The Great Allotment Proposal

by Jenny Oliver

  Tuesday Emily had to dash home from the office midmorning ahead of the launch party of her new Cherry Blossom fragrance because she’d forgotten the notepad with her speech and her shoes.

  It was another scorcher of a day. The party was being held on a roof garden overlooking St James’s Park and her assistant had come back from a morning recce to tell her that the paving stones up there were steaming – scalding her foot when her flip flop slipped off. Emily had spent most of the morning refreshing her weather app to see if any cloud cover was due, trying to track down some giant sun umbrellas, and ignoring a great email hullabaloo about the article Faye Starkey had written post Emily’s interview walkout. She hadn’t read it. She didn’t want to read it. She wanted it to go away and not ruin her party. But her PR company wanted her to agree to an interview with a rival magazine that would lay the truth bare, which Emily had no intention of doing. She was reading the email as she walked in the front door of Mont Manor, feeling the immediate relief of the cool inside compared to the belting sun outside.

  Winston was up a scaffolding rig painting over the giant spray-painted skull on the hall wall while Radio Two was booming over the deafening thuds of the kitchen demolition. ‘You’re home early,’ he called down.

  Emily kicked off her shoes and dumped her bag. ‘I’ve got to pick some stuff up,’ she shouted over the noise.

  Winston nodded, then turned back to dip his brush in the white paint before pausing and saying, ‘Just want to say, my mrs showed me the article this morning and I was horrified. Trash. I want you to know that I think it’s trash. Me and the mrs both think that. Says she’s never going to watch a Giles Fox film again.’

  Emily smiled. ‘Thanks, Winston. I appreciate it. Although I’m not sure Giles had anything to do with it so I wouldn’t want your wife missing out on his films.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that, nice of you to say.’ Winston raised his brush at her and then carried on with his painfully slow painting.

  Emily went through into the living room where she’d created a makeshift desk in front of the big French windows. She tried not to look around too much when she walked in – the luminous-pink carpet and pineapple wallpaper made her wince. Somewhere else she might have thought it was OK, avante-guard trendy, but not here. When Bernard had owned the manor, this room had been the yellow room. Buttercup paint and pale-cream curtains. Polished wood floorboards and a giant marble fireplace that their dog would stretch wide in front of in winter, Christmas lights twinkling around the big gold mirror above. Every room was known as its colour. Never the living room or the study, but the red room and the green room. Her plans for redecoration were based on exactly that.

  Sitting down, she tried to concentrate on an email thread about the huge umbrellas and jugs of cucumber water that would be available alongside the Aperol aperitifs, but the urge to find and read the article was niggling her.

  It would be better if she read it, she thought. But it would only upset her.

  She bit her fingernail and thought about what someone else might do. She thought about Enid. She was always about facing things head on. She’d been the one to push her to tell Jack about Giles. To come clean and get it all out in the open, even if it meant sending a letter because there was no internet and the phone was always engaged or the line dead. Emily had just wanted to ignore it all and start her new life. Better to just up and leave, she had thought. Jack wasn’t exactly making much contact with her. But Enid had almost stood over her as she wrote. Clear up after you, Emily. The worst thing you can do is leave someone without answers.

  She had written to Jack to tell him about Giles and her impending move to LA. Jack had written back a note that said, I thought something like that might happen.

  No fight, no tears, no upset. Just that she had behaved the way he’d expected.

  And Emily had suddenly seen herself, momentarily, through his eyes, through Enid’s eyes, and she had hated it. So just as quickly she had glossed over that vision and packed her bags for Hollywood where, she discovered, no one really cared about what was underneath, as long as the surface was shiny enough.

  It was only recently that Emily was starting to see beneath her surface and like what was there. What she was really scared of about this article was that it would mess that up. That the comments and observations would get under her skin and she wouldn’t be able to shake them away. She would see them every time she looked in the mirror.

  Don’t read it.

  She searched the magazine name and immediately saw a picture of herself in one of the little boxes on its cover. She shut her laptop.

  People would mention it at the launch, she thought. They would mention it the way Winston had mentioned it.

