by Unknown
Pink juice dribbling from their lips, she and Spurs picked one and ate one in the traditional way, trying competitively to fill their own punnet first, while at the same time greedily incapable of stopping themselves cramming the best of the crop into their mouths.
‘I always think these places should weigh the punters along with the punnets before letting us loose,’ Ellen said, as they worked their way along opposite sides of the same row, bumping heads as they looked for hidden gems beneath the shark-toothed green leaves.
‘How much does a guilty conscience weigh?’
‘More than a bellyful of strawberries.’ Ellen watched as Snorkel and her new pack charged up to another car bumping across the ruts in the parking field. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondering. How much soft fruit does a thought that weighs on your mind weigh?’
‘Three strawberries and a loganberry.’
‘And how many strawberries does it take to pull your weight?’
‘More than a weight off your mind but less than it takes to throw your weight around. Is this going anywhere?’
He looked up, holding the fattest, juiciest strawberry Ellen had ever seen. ‘No. I like going nowhere with you just as much as I like going places.’ He put the strawberry to her lips.
‘Stop it,’ she breathed, and turned her face away.
‘Sorry?’
‘You heard.’
He tapped the strawberry against his nose, then laid it carefully on top of his punnet. ‘You’re funny.’
‘If you say so.’ She wiped the sweat from her forehead, longing for the storm to break.
Blue-haired Pixie had gone when they walked back into the glasshouse. In her place was the eldest of the many elfin children, scribbling doodles on the OU prospectus and chatting on her mobile phone. She watched Spurs with interest as he gathered several trays of bedding plants from the tables in the centre. Then he spotted a big bucket filled with citronella torch candles in the shape of stars and gathered up the lot. He marched to the till and gave her his devilish smile.
She weighed the strawberry punnets and rang them up, along with the bedding plants, chatting all the time. ‘Yes, he’s still with her, although fuck knows what he sees in her, and she has a singing voice like a cat that’s just been sat on by a pensioner. Thirty-five pounds sixty.’ She looked up at Ellen and Spurs.
‘How much?’ Ellen hastily hid the twenty she’d fished from her shorts.
‘Thirty-five pounds sixty. Thanks.’ She took the fifty-pound note that Spurs was offering and gave him a ravishing smile as she rang his change through the till. ‘Dilly reckons Ely Gates is still trying to split them up – her mad mum is like a witch or something and she always knows what’s going on. Yes, I know she’s a bit stuck-up, but I reckon Dilly’s quite cool as it goes. Fourteen forty.’ She handed Spurs his change with a wink.
As he and Ellen headed towards the doors again, the girl whispered into her phone, ‘I just had a right stud buying stuff here. Shame he has a wife. You should see him. No – definitely not local.’
‘That,’ Spurs breathed as walked outside, ‘is manna to my ears.’
‘Being a right stud?’ Ellen cuffed his arm.
‘Nope.’
‘Oh, you mean the fact she didn’t recognise you as local?’
‘No.’ He looked at her through the bedding plants, silver-bullet eyes scoring direct hits. ‘She thought you were my wife.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘We could be married,’ he pointed out, dead-panning her. ‘We’re at a garden centre, after all.’
‘We could be brother and sister,’ she retaliated. ‘You dared me to jump off a hill and made me cry.’
‘We could be mistress and gardener,’ he offered.
‘Or colleagues in a strawberry-jam-manufacturing business?’ She looked at the overflowing punnets.
‘Or just greedy bastards?’
‘Fly-hating arsonists?’ She propped the citronella torches against the jeep bonnet.
‘Lovers.’ He leaned against the car while she unlocked it.
‘Strangers,’ she reminded him. ‘We hardly know each other.’
‘Oh, we do.’ He smiled. ‘We so fucking do.’
‘Friends.’ She looked at him levelly.
He shook his head, still smiling. ‘I don’t do friends any more.’
Ellen left him laying the trays on the back seat and went to gather Snorkel, who was happily joining in her new gang’s attempts to mug a well-dressed couple with a pair of furious pugs on their parcel shelf.
