‘Put the halloumi over there and I’ll give the chickens another turn,’ Dee directed, while Ellie finished setting out napkins and cutlery.
Ellie placed the plate of grilled cheese on the trestle tables they’d set up in a copse of trees next to the stream running in front of Jacob and Maddy’s cabin. Standing back, she brushed sweat-soaked hair off her brow, and took a moment to admire the magnificent spread her mother had brought from the farmhouse. August sunshine beamed through the canopy of trees, illuminating the feast of salads and baked goods.
The sound of birds and insects filled the air around the smallholding. The manic activity of this morning, as everyone chipped in to finish the dwelling, had finally tapered off. She knew Art was inside busy laying the last of the bathroom tiling with Jacob, while Annie and Tess were helping Maddy finish off the painting chores in the sitting room. Josh and Toto had been commissioned to entertain Melody after covering themselves with paint. The two of them scrambled around on the banks of the stream, building a mud palace with Melody for her extensive collection of Frozen figurines. Mike was hauling the last of the debris into the truck to take back to the farmhouse skip, having already made up the bed frame in the newly painted bedroom, while Rob was riding herd on his toddler sons, who had an unenviable knack of always running off in different directions.
After starting at eight the previous morning, they were almost finished, ready to chow down on Dee’s early evening meal in the fading sunshine.
The timber-framed bungalow was perfect for a young couple just starting out, the simple wooden three-room structure topped with a sloping roof of reclaimed slate. Jacob and Maddy had spent their last night in the farmhouse yesterday and there had not been a peep out of them all night. But Ellie still hadn’t slept well – she hoped the quiet wasn’t going to get to her when they were gone. With Josh in his box room between Toto’s room and her mother’s master bedroom on the opposite side of the house, it would just be Art and herself in the east wing of the farmhouse from now on. Thank goodness she had her own en suite bathroom and wouldn’t have to share one with him, because hearing the distant hum of his shower yesterday evening when she’d been lying in bed had been enough of a distraction.
Art emerged from the cabin and unhooked his toolbelt to drape it over the porch rail. She felt the odd bump in her chest that always accompanied sights of Art these days, as he strolled towards the tables across the meadow grass.
‘Food, thank God. I’m starving.’ He rolled up the sleeves of his work shirt. His dark hair gleamed, the stubble on his jaw and the crisp curls of chest hair against sun-browned skin shiny in the sunlight. Her heart bumped again.
No one wore sweat and sawdust better than Art Dalton.
He leant over the table to pluck one of Dee’s feta tartlets off the centrepiece. And got a swift slap on the back of his hand from her mother.
‘Go and wash up in the stream before you touch that,’ Dee said.
As Dee turned back to the barbecue drum, and the chickens slow-roasting over cedar wood charcoal, Art sneaked a tartlet and popped it in his mouth.
He pressed a finger to his lips while he chewed and winked at her. Silly to get dazzled by Art’s mostly non-existent charm, but she couldn’t resist the quick grin in response to his playfulness.
He headed over to the stream to do as he was told and she watched him go.
The plaster-streaked cotton of his work shirt stretched across his back as he crouched down to examine the Frozen palace on the stream bank. Melody pressed next to his knee, resting her hand on his nape as she pointed out all the palace’s design features. His large hand came round to rest on her waist and give it a squeeze as he spoke to her – probably about the construction properties of the palace. Toto joined them, her jeans caked in mud up to her thighs and her hands even filthier.
Ellie couldn’t hear the conversation, the girls’ voices drowned out by the rush of the stream, the whistle and coo of a nearby bird and the noise of the Jackson boys running rings around their father. But she didn’t need to hear the conversation to notice the tilt of Art’s head and then the slow nods as he listened intently.
He rinsed his hands, then stood up, flicking the excess water over Melody who giggled. Then he rested a hand on the back of Toto’s neck – she dived out of the way, giggling too. Josh stood back through it all, shielding his eyes against the sun, then bobbed his head when Art addressed him. The shy smile on his face as Art directed all three of the children to wash up had Ellie’s heart tumbling over in her chest.
Art’s communication skills might be lacking, but his listening skills were exemplary.
The thought of that focused, intent look brought back memories of their kiss in the kitchen. The kiss she still hadn’t managed to completely forget.
‘He’s wonderful with them, isn’t he?’
Her mother’s voice hauled Ellie out of her Art appreciation moment.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled, as she fidgeted with the table layout.
‘I have to admit I had my reservations when Alicia got pregnant. I didn’t think Art would be able to cope with the responsibility. But seeing him and Toto together…’ Her mother gave a quiet sigh of contentment. Dee’s gaze shifted to Ellie, the true blue of her eyes misty with memory. ‘You should never underestimate how much people can do when tested.’
