by Heidi Rice
Now?
Ellie’s hands cramped on the reed grass she was weaving through the bases her mother had designed for the flower arrangements.
‘Is it the arrival of the smarmy ex that has put a crimp in things?’ Annie continued, confirming Ellie’s worst fears when Tess and Maddy sent her equally knowing looks – part concern and part curiosity. ‘Because, if it is, I’m going to run him off myself.’
The base dropped out of Ellie’s numbed fingers. ‘Bloody hell, was Art and I’s secret liaison actually a secret from anybody at all?’
‘Did you really think it would be?’ Tess said, still threading dried ivy through the wicker structures Dee had made to hold the rest of the flower centrepieces. ‘Once you started looking as if you’d discovered the secret of life. And Art began to smile on a regular basis?’
‘Not the secret of life. More like the secret of the female orgasm.’ Maddy grinned like someone who had discovered it too, and wasn’t ashamed to let everyone know it as often as was humanly possible.
Ellie swore softly under her breath. Not sure whether to be relieved or depressed that her friends had known about the worst kept secret in Wiltshire all along. A week ago, she would have been amused, delighted even, and probably jumped at the chance to tell them everything. Well, almost everything. Now, not so much.
‘Wait a minute,’ Annie said. ‘Were doing? I thought so, you’ve stopped having spectacular nooky with Art just because Dan the Skank has turned up.’ Apparently Annie hadn’t fallen for Dan’s charm either. ‘I thought we already discussed this. You don’t owe him fidelity. And anyway, you’re divorcing him. Unless…’ Annie’s eyes went wide with horror. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about that.’
‘No, I spoke to a lawyer two days ago and I’ve told Dan. I’m not sure he believes me.’ In fact, she was fairly positive he didn’t believe her, because he had simply told her they could talk it through when they got back to Orchard Harbor, as if there was actually anything left to discuss that didn’t involve their lawyers. ‘But he’ll find out soon enough when he gets home and the papers are waiting for him.’
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ Annie said. ‘So what’s going on with Art then? Why have you stopped looking born again and why has he stopped smiling?’
‘We’re guessing there’s no more secret orgasms going on, but why?’ Maddy poured Ellie a glass of wine from the bottle Tess had brought with her.
‘Honestly, it’s complicated,’ Ellie said, feeling like a fraud. Why couldn’t she just tell them what she’d told her mum, that she and Art had never been more than a fling?
‘We can handle complicated,’ Annie said. ‘That’s what friends are for.’
Ellie’s eyes began to sting. The simple statement making her realise that she hadn’t cried herself dry during Dee’s pep talk the way she thought.
Her mother had been wonderful, so supportive and so insightful. And it had made her even more aware of how much she had gained from this summer – with or without Art’s help. And seeing how worried and willing to help Tess and Annie and Maddy were too only confirmed that.
So why did she still feel so shit about the fact that she and Art were over now?
She knew for all his moodiness, and his general unwillingness to talk about his feelings, Art was not an insensitive man. Not by a long shot. If he were, he wouldn’t have been so freaked out about Toto’s periods, or got so worked up and overprotective of Dee when Ellie had first suggested the shop project, or been so deeply scarred by his father’s brutality and his mother’s neglect that he’d ended up with a phobia of hospitals. But it seemed somehow that even though she had thought they were friends, had come to care for him, he’d never cared that deeply for her. Not even as a friend. And that hurt. It made her feel less than the way she now realised she had always felt every time Dan had cheated on her. And that was something she never wanted to feel like again.
‘If you put an end to it because of your divorce not being final,’ Annie continued, ‘we’re here to make you see the error of your ways.’
Tess and Maddy nodded enthusiastically, having abandoned their art and crafts too.
Ellie sipped her wine, to give herself strength, deeply touched by their support. ‘It wasn’t Dan’s arrival so much as…’ She paused. ‘As the fact that it was going nowhere. We both knew it would have to end eventually.’ Hadn’t they? ‘It just seemed less awkward to end it before things got messy.’
