ten o’clock, when the light in the shed has faded so much I can no longer read the customer order sheets, I decide to call it a day and pack the rest of the boxes the following morning.

  I’m dropping with exhaustion. But there’s still a job I need to do tonight so that I don’t have to face it in the morning.

  Carrying one crate at a time, I heave all the rotting produce to the far end of the garden and hurl it – with far more force than is strictly necessary – on top of the compost heap.

  Then I march indoors and stand under a hot shower, scrubbing away the horrors of the day.

  With the water streaming down over my face, I’m even able to convince myself I’m not crying.

  If I don’t get a chill room, I don’t have a business!

  That’s my first thought when I wake up next morning and as I drive around doing the day’s deliveries, it’s never far from my mind.

  Erik barely figures in my thoughts, I’m so busy mulling over my business options (scanty, to say the least) and worrying that if I can’t sort something out soon, I’ll be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

  My thought processes seem to go round in a circle.

  If the business fails, I’ll be forced to sell Farthing Cottage. And it’s too late to think about finding a ‘proper job’ to pay the bills because I’m already up to my eyes in debt. If I don’t want the house to be repossessed, I have to make Izzy’s Organics profitable. But how can I do that when I have a chill room to buy and only an overdraft to buy it with … ?

  Whichever way I look at it, I’m in terrible danger of losing Midge’s house.

  The last few times we spoke on the phone, she kept talking about the gates and how she wanted to have them professionally restored. I’d promised we’d do the job together. We’d take them to the reclamation yard the next time I went down for a visit.

  But of course, the ‘next time’ never happened …

  I was failing her on so many levels.

  Jess is back from Cornwall, saying she feels better for the break.

  She calls in on her way home from work the following Monday night and we chat over a glass of wine. I remove a giant panda from a chair so she can sit down. The kitchen is in complete chaos, with objects for the auction on Saturday piled on the table and on the bench by the door.

  I want to know why she went down to Cornwall, but she swiftly steers the conversation round to me and Erik.

  ‘He’s an idiot. He didn’t deserve you.’ Crossly, she sloshes more wine into my glass. ‘And anyway, I just read you need to date twelve guys before you choose a long-term partner because that gives you the best chance of making a love match.’

  I reply that if my tally includes Tommy Knowles in Primary One then I’ve already made it to twelve and I’m still no nearer finding The Right One. Whatever that means.

  Jess grabs my arm. ‘Hang on a sec. Maybe it’s Tommy Knowles.’ Her eyes are almost popping out with excitement. ‘Maybe your Mr Right is actually Tommy Knowles! Any idea where he lives these days?’

  After I’ve sent her packing, I slouch in front of the TV and watch a documentary about singletons finding love in unlikely places.

  I haven’t cried once over Erik since Lottie dropped her bombshell. But for some reason, I sob through the entire story of a couple who met in a lift and ended up squeezing into the same elevator, along with their wedding party, for their Big Day. With a registrar who, desperate for his ten minutes of TV fame, was wrestling manfully with claustrophobia.

  I remain tearful during the account of a woman who went to get her legs de-fuzzed and found she’d been double-booked – alongside a man called Derek, who was also there for a leg wax and turned out to be her soul-mate.

  It was all so unfair.

  If men odd enough to want hair removed from their legs could find true love, why not me?

  I decide to take Jess’s advice and write down all the things I didn’t like about Erik. This proves something of a revelation. The list fills two whole sides of a lined A4 notepad.

  But none of this, however helpful in some respects, can solve the knotty problem of who is going to front Saturday’s charity auction.

  Anna keeps saying I should hold off giving Erik the old heave-ho until the auction is over.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t do that,’ was my first response. Because it was just wrong. On so many levels.

  Then later, I got to thinking.

  I certainly didn’t owe Erik any loyalty.

  If Lottie told him about our little chat, then things would come to a head very quickly. But what if she didn’t? What if she was assuming I’d be the one to tell him? If that was the case, I could carry on as if nothing had happened – at least until the fayre was over.

  I’m using the excuse of being frantically busy to avoid talking to Erik on the phone. And I’m feeling fairly confident he won’t show up before Saturday.

  But on the Wednesday night before the fayre, I hear a familiar ring at the door – one long chime, followed by two short pips – and my heart dives into my slippers.

  It’s him.

  In a funny way, that distinctive ring gives me the confidence to face him. It tells me he’s the same old Erik in a chirpy mood. Lottie can’t have told him.

  All the same, I feel sick with nerves as I open the door.

  He’s hol
ding the most enormous bouquet I have ever seen.

  I harden my heart to his dazzling smile.

  ‘Christ, I’ve missed you,’ he says.

  The flowers land on the floor and he pulls me into a huge hug that at first I resist. Then I remember I have to make him think nothing has changed.

  The hug feels achingly sad.

  He pulls back to look at me. ‘You great big softie.’ Smiling, he wipes a tear from my eye with his thumb.

  I smile tightly and twist away from him. ‘Come into the kitchen.’

  He looks surprised but follows me through and sprawls on a chair, watching me.

  ‘So, I hope you’re all ready for Saturday,’ I say a bit too brightly, spooning fresh coffee into a cafetiere. ‘We’ve got loads of great stuff for the auction and I’m relying on you to charm the cash from their wallets.’ Thinking I sound a bit grasping, I add quickly, ‘A big chunk will go to charity, of course.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He laughs. ‘The save-Izzy-from-destitution charity.’

  I smile grimly but say nothing.

  ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ He’s on his feet, grabbing me round the waist.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say briskly, batting him away. ‘Have you eaten?’ I fling open the fridge and peer in.

  ‘It’s Lottie, isn’t it?’ he says and my heart lurches. ‘I hear she’s been bending your ear with her stupid tales of betrayal.’

  Oh God, so he does know.

  Slowly I close the fridge and turn to face him, full of dread at the confrontation that will follow.

  I’m all ready for his excuses and his lies.

  I will be completely immune to his pleas of innocence or the downcast eyes; the agonised confession; the insistence that I’m the one he loves and that he’ll do anything to make things right.

  Whatever he says, I will not allow him to charm his way back into my life.

  He shakes his head. ‘I really worry about that girl. Total head case. Just because she’s depressed doesn’t mean she has to wreck my life as well.’

  It takes a moment for my brain to catch up.

  He levers the lid off the biscuit barrel and roots around inside. ‘Aren’t there any chocolate ones left?’

  I stare at him, bemused.

  ‘Is it my fault if she wouldn’t accept it was over?’ He shrugs. ‘I told you. Head case.’