The Great Allotment Proposal

by Jenny Oliver

  Jack went back to the diary page he was on and started to read aloud, ‘There was a visit to the boatyard today. A whole group of them came. Fred was really proud. That’s Enid’s husband, yeah?’

  Annie shook her head. ‘Not yet. They didn’t marry till after the war.’

  Jack carried on, ‘We didn’t have any butter for pie so I made stewed cherries, sweetening it with honey from the allotment. Big bowls of it. More than any of these men had seen for years, I think. They piled into the cafe and drank us out of tea and devoured bowls of sweet fruit. It was the nicest afternoon I can remember. A bit of flirting and music always lifts the spirits. Kate said I was being brazen but, bloody hell, after you’ve seen what I have in this ambulance job, you think: what’s wrong with a bit of brazen. So yes, when James Blackwell introduced himself and complimented me on my cherries, I’ll admit I might have said something a bit saucy in reply. Ha. I didn’t tell Kate. But when I shut my eyes for sleep, I’m hoping I see his smile rather than the stuff I see at the moment. Enid.’

  ‘I think it’s really unfair that you just picked up a diary and got the best bit.’ Emily shook her head. ‘You’re like those women in Vegas who stalk the slot machines.’

  ‘Emily…’ Jack raised a brow. ‘I think you’re missing the point.’

  ‘Yes, I get the point, I just think it’s unfair that Jane’s ploughed through three of the bloody things and you just pick it up and off you go. So typical.’

  Jack laughed.

  Emily thwacked him on the arm and then said, ‘Move, I’m going to the loo.’

  Jane reached over and took the diary from Jack. ‘I can’t believe he’s in here. I don’t think I thought he would really exist. Did you?’ she said to Annie.

  Annie shook her head. ‘Not really. It’s kinda spooky. Let me get the letter.’ Matt stood up to let Annie pass but then followed her to the counter where the letter about the injured Corporal James Blackwell was tucked inside an envelope underneath the cash tray in the till.

  As she rummaged around to find it, Ludo called out from the kitchen, ‘Stay there, Annie, I want you to try this…’ He held up a sizzling pan of chorizo fritters.

  ‘OK, Ludo. You guys, do you want to try fritters?’ Annie said over her shoulder to where Jack, Ed and Josephine were sitting at the table. They were all a touch awkward now they were alone and jumped up at the chorizo respite.

  Emily came out the loo and paused, surprised to see everyone up by the counter reaching across to sample Ludo’s new creation.

  ‘Oh my god, they’re amazing,’ Jack said, talking around the burning hot fritter. ‘They actually taste like Spain, don’t they, JoJo?’

  Ed turned his head sharply when he heard the shortened version of his wife’s name and Jack paused, as if the word had come out of his mouth on instinct.

  ‘I mean…’ He fumbled for something to say. Josephine looked panicked.

  ‘Of course they taste like Spain,’ Emily cut in with a dramatic roll of her eyes and a laugh, and the tension burst as it always did when she took control of a situation. ‘That’s the whole point. Now, Josephine, tell me, how the hell are you so goddamn stunning and do you have an agent because you really should be modelling.’

  Josephine blushed. ‘I’m far too shy for that.’ She waved her hands as if trying to deflect the attention.

  Emily smiled and then said softly, ‘Jack was telling me that you were at the hippy-dippy eco thing as well. So are you an engineer, too?’

  As Josephine started telling Emily about her career as a conservationist and Emily nodded and listened and said all the right answers and laughed in all the right places, both Jack and Ed seemed to visibly calm. Like animals fluffed up to fight their shoulders sank a touch, their faces softened, Ed started to say something, Jack tipped his head to show he was listening. Matt raised his brows at Annie who winked and got them all beers from the fridge.

  Josephine asked Emily if she minded if they stood outside for a second, she needed to cool off and Emily nodded, grabbing her glass of wine as she went. She could feel Jack watching them go.

  Outside the air was completely still. Not even a leaf moved. The heat hung almost visibly in the air. Josephine breathed out slowly and then turned to Emily and smiled. Emily nearly had to say something again about how pretty she was.

  ‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ Josephine said, holding her thick brown hair up off her neck as she spoke.

  Emily shook her head. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Oh you have. Believe me.’ Josephine looked back inside. ‘That…’ She nodded to where Ed and Jack were chatting. ‘That wouldn’t have happened before you got here. He said he was fine with it, but…’ She shook her head. ‘It’s been really hard.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Emily said, perching against one of the outdoor cafe chairs.

  ‘It’s not that we love each other any more. We don’t. Like we’ll always be fond of each other because of our memories but we don’t love each other. I think Ed sometimes worries about that, not so much any more. But Jack…’ She swallowed. ‘I think with Jack it was just about territory. And completely understandable. I know that.’

  Emily held a hand up. ‘Honestly, you don’t have to explain to me. I certainly know how weird relationships are.’

  Josephine laughed. ‘Yeah, I suppose you do. I still find it weird that Emily Hunter-Brown is here on the island. I mean, you’re a celebrity.’

  ‘I’m not a celebrity.’ Emily shook her head. ‘I was famous once. That’s it.’

  Josephine nodded. ‘We should probably go back in, shouldn’t we?’

  Emily shrugged. ‘Up to you.’

  Josephine took a step towards the door and then paused. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come back. I promise it wouldn’t.’

  ‘I think you’d have all found your way.’

  Josephine shook her head. ‘No.’ Then she seemed to think about whether she wanted to say what she was going to say next. Emily waited, curious. Josephine smiled. ‘I think Jack kept a part of himself for you, always. He loved me in his own way, but there was always you. Always.’

  ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous.’ Emily waved her hand, a bit embarrassed and a bit disbelieving.

  Josephine shrugged. ‘I’m not lying. I promise.’

  Emily swallowed, looked down at the floor. At the mark her flip flops made in the sandy earth.

  ‘I promise it’s true,’ Josephine said again, and then Ed called over to her because Ludo had made more fritters and she went inside, leaving Emily where she was, leaning against the metal chair thinking that she too had kept a part of herself for him. Not a massive part. But a tiny little bit. Polished like a part of a sculpture touched by tourists’ hands. A part that she had kept safe and secure and taken out whenever she could to make sure it gleamed.

  She glanced in the window and Jack waved for her to come in. She nodded.

  The view inside was beautiful. The lights shone, the laughter drifted, the glasses clinked. She remembered what she’d said to Jane about never having relationships. She thought for a second about her and Jack, the first picture in the paper if they got together. The journalists burrowing into his past, the articles that would dredge up everything with Josephine, the websites that would annihilate them, the rumours, the gossip, the paps camped out on her doorstep.

  Jack was watching her. When she caught his eye his eyebrows drew together in an expression to see if she was OK. Emily smiled through the glass. Never had it seemed more apparent that she was on the outside looking in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The dahlias burst one by one. Popping into lush purples and dark flame reds. Their tiny quills curled like wood shavings. The flowers like they’d been turned inside out, the petals bulging out and round to touch the stem.

  Emily adored them. She stroked them to feel the velvet beneath her fingertips. She gazed at them. She jotted down notes for a new spring collection based on the vibrant hues. And while she kne
w she shouldn’t have favourites, there was one flower that was completely and utterly exquisite. Take a magnifying glass to it and it would be impossible to find fault. Red so deep it was like her own blood. A flower so huge it was almost too heavy for its stem. Leaves crisp and waxy and perfect.

  This one was a prize-winner. They all knew it.