‘So you didn’t end it because the ex arrived, you ended it because you didn’t want things to get messy?’ Annie asked.
‘Exactly,’ Ellie said, glad that someone could make sense of it all.
‘But why would things get messy, if it was just a fling?’ she countered.
‘I…’ Ellie hesitated. Why didn’t she have an answer to that?
‘And who ended things exactly?’ Annie added. ‘You or him?’
‘I did, I suppose,’ Ellie said, although she wasn’t even sure about that any more. ‘Although he didn’t exactly put up much of an objection.’ And why did that still hurt?
Ellie felt the tears begin to mist her eyes again.
Oh, for goodness’ sake, pull yourself together.
Annie touched her hand. ‘What is it, Ellie? Whatever it is we are totally here for you.’
She looked at the ceiling, struggling to keep her eyes dry. God, why was it so hard to say now, even to her friends? ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling I might have been falling in love with him. How idiotic is that?’
‘Not idiotic at all,’ Tess said, as if she hadn’t just said something completely ridiculous. ‘Because it’s obvious he was falling for you too.’
Ellie wiped away a tear with her fist. Well, at least now she knew she hadn’t completely lost her mind. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t make her predicament any less tragic. ‘No, he wasn’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Maddy said. ‘Did you ask him?’
‘No, thank God. The only saving grace in all this is that I didn’t do that.’ And that was still the major bright spot on the horizon. ‘Believe me, I’ve been there, done that and I already have the hideous memory of what happened to prove it.’
‘You fell in love with Art before? When?’ asked Tess, aka Miss Super Intuitive.
‘Nineteen years ago, the day before I left, I threw myself at Art. I’d had a crush on him for weeks and I thought he had a crush on me.’ Her mum had thought so too, so she hadn’t been completely nuts. ‘For a moment, I thought…’ She pushed her hair back, starting to feel ridiculous all over again. ‘I actually thought he was going to kiss me. But, instead of kissing me, he went all stiff and looked horrified. Then he told me to get lost. He told me he didn’t kiss little girls. Especially not stuck-up little girls like me.’ Good to know she could still cringe about that. ‘I was devastated, of course, as only a fourteen-year-old drama queen can be. I didn’t think I could survive at the commune after that. So the next day, when my dad arrived to visit me – I told him I wanted to go back to London with him. That I hated the commune and couldn’t live there. So we left together. I know now that devastated my mum. And the reason she signed over all her custody rights to him was because after that grand departure, she thought that’s what I wanted. She convinced herself I’d been desperately unhappy at the commune, and it was all her fault, when of course I hadn’t been and it wasn’t. And I suppose I convinced myself of the same thing, because I didn’t want to admit the truth, that I’d made a complete tit of myself and thrown myself at Art when he was not remotely interested in me.’
To think she might have done that again was even more humiliating now she thought about it. Her mother had tried to make her feel good about that stupid knee-jerk decision nineteen years ago, wanted her to believe that she’d learned from it, that what she’d done had been brave instead of just monumentally melodramatic, but how could she have learned from that mistake if she hadn’t actually owned it until this summer?
‘So let me get this straight, you didn’t tell him you think you might be falling in love with him this time?’ Maddy asked.
‘No I did not, thank God.’ She could still be relieved about that if nothing else.
‘Ellie, is it at all possible that you let that incident…’ Annie paused. ‘Which I think all of us who have ever been teenage girls in love will admit sounds pretty horrific,’ she added. ‘But is it possible that it was so awful you let it colour how you read his reaction this time around?’
Ellie thought about it, for a few seconds. Then shuddered. No, she wasn’t going to get delusional again, not even for Annie. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. He looked right through me, Annie. He made me feel like crap. Even if I could persuade myself I misunderstood, I can’t get past that look. He’s never looked at me like that before and I–’
‘Which is exactly my point,’ Annie interrupted. ‘Art is not a demonstrative guy. But he looks at you like you matter. I’ve also never seen him smile as much as he has in the two weeks before you split up. And he’s certainly not smiling now, in fact he’s been supremely cranky, even for him. Just ask Toto.’