  All the other pieces that had come from the press junket had been published already. Light and whimsical stuff that she had been completely in control of, batting away comments with funny little quips and charming them with stories of youthful summers frolicking in the cherry orchard.

  She opened the laptop.

  Where’s a Hunter without her Fox?

  Emily sighed, put her chin in her hands and started to read.

  Emily Hunter-Brown says she’s fine. OK, Em, we’ll play along. She’s not looking for romance (yet hang on a sec? Isn’t her new signature scent ‘Cherry Blossom’? And what did she wear in her hair at her engagement party? You guessed it!), she’s completely forgiven Giles (but she hasn’t called to congratulate him on his new baby), she’s not broody (yet she’s just bought a six-bedroom house?).

  ‘Honestly, I’m very happy for him,’ she says of Giles, lowering her head and looking up through tear-flecked lashes. When I question her further, she comes back with her trademark, husky ‘That’s private.’ Yet I can see the turmoil behind her eyes.

  I ask why she’s suddenly so serious. Where’s our fun, wild Emily gone? She claims she’s growing up – hence the blue highlights, gone, and the dumped Rolling Stones roadie – but we want to tell her that growing up doesn’t have to mean boring, sad and lonely. Bring back our Em with her crazy brand of cool.

  Not only that, we’re worried about you, Emily. Alone in that big new house of yours. We worry that you’re building a bubble around yourself away from reality. We worry that we’re losing you to a fantasy past. We don’t want to utter the words Havisham, but if we don’t, someone else will.

  So we’ve done the only thing we felt we could do…

  We’ve called in the Fox.

  ‘Oh god.’ Emily covered her eyes with her hands and read the last bit through the cracks in her fingers.

  And even we had to catch our breath when Giles said that he too was worried. (OMG, Mr Fox, we LOVE you.) He urged her to get in touch and told us to tell her that he’s always there if she needs him. (We can hear Adeline screeching from here!)

  Read into that what you will. Butterflies fluttered in our tummies.

  So please, Emily, if you’re reading this, call Giles. It may be the most important call you ever make. You say you’re OK, but we simply can’t believe you.

  ‘Bollocks.’ Emily slammed the laptop shut. ‘Giles, you snake,’ she said then, closing her eyes for a moment, realised that he probably hadn’t even spoken to them.

  ‘Everything all right, Emily?’ Winston called from the hallway.

  ‘Fine thanks, Winston.’ She pulled her hair away from her face and tied it up with an elastic band.

  She read the article again and again, wishing that she’d never read it once. She knew she shouldn’t let it take the shine of the launch of her perfume – blossom in her hair at the engagement, for goodness sake? How dare they bring it back to that. The scent was her tribute to Cherry Pie Island. The smell of the first blossoms, the big puffballs of flowers and the carpet of white petals. But it made her want to curl up in her bed clutching the signature scent to her chest, to lock it away so no one else could have it. She had wanted it to be about her strength and vitality. About independence and spirit. Her memories of a time b
efore she became ‘Fox Hunter’ and an ability to make it on her own without anything to do with him attached. And yet however many years passed – five now – she couldn’t shake him.

  So she Googled him instead.

  There he was in the hundreds. Pages and pages of him. She hadn’t really looked at a photo of him in years. And now there were almost too many to see clearly. She peered at the photos of him with his new baby. With Adeline at the Oscars. With him loping down the street with his bulldog, carrying a Starbucks and talking on his phone. With him wearing glasses, which she wasn’t sure he needed, looking serious as he tried his hand at directing. She studied him, the lines on his face, the slight stubble, the tan, the new tattoos. She got really close up on one picture of his face front on and examined every detail. She looked at his clothes, at his shoes, at his wedding band. And she realised that she didn’t know him at all any more. Not even slightly. His smile was the same. His eyes were the same. But otherwise he was a stranger. A person with whom her life once crossed.

  Yet as they crossed, she had been snagged. Caught like a bit of flotsam on the back of his boat, bashing about through the waves as he speeded forward. And, try as she might, she couldn’t shake herself free.

  ‘Damn you!’ she said, slamming the laptop shut.