‘You tourists?’
‘Woof, woooooof, WOOF!’
‘Yes.’
‘You from London?’
‘No – Ashbridge.’
‘Wooooof!’
‘Can your dogs play with ours?’
‘Absolutely not – shoo! Shoo!’ they told Ellen furiously. ‘Your children should learn a little respect.’
Spurs laughed his head off when she told him as they drove back. ‘So you’re my wife and we have uncontrollable children – why am I seeing my future flashing in front of my eyes?’
Ellen put her foot down, ignoring the rattling above her head and in it.
While Spurs was unloading the jumps from the jeep, Ellen stashed the strawberries in the fridge, then walked through the house, letting herself out of the low cellar-steps door so that she could creep to the pond and fish out the scuppered paper boat and the horseshoe. She rinsed both under the outside tap, but the paper shredded and fell apart in her hands.
She clipped the hose on to the tap and went back to the pond to wash the last of the algae from the liner, first scooping out the slop with a bucket.
‘What is it with you and that pond?’ Spurs asked, when he came to find her.
‘I like to be near water,’ she explained, poking a stick into the fountain nozzle to remove the gunk that had built up there.
He picked up the hosepipe and she thought he was going to drench her with water, but instead he directed it at one of the big flower-beds under the hedgerow, showering it with great spectrums of droplets to soften the earth for planting.
‘My father dug this pond himself,’ Ellen told him, her pride fierce, not knowing where this outburst was coming from. ‘He’d just had a heart-attack, but he was still out here with a shovel day and night. He could never stand still.’
‘Like you.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is he okay now?’
‘So-so – he still pushes himself too hard, and I think my mother is terrified that he’ll drop dead the moment this place is sold and leave her alone half-way up a Spanish mountain. She thinks he’s on borrowed time, but Dad never borrows anything he can’t repay. He’ll be around for years.’
Spurs was creating another small water feature now as one corner of the bed filled up with dark, swirling earth. He hardly seemed to notice that he was watering the same spot continually. ‘How can you be so sure?’
Ellen looked up from poking at the fountain. ‘Because I want it to be true.’
‘Don’t you think it’s better to prepare yourself?’
She threw the stick into the reeds and clambered out of the pond. ‘I’ve seen him attached to tubes and monitors and machines that kept him breathing. We were told he wouldn’t survive the first attack. I was prepared then, but he wasn’t. He thinks he’s immortal. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to live for ever if he wants? I’m not going to stand in his way.’
He was still soaking a tiny patch of bed so that muddy water spilled out on to the grass. ‘I only ask because my mother is quite ill. Very ill,’ he corrected himself. ‘My mother is dying.’
‘Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry,’ she breathed.
He was soaking his own feet now. ‘She refuses to tell anybody that she’s terminally ill. I only found out by accident,’ he grimaced at the enormity of the secret. ‘Christ knows, I should have guessed. She’s so driven now. And she’s in such a hurry – she has an awful lot to sort out before . . .
before she . . . goes.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellen said again, standing beside him, her feet sinking in his man-made bog. ‘Do you know how long?’
‘Not longer than six months, I believe.’
‘Is it cancer?’
‘I don’t know – maybe.’
Ellen gently took the hosepipe from him and twisted off the sprayer. It seemed so strange that he knew so little compared to the way her family had coped with her father’s illness, acquainting themselves with every medical fact at their disposal, reading books and searching the Internet for information until they were better versed than the cardiologist.
‘Nobody in the village knows, so I’d be grateful if—’
‘I won’t tell a soul,’ she promised.
‘Thanks.’ He looked down at his wet feet. ‘She’s always said they’re made of clay – and here’s the proof.’ He laughed bitterly.
‘But you came home to prove otherwise?’
He stepped out of the loamy puddle and prised off the sodden trainers. ‘I guess so. The prodigal son and all that. Take your shoes off.’
Ellen sensed there was a lot more to it, but he wasn’t saying. He took the hose back and rinsed first her feet, then his own before leaving the water running into the pond.
‘Have you thought about your other two wishes?’ He stared at the bubbling water, desperate to move away from his tragic secret.
