Summer At Willow Tree Farm: the perfect romantic escape for your summer holiday

by Heidi Rice

  And now, after everything he’d just told her, stuff he’d never told anyone, not even Dee, and the patient way she’d listened, and the compassion and fury shining in her eyes when she had, he was finding it even harder to ignore the boulder on his chest. He didn’t want to hope, because that made him feel pathetic. But surely she wouldn’t have asked him about all that shit from his past unless she felt the same way – that there might be more going on here than just recreational sex and small talk.

  ‘It’s about Toto,’ she said.

  ‘Toto?’ he said, as his heartbeat downgraded. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say, but why was he so disappointed? What exactly had he been hoping to hear? ‘What’s up with Toto?’

  *

  ‘Your daughter started her periods on Friday.’

  Ellie watched Art’s face, for any adverse reaction, and saw the crease form between his brows.

  ‘She wanted me to tell you,’ she added.

  One quizzical eyebrow lifted. ‘Why did she tell you about it?’

  He didn’t sound upset, so much as surprised, but there was a wariness there that made the nerves jump and jive in her stomach.

  Why did his reaction feel like a slap? Maybe it was just that shocking revelation about his injury, making her feel overemotional? That Art had opened up about his past had felt significant, even though he hadn’t seemed to need her outrage or her support – giving the horrific details in a monotone, as if he’d come to terms with those events years ago.

  He was a remarkably self-sufficient man, which was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘She was busy raiding my bathroom for sanitary products.’

  He swore, the frown remaining in place. ‘I’ll take her into Gratesbury tomorrow and get her what she needs.’

  ‘I already did that,’ she said, trying not to take the curt tone personally.

  The frown deepened. ‘You didn’t need to. I could have handled it.’

  OK, that was definitely a slap. She’d worried about overstepping the mark, that Art might resent her involvement, but she hadn’t expected his response to be this negative. Especially after the conversation they’d just shared.

  He began to pack the rest of the leftovers into the picnic basket, his movements tense.

  ‘Art, I’m sensing a certain amount of animosity here and I’m not sure where it’s coming from,’ she said, determined to calm the situation for Toto’s sake as much as her own. The little girl had been worried her father would freak out about this. Apparently she’d been right. It was her job now to make sure he didn’t freak out with his daughter.

  He didn’t respond, turning his back to tug his T-shirt over his head.

  ‘If you’ve got a problem with me buying your daughter sanitary products that she needed, when she needed them, I’d like to know why?’

  ‘Let’s just drop it,’ he said, standing up to stamp on his boots.

  I don’t think so.

  She grabbed her pumps, slipped them on.

  He tucked the basket under his arm. ‘I’ll head back,’ he said. ‘And drop the basket off for you.’

  ‘Art, wait,’ she said, still frantically tying her laces as he stalked off.

  She caught up with him on the path, breathless now and battling to keep her own emotions in check. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

  He shrugged off her hand. ‘Nothing, I’ll talk to Toto when she gets back from Salisbury, tell her not to involve you again.’

  ‘Don’t you dare do that,’ she said, starting to lose the grip on her temper.

  ‘I’ll dare what I goddamn like, she’s my daughter.’ And there it was again, the slap, but she couldn’t let herself care about that. This wasn’t about her, or him, it was about Toto and her feelings. ‘She should have come to me.’

  ‘She was scared, Art, scared that you’d freak out about her becoming a woman.’

  ‘Why the hell would I freak out about that?’

  ‘Maybe because that’s exactly what you’re doing.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You’re even freaking out about me talking to her about it.’

  ‘Because she should have come to me,’ he said again, as if this were a parental pissing contest.

  ‘Why would she come to you? She needed sanitary products, you weren’t likely to have any, now were you? I bet you’ve never even spoken to her about menstruation either, have you?’

  She could tell she had him there from the stubborn look on his face.

  ‘I didn’t need to, they handled it at school,’ he said, finally. ‘She told me all about it. The tampon in the water glass totally freaked her out.’

  Ellie had to bite back a smile, the disgruntled tone making her temper fade. ‘Yes, she mentioned that to me too. We decided she didn’t need any tampons yet.’

  ‘I can get her what she needs,’ he said, his face not softening one iota. ‘That’s my job.’

  ‘She’s a practical kid,’ Ellie said, grasping for reason and practicality in the face of his intransigence. ‘She figured you wouldn’t have any. That’s all.’

  ‘I suppose…’ He hesitated. ‘She still seems like a little kid.’

  She saw it then, the flicker of dismay and vulnerability, that he was trying so hard not to show her.

  Why had she never figured it out before? Even if Art had been a single parent for a lot longer than she had, he had insecurities too. This wasn’t about her, about them, it was just about Art’s relationship with his daughter.

  She placed a hand on his arm, touched by his concern, and felt the muscles tense beneath her fingers. ‘And she’s still a little kid in every way that counts.’

  He dragged his hand through his hair, sending the still damp strands into furrows. He drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. ‘Thanks for handling it. I’m not great with this stuff.’

  ‘You’re better than you think.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I try my best, but I can’t be her mother.’

