The Great Allotment Proposal by Jenny Oliver Read Free Book Online Page A

alive, it’s salvageable.’
    ‘OK,’ they both replied in unison.
    And with a regretful backward glance at the cherry pie, Annie picked up the fork and started battling with a giant bindweed while Emily stood looking down at her hoe. ‘Jane,’ she said. ‘I hate to say it, but I have absolutely no idea how this thing works.’
    They weeded, they hoed, they scattered slug pellets, they netted, they cloched, they staked and twisted and battled with evil bindweed roots until Emily collapsed on the earth and said, ‘I can’t go on. I’m so tired, my nails are completely buggered and I really, really want some cherry pie.’
    Annie snorted a laugh. ‘Get up, Emily, we’re nearly done.’
    ‘Please don’t make me.’
    Jane straightened up from where she was staking the practically non-existent dahlias and giggled. ‘Maybe we could have a little break. Have some lemonade.’
    Emily clapped her hands together and said, ‘Or bugger the lemonade and let’s have the wine that’s in the shed.’
    Annie pushed her hair out of her eyes and straightened up, slowly uncurling her spine and arching backwards with a sigh. ‘That sounds like a much better idea. I think there are some little candles in there as well.’
    As Annie and Jane put the final touches to the canes and the netting, Emily squeezed herself into the dilapidated shed and came out with a bag of tea lights, the wine and a big roll of white and blue bunting. ‘Look at this, it was from the ice cream van, wasn’t it? D’you remember? I’m going to string it up,’ Emily said as she handed the wine and candles to Annie and started tying the bunting to the fallen water butt and along to the highest branches she could reach of the damson tree.
    Jane lit the candles with an old cigarette lighter she found in the shed and Annie poured the wine into plastic beakers and divided up the cherry pie. The pastry a little bit soft after sitting in the paper bags in the sun but, after all the allotment labour, their first mouthfuls felt like the best they’d ever tasted.
    ‘Did you know Enid?’ Emily asked Jane as she looked across at the bunting, the pennants flapping gently in the occasional gust of wind.
    Jane nodded. ‘Her and Mum used to play poker. Practically every night. They were ruthless. I’d have to bow out after about the third hand. They’d bleed me dry.’ She took a sip of her wine before adding, ‘I think probably it was Enid dying that finished Mum off. Her friend had gone and that was it.’
    ‘Did you find the diary?’ Annie asked as she relit one of the tea lights that flickered out in the breeze.
    ‘What diary?’ asked Emily.
    ‘You know they found that letter about the corporal injured in the war?’ As Annie spoke, Emily shook her head.
    ‘I told you the other day. We found a letter in the cafe addressed to Enid about a guy who’d died in the war that wasn’t her husband. Remember?’
    ‘No, I don’t think you told me that.’
    ‘Or you weren’t listening.’
    Emily made a face as if she was being told off by a teacher.
    Jane cut in before they could start bickering and said, ‘We think there’s a diary. Or Holly thinks there’s a diary. I’ve searched Enid’s place but couldn’t find anything. Annie’s looked in the cafe. We haven’t asked Martha yet because she’s not that keen on the whole thing, I think she just wants her mum’s memory to rest and not have the past changed. But…’ Jane shrugged. ‘I kind of think Enid would want us to know. I think she’d like that we were chasing after her history. And anyway, I think it’s kind of exciting.’ She laughed. ‘See, you can tell I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with two pensioners.’
    Emily laughed, poured them all more wine, and then stood up to go and look over their patch. What had earlier in the day been a huge mass of green leaves was now individual plants trained into neat little rows and trailed up bamboo canes. The lettuces that had been