‘You’ve granted more than three already.’
He stared into the black depths, a crooked smile on his lips. ‘Oh, you don’t get away with it that easily. That’s just wishful thinking.’
‘Then I wish I didn’t think so much,’ she said idly.
‘Wish I couldn’t read your thoughts?’
‘I was thinking just that.’
‘I know.’
With their trainers drying side by side they knelt in front of the bed and started to dig in plants. Ellen couldn’t bear Spurs’ sadness. She longed to cheer him up, however temporarily. ‘Let me buy you a meal tonight to thank you for this,’ she insisted. ‘If you don’t mind eating at the Duck twice in one weekend?’
‘You’ll never get a booking.’
‘Somewhere else, then – the Oddlode Inn?’
‘I’m under a lifetime ban,’ he admitted, not looking her in the eye. ‘Besides, they don’t serve hot food. You can cook for me if you like.’
‘I don’t really cook,’ she confessed, the customary fear gripping her at the prospect of anything involving a pan, a hob and a smoke alarm.
‘In that case I’ll just have to settle for strawberries and lot sixty-nine.’
‘Lot . . .’ Ellen’s heart hammered as she recognised the number only too well. ‘You bought my promise?’
‘It was a fair trade. Mind you, I had to fight for it – Giles had bribed the auctioneer, I gather. Thankfully, I have her ear.’
Oh, hell. Ellen buried her hot face in a tray of garish dahlias.
Ellen tried to cram back as much lunch as possible in the hope that there wouldn’t be enough supplies left for supper so they’d have to go out after all. But they had picked more strawberries than the Wimbledon crowds could consume on men’s finals day, and the huge hunk of cheese that had survived from the day before was still as big as a brick, even after she’d stuffed her face with the doorstep sandwiches she’d lobbed together.
‘Worked up an appetite flying around earlier?’ Spurs watched her bulging cheeks with amusement, no longer melancholy.
‘Something like that.’ She thought about the way he had made her cry afterwards and found she couldn’t swallow.
He threw the crust from his sandwich to Snorkel. ‘It’s a beautiful place. I haven’t been up there for years. We used to go there as kids – play dare.’
‘Ever do that dare before?’
‘That was at least a double dare,’ he teased her, silver eyes egging her on to play verbal catch. ‘And no, we never got the girls to do double dares.’
They eyed each other childishly, and Ellen felt the sparks light her touch-paper as always. ‘Does that mean I get to dare you?’
‘If you like.’ He smiled, but his eyes hardened warily. ‘What did you have in mind?’
The tension stretched out between them like taut elastic. He knew her well enough already to guess she wasn’t going to challenge him to naked mud-wrestling in the flower-bed.
She fanned her T-shirt and chewed a corner of her lip, risking a wild card because time was running out. ‘I dare you to apologise to Pheely.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘I think it is.’
He ate a strawberry, threw the stalk on to his plate. ‘I’d rather gallop Daffodil’s horse down from Broken Back Wood.’
‘I doubt she’d let you do that.’
‘Want a bet?’ His eyes sparkled.
‘No. You mustn’t ask that of her. It’s not fair. The horse might get hurt – then Pheely would never forgive you.’
‘Otto’s Dilly’s horse. I bet she’d let me.’
‘You could kill him.’
‘And me? What if I got hurt?’
‘You’d be more likely to get hurt apologising to Pheely.’ She was suddenly incensed. ‘That’s what you’re really frightened of, isn’t it?’
‘Fuck Pheely.’
Ellen felt her arteries boiling, all pity abandoned. ‘I dare you.’
‘To fuck Pheely? No, thanks.’
‘To apologise to her!’
‘Never. I’ll ride that hill every day and kill a hundred horses until I shatter my spine first.’
She looked at him levelly. ‘You’re such a coward.’
‘I’m not!’ He hulled half a dozen strawberries, laying them out in front of him like ducks in a shooting gallery. ‘They’d love it round here if I broke my back.’
‘Maybe it would break the rod you’ve made for it?’
