Summer At Willow Tree Farm

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 on his promise to Dee.

There was no reason why Ellie and he couldn’t be civil to each other. She might not even remember him. Much.

But then his gaze snagged on her strappy top and the way the thin cotton stretched tight across her breasts. The firm nubs of her nipples stood out against the fabric.

He heard a cough, and lifted his gaze. A pair of grass-green eyes glared at him. The flush burned the back of his neck, at the thought that he’d just been caught checking her out before he’d even said hello. But then the intriguing tilt at the edges of her eyes went squinty and he noticed the bluish hollows of fatigue underneath.

She looked exhausted.

Her lips pursed and the puddle of pity dried up. The tight smile was as unconvincing as the one nineteen years ago.

‘Hello, Arthur,’ she said, using the name he hated except when Dee used it. ‘You’re still here then.’

It wasn’t a question, more like a declaration of war.

CHAPTER TWO

Bollocks on toast.

Art Dalton was still here. And still hot. And most definitely still an arsehole, if the insolent way he’d been inspecting her boobs was anything to go by.

‘Yup,’ he said, in the gruff tone that had always unnerved her when they were teenagers. As if there were a million things he could say, but wasn’t going to.

The nervous tension that had been sitting in her gut during the flight over and the drive here, snaked up Ellie’s torso to wrap around her ribs like an anaconda.

Stop freaking out, you ninny. He’ll think it’s on account of him.

She took two calming breaths, drowning out her mother’s information about sleeping arrangements, and took a moment to glance around the yard. Studiously ignoring the man in front of her.

The pungent smell of wet earth and manure hadn’t changed, but everything else had. The place didn’t look like the site of a recent zombie apocalypse any more. There were no rusting vans and trucks propped up on breeze blocks, no broken furniture lying about. Just a carefully segmented vegetable garden, laid out in rows with a section under glass. There were geese and ducks poking around, but no pack of wild dogs or wild children, just two well-dressed toddlers and a skinny little boy about Josh’s age who had taken him off somewhere.

She would check on her son in a minute, after three hours in a car he could do with a run about, but she was reserving judgement on the motives of that skinny boy.

The barn behind the two-storey stone farmhouse had a new roof, the corrugated iron gleaming silver in the sunlight. Even the mud looked industrious. And all three of the men she’d been introduced to had seemed young and ordinary, instead of old and weird. Not a nose ring or multicoloured Mohican in sight.

The anaconda released its stranglehold on her ribs. The place didn’t feel as hostile any more.

‘Exactly how long are you planning to stay?’

Art’s dry enquiry interrupted her mum’s running commentary on how pleased she was to meet Josh.

Not hostile – except for Prince Not Charming.

‘Because that’s a ton of stuff,’ he added, the rasp suggesting how much of an effort it was for him to put a whole sentence together.

In worn boots and oil-stained overalls, Art Dalton looked as intimidating as ever – the strong, silent, stroppy type. His tall, whipcord-lean build had a solid strength, accentuated by the workman’s biceps that moulded the rolled-up sleeves of his overalls. The old tattoo caught her eye, the once blood-red lines having faded to a dusky pink against sun-browned skin. She dragged her gaze away, before she got fixated. His dark messy hair matched black brows, permanently lowered over his prominent aquiline nose. Sensual lips twisted in a cynical attempt at a smile. At fifteen he’d been the ultimate rebel without a cause, the original Lord of the Flies – both terrifying and exciting.

Not a good combination for a fourteen-year-old girl in the grip of rioting hormones, who missed her friends terribly and had about as much common sense as Daffy Duck. Luckily, she’d kicked Daffy to the kerb nineteen years ago – give or take the odd ill-advised marriage – after Art had rejected her the first time. So it really didn’t matter now that he looked like the walking embodiment of ‘a bit of rough’. Or exuded the earthy eroticism of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

‘Stop interrogating her, Arthur.’ Dee threaded her arm through Ellie’s and led her towards the farmhouse, and away from Art and his surly questions.

‘How long are you planning to stay?’ Dee asked, as they approached the farmhouse.

Lavender bushes, sunflowers and fire-red foxgloves spilled out of the flowerbeds by the door, giving off a heady perfume. A wisteria vine, clinging to the stonework, wound its way around the peaked portico.

‘Because you and Josh are welcome to stay for as long as you want,’ her mother added.

From the forbidding scowl on his face, she wasn’t convinced Art Dalton agreed.

‘I don’t know. We haven’t made any concrete plans yet.’ The only concrete plan so far had involved escaping from Orchard Harbor before news of Chelsea Hamilton’s pregnancy hit the local gossip grapevine – and turned her and Josh’s lives into a soap opera worthy of Argentinian daytime TV.