‘Well, he’s not getting spectacular nooky any more, is he,’ Ellie said, not wanting to think about Toto either. ‘Men are simple creatures, sex keeps them happy. I found that out the hard way with Dan.’
‘Forget about Dan, he’s a skank,’ Annie said. ‘Art’s not. And I wouldn’t normally disagree with you re: the path to enlightenment for men being paved with spectacular nooky. Rob only whistles when he’s up at dawn to do the milking if he got up before dawn too,’ Annie said. ‘If you get my drift.’
Ellie laughed, the first genuine laugh she’d had in four days, Annie’s broad Yorkshire humour hard to resist.
‘And Rob can get tetchy if he’s not getting any, because so can I. But Art’s surprisingly self-contained in that department. I think he may have trained himself to do without sex for Toto’s sake.’ She lifted up her hand and began counting off the points with her fingers. ‘Let’s look at the evidence. One. He never brings anyone back to the farm. Ever.’
‘I was here already, he didn’t have much of a choice there,’ Ellie said.
‘Two,’ Annie carried on regardless. ‘He dates women then discards them quickly.’
‘We broke up after two weeks, so he certainly didn’t break pattern there,’ Ellie said.
‘Yes, he did, you guys were circling each other for months. Ever since you arrived really.’
So everyone had picked up on that too. Fabulous.
‘And three,’ Annie added, not waiting for a reply. ‘He never ever lets a woman get too close. As soon as there is even a whiff of commitment in the air, he’s gone. Ask my mate, Daisy. So the fact he didn’t notice you were getting too close – I think that’s hugely significant.’
Who knew Annie was such a hopeless romantic? Or capable of clutching so hard at straws? Ellie would have been charmed, if only the conversation wasn’t making her start to feel angry with Art now as well as hurt.
How could he have let her think she was special, knowing the whole time she wasn’t? Because if what Annie was saying was true, his behaviour was beginning to look deliberate. He’d protected all the other women he slept with but not her. Had she actually meant even less to him than she thought?
Thank goodness she’d always had an exit strategy – her return to New York suddenly looked like a lifeline.
Josh and she would be able to make a clean break in three weeks’ time from this misery.
She’d get over any lingering feelings for Art again like she had the last time. And when that happened she’d be able to come back and visit. But until then, it would be healthier for her to put the distance between them she needed. Three thousand miles distance to be exact.
‘Annie, can we stop talking about Art now?’ she said, letting the weariness show in her voice. ‘We’ve still got ten more of these centrepieces to prepare. And I don’t want to be still here at midnight.’
Before Annie could say anything, Jacob and Melody crashed into the room holding armfuls of ivy.
‘Hey, you wouldn’t believe how much we managed to find,’ Jacob said.
‘Where’s Toto?’ Ellie asked, pleased to be able to change the subject.
‘We bumped into Art in the woods. Toto went back with him.’
Ellie’s heart throbbed painfully at the mention of the man, the gaping hole still there and still making itself felt. Yup, she needed distance. Thank goodness she was going back to New York, because as long as she was still here, the hole would never heal.
Brushing his hands on his jeans, Jacob knelt beside his bride-to-be, his smile sweetly reassuring as he rested his palm on the small mound of her belly. ‘Hey, good-looking, what you got cooking?’
‘Maddy’s got a baby cooking,’ Melody said, having climbed onto her mother’s lap, then promptly stuck a grubby thumb in her mouth as everyone chuckled.
Jacob ruffled Melody’s hair. ‘Clever girl.’
‘Can I go to bed now, Mummy?’ Melody yawned, round her thumb.
Tess lifted her daughter to take her home. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to desert the field, ladies,’ she said. ‘Are you OK, Ellie?’
‘Yes, of course, I’m happy to put in another couple of hours, if Maddy and Jacob will have me,’ she said, deliberately misinterpreting the question.
Tess left, and Annie stayed and the three of them worked together, doing the last of the work to make sure Maddy’s wedding would be glorious, while Jacob cooked them all dinner and kept the wine flowing. As always, Ellie found herself enjoying the camaraderie. She was really going to miss moments like these when she returned to the US. But it was better not to linger.