Ellie nodded, realising how much she had once underestimated Art too. ‘So Alicia was Toto’s mother?’ she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.
‘Yes, she lived here for four years. Her and a couple of her friends…’ Her mother paused. ‘They came from London. Said they wanted to try alternative living.’
‘Where is she now?’ If she’d only lived at the farm for a few years had she left when Toto was still a baby? Ellie observed Art down by the stream, busy washing off Melody’s hands while Toto and Josh splashed about nearby getting wet but not a lot less muddy.
Toto was thirteen, which meant by her calculation Art would only have been twenty-one when she was born. Had he been a single dad right from the start? How had he coped? Even with Dee’s help? She could remember how much hard work young children were and she’d had a housekeeper and a maid while Josh was little, hired by her father-in-law, who had insisted that Granger women didn’t waste time on housework when they could pay someone else to do it for them.
‘We don’t know,’ Dee said, the edge in her voice unlike her. Dee rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. But it was clear Toto’s mother had managed to fit herself into that exclusive group. ‘She left before Toto’s first birthday and hasn’t been back in touch since. I can’t say I’m upset about that. She had a lot of problems, but it’s hard to feel sympathetic when she abandoned her own child without a backwards glance.’
So many questions twirled around in Ellie’s brain. How long had Alicia and Art been an item? Did he miss her? And what were the ‘problems’ her mum was alluding to so cryptically? Other than being a monumentally crap mother?
She forced them back though, as Tess and Maddy and Annie joined them to help carve the chickens. And Rob attempted to wrestle his boys into the two high chairs set out at one end of the table.
As Ellie laid a serving platter of barbecued chicken in front of Rob, she observed Art heading back from the stream. He clasped Melody’s hand as she chattered away like a magpie. The older kids trailed behind, now wet as well as muddy.
Questions about Art’s past were probably best left unsaid. And unanswered. He had always been an enigma, and the only other time she’d tried to satisfy her curiosity about him, when she was fourteen, it had not ended well.
*
‘Folks, I need your attention for a minute.’ Jacob looked ready to burst as he tinked his glass with a knife. But, as he pushed back his chair to stand and swept the hair out of his eyes, Ellie could see the nerves.
‘First, I wanted to say thanks, from Maddy and me.’
Maddy whooped and cheered.
‘I’m sure Ellie and Art are going to particularly appreciate us being gone,’ he added, his trademark cheeky grin back.
Ellie’s gaze connected with Art’s across the table as everyone else laughed. The sun was dipping towards the horizon on the other side of Jacob and Maddy’s cabin, throwing Art’s face into shadow, but she could feel his gaze on her before he turned to toast Jacob with his glass of home-made apple cider.
‘Why do you think I got up at six this morning to finish that bloody bathroom.’ Art’s growl rippled across Ellie’s skin, and she shivered despite the warmth of the evening.
She detached her gaze from Art, only to find Annie watching her with a ‘just jump him already’ look on her face.
She took a sip of her own cider and ignored it. She’d already decided that jumping Art was not a solution. Maybe they didn’t hate each other any more, and maybe they’d managed to forge a good if distant working relationship during the shop build, but they were hardly best buddies.
One insane kiss and a couple of hot looks did not a friendship make.
Jacob cleared his throat loudly as the table fell silent again.
‘I wanted to let you all know how much this means to us both. But especially to me, because I’ve been carrying something around in my pocket for over a month now.’ He pulled a small velvet box out of the front pocket of his jeans.
A hush descended over the whole company. Even Jamie Jackson stopped rapping a chicken bone on his high chair as if aware of the gravity of the occasion.
‘I had planned to do this in private.’ Jacob cleared his throat again, staring intently at Maddy. ‘So that if the answer was no, I wouldn’t look like a complete twat.’ He thrust his fingers through his hair, his nerves palpable now.
Maddy had been struck dumb. Obviously she hadn’t been expecting this as much as Jacob thought.
‘But I figured, what the hell? Why not do it in public, in front of all the people I admire and trust most in the world? If I’m going to make a twat of myself, why not go the full twat while I’m at it?’
He turned to Maddy and opened the box, the tremble in his fingers visible. A silver ring embedded with tiny diamonds shone gold in the dying sunlight.
He pulled out his chair and knelt in the grass in front of Maddy, his usually smooth movements clumsy. ‘Maddy… I… Oh shit. For God’s sake put me out of my misery here.’
The beaming smile that spread across Maddy’s face was an answer in itself. ‘If that’s your idea of a proposal, it’s a piss poor one.’
Jacob chuckled, still looking a little unsure. ‘If that’s your idea of an acceptance, it’s an even piss poorer one.’