Ellie would have been able to cope with all the ‘well-meant advice’ and faux sympathy once the news was out, because she’d been doing that for years, but she wasn’t sure Josh could, without eating his own weight in Oreos. The truth was she hadn’t even had the guts to tell him yet that Dan and her were separating.

‘Then I hope you’ll consider staying for a while,’ Dee said, the generosity of the gesture making Ellie feel even more uncomfortable.

Her mother had been suggesting she and Josh visit for a while now, not long after that first tentative email with the subject line ‘Merry Christmas, Ellie’ had appeared in her inbox four years ago. But, prior to that, they’d lost contact for over a decade – separated by the huge chasm that had developed once Ellie had chosen to leave the commune after that one fateful summer and go back to live with her dad. And her mother had opted to stay put with her new girlfriend.

‘But there’s no need to make a decision yet,’ Dee added quickly, obviously picking up on Ellie’s reluctance, as she walked ahead past a rack of coats and jackets positioned over a crate full of scuffed sneakers and wellington boots. ‘All you and Josh need to do today is settle in, and relax after your long journey.’

The long journey had been a picnic compared to the week that had preceded it, but Ellie allowed herself to be led.

‘I’ll be serving dinner in a couple of hours,’ Dee said. ‘But I could get you something to snack on first if you’re hungry.’

Her mum’s voice drifted over Ellie. ‘I’m fine.’

She refrained from suggesting she skip dinner and crash now as her mother opened the door to the communal kitchen. It would be an ordeal attending the communal supper tonight. She didn’t find eating with people she didn’t know particularly relaxing, but it was the penance she would have to pay for being deranged enough to accept her mum’s invitation in the first place. And at least the people who lived here now didn’t have inappropriate piercings or judgemental scowls on their faces – every one except Art.

Then again, she hadn’t seen Art’s mother yet, or her mother’s girlfriend Pam. Reunions she was not looking forward to almost as much as the one with Art.

She raised her head to ask about them both, and gasped.

She recognised the sturdy butler sink and the scarred butcher’s block table – around which numerous discussions about whether Tony Blair was really a Tory plant had been conducted in her youth – but nothing else looked familiar. The boxes of pamphlets and home-made placards she remembered stacked in every available corner, the wolf-like dog that snarled whenever she ventured into the room and the teetering towers of dirty dishes in the sink were all gone.

The commune’s hub had been transformed from revolution central into the set from a country cooking show.

An industrial dishwasher stood in one corner next to the cast-iron splendour of a traditional Aga cooker. The flagstone flooring had been scrubbed clean. The door to the pantry – which had once housed an antique printing press – now stood open to reveal shelves groaning under jars of home-made preserves, while a collection of potted herbs stood in aromatic abundance on the windowsill over the sink.

The delicious smell of garlic and melted cheese drew Ellie’s gaze to the home-baked lasagne and tray of roasted vegetables resting on the Aga’s hot plate.

Ellie blinked, expecting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to pop out of the pantry at any moment and start demonstrating how to make sloe-gin ice cream.

‘What happened?’ Had she slipped into an alternative reality?

‘What happened to what?’ Her mother turned from the cooker, where she’d been taking another tray of vegetables out of the oven.

The light from the window illuminated the streaks of grey in her mother’s dark blonde hair. In the shaft of sunlight, Ellie noticed for the first time the speckle of sun blemishes on her mum’s skin and the slight thickening around the waistband of her gypsy skirt. But otherwise, Dee Preston, unlike her kitchen, had hardly changed. With her sky-blue eyes, the thick tangle of hair tied up in a topknot, the collection of bangles on her wrist jingling as she basted the vegetables, she looked a good fifteen years younger than her fifty-nine years.

‘To the kitchen? To the whole place?’ Ellie felt a bit ridiculous when her mother sent her a quizzical look, as if she couldn’t imagine what Ellie was getting at. ‘It doesn’t look anything like I remember it.’

‘Oh, well, yes.’ Dee glanced around, attempting to locate the differences. ‘I suppose it is a bit less cluttered these days.’

‘Mum, it was a shit-hole,’ Ellie said. ‘There was that feral dog that lurked in the corner like the three-headed hellhound from Harry Potter.’

‘Fluffy?’

‘That dog was called Fluffy?’ Clearly someone back then had a sense of humour she’d been unaware of.

Her mum smiled. ‘No, the three-headed dog in Harry Potter’s called Fluffy. Laura’s Irish wolfhound was called Scargill, I think.’

That figured, because Art’s mum had been in the forefront of all the revolutionary bollocks Ellie remembered from the bad old days.

