Summer At Willow Tree Farm. Heidi Rice
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Ellie’s original arrival at all. Truth was he’d been fascinated by Dee’s daughter that day. She’d stepped out of her mother’s car, flicked back her Rachel from Friends hair, the pastel silk blouse emphasising the buds of her breasts, and the superior scowl on her face making her look like a fairy queen who’d just swallowed a cockroach.
He’d stared, dazzled by how pretty and pristine she was. And she’d pursed her lips into a brittle smile, wrinkled her nose and looked right through him.
Dee glanced his way, before returning her attention to the road. ‘To a fourteen-year-old girl, when a good-looking boy doesn’t notice you, that’s tantamount to a knife through the heart.’ Dee craned her neck, eager to see round the corner of the barn, her knotted hands a testament to her nerves as she waited for her prodigal daughter’s return. ‘Especially one as vulnerable as Ellie was.’
Vulnerable? Was Dee kidding? Beneath the petite figure and the baby-doll face, Ellie Preston had been about as vulnerable as Maggie Thatcher.
‘She didn’t want me to notice her,’ he muttered in his defence. Because she’d done nothing but give him grief when he had.
Dee’s gaze flicked away from the road, her pale blue eyes beseeching. ‘I know you two never did get along. But please, will you try and be nice, or at least not hostile towards her. It would mean so much to me.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not fifteen any more,’ he said, trying to keep his voice devoid of tension. ‘And neither is Ellie. I’m sure we can act like grown-ups if we put our minds to it.’
And stayed the hell out of each other’s way – which was precisely why he hadn’t planned on being part of the welcoming committee.
‘Ellie runs a very successful event-planning business in America, you know,’ Dee said, her voice thick with pride. ‘She might have some ideas that could help with our financial troubles.’
‘We’re not in financial trouble,’ he said, determined to take away the worry lines forming on her forehead.
‘I know it’s nothing you can’t fix,’ she said, reassuring him instead. ‘But maybe Ellie could help you run the place, take some of the burden off your shoulders, while she’s here.’
‘It’s no burden,’ he murmured, thinking of the cramped office he’d escaped from for the afternoon, furnished with a dying Hewlett Packard of indeterminate vintage and floor-to-ceiling shelves bulging with folders full of spreadsheets and order forms and invoices, which he had inherited from Dee’s dead partner Pam four years ago – and still hadn’t got to the bottom of.
While he’d have been more than happy to hand the lot of it over to someone else and run like hell, no way could he hand the mess over to Dee’s daughter. As a teenager she’d hated this place with every fibre of her being.
While he might not have the right skills to manage the farm, he wasn’t going to let it be bludgeoned to death by a woman who would happily tap dance on its grave.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll figure out something useful for her to do while she’s here,’ he said wearily, hoping like hell Ellie wasn’t planning to stay for the whole summer.
Maybe Princess Drama could shovel the manure into biodegradable bags? Or collect eggs from Martha, their prime layer, who had a homicidal personality disorder that would rival Caligula? Or better yet, help Jacob set the rat traps in the back barn? If he remembered correctly from the summer he’d spent with Ellie, she had a pathological phobia of mice. And the rats in that barn were big enough to give the farm’s fifteen-pound ginger tom post-traumatic stress disorder.
The vice around Art’s ribs loosened as he imagined the many ways he could persuade Ellie Preston to bugger off back to her very successful event-planning business in America long before the summer was over.
‘I know you will.’ Dee placed her sun-spotted hand on Art’s forearm. ‘You always know what to do. You’re such a credit to us all.’ She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, the gesture full of maternal affection. The way she’d begun doing nineteen years ago. The day her daughter Ellie had climbed into her father’s Mercedes and driven away.
He caught the comforting scent of vanilla essence and lavender while Dee nattered about all the exciting things she was going to do with the grandson she’d never met. And his spirits sank.
Bollocks. He wasn’t going to be able to torture Ellie into leaving without upsetting Dee. The headache at his temple hammered at the base of his skull.
Perhaps he’d be able to set Martha the psycho hen on Ellie, but locking her in the barn with the mutant killer rats was probably a non-starter.
‘That’s them.’ Dee’s remark cut into his thoughts.
He lifted his head as a red Ford Fiesta bounded into the yard, then stopped. A boy popped out. About Toto’s height. His short caramel-brown hair stuck up in a tuft at the crown. He wore high-top sneakers, a grey and blue New York Mets T-shirt, a baseball cap backwards and baggy cargo shorts that slouched on his hips but did nothing to hide his pronounced belly.
‘Hey, I’m Josh,’ he said in a broad US accent. He shuffled his hand in a half-hearted wave that was both eager and shy.
Dee rushed over to gather him close in a hug. ‘Josh, it’s so wonderful to meet you. I’m your Granny Dee.’
The boy smiled, his expression both curious and uncomplicated. And Art spotted the railroad-track braces on his teeth.
Ellie’s kid couldn’t have looked and sounded more like an all-American stereotype if he’d tried. He reminded Art of one of the characters from Recess, the cartoon Toto had devoured like kiddie crack a few years ago.
Ellie stepped out of the other side of the car and Art’s breathing stopped as he absorbed the short, sharp shock of recognition.
In a pair of faded Levi’s rolled up at the hem and a snug lacy vest top that emphasised her small frame, her wild strawberry blonde hair tied up in a haphazard knot to reveal dangly earrings, she looked summery and sexy and casual, and nothing like the pristine, polished, too perfect girl he remembered. But then Dee placed a hand on her daughter’s arm, and Ellie’s spine stiffened as if someone had shoved a rod up her arse.
Dee began introducing everyone, while the younger kids swarmed round Ellie’s son, who seemed astonished by the attention. Toto, like him though, held back.
Then it struck him, as he watched Toto watch the boy, that as the oldest kid here, a card-carrying tomboy and as good as a surrogate grandchild to Dee, his daughter might feel as uncomfortable about the new arrivals as he did. Maybe he should have spoken to Toto about Ellie and her son coming to visit? Was this one of those situations that required the sort of ‘parent–child’ conversation the two of them generally avoided? How was he supposed to know that?
But then Toto stopped watching and marched up to the boy, said something to him and grabbed his hand. The boy’s doughy face lit up as he nodded and allowed himself to be dragged off. Toto in the lead as always, like the Pied Piper.
Nope, we’re good.
Thank Christ. This situation was enough of a head-wreck already.
Give or take the odd drive-Dad-mad moment, Toto was a brilliant kid. Smart, independent, straightforward and unafraid. And, like him, she wasn’t the share-and-discuss type.
So yeah, it was all good. No feelings talk required.
Ellie’s body remained rigid as she chatted to her mother, while Mike Peveney and Rob Jackson – who had both bought into the Project with their young families a couple of years ago – set about unpacking her car. A few minutes later, they had disgorged enough bags from the two-door compact to spend six months on safari in Kenya rather than a few weeks in Wiltshire.
Digging his fists into the pockets of his work overalls, Art strolled towards the dwindling welcoming party, prepared to follow through