‘I guess we must be made for each other then.’ Maddy threw her arms around Jacob’s neck, her corkscrew curls bobbing round her shoulders. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
Jacob roared with pleasure then rose to swing his new fiancée round in his arms. Everyone surged to their feet, shouting congratulations and applauding. Toto and Josh whooped and whistled, dancing around behind Jacob and Maddy, who were now kissing as if their lives depended on it, while Jamie Jackson screwed up his face and screamed his lungs out as if he were being murdered.
Ellie’s heart jitterbugged. These two had their whole lives ahead of them and, unlike her and Dan, she didn’t think they were going to bugger it up. Because they didn’t just love each other, they liked each other too.
But, as her gaze travelled round the table at all these people she had come to like so much too, it snagged on Art again. Unlike the others, he wasn’t watching the kissing couple, he was watching her.
She looked away, the heat spreading up her scalp, and everything inside going tight and achy and fluttery. Blast.
*
‘Ellie, could I speak to you a minute?’ Maddy still beamed like a solar-powered flashlight, her cheeks rosy with the apple cider they’d used to toast the couple.
‘Of course, what do you want to speak about?’ Ellie said, handing her mother the box of bowls they’d just finished washing out in Maddy’s new kitchen.
Dee headed out towards the tractor they were loading.
Maddy’s smile spread as she whispered, ‘Wedding plans.’
Ellie laughed. ‘Don’t want to waste any time?’
‘Are you kidding? It took him so long to propose, I want this done before he changes his mind.’
Lifting the box with the last of the leftovers they’d saved, Ellie nodded to the bag of cutlery and plastic plates they had to load before they could head back to the farmhouse. ‘Give me a hand with that and we can walk and talk.’
Hauling the equipment together, past Art and Jacob who were busy dismantling the barbecue, Maddy nudged her arm. ‘I want to do it this summer, while you and Josh are still here. When are you planning to head back to the US?’
The sweet thrill that Maddy would be so keen to include them in her special day was accompanied by a pang of longing.
It was already the sixth of August, the shop was due to open next weekend and they’d already made huge inroads into getting the newly refurbished building stocked. All her thoughts and planning had been focused on the launch. But once they were up and running, she only had three weeks of summer left before the school term started in the US. She’d emailed a lawyer a week ago about the divorce proceedings, but had basically avoided thinking about that too – wilfully putting off any negotiations with Dan and his legal representatives about the splitting of their assets and his visitation rights. For goodness’ sake, she still hadn’t even spoken to Josh yet about the divorce – the thought of having that conversation still giving her panic attacks. That Dan hadn’t raised it in any of his Skype calls with Josh suggested he was more than happy to avoid it too.
‘I suppose we’ll have to head back at the beginning of September.’
‘That soon?’ Maddy sounded shocked. Ellie knew how she felt.
Why hadn’t she given this any thought? She was an event planner for goodness’ sake. Planning for the future was her forte. She needed to stop avoiding thinking about what would happen once their summer was over.
‘I’m afraid so. I need to get Josh settled in a new school.’ In truth, she should go back now to get everything done she needed to get done. But no way was she abandoning the project when they would need her the most.
‘I thought he was going to school with Toto in Gratesbury?’
‘That was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement for the last few weeks of the summer term.’
The children had broken up two weeks ago, and had been disappearing each day on different adventures in the woods, or hanging out with Tess and Melody, to avoid getting roped into helping out with the shop.
‘You can’t go back so soon after the shop has opened,’ Maddy said. ‘You have to bask in the fruits of your labour. Why don’t you ask the school if Josh can enrol there for the autumn term?’
The simple suggestion had the weight in Ellie’s stomach jumping. Maddy was right. If the head teacher still had some spare spaces to fill, why not let Josh start back at school here with Toto? It would save her having to put an arbitrary end date on their stay before she was ready.
Maybe it was a cop-out. Another excuse not to face reality. But she’d started the shop project, she was responsible for its success and she couldn’t possibly leave her mother in the lurch after all Dee had done for them both.
They would still have to go back. But Dan hadn’t contacted her directly since they’d left Orchard Harbor, so he was obviously tied up with Chelsea and preparations for the baby. And she still had no desire to walk back into that minefield before she absolutely had to. Plus, Josh had enjoyed going to school with Toto for the last few weeks before the summer break. He’d made new friends, loved his teacher Miss Morely. Would it be so terrible to extend their stay until the end of September?
‘I could definitely think about it,’ Ellie said, as they stacked the boxes and bags into the truck bed.
‘That’s terrific,’ Maddy said. ‘Because I wanted to ask you a huge favour.’
Ellie smiled, feeling lighter already. ‘Which is?’
‘Would you plan our wedding?’
