Green Beans and Summer Dreams

But I always came to the same conclusion.

However attractive the idea of growing and selling my own vegetables might be, there wasn’t any real money in it. So gardening could only ever be a lovely hobby.

But I’d reached a place where I was happy with myself and my life. Jamie seemed to be thriving at work. We were living in a beautiful house in the country. Our future looked sunny.

I could never have anticipated what was to come next.

Afterwards, I’d look back and wonder why on earth I hadn’t realised what was happening. Had I been too wrapped up in the garden to spot the signs?

When Jamie came home from work one day and broke the news that he was leaving, it was so unexpected that at first, I was struck dumb. I remember watching the sentences floating out of his mouth but being quite unable to take them in.

Then he mentioned Emma and instantly I was hearing every word in magnified Dolby surround sound.

I sat down on the nearest kitchen chair, in case my trembling legs gave way.

Emma was Jamie’s work colleague. He’d mentioned her from time to time. Apparently they had tried so hard to resist the attraction between them but in the end it was impossible. Jamie gazed at me with infinite sadness, shrugged his careworn shoulders and said, ‘It was beyond our control. We were always meant to be. Emma and me.’

Hurt and anger boiled up inside me.

What an utter load of horseshit he was spouting!

Since when had Jamie been a believer in flaky concepts like Fate and Destiny?

The only thing that was ‘meant to be’ was me hurling the salmon en croute with asparagus at his stupid head.

But since I’m not a violent person, I did the next best thing and escaped to the bathroom.

I sat on the mercifully cool floor tiles, leaning against the lovely free-standing bath Jamie and I had chosen together.

I caught my reflection in the angled shaving mirror by the basin. Pale face. Sweep of reddish-brown blow-dried hair. Dark eyes bleak with despair.

The fabric of my brand new, poppy-red mini dress felt stiff against my bare thighs, tanned from the garden. I gazed at the cream, strappy sandals with the ruby jewel embellishments.

I was dressed for a special day.

And special days demanded sacrifices – whether it was heels that tortured your feet and gave you the calf muscles of a weightlifter or corset-type tops that made you wish breathing could be optional. In an ideal world, I would have changed out of my new outfit when the lightning bolt struck because now it just made me feel like a fool. But when someone who’s supposed to love you stands there, white-faced and barely able to look you in the eye, and says he’s sorry, but he’s decided to move in with someone a decade younger, it would hardly be normal behaviour to say, ‘Hang fire a sec, will you, while I slip into something more comfortable?’

I smoothed my hand over the knobbly surface of the floor tiles. A bathroom wasn’t the best place to hole up, from a comfort perspective, but it had one distinct advantage. A door that locked. So I didn’t have to look at his face and see his pathetic I’m so sorry but we just couldn’t help ourselves expression.

I loved those tiles. Tiny Mediterranean blue squares like the bottom of a swimming pool. They’d taken an age to lay. The rooms in this old farmhouse weren’t exactly small. But we’d both agreed it was worth the painstaking effort.

Tears stung my eyes.

He’d be picking out tiles with Emma from now on.

I thought of all the months of deception as Jamie pursued his tacky, clandestine passion and suddenly, I was furious again. I wanted to stick my head round the door and yell at him that bloody Emma was welcome to him. And could he please leave his key on the way out? I might even hurl his stupid top-of-the-range tablet at him as he went. The one I’d spent ages choosing then wrapping up in a big cellophane bow with little red hearts on it.

Take that, cheating gadget man!

But of course I wouldn’t. I’d keep it all in because in my top ten of Things I Loathe, confrontation was a clear winner (though currently jostling for the top spot with Jamie Evans, monster deceiver).

I thought of my friend, Anna. She wouldn’t hold back for fear of unpleasantness and shouting. I shuddered to imagine what she would say to Jamie when she knew he’d been cheating on me for the past ten months; with a woman who, at twenty-two, had a full decade on me and whose biological clock could tick for another twenty years before the warranty ran out.

Jess, my other best friend, would be deeply shocked but instead of railing at Jamie, she would gather me close and let me sob.

Suddenly I longed for Jess.

‘Izzy? Are you OK in there?’