  ‘Are you talking to me, Emily?’

  ‘No, Winston, you’re all right.’

  She had to get out. She needed an hour’s peace. She needed, she realised, to go to the allotment.

  ‘Oh you’re back?’ Emily said as she walked up to her patch, surprised to see Jack there watering his tomatoes.

  ‘Just now,’ he said, bending down to retie some of the stalks to their canes. ‘Why? Did you miss me?’

  Emily got her hoe out from the precarious shed and shook her head. ‘Not really.’

  Jack laughed. ‘No, I don’t suppose you did. What’s wrong with you? You look furious.’

  ‘I’m not furious.’

  He leant on one of the canes, raised one eyebrow and said, ‘Em, you’re fuming.’

  She started hoeing, severing the heads off the tiny weeds. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said with a chuckle and went back to detangling and tying his tomato plants.

  ‘All right, son?’ said a man’s voice, then, ‘Oh hello Emily! Nice to see you here.’

  Emily turned to see Jack’s dad, Alan Neil, walking up the path with a bag of beers in one hand and a tray of seedlings in the other. She knew him pretty well, not just from when she was a kid, but because she hung around with the kind of people that recorded at Alan Neil’s studio. The venue was infamous not just because it was based in an old lighthouse, but because Alan was one of the best producers in the business and musicians flocked to work with him. He kissed her on both cheeks when he got close and said, ‘I heard you’ve single-handedly saved the Cherry Pie Show.’

  Emily saw Jack frown in the background. It was clearly news to him.

  ‘Did you know that, Jack?’ His dad asked. ‘Emily’s bringing back the festival. Well not exactly is it, it’s more like a hybrid show and festival. I got your email about the music, I’ll get the bands there, don’t you worry. I’ve got some brilliant little up and comers and I reckon I could pull in a few favours. You’ll have to make sure you’ve got some decent security though. Don’t want a rerun of the last one.’

  Emily shook her head. ‘You might have to help me with that as well,’ she said, looking sheepish. ‘I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start with that.’

  Alan winked. ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll sort it for you. You could put Jack on the door. That beard’d scare away any rogue visitors.’

  Emily laughed for the first time that day. ‘No kidding. He’s like a monster.’

  Jack ignored the two of them and moved on to some other plants that Emily had no idea what they were.

  ‘Hey, here’s Ed and the little ’un–’ Alan pointed over to the gate where Ed Neil, Jack’s younger brother, was walking over carrying a young kid, who must have only been one, on his shoulders and behind him was a tall, tanned, willowy woman dressed in a flowery cotton sundress, her hair pulled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and her face like an Egyptian goddess. She was breathtakingly stunning. Emily was almost tempted to ask her to be the face of her new campaign.

  ‘Blimey, Ed’s done all right for himself, hasn’t he?’ Emily said, with an incredulous look at Alan. ‘Where did she come from?’

  But instead of laughing back, Alan just gave her a tight smile and started to walk towards Ed and his family.

  Emily looked at Jack for back-up that what she had said wasn’t weird or out of line, but Jack was staring resolutely down at his perfect lines of plants.

  ‘Emily, you know Ed, don’t you?’ Alan said, pointing from Ed to Emily and back again.

  ‘Yeah. The annoying younger brother,’ she said with a smile and a wink. ‘You’d always be like “Jaaaack, it’s your girlfriend” when I rang and then you’d giggle down the phone. D’you remember?’

  Ed nodded and blushed a touch as he held out his hand to shake. When Emily’d last seen him, he’d been a scrawny, geeky little thing, into building balsa wood models with his brother and model aeroplanes and generally following along after Jack with big doe eyes. Now he was still fairly scrawny but in a city banker kind of way: pink low-slung shorts, a cream striped casual shirt, a woven belt and deck shoes.

  ‘And this is Monty,’ Alan said, pointing to the toddler who had clearly softened Alan in his dotage. ‘And Josephine.’

  ‘Hi,’ Emily said, reaching round Ed to extend her hand to his wife.

  Josephine smiled shyly as she shook Emily’s hand, said hi, then lifted Monty off Ed’s shoulders and went to look at the chickens on the neighbouring plot.