‘Oh…’ she murmured, torn. She wanted to say yes. Weddings had always been her favourite events to plan in Orchard Harbor. All that positive energy. Plus, she’d adored taking the stress off the bride and groom so they could feel relaxed as their big day approached. And with Maddy and Jacob, the joy of doing that would be all the greater, because they had become friends. Giving them a great start to their marriage would be the perfect gift. But if she committed to this, wouldn’t she be committing to so much more? She wasn’t a permanent part of this community, and she needed to remember that.
‘Before you say no,’ Maddy jumped in, her face a picture of determination, ‘it’s only going to be a small affair. My mum and dad will come and a few of my friends from Richmond where I grew up. Jay’s got no family to speak of, so he’ll just be inviting some of his old mates from Bristol. Even factoring in everyone from the co-op we’re talking fifty people tops. And I’ve already got a dress.’
‘Really?’ Ellie said, impressed.
‘I found it a month ago in the Oxfam shop in Salisbury. Antique lace and satin, bias cut, and it fits so perfectly. I thought it might be a sign so I bought it. I thought I’d sew in some sequins along the neckline to give it a bit of bling.’ Maddy hummed with pleasure. ‘Seriously, I love it so much, if Jay hadn’t asked me soon I would have had to do the asking.’
Ellie laughed. ‘And there I was thinking you were as surprised as the rest of us when he proposed.’
‘I was astonished. But only because it’s taken him so bloody long.’
They both laughed at that one.
Dee came round the back of the tractor to join them, having just corralled Josh and Toto into the trailer they’d hitched up to carry the tables and chairs the short ride across the meadow and through the fields back to the farmhouse. ‘What are you two laughing about?’
‘The stupidity of wedding proposal etiquette,’ Maddy piped up. ‘Whose daft idea was it to leave that job to men? Seriously, it’s so much easier to be a lesbian.’
Dee’s smile was wobbly round the edges. ‘It is now. But we had to wait a long time to even get that option.’
Maddy sobered. ‘God, sorry, I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t mean to be crass.’
‘You’re a woman in love, on one of the most exciting days of her life.’ Dee patted Maddy’s cheek. ‘Crass is allowed.’
‘Maddy and I are talking about wedding plans,’ Ellie cut in, to give Maddy time to extricate her foot from her mouth.
‘That’s marvellous,’ Dee said. ‘I love weddings. Are you planning to have it here?’
‘Absolutely.’ Maddy nodded, her embarrassment forgotten in the rush of excitement lighting her eyes. ‘Do you think we could do it in four weeks?’
It was Dee and Ellie’s turn to looked shocked.
‘Are you joking?’ ‘Four weeks!’ they blurted out in unison.
‘I know it’s a bit mad,’ Maddy said, ‘but I can’t wait to get hitched. And we’re only talking about a glorified party. I don’t want too much fuss. As long as I can wear my dress I’m good.’
‘But why the rush?’ Ellie said, confused now.
‘I want it to be in the summertime, so we can all be outside,’ Maddy said, her eyes still bright with enthusiasm. ‘We could have it one Saturday evening after closing the shop. String fairy lights across the farmyard like we did after the barn clear-out. Maybe add lanterns and flowers to make it magical.’
Ellie could already envision it, but, even so, four weeks wasn’t long. Maddy might think a wedding was nothing more than a glorified party, but even with a small guest list, it would be an important event in the young couple’s life. And if she was planning it, she wanted to do it right. ‘We could still make it magical at the end of September?’ she offered.
‘We?’ Dee said. ‘Will you still be here then?’ The hope in her voice made Ellie’s mind up for her.
‘Yes, I thought I could stay till the end of September. As long as Miss Durden is happy to have Josh enrolled for the start of term. I want to make sure the shop is properly secure before I hand over the reins and head back to the US.’
‘Sweetheart, that’s marvellous.’ Her mother gripped her hands, the pleasure in her voice swelling the ache in Ellie’s chest. She’d have to talk to Josh about the divorce, and their long-term plans for the future before he started school again with Toto, so he didn’t get confused. But, for now, why not extend their summer an extra month?
‘I’ll ring Marjorie tomorrow and have a chat about the logistics,’ Dee added.
Ellie smiled. This was the right thing to do, she couldn’t possibly run out on everyone right after the opening. And now they had a wedding to plan.
‘So there’s no need for you to rush the wedding,’ Ellie said, addressing Maddy again. ‘We could schedule for the end of September, and give ourselves another three weeks of planning time. Two months is much more doable than one.’
Maddy’s face went spotlight red. She slanted a furtive look across the meadow to where Art and Jacob were now sharing a beer with Rob and Annie Jackson. The Peveneys had already headed home with a sleepy Melody.
‘Actually, there kind of is a need to rush the wedding.’ She swallowed audibly, her excitement and joy palpable in the evening light as she placed a hand over her abdomen. ‘I want to be sure I’m not too pregnant to fit into that dress.’