I froze, like an animal sensing the next few seconds could mean life or death.

‘Open up, Izz. We need to talk.’

I stared mutinously at the door handle. If he thought I was going to—

‘Come on, Izz, stop being so melodramatic. Oh, for God’s sake, we can’t do this through a locked door.’

My mouth twisted with scorn. He’d been shagging Emma for the best part of a year. Now they were planning a new life together. Exactly how was talking going to help?

‘Izzy, I’m so, so sorry. What else can I say? If you want me to go, I will. Do you want me to go?’

I pulled a ‘duh!’ face at the door.

‘Isobel! Talk to me!’ He blew out his breath, frustrated. ‘Look, we’ve had a good innings, you and me. Five years. But in the long run you’ll see this was for the best. Christ, you’ll probably thank me.’

A good innings? Trust him to default to his deathly dull cricket in a crisis.

I remembered the champagne chilling in the fridge. I’d smiled at the check-out girl as she removed the security collar on the bottle, all the while complaining that her boyfriend could never be relied on to remember special occasions. My smile was a little smug, because my boyfriend always did.

‘Right, I’m going,’ he announced, and the ice in his tone felt like a slap in the face. ‘You do realise you’ll have to sell the house.’

I swallowed hard. ‘No way,’ I called out, my voice catching a little.

This was my house! We weren’t married. Or even engaged. Aunt Midge would turn in her grave if she knew he and Emma were planning to lay some kind of claim to Farthing Cottage.

‘Well, you’ll have to pay the mortgage on your own then, won’t you?’

‘Fine!’ I yelled.

‘Come on, Izzy. You won’t need a house this big once I’m gone.’

I reached for some toilet tissue and blew my nose very softly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll – sell things.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You heard me. I’ll sell things.’

‘What things?’

I hesitated, curling my hands into fists.

‘Vegetables.’

There was a short silence, broken only by the occasional drip of a bath tap.

‘Vegetables?’

I could picture his disbelief.

‘Yes, vegetables. From my garden,’ I shouted, pride in my achievement poking through the desolation.

‘Izzy, don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’

My heart sank at his scorn. But of course he was right. Selling vegetables wasn’t going to pay the mortgage. I needed to get a proper job.

‘So how does Emma earn a living?’ I called out, panic making my voice sound shrill.

‘Sorry?’

‘I expect she’s something incredibly important in the City.’

‘She’s a receptionist, if you must know. But what’s that got to do with anything? Look, for Christ’s sake open up.’ He pumped the bathroom handle to let me know he meant business.

I stared at the door. It was clear he’d made up his mind and now only wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything silly. Like drowning myself. Or making a suicidal appointment with my hairdresser.

Sighing, I kicked off the sandals and got to my feet. ‘OK, I’ll come out.’

Maybe it was time to do the grown-up thing …

‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ came the response. ‘Talk about melodramatic. You’d try the bloody patience of a saint sometimes.’

But then again, maybe I’ll just stay here …

‘I’m having a soak first,’ I called out defiantly. ‘I might be a while.’

I turned on the taps and undressed slowly while the bath filled and the hammering on the door intensified. Lowering myself into the water, I felt fragile and bruised, as if I’d been in a punch-up.

A resounding thud reverberated through the bath as Jamie kicked the door in frustration.

‘Suit yourself, then,’ he yelled. ‘Have a nice life.’

I heard his feet hammer down the stairs and seconds later, the front door slammed.

I lay there until the bath water grew cool.

Then I got out and wrapped myself in a towel.

It was 12th August. The date we’d met, five years earlier. A day we’d always taken care to celebrate, whatever else was happening, and which this year I’d flagged on the calendar in the kitchen – a big red heart with an arrow through it and our initials. Even knee-deep in misery, the irony of his timing didn’t escape me.

Today was our anniversary.

Jamie had left me.

And I was alone.

The two weeks that followed were a bit of a blur.

Sick with misery, I turned inwards, wanting to be alone, unable to bear the thought of other people’s sympathy. As day turned to night and back to day again, I gradually became aware that Anna and Jess would wonder about my lack of contact. So I sent them texts saying I was visiting my mother and would be in touch when I got back.