  Emily had become obsessed with it. Treating it like she did her new signature scent or her recent bestselling glitter brick – she nurtured it, she protected it, she didn’t stop until it had everything it needed to blossom. And, in turn, she became more tied in with the allotment. Loved the feeling of changing from her work clothes – her silk Balmain jumpsuits, Burberry pencil skirts, Chloé sandals, all things that used to give her a shot of pleasure when she put them on – into her mud-splattered shorts and threadbare T-shirt. Three party invitations stood unopened on her mantlepiece. The organiser of a recent charity ball had phoned to check if she was feeling alright when she had emailed to leave a donation in lieu of attendance. She no longer felt the pull to be out. Instead she wanted to be at the allotment, or in her home – where her new kitchen was starting to take shape and where Winston had finally moved into the living room, scraping away the pineapples – she wanted to be in her garden or out the back sitting on the deck of Jack’s boat. She found herself favouring the Dandelion Cafe over invitations to supper at The Ivy. Drinks with Jane and Annie, sitting beside the crumpled shed, had become more pleasurable than post-work premieres.

  The only negative was the fear that had chased her since the tapas night, when she’d been given a view into what her past could do to ruin her future. She tried to ignore it. To roll over when it tapped on her shoulder in bed, to get up and do something else when she zoned out at her desk at work trying to think of ways to make the impossible possible.

  All the while knowing that she was getting ahead of herself. That Jack just laughed and joked with her, invited her on to his boat to drink brandy and craved a simple life. But she couldn’t deny the moments between them. Silences when they both just looked. Seconds when she thought he might kiss her. And he’d shaved off his beard for goodness sake. There were signs.

  ‘You ready for the weekend?’ he asked on Tuesday as Emily was picking greenfly off her dahlia with her eyebrow tweezers.

  ‘Yep,’ she said, barely wanting to breathe in case it upset her flower.

  ‘When’s the marquee coming?’

  ‘The guys are putting it up on Friday.’

  ‘Security?’

  ‘Your dad’s sorted it, along with a couple of bands and River and Clemmie will play now they’re speaking to each other again. Annie’s sorting the food. Barney’s sorting the drinks. Now all I have to do is make sure my dahlia survives.’ Emily stood up straight and pulled her sunglasses down from where they were tangled in her hair.

  ‘Judges?’

  ‘Your dad. The mayor. Jonathan – urgh. Wilf is coming back so I’ve roped him in as a sort of celebrity judge. And there’s a couple of others from the council. I can’t remember their names.’

  Jack picked a damson and popped it in his mouth. ‘Sounds like you’re all sorted.’

  Emily shrugged a shoulder and said, ‘I am I think. It’ll be fun. I’ve even thought about baking a cake for the bake off.’

  ‘Steady on, Em.’ He laughed.

  Finishing up with her dahlia, she went over to the rickety chairs and plonked herself down with a sigh. ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea how to bake so it probably won’t happen,’ she said. ‘Will you help me? On the day.’

  Jack paused as he was reaching up for another damson. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He picked a couple more of the little purple fruits and came over to where she was sitting, handing her two and then going over to sit on the floor against the collapsed shed.

  After a moment, the sun shimmering an evening haze above them and the birds swooping across the clouds, Jack leant forward, his arms draped over his knees and said, ‘So tell me about Giles.’

  Catching her completely off guard, she almost choked on her damson stone. ‘What about him?’ she said when she’d recovered her breath.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What happened? What went wrong?’

  She drew her legs up underneath her and said, ‘You sound like an interviewer.’

  ‘But I’m not an interviewer. I’m your friend.’

  Emily retied her hair with the bit of old string and licked her lips.

  ‘Was it good?’ he asked. ‘Did you have fun?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah I did. It was fun for a while. At the beginning, it was amazing. That feeling of waking up one morning and you’re the most famous person on the planet practically, that was crazy.’

  ‘And he looked after you? Through all that?’ Jack plucked at the bits of grass between the cracked paving slabs, looking up at where she was sitting, nervously fiddling with her hair.

  ‘I think so. Or at least someone did. Assistants, PR people. It was – I can’t really remember it. In my head it’s more like a colour, like a feeling, you know? It’s a big blur of what I’m pretty sure was happiness.’

  ‘And then?’