  She heard the regret in his voice. ‘From what you told me about Alicia, Toto’s better off without her.’

  ‘Maybe. But I sometimes wonder whether…’

  ‘Don’t. You’re doing a good job. Toto’s a wonderful child, confident and secure and well adjusted. She’s been wonderful to Josh this summer. Her friendship has meant so much to him, and to me.’

  He nodded, his gaze thoughtful, but he looked away before he said, ‘Kind of ironic, when you think how we used to fight when we were kids.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. But, as he shouldered the basket, and walked beside her through the woods, it occurred to her that in some ways they had become kindred spirits too.

  She pushed the feeling back, of companionship, of friendship. She didn’t take his hand, wasn’t surprised when he didn’t offer her his. Something had changed between them today, something profound, that neither one of them could afford to examine too closely – was that why he’d jumped off the handle when she’d mentioned Toto starting her periods?

  As they approached the edge of the orchard, she touched his arm again. ‘I’ll take the basket. I should clear it out and put it away again before Mum and the kids get back.’

  He kept it on his shoulder. ‘It’s OK. We’ve got time before we have to cover our tracks.’ She thought she heard a slight edge to his voice, but convinced herself she must have been imagining it.

  She’d gone into this wanting it to be just about sex, and so had he. If it didn’t feel like just sex any more that was only because they’d become friends while bonking each other’s brains out. The desire to ask for more was a mistake. The desire to reach out to that little boy who had been broken so badly by a mother and eventually a lover who had never been good enough for him was a fool’s errand. A fool’s errand that she’d been on once before, nineteen years ago. Art had always found it impossible to trust people and just because she now knew why he couldn’t, didn’t mean she coul
d somehow magically fix that about him.

  But, as they walked through the back orchard together, she found herself finding it harder and harder to ignore the stupid, romantic voice inside her that wanted to at least try.

  As they approached the door of the farmhouse, she opened her mouth to say something, anything to bridge the gap that seemed to have opened up between them, when she heard a car coming down the track.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Art said, dumping the basket on the farmhouse’s front step.

  That wasn’t Dee’s car. ‘It must be a customer,’ she said, grateful for the interruption that had stopped her saying something she would no doubt regret.

  Instead of taking the fork in the track that led to the shop car park, the gleaming convertible travelled towards them, stopping a few feet away.

  Art stepped in front of her, as a man got out of the car.

  Her heart shuddered to a stop, the wave of shock swiftly followed by a wave of panic.

  Was that…? No, surely not, it couldn’t be. What the bloody hell was Dan doing here?

  With his chestnut brown hair carefully styled and a pair of Ray-Bans perched on his nose, her soon-to-be-ex-husband looked debonair and dashing – and nothing like an optical illusion.

  Even so, the moment felt surreal, suspended in time as Dan strolled towards them, lifting off his sunglasses. But then his gaze landed on Art, taking in their damp hair, the discarded picnic basket. And the welcoming smile turned into a suspicious frown.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Dan said.

  Art touched her waist to push her behind him. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he said, annoyance snapping in his voice.

  ‘I’m Ellie’s husband,’ Dan shot back. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  PART FOUR: BACK FOR GOOD

  THEN

  Eloise Charlotte Preston DALTON’s Diary

  3 September 1998

  Ever since I saw Art silent crying on my mum’s shoulder, I’ve realised he is my soul mate. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. I even dream about him. And I get sad now when he doesn’t come to supper – and I used to love it when he didn’t come!!

  I think I love him. And I’m pretty sure he is in love with me too because:

  Reasons:

  1) I keep catching him watching me when he thinks I’m not looking.

  2) He hasn’t had a girlfriend in ages. Girls still come to the commune to see him, but he hardly even talks to them now. And I haven’t seen him snogging any of them, not like I saw him snogging Donna Whatshername in the woods a month ago.

  3) He hasn’t called me Princess Drama in weeks and weeks.

  4) When that horrid little Haley called me a posh cow, he told her to shut up. I heard him.

  5) Yesterday, when I said hello to him, he said hello back, and not in a mean way, but in a cool way. He even smiled. Almost.

  The only problem is, he hasn’t said anything. And boys are supposed to say first.

  I wrote to Jess about what to do last week, her letter arrived today.

  She thinks I should go ahead and tell Art. But just writing that down here makes me feel a little sick. Excited sick, though, like when I went on the roller coaster at Alton Towers and it did a loop the loop. Not sick sick, like I’m actually going to puke. So there is that.

  And Jess is an expert about this stuff, because she’s been out with about every boy in our class (all except Kev Smith, because he’s gross) and she says she had to ask a few of them first because boys can be really slow.

  But Art doesn’t seem like he’d be slow about this stuff. Not from the way he was kissing Donna Whatsit.

  And what if I tell him and then he wants to kiss me? Like he kissed Donna? And he finds out I’m a rubbish kisser? He’s had loads of practice and I’ve had virtually zero. The only boy I ever kissed was Willy Reid in year six and he slobbered so much he nearly drowned me, so I don’t even think that counts as practice.

