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

shredded by the slugs had been plucked out and the smaller, less holey ones covered with arcs of netting held in place by damson twigs. What she now knew were carrots and beetroots had been salvaged from the bindweed, and the flowers – the dahlias, the sweet peas and the sunflowers – had all been rescued by Jane. The begonias were past it, unfortunately, and were on the compost heap. ‘I don’t think we’re going to win anything,’ Emily said, looking over her shoulder at the other two.
    ‘Never say never,’ Jane said with a shrug. Then, after a moment, asked, ‘Emily, how do you know Jack?’
    Annie sucked in her breath.
    ‘Don’t be all dramatic, Annie.’ Emily scowled. ‘You’re so annoying.’
    Annie laughed and turned to Jane to say, ‘She broke his heart by running off with Giles Fox.’
    ‘Giles Fox?’ Jane said. ‘Not the actor?’
    Annie did a little nod.
    Emily cut in, ‘I didn’t run off with Giles. Jack ran off to Spain.’
    ‘
The
Giles Fox?’ Jane frowned. ‘Really? The actor?’
    ‘You have been shut away with two pensioners, haven’t you?’ Annie shook her head in disbelief. ‘They were a full-on super couple. “Fox Hunter”? You must have heard of that, Jane? Emily and Giles. They were the nation’s sweethearts. Didn’t you know any of this? Everyone knows.’
    Jane shook her head. ‘I’m really bad with stuff like that. I only know who Giles is because of that Jane Austen adaptation. My mum loved him in that. Do you still talk to him?’
    Emily shook her head. She’d felt herself clam up at the mention of his name, at Annie précis-ing her past so casually. Her standard,
‘That’s private,’
answer was on the tip of her tongue, but there was something about the evening that stopped the words on her lips. Something about having got her hands dirty with these two women. They’d dug and weeded and sweated together and the wine they were drinking was like a prize and the candle light and the black, empty allotment site around them like a moment out of normality. Emily had never worked to the point that her fingernails were thick with dirt, her hair was frizzy from sweat, her skin void of all make-up, her back and arms aching, her hunger from manual labour. She was starting to feel about the allotment patch how she felt about her EHB Cosmetics products. The pride she had in developing something new from scratch. But rather than completely in control of every detail of it, she was being led by someone else. She was being told what to do. Which happened very rarely in her life. Jane had made her trust her. It didn’t matter that it was over some little seedlings and trailing sweet peas, it was trust nonetheless and Emily wasn’t used to that.
    So instead of saying,
‘That’s private,’
she found herself saying, ‘It was ages ago now. He has a whole other life. And I try not to think about it too much because I can still get upset, which is stupid because it was so long ago.’ She came back to the table and reached over to grab her wine. When no one else spoke, she found herself adding, ‘But I just think sometimes, if only I hadn’t agreed to marry him. If only I’d just let it play out without a wedding. I think then it all would have been different. Less of a fairy tale for everyone.’
    She could feel Annie watching her, unsure if she’d ever said any of this to her or not. Unsure if she’d ever said it out loud to anyone. She put the glass back on the table and walked over to the damson tree before saying, ‘But the press love that it happened. They love that there was that magic, that people got behind it. And it just built and built. They loved the engagement after so long together, they loved all the planning. God.’ She covered her face for a moment thinking about it, then looked back up at the two of them. ‘I think they just wanted us to be the characters from the film. For it to be as intense and crazy as it had been on screen. And then Adeline came