Every morning I woke in a panic at the thought of a future without Jamie in it. And I constantly raked over the details of our last year together, wondering if there was something I could have done differently that would have stopped him falling in love with Emma.

I spent a lot of time in bed with my nice friends on daytime TV. And I mooched around the house, leaving a trail of scrunched-up tissues, making feverish plans that alternated between winning Jamie back and making him suffer horribly.

I was plagued with guilt about the garden and all the weeding I wasn’t doing.

The vegetable plot was usually my haven, especially in times of stress. I nurtured my plants lovingly; fed them rich compost; even talked to them because I’d heard that helped. But they were being sorely neglected.

I’d started to avert my eyes every time I passed a window, because I couldn’t bear to see their hurt stares. Rows of neglected peas, tendrils twining round sticks, crying out to be picked. And droopy green beans, used to being cosseted, huffily indignant to find themselves thirsty.

I was finally forced to text Anna with news of our split – only because Jamie and I were due round at hers for dinner that night so I had no other option.

And half an hour after that text – as I lay on my bed eating a chocolate orange I’d found in my gift drawer and watching Deal or No Deal – she was banging on the door.

I tried to ignore it.

But she rattled the letterbox and started yelling through it. ‘I know you’re in there, Izz. I can hear the telly for Christ’s sake!’

I frowned at the open bedroom window.

‘Let me in! Please!’ A pause. ‘I’m not budging till you open up.’

My heart sank.

I’d learned from experience that when Anna made up her mind about something, arguing with her was completely futile. You might as well tell Sweeney Todd to turn vegetarian.

Anna was loud and extrovert and said exactly what she thought. It might have been something to do with her red hair. Or the fact that she never had a dad to oversee discipline in the house when she was a child, just a lovely, slightly unconventional mum who had her packing her own school lunches by the time she was five.

If I didn’t go downstairs, Anna would bring a tent and a flask and camp out in my field until she gained entry.

So I dragged myself up, pulled on my dressing gown and did a horrified double take in the mirror.

I had turned into the mad woman in the attic.

Scary white face peering through a tangle of undergrowth. My dark auburn hair kinked wildly when left to go its own way. It hadn’t been within spitting distance of a hairdryer for days.

It was a wrench having to leave my sanctuary.

But as I headed down the stairs, I suddenly thought how lovely it would be to see a friendly face again after two weeks of self-imposed solitary confinement.

Tears pricked my eyes.

How could I have forgotten what an amazing comfort friends could be in times of crisis?

A warm feeling spread through me and I almost ran the last few steps.

‘At long bloody last!’ Anna shouted. ‘I’m freezing my bloody bollocks off here.’

She blew in on a gusty wind, along with a delivery of crisp autumn leaves from the beech trees outside my door, and marched straight through to the kitchen, winding off her scarf and yelling back, ‘I couldn’t believe your text saying Jamie buggered off at the weekend. That bastard has been gone three days and you never thought to mention it till this morning?’

I pulled my gaping dressing gown together and trailed after her. Having made it to the front door, I was now completely knackered.

I slumped down at the kitchen table. ‘What day is it?’

‘Wednesday. Why?’

‘Actually, it’s two weeks and four days.’ I eye her apologetically. ‘Since he left.’

Anna, who was pacing round the kitchen, boot heels clacking on the flagstone floor, stopped and spun round.

‘But your texts said you’d gone away. You’ve been here all this time?’ She fell into a chair opposite, her face softening. ‘Look at you! So calm and so brave.’ Leaning across the table, she imprisoned my hand in her freezing fingers. ‘Well, don’t worry. You’re not on your own any more.’

‘Um – good,’ I said, trying my best to look encouraged. All this messy human interaction was taking a bit of getting used to after two weeks in a vacuum. And I was aching all over. Even my skin felt sore. Every cell in my feeble body wanted to be in bed with the covers pulled over my head.

Anna gave my fingers a tight squeeze and I tried not to wince. ‘Let’s have a night out! Just you, me and Jess. And we can rubbish men to our heart’s content.’

