Appleby Farm Read Free

softened as she leaned forward to hand Parker back the toy he had just dropped.
    ‘Aww, thanks, Freya. Are you getting broody, by any chance?’
    I thought about it for a moment.
    ‘Yes and no,’ I replied honestly. ‘I’m not ready to do the whole settling-down thing yet. But at some point, yes. I can see myself with a couple of munchkins, cottage in the country, a horse and a dog … But at the moment, I’m happy to borrow Parker every now and then.’
    No idea why I’d suddenly blurted all that out. I felt my face redden. I’d never been conscious of this plan before. I did want to be a mother at some point, though. And at the risk of sounding a bit 1950s, I wanted to be the sort of mother who was there when my children got in from school, with a kiss and a cake straight out of the oven. Like my Auntie Sue. I’d have to work on the cakes bit; my repertoire consisted of one thing – scones.
    ‘Does Charlie know how you feel?’ Gemma asked, gazing at me wide-eyed.
    The only problem with Kingsfield is that everyone else has been here for donkey’s years. I might only have met Charlie a few months ago, but Gemma’s known him for ages from Ivy Lane allotments. Unlikely as it seemed looking at those nails, Gemma had her own allotment plot until Parker came along.
    ‘Whoa! Steady on, Gem, we’ve only been together five minutes!’ I bent to brush my lips against Parker’s head to hide my hot cheeks. ‘I’m sure we’ll broach the subject when the time comes.’
    ‘It’s just that … oh, nothing,’ mumbled Gemma. She lifted the mug to her lips and sipped at her tea.
    My stomach lurched. Just that what? But before I had chance to ask, Gemma squealed and reached into her bag.
    ‘I nearly forgot to show you this!’ She handed me a postcard with a picture of a tortoise on a deserted beach on it. ‘Came this morning, from Tilly and Aidan. Sounds like they’re having an amazing time in the Galloping-wotsit Islands. Aww,’ she sighed, lifting Parker from me and arranging him back in his pushchair, ‘they are such a perfect match, those two.’
    My friend, the lovely Tilly Parker, the baby’s namesake, was another of the Ivy Lane allotment posse. She was the girl I credited with getting me and Charlie together and she met
her
fella, Aidan, when he came to Kingsfield last year as part of a film crew making a documentary about the allotment. He was filming something else now, in the Galápagos Islands, and Tilly had joined him for a holiday.
    A perfect match.
The words ran rhythmically through my head while I read Tilly’s postcard and Gemma prepared to depart.
    I waved her and Parker off with a smile. I didn’t feel overly smiley on the inside; I felt a bit churned up. Gemma hadn’t uttered the exact words and I might have been putting two and two together and making a fuss about nothing, but it felt as though she thought that in some way Charlie and I
weren’t
a perfect match. And as Shirley had pointed out only a few minutes ago, Shenton Road Café wasn’t my future.
    My stomach flipped queasily. When I woke up this morning my life had seemed quite straightforward, but now … well, I wasn’t sure of anything.

Chapter 2
    By the time I’d finished up at the café, scurried along Shenton Road, into All Saints Road, down Ivy Lane and made it as far as the allotment gate I was back to my normal happy-go-lucky self and smiling at my own daft thoughts. What had all that self-doubt malarkey been about?
    I pushed open the heavy gate and closed it behind me.
    It wasn’t like me to over-analyse things; life’s far too short to agonize over my career choice or to worry about the state of my relationship. Or anything else, for that matter. Far better just to go with the flow. I loved my life and anyway, no one really has the perfect job and the perfect partner. Charlie and I were fine. No, better than fine – we were great, we made each other happy and we had a laugh together. And that was what made us so