‘He died years ago,’ Dee supplied helpfully. ‘He’s buried in the back pasture.’

‘But it wasn’t just the dog,’ Ellie continued, silently hoping the Hound of the Baskervilles had died in agony, because it was the least the cantankerous old beast deserved. ‘No one ever washed up or cooked anything remotely edible, except you. The whole place stank of unwashed bodies and stale marijuana and it was a hotbed of born-again hippie anarchy.’ She swept her hand to encompass the scene before her now, which could have illustrated a feature article in Country Living. ‘Not home-grown herbs and home-made preserves and home baking. The place looks as if it’s been given a makeover by the Shabby Chic Fairy. Seriously, what happened?’

Because she wanted to know.

‘Well, Laura left us a few months after you did. And most of the activist element left not long after that, too.’

Laura Dalton had left? Nineteen years ago? So why was her son Art still hanging about? Ellie stopped herself from asking though, because she wasn’t interested in what had been going on with Art.

‘Where did Laura go?’ she asked, deciding that was a safe question.

‘She ran off with the local Lib-Dem member of the county council. His name was Rupert something.’

‘You are joking?’ This was beginning to sound like a Little Britain sketch. And not in a good way.

‘We were all a bit surprised to be honest, given that Laura had insisted even New Labour were traitors to the cause.’ Dee’s smile became rueful.

‘I thought Laura was a lesbian?’ She’d never managed to get to the bottom of how Art had been created, because no one had ever spoken about his father. But given how demonstrative Laura had always been with Delshad, her partner at the commune, Ellie had begun to suspect Art might have originated from a petri dish in a sperm bank.

‘So did Laura, I suppose.’ Dee tucked a stray tendril behind her ear and picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already pristine table. ‘But apparently she wasn’t. Or not where Rupert was concerned. She left a note for Art, explaining why she’d left, but he never told me what it said.’

Had his mum just left him behind then? With a note? He’d only been fifteen.

The spurt of sympathy though was blasted into submission by a disturbing memory flash of Art at fifteen. His lean wiry nut-brown body lying in the long grass by the millpond, the bloody ink on his left bicep rippling as he held his…

Heat blossomed in her stomach and crawled over her scalp, the same way it had all those years ago, when she’d watched him unobserved from her vantage point in the derelict mill house and realised what he was doing.

She cut off the memory. But the heat refused to subside as she had another memory flash, closer to home, of the same ink peeking out from the rolled-up sleeve of Art’s overalls a few minutes ago.

Note to self: jet lag, a failed marriage and a year with only the occasional duty shag can seriously mess with your mental health. Enough to delude you into fixating on an arsehole like Art Dalton and his tacky tattoo.

She needed to crash, and soon.

‘So Laura never came back?’ she said. ‘Delshad must have been devastated.’

Any sympathy for Art on the other hand would be misguided. She couldn’t imagine him being devastated. His mum had probably run off with Rupert the Lib-Dem – and jettisoned her political beliefs and her sexual identity in the process – to get shot of him. After all, he’d been more wild and feral at fifteen than that bloody dog.

‘Actually she did come back in a manner of speaking,’ Dee said, throwing the dishcloth into the sink.

‘Oh?’

‘A young man called Jack Harborough turned up five years ago with her ashes in a Tupperware container. He said he’d been living with her in a squat in Tottenham. He had photos of the two of them together. Apparently she died of lung cancer. She did look terribly thin in the photos. Like someone from a concentration camp. Awful,’ Dee said mildly. ‘That’s what roll-ups can do to you.’

Ellie was still trying to get her head around the thought of Laura coming back in a Tupperware container. The thought of the stunningly beautiful radical socialist looking like a Belsen victim simply wouldn’t compute.

And she thought her life had become a soap opera.

‘Where’s Pam?’ Ellie heard herself say, deciding she would have to kick the elephant in the room eventually. And getting sidetracked with Laura’s story had given her a headache. And some memory flashes she really didn’t need to go with the foggy feeling of exhaustion.

Dee’s smile didn’t falter, but the warmth in her eyes died. ‘She’s dead, darling. She died four years ago.’

‘I didn’t know. I’m… I’m sorry, Mum.’ The words felt inadequate. And somewhat hypocritical, given the emotion arriving on the heels of the revelation was a massive surge of relief. ‘Why didn’t you tell me in any of your emails?’

Was Pam’s death the reason why Dee had decided to get in touch again out of the blue? Surely it had to be.

Ellie’s spine stiffened a bit more. Get over it.

It was churlish to feel cheated that her mother’s grief had been the only thing prompting her to build bridges that had been broken for so long. Why should her mother’s motivations matter? After all, she and her mother weren’t close, would never be close – and Ellie’s reasons for being here were equally as self-serving as her mother’s reasons were for wanting her here.