She sighed happily at the prospect. This was Anna in her element, rubbishing men. Which was strange when she had lovely, funny, rugby-playing Peter tending to her every need and whim.

‘Or maybe a spa day would be better? Or’ – her eyes lit up – ‘how about a girls’ weekend? To Prague? Or Barcelona or something? Would that cheer you up?’

I tried to look enthused. But to be honest I was desperate to get back to Deal or No Deal. The contestants were like one big happy family. Watching it made me feel safe. And I knew for a fact that Noel Edmonds would never do the cheating thing.

But to make Anna feel better, I nodded and said, ‘Yes, that would be nice.’

I had an odd feeling it wouldn’t happen, though, and I was right because the next day I came down with the worst cold I’d had in years. As I snuffled my way through the last of the tissues (eventually resorting to the posh lilac ones in the guest bedroom), I couldn’t help wondering if illness was my body’s way of getting me out of a tight spot.

I hated to seem ungrateful, but I knew exactly what a ‘cheering up Izzy’ evening would be like. Jess and Anna would be feeling bad for me so I’d have to make a mammoth effort to smile and ‘act normal’ to reassure them I was fine, when all I really wanted to do was drive home, drag my duvet through to the living room and watch back to back reruns of Grey’s Anatomy in my pyjamas.

My cold, while pretty revolting, was a great excuse for remaining immobile in the house for another week. No-one could come near me because, of course, colds are highly infectious and this one had me practically at death’s door (at least, that’s what I told everyone).

And so it might have gone on, with me inventing new ways of remaining out of circulation in order to legitimately mope my days away.

But then that horrible text arrived from the bank and the scariest word in the home-owner’s dictionary leaped immediately into my head. Repossession.

After Jamie left, I’d buried my head in the sand over money. It was always there in the back of my mind – a vague threat cloaked in black, keeping its distance. But I somehow thought that while I was still in mourning for the end of my relationship, I couldn’t possibly be expected to start exercising the logical part of my brain and work out a plan. So the only action I’d taken to prevent my life going into complete financial meltdown was making gallons of vegetable soup and crossing my fingers. Admittedly, I was keeping them firmly crossed that Jamie would feel sufficiently guilty for doing the dirty on me to keep on paying the mortgage for a while.

Apparently I had been deluding myself.

OCTOBER

Autumn has arrived. The leaves are changing colour daily. And I’ve run out of ways to cook apples!

My four Bramley trees have been unusually heavy with fruit this season. I went out with the step-ladder last week and picked all I could reach. I’m not great with heights so I tried not to look down. But then a terrier ran into the garden and started yapping around the ladder, so I was forced to descend.

But every cloud has a silver lining. The dog’s owner happened to be a very tall gentleman who, when he realised my difficulty reaching the top branches, climbed the ladder himself and had the rest of the apples down in minutes!

I’ve now got enough Bramleys to feed the five thousand. I’ve stored dozens in the garage, each one wrapped in newspaper to hopefully keep them from rotting.

And when Izzy arrived on Tuesday, we went out blackberrying in the lanes around the house then spent a lovely morning baking. The scent of blackberries, apples and buttery pastry filled the house and was so heavenly, we couldn’t resist eating pie for lunch and dinner as well!

Yesterday, I staked out a small area in a sunny spot of the garden so Izzy could have her very own vegetable plot. We went to the garden centre and she chose what she’d like to plant – with a little guidance from yours truly, of course.

When we got back with our spoils, Izzy remembered the pumpkins she’d planted during the summer holidays, in a spot just beyond the terrace. She rushed outside, eager to find out if they had sprouted but there was nothing to be seen.

She was so disappointed, I hatched a plan.

Magically, when I went out into the garden this morning – hey presto! There was a single, average-sized pumpkin, partially hidden by foliage, just where she’d planted the seeds!

Izzy was amazed.

Although later, she did comment that she was quite sure it hadn’t been there the day before and that it looked very like the pumpkins in my own vegetable plot. She’s too wise for her own good, that one!

I told her one pumpkin was indeed very like another.

We made soup with hers and it was absolutely delicious.

Chapter Two

‘My treat.’ Jess reaches for her purse. ‘Call it a celebration.’