  ‘So how did you two meet?’ Emily asked Ed, who was taking off his rucksack and opening it up to get stuff out for Monty.

  They all seemed to pause for a second, stiffen at the question.

  Emily swallowed. Wishing suddenly that she’d left it at the earlier comment to Alan. She didn’t know what the problem was, but it was clearly some unspoken balloon above them that she was unwelcomely prodding.

  ‘Hey, guys!’ Annie arrived, saving the moment, and everyone relaxed, letting Emily’s question disappear into the afternoon. ‘I’ve got vanilla sponge and cherry pie and some chocolate muffins. All leftover from the cafe and it has to be eaten by the end of the day. Monty, I see a chocolate muffin with your name on it,’ she said, smiling at the toddler. Next to Annie was her little niece Gerty, dressed in a red tutu, pink boots and a black and white striped T-shirt, around her neck was a camera and she was snapping shots of the allotment’s decrepit shed.

  ‘Don’t go too close to that, Gerty, that thing’s a death trap,’ Annie said as she unloaded packages from the cafe.

  ‘But it’ll make a good photo,’ said Gerty, going closer, kneeling down for a shot of the rotten, lichen covered door.

  ‘Well just be careful,’ said Annie, then looked over to the others and said, ‘She’s going for that Young Photographer of the Year Award.’

  ‘Get a good shot of that shed, Gert, and you’ll be in with a chance,’ Ed said with a smile as he went to join his wife, handing Monty his cup and bending down with them to look at the chickens. Alan went over to give Jack the tray of plants he was carrying as Emily lay her rake down next to the sweet peas and wandered over to Annie.

  When she got near she made a show of helping her undo the cake packets while whispering, ‘Why are they all so funny about Ed’s wife?’

  Annie looked furtively over at Ed and Josephine and then towards Jack and Alan. Jack had glanced up, clearly aware of what they were talking about. ‘I don’t think I can tell you here,’ Annie whispered back, trying to keep her lips still like a bad ventriloquist.

  ‘Just tell me,’ Emily muttered.

  ‘Gerty, mind the shed,’ Annie called over to her niece. Then really quickly under her breath sai
d to Emily, ‘Because she was married to Jack.’

  ‘What?’ Emily said, a touch too loud, and she heard Alan cough behind her and knew it was a warning.

  Annie made a face and nodded.

  Emily stood open-mouthed for a second, but before she had a chance to glance over and stare at Ed, Josephine and Monty looking at the chickens, the shed collapsed with a giant bang.

  ‘Gerty!’ Annie yelled as the whole structure toppled to the left, the supporting side wall hitting the ground with a smack and the roof bashing down on top of it. Gerty sprang back on her bum, clicking the shutter of her camera by mistake. The surprise made her cry as Annie scooped her up and away from the wreck.

  Jack jogged over to check that they were OK and when it was clear everyone was fine, stood next to Emily watching a couple more bits of wood snap and the walls slide further sideways, before saying quietly, ‘Got your gossip?’

  Emily turned to look at him. ‘I had no idea,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry.’ Not even bothering to mask the fact they’d been caught gossiping.

  Jack just shrugged. ‘It’s life.’

  ‘And you’re OK with it?’ she asked, glancing sideways to see Josephine cuddling a shocked, crying Monty.

  ‘What would the alternative do?’ he said. ‘There’d be no family.’

  Emily frowned, unsure at his reasoning.

  Jack smiled. ‘You can’t stop what will be, Em,’ he said, then reached forward to grab a slice of vanilla sponge. ‘Your shed is buggered.’

  Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Tell me about it. All our tools are in there.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Jack nodded his head towards what looked like the corner of a wooden box sticking out the earth where the side wall had collapsed.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Emily said, taking a step forward. ‘Looks like a wine crate. Maybe it’s vintage champagne. That’d be fun.’

  Annie and Jack followed her forward. Handing his vanilla sponge to Emily, Jack bent down and pushed the earth away from the top of the box and then scooped it out from the sides. ‘You want me to pull it out?’