  Tomorrow is Friday and all the little kids here go back to school. I’m supposed to be starting the new school Mum has enrolled me in on Monday. So me and Art will be the only ones here all day tomorrow. And my dad is supposedly coming to visit on Saturday (although I’ll be amazed if that happens as he keeps saying he’s going to come and then he never does – but if he does, I’ll probably have to spend some time with him).

  So if I’m going to tell Art, I have to tell him tomorrow. Before school starts, and before I chicken out.

  If he wants to kiss me, it’ll be fine. As long as he doesn’t want to have actual sex with me. Like I think he did with Donna, because he had his hand on her boob while he was kissing her. It looked pretty hot, and Donna was moaning like she loved it, but Jess said it hurts like hell the first time, because her older sister told her. Also what if I’m rubbish at that too??

  But I’m sure he won’t want to do sex straight away. We’ll have to run away first, so we can be together. Like Jack and Rose would have done in Titanic if he hadn’t frozen to death (I still don’t get why she didn’t move over and find a spot for him on that door, it was easily big enough for both of them!).

  My mum will be sad I know if me and Art run away, but Mum will understand, because she had to run away too, with Pam.

  At least we won’t have to worry about Art’s mum. She probably won’t even notice we’re gone.

  NOW

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Dan, I can’t believe you would just turn up here without letting me know,’ Ellie’s voice sounded hoarse, her head pounding from the confrontation she’d ended up having to referee in the farmyard between her not-quite-ex-husband and her current lover.

  At least she’d managed to avert a punch-up between them. Although, to be fair, Art had backed off as soon as Dan had made his announcement.

  In fact, his face had gone completely blank and he’d walked off without another word. For a moment though, he’d looked… stunned? Angry? Wounded? It was hard to say, because he’d masked it so quickly. But, whatever it was, it had shocked her. And made her feel sick. She would need to speak to Art later. And explain.

  She and Dan were separated, they had been for three months, he had no right to turn up and start mouthing off about his marital rights.

  But before she could deal with Art, she had to deal with Dan.

  She’d corralled him into the farmhouse kitchen, to contain the situation.

  ‘Yeah, well, I can’t believe you’d sleep with some goddamn farmer as soon as you arrived in the UK,’ Dan said. ‘When you haven’t slept with me since before goddamn Christmas.’

  ‘Art’s not a farmer, he’s a talented carpenter and an expert in construction,’ she said, reeling from the fury in his tone. Was he actually seriously upset about this? How could he be?

  They’d agreed months ago they were getting a divorce. He’d been sleeping with another woman, who was having his baby in approximately six months’ time. How did that make her the bad guy?

  ‘Awesome, so I can get him to drill my drywall as well as drill my wife, that makes me feel so much better.’

  ‘Stop being crude.’

  ‘Crude, I’m being crude! You’re the one who just banged some other guy while you’re married to me.’

  ‘We are getting a divorce. You’re having a child with another woman. What about that did you not understand?’

  ‘Chelsea’s not pregnant, it was a false alarm,’ Dan said. ‘We found out a month ago. She hasn’t spoken to me since, so I think we can say that relationship is definitely over.’

  ‘But…’ Ellie’s mind stalled on the news. How did she feel? Relief? Surprise? Shouldn’t she feel something? But all she felt was tired and… indifferent. ‘So what?’

  ‘So what?’ It was Dan’s turn to look shocked. ‘So I came to get you. You and Josh. I’ve missed you. I want another chance.’

  ‘Dan, you’re not serious? Even if Chelsea’s not pregnant, our marriage has been over for years.’ And it had taken him over a month to make a move once he’d broken up
with Chelsea. If he expected her to believe he’d been celibate for four whole weeks, he must think she was more gullible than Mary Poppins.

  ‘Why? Because you’ve found some farmer to replace me?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, because you found a thousand women to replace me.’

  ‘There weren’t that many.’

  ‘That many? Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

  ‘OK, I fucked up.’

  ‘“Fucked” being the operative word,’ she said, deciding that sometimes crude worked.

  Dan gave a long-suffering sigh, as if he were actually the injured party here. ‘I screwed up and I’m not proud of it.’

  ‘You screwed up more than once, Dan. A lot more than once. Someone who keeps repeating the same offence is clearly not capable of change. I believed you the first time you said it wasn’t going to happen again. I even believed you the second time. But I finally stopped believing and we simply ended up locked in a loveless, sexless relationship in which we were both kidding ourselves that we actually cared enough about each other to stay together when the truth was we were just too lazy and self-absorbed to do anything about it. I’m sorry you came here today. And I’m sorry you saw Art and I together, because you and I are still nominally married.’ Was that the real reason she’d been so determined to keep her and Art’s liaison a secret, not to protect Josh or Toto, but simply to protect her own reputation? The new stab of guilt sliced under her ribs, making her anxiety increase. ‘But what we’ve been doing together is still none of your business. You left me, Dan, years ago, every time you decided to sleep with another woman, so you don’t get to turn up now out of the blue and lay down the law about marital ethics.’

  Unfortunately, that fact didn’t make her feel any better about the look that had flashed across Art’s face when Dan had arrived. They had shared something this afternoon, something profound. And now she might never know what that something was, because she hadn’t had the guts to ask before her ex had turned up.