‘I didn’t want to bother you with it,’ Dee said easily enough. ‘After all, you and Pam didn’t care for each other.’ The words were said without any censure, but Ellie’s chest tightened.

Pam had tried to get on with her. It was she who had refused point blank to get on with Pam.

She headed round the table, and laid a palm on her mother’s arm. ‘Yes, but you cared about Pam.’ While Ellie might once have managed to convince herself her mother’s affair with another woman was nothing more than a juvenile mid-life crisis, it was hard to escape the fact the two of them had lived together for fifteen years. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

Her mother’s skin felt soft and cool. And the gesture felt awkward, and insincere. Especially when Dee said: ‘Thank you, Ellie. You know, it was Pam who begged me to contact you, to re-establish a relationship with you before she died,’ she added, confirming Ellie’s suspicions. ‘And I’m glad I did. It’s wonderful to finally have you here.’ Dee’s hopeful expression did nothing to ease Ellie’s guilt or her discomfort. Exactly what was her mother expecting from this visit? ‘And I’m so looking forward to getting to know Josh.’ Dee patted her fingers. ‘He seems like a lovely boy. So open and so very American.’

The mention of Josh gave Ellie a jolt. In the shock of seeing Art and the new improved farm and hearing about Laura’s Lib-Dem love shock and Pam’s untimely death, she’d completely forgotten about her son.

‘I’m sure he will. But who was that boy he went off with?’ she asked, her protective-mother instinct charging to the fore.

Actually, it was a bit surprising Josh hadn’t returned already. He wasn’t usually confident with strangers. Especially strange kids. And the boy who had led him off had reminded Ellie of the wild kids who had roamed the commune before. Skinny with a smudge of something on his chin, his short dark hair sticking up, wearing torn jeans and a grubby T-shirt, his eyes too big for his freckled face, the boy had looked decidedly feral.

‘Toto, you mean?’ Her mother smiled as if enjoying a private joke.

‘Yes, Toto, that was it. He said he was taking Josh to their clubhouse. Is it safe?’ She should have asked this before. Josh wasn’t the most agile of children. And she didn’t want him to feel awkward. Or worse, end up in some hideous initiation ceremony. Like she had. ‘Isn’t Toto a dog’s name?’ Why would anyone give their child a name like that?

‘Toto’s short for Antonia.’

‘That boy’s a girl?’ The obese gymnasts relaxed. Surely a tomboy would be less feral than an actual boy.

‘Yes, she’s Art’s daughter.’

The obese gymnasts began doing backflips in Ellie’s stomach.

Less feral, my arse.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Dad, Dad, Dad, you’ve gotta come quick.’

‘Damn it!’ Art wheeled back the axe to stop himself from nearly hacking off his foot a second time in one afternoon. ‘Toto, what is wrong with you? Don’t run up and shout at me when I’m chopping.’

But Toto already had her hand buried in his overalls to drag him who knew where. ‘You’ve got to come. Josh is stuck up a tree and he’s going to die if you don’t rescue him.’

He placed the axe by the tree stump and gripped his daughter’s shoulders to stop them shaking, from either exertion or terror, it was hard to tell.

‘Calm down. Who’s Josh and what tree is he stuck up?’ They’d deal with the dying bit in a minute.

‘Josh is the new kid.’ Toto gasped between breaths. ‘Dee’s grandson.’

Crap. Just what he needed, Ellie’s kid breaking his neck after they’d been here exactly half an hour. She was just the type to sue them into the ground for child endangerment.

‘What tree’s he stuck up?’

Toto tried to drag him towards the woods. ‘The Clubhouse tree.’

‘Can’t he just climb down again?’ he said. ‘There’s a ladder. I built the thing myself.’

‘No, it’s the ladder he’s stuck on.’

‘How can he be stuck on the ladder?’ Had the thing broken? The cost of the lawsuit spiralled up.

‘I don’t know,’ Toto wailed. ‘He just did. And now he can’t get down and he’s afraid and he could fall. And he’s way way up, right near the top. If he falls, it’s gonna hurt.’

She yanked his overalls. Grasping her wrist, he lifted her fingers off. ‘Stop tugging me. I’ll go sort it out.’

Toto tried to shoot off ahead of him, but he grabbed her arm.

‘Dad! Don’t hold me. I need to run back; he’ll be scared without me.’

‘I’ll go. You need to go tell his mum what’s going on.’ He’d be more than happy never to have Ellie know about this, but just in case her son did end up injuring himself, it was the only responsible thing to do. ‘And show her where the tree is.’