‘Of what?’ I ask, blanching at the vast sucking noise coming from the café’s industrial-sized coffee machine.

Every sudden noise is freaking me out. I suppose it’s because, apart from quick food raids to the local supermarket, I haven’t been out in the real world for months.

Jess beams in a proud, motherly way. ‘Moving on. Your brilliant new life.’

I smile at her hopeful optimism.

In recent weeks, I’ve got back to the job-hunting. But to be honest, my heart isn’t really in it. I need to feel positive about what I’m doing, otherwise I worry I might spiral down into the depths again – and sadly, I don’t think my old career in PR will give me that lift any more.

I’m hankering after a new direction altogether.

I glance around at the familiar low lighting, black leather sofas and chrome tables. The landscape of my life might look very different from two months ago, but the Fieldhorn Deli Café is exactly the same.

Today it’s full of Saturday shoppers taking shelter from the autumn wind that’s blowing leaves along the High Street. The low hum of a dozen conversations is actually quite soothing. It feels good to be somewhere familiar that evokes only good memories.

‘Just a coffee, please,’ I tell Jess, fingering the loose waistband of my jeans. I haven’t eaten properly since Jamie moved out. Whenever I make a meal for one, the food looks so abandoned on its little plate it makes me want to cry. Many times I have ended up scraping it into the bin.

At first when he left, my stomach churned constantly and I was plagued by Hollywood-style snapshots of the pair of them together.

Jamie and Emma laughing in a pub by a roaring fire, chinking glasses of mulled wine as the snow piled up outside. Emma and Jamie, in cute matching puffa jackets, stealing a kiss over a supermarket trolley. Jamie and Emma enjoying marathon sessions of movie-quality sex in her chic London flat as snow drifted gently past the window. Odd there’s so much snow. George Michael’s ‘Last Christmas’ video clearly made a big impression.

Jess frowns. ‘I wanted a Danish pastry. But I can’t eat it if you’re just going to sit there watching.’

‘I thought you were on a diet,’ I point out. ‘Which is nuts, by the way.’

‘I’m a bride-to-be.’ She sits bolt upright and pats her flat stomach. ‘It’s against the law not to lose weight for the Big Day.’

‘So what’s with the Danish?’

‘I’ve counted it into my eating plan.’

Suddenly I feel hungry. Perhaps it’s all this talk of food or the aroma of fresh coffee or knowing the Deli Café sells my favourite cookie of all time.

Or maybe it’s because after a month of half-hearted job-hunting, at last I have a plan I think might work.

‘Pecan Nut and Raisin Crunch, please,’ I tell Jess. ‘Actually, I’m starving. I’ve been awake since five.’

Jess’s face falls. She knows all about my sleepless nights.

‘No, it’s good.’ I sit forward. ‘I’ve been thinking since five, and I’ve found a way to hold on to Farthing Cottage. I’ll tell you about it when Anna gets here.’

She gives me that fond, goofy look that says, How do you manage to be so brave?

Frankly, I wish she would stop wrapping my feelings in cotton wool. Jess is getting married to Wesley in July and should, in theory, be boring me to death with talk of bridesmaids’ dresses and table plans. Just because I won’t be walking down the aisle any time soon doesn’t mean I’m allergic to connubial happiness in general.

But I know she’s only trying to protect me.

I feel a surge of affection for my two best friends. A tear squeezes out but I dash it away in case Jess thinks I’m about to have a relapse.

The truth is I still have an occasional ‘down day’ but on the whole, life is slowly getting back to normal.

Jess goes off to order just as the door chimes and Anna arrives, out of breath. The damp day has frizzed her red hair, making it bunch out over her shoulders. She drops her keys on the table and hugs me. ‘Sorry I’m late. Peter wouldn’t let me out of bed.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘How’s Jess?’ She grins over at the counter. ‘Of Jess ‘n’ Wes?’

‘Stop it,’ I admonish her. ‘You know she hates that.’

Anna shrugs. ‘It’s not my fault they’re a rhyming couplet. Back in a sec.’ She plonks her scarf on the table and rushes over to join Jess at the counter.