Nobody mentioned Art again. And Ellie was glad.
Because really, what else was there left to say?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Maddy and Jacob’s wedding day dawned bright and clear and crisp. The slight chill in the air a signal that summer was drawing to a close.
Ellie spent the morning in the shop – the original plan had been to schedule the celebration for the evening, because they hadn’t wanted to lose a day’s trading and Saturday was their busiest day. But, in the end she, Dee, Tess and Annie had made an executive decision to close up at one o’clock despite Maddy’s objections. They could make up the sales the next weekend with a leafleting push in Gratesbury and Salisbury. Both Maddy and Jacob had put in so much to the project and they deserved to have their special day properly marked… Plus, Ellie knew there were bound to be tons of last-minute details to see to that would require all hands on deck. The late arrival of the guys who were erecting the gazebo and a mad dash to Gratesbury to buy extra tea lights just two of the things that ended up on Ellie’s troubleshooting list.
By six o’clock, with the ceremony due to start at seven, she had finally downgraded from whirling dervish to multitasking maniac.
Entering the house after decorating the gazebo with Annie and Tess, she found her mother putting muslin covers on the trays of canapés she’d prepared for the reception. With an apron slung on over a royal blue body-con dress, her salt and pepper hair arranged in an elegant chignon, Dee looked the picture of calm, competent class.
‘Mum, you look gorgeous.’ Ellie’s stomach rumbled, she’d missed lunch in the melee – but everything was finally done. ‘And so does the food.’
The gazebo was ready for the guests to arrive, the tables for the wedding feast had been arranged and decorated in the shop forecourt, the flower arrangements her mother had got up at dawn to finish looked beyond beautiful in the rustic fall colours. Rob had begun to light the jam jar lanterns they had dotted around the grounds as the sun began to sink towards the horizon and the band Rob and Mike had booked were setting up for entertainment later in the evening.
The group of students they’d hired from Salisbury’s catering college to serve the meal, so that Dee could join in the festivities, milled around the k
itchen stacking champagne flutes onto trays, and finishing the final prep.
The aroma of fresh herbs and roasted garlic wafting out of the kitchen and the glimpse of the wild mushroom and goat’s cheese tartlets Dee had just covered made Ellie’s mouth water.
‘Good, that’s the general idea.’ Dee smiled and straightened, flicking a tendril of hair back from her face. The subtle application of make-up accentuated her mother’s enviable bone structure and the cool blue of her eyes.
Ellie felt the pulse of pride in her chest. At all her mother, no, all of them, had achieved today. This would be a celebration not just of Maddy and Jacob’s love for one another, but of the love they all shared for this place, this community.
The pulse of sadness wasn’t far behind, at the thought of all the things she was going to miss when she went back to the US. She pushed the thought to one side – no time to mope about that now. Given the increasing awkwardness with Art now he had moved back into the house, she knew she’d made the right decision there.
‘You need to get upstairs and change,’ Dee admonished.
‘Right, but have you seen Josh? And Toto?’ She’d been keeping an eye out for them both for over an hour.
‘Toto’s upstairs moaning about the dress she has to wear. I haven’t seen Josh,’ her mother remarked.
‘I thought they were together.’ The two of them had headed off after breakfast to help Jacob decorate the vintage Land Rover Art had found to transport the bride and groom to their wedding night caravan. ‘He needs to get showered and changed into his suit.’
‘Toto might know where he is,’ Dee said, before one of the catering students interrupted to ask if it was time to start frying the sweetcorn and tofu fritters.
Ellie dashed up the stairs. She did not have time to track Josh down. But, as she raced down the corridor, Art stepped out of his bedroom
She barrelled into him, his whoosh of breath matched by her squeak of dismay.
Strong arms wrapped around her, to stop her tumbling on her arse. For a split second she was inhaling his delicious scent – soap and man – overlaid with the fresh hint of sandalwood cologne, her face nestled against the fabric of a starched white shirt.