‘The only rod I can feel is the one between my legs that wants to fuck you.’ He popped the strawberries into his mouth one at a time as he stared her out.
‘Oh, grow up.’
He laughed. ‘I thought you loved me?’
‘Not when you’re like this, I don’t.’ Ellen stacked the plates together, grabbed the strawberry bowl and carried them inside.
‘I haven’t finished!’ he complained, following her and snatching strawberries. ‘And what d’you mean “when you’re like this”? Like what?’
‘Where do I start? Self-pitying – reckless – headstrong – crude as oil.’
‘Just like you, then?’
‘I’m not crude.’
‘Oh, you are. And you want to get a whole lot cruder with me right now.’
She slammed the plates down on the kitchen surface. ‘I didn’t know you before, but frankly I’m finding it hard to swallow the “I’ve changed” line. You don’t seem to care about another soul – human or animal – apart from yourself.’
‘Don’t you believe I love you, then?’
‘That joke’s worn thin. I’ve enjoyed your company these past couple of days, and I’m really grateful for your help. Honestly. But you are one of the most changeable, unpredictable and screwed-up individuals I’ve ever met.’
‘So are you.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m not surprised Richard pissed off. Two days with you is hell – how the poor sod lasted thirteen years is a miracle.’
‘You bastard!’
‘You bitch.’
She threw a strawberry, which bounced off his chest. He lobbed a tea-towel back. She launched a handful of strawberries and half a baguette. He retaliated with a kitchen roll. She scored a direct hit with the cheese. He played an underhand shot with a wax lemon from the artificial fruit arrangement and laughed when it ricocheted off her forehead into the sink.
‘This is not fucking funny!’ she howled, then hurled a plate, which he only just managed to duck. She stormed outside to the pond, which had filled to overflowing. Picking up the hose, she turned back to stop h
im chasing her outside. ‘Don’t come any closer!’
‘Or what?’ He slowed to a walk.
‘You get wet.’ She held up the hose.
‘Oh, I am so scared.’ He carried on walking towards her.
‘I mean it!’
‘How wet would I get?’
‘Bloody wet.’ She turned the jet from a trickle to a blast and wagged it in the air, inadvertently showering herself with drips.
‘As wet as you are now?’ he asked.
Thinking he was referring to her lack of hose control, she glowered at him.
‘As wet and slippy and hot and bothered and horny and turned-on as Ellen?’ He spoke in a hypnotic chant.
Ellen felt the hosepipe wobble as her hands started to shake.
‘Deny it.’ He was still walking towards her. ‘Deny you’re so wet you don’t know what to do with yourself.’
‘Get lost.’
‘You can’t, can you? You can’t deny it.’
She thrust the hosepipe in front of her and let him have a gallon full in the face.
‘Yeaaaaaaawwwwwwwwww!’ The next thing she knew, thirteen stones of muscle-power had rugby-tackled her and she was flying backwards, his arms around her waist, straight into the pond.
‘You b-b-bastard!’ she spluttered, choking on the water.
‘Bitch!’ He held her under.
She hammered at his chest and kicked out, convinced for a moment that she was fighting for her life. She should never have crossed him. He was capable of murder. He’d tried to kill her once already that day – sending her off on a crazy parachute jump for a dare. Now he was drowning her. Well, she wasn’t going without a fight.
‘Owwww!’ he wailed, as she scratched his face hard. ‘Get off!’ He was still laughing.
Splashing away from him, Ellen realised that perhaps he hadn’t been trying to kill her, after all. Breathless, heart hammering, she managed to stand upright, only to find his hand on her ankle, pulling her over again.
She kicked out as she fell and caught him hard on the chin.
Totally submerged, she felt the water rush through her nostrils and down the back of her throat as she gulped it into her windpipe by mistake. In the gloom, she could see a hand reaching out close to her face and she batted it away, kicking back with her legs to get as far away as possible. Her head burst out of the water, and she made a lunge for the bank, dragging herself up on to the reed bed and spluttering as she fought for breath, laughing and gagging as she went. Then she turned back to the pond.