  Emily sucked in her bottom lip and glanced over to where Annie’s mum was clipping her tomatoes and Jonathan was re-draping his net curtain protector. ‘And then I think you could probably say it got slightly less happy.’ She laughed but Jack watched her without smiling. ‘I probably wasn’t the best person to be famous. It was like being let loose on this wild adventure that I didn’t have the emotional tools for and, well you know me, I’ve always loved attention.’ She picked at the mud under her fingernails. ‘To Giles I was a kid and he treated me like a kid and so I acted like a kid. He had all his grown-up pals who’d sit around in dark rooms getting high talking about shit and I’d flit in like his teenage daughter trying to get his attention.’ She leant back in the chair and glanced over at Jack. ‘The whole relationship was me trying to get his attention. And when he asked me to marry him it was like I’d hit the jackpot. I don’t think I even thought about whether I liked him or not or whether he loved me. He wanted to marry me.’

  Jack sat back against the fallen shed wall, his legs outstretched in front of him, and asked, ‘Why do you think he asked you to marry him?’

  Emily scrunched up her face. ‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot and part of me thinks it was for the publicity. We generated a lot of income as a couple and I made him more valuable. Our wedding would have been insane. Or maybe it’s that you think marriage will turn your relationship into something else. We had fun together sometimes, he was really protective of me. We’d been together for like eight years so we obviously thought there was something there worth keeping. Or…’ She shrugged. ‘Or it was just habit. Take your pick,’ she added with a smile.

  Jack gave her a half-smile in return.

  Emily lay back in her chair and looked up at the sky, squinted at the falling sun and followed a pair of magpies with her finger as they flew from the damson tree over to the other side of the allotment. ‘But then Adeline came on the scene. I knew something was wrong but I thought it was just the same worries I had. And for Giles, I mean her coming along was a good thing. That’s what’s so annoying. If we hadn’t been about to get married, then I think we could have just sloped apart. We could have uncoupled, as they say.’ She laughed again. ‘But he didn’t bloody tell me. That’s what I can’t forgive him for. That’s what makes me so mad. He let me go right up to the day.’

  Emily looked over at Jack to see him still watching her, his head tilted slightly to one side. His fingers stripping a blade of grass.

  ‘Do you regret it?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Emily shook her head. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Yes,’ she added suddenly. ‘Yes I massively regret it. You’re not meant to have regrets…’ Her voice started to wobble and Jack shifted upright. ‘But I really, really regret it,’ she said, and then she started to cry.

>   ‘Oh shit, Em.’ Jack jumped up and came over to kneel beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ She swiped the tears away. ‘I made me cry.’ Then she smiled at him. ‘It’s good to cry, clears the emotion.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  She reached over and ran her hand down the slight stubble on his jaw. ‘You shaved your beard off.’

  ‘You said you didn’t like it.’

  ‘Is that why you shaved it off.’

  He shrugged. ‘Might have had something to do with it.’

  She smiled and then bit her lip, her eyes dancing with their familiar mischief. ‘Would you flinch again if I tried to kiss you?’

  ‘You said you weren’t trying to kiss me.’

  ‘I wasn’t but would you?’

  A grin spread across Jack’s face. ‘No.’

  Emily nodded but stayed where she was. ‘That’s good to know.’

  Jack narrowed his eyes. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Try and kiss me.’

  ‘No. You try and kiss me.’

  ‘Why? You said it first.’

  Emily laughed. ‘OK.’

  She stared at him, at his dancing laughing eyes, at his cocky half-smile, at his dark, tanned skin.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged.

  ‘OK,’ she smiled. ‘OK.’ And she reached her hand up again and let it rest on his face, then snake round into his shorn hair and, leaning across the arm of the rickety chair, she let her lips touch his and she kissed him for the first time since she was seventeen.

  Snap.

  The sound of the camera shutter was like thunder against the still, quiet evening.

  Emily jerked backwards.

  The blond paparazzo appeared from behind the cherry tree. ‘Gotcha, Em. Gotcha good,’ he laughed and before either of them could do anything he’d jumped on his bike and was cycling off across the allotment to the gate, destroying potential prize-winning vegetables and flattening sky-high sunflowers as he went.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Emily jumped up in panic. ‘Shit, Jack, what are we going to do?’