Appleby Farm Read Free Page B

the pit of my stomach. ‘These are Sungold, they’re sweet little cherry tomatoes. I’m hoping to get Ollie to try them. He reckons he doesn’t like tomatoes, but I might convert him with one of these.’
    The warm feeling grew a bit bigger. Yet another reason to adore him. ‘The world’s greatest dad, you,’ I said, nudging him playfully. ‘What are these other bigger ones?’
    Charlie cleared his throat. ‘Um, they’re Outdoor Girl. I saw the packet and thought of you.’
    ‘Me?’ I gasped. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.
    He shrugged and turned his face away but I could tell he’d gone a bit pink.
    OK, so growing a variety of outdoor tomatoes in someone’s honour might not be everyone’s idea of a romantic gesture, but I knew how Charlie’s mind worked and my heart bounced all over the place. He worshipped his six-year-old son Ollie, who was quite literally at the centre of Charlie’s universe. So if he’d been thinking about both of us when he’d made his tomato choices, that must mean that I was special too, mustn’t it?
    More than that, I loved the fact that he knew me so well. My favourite jobs have been those where I could spend time outside. My idea of absolute hell is being desk-bound like my housemate, Anna, who is a web designer and barely moves more than five metres in an entire day.
    ‘Can I plant them outside, then?’ I said, dragging my eyes back to the seedlings. ‘I quite fancy a bit of fresh air.’
    Charlie rolled his eyes and chuckled. ‘I don’t know why you work in a café when you’re so mad keen on the great outdoors. You should be a park ranger or a policewoman or something. But no, sorry, they’re not hardened off yet. Here, stick these in instead.’
    ‘Peas! Oh, I love these!’ I said as he handed me a tray of sturdy pea plants. A picture of me hiding in Auntie Sue’s veggie patch floated into my head, sitting in the sunshine, popping fat peapods with my thumbs and eating the contents like sweets.
    Charlie chuckled indulgently. He dispatched me towards a wigwam of bamboo canes and we both settled into our tasks. I knelt down in a patch of low sun and began to dig a small hole. I sprinkled a bit of fairy dust into it and then placed a tiny pea plant into its new home. I knew it wasn’t fairy dust. Obviously. It was just far nicer to think of that than what it actually was, which might have been very nutritious for plants but absolutely stank.
    Policewoman.
I started to laugh.
    ‘It’s the handcuffs, isn’t it?’ I shouted over my shoulder.
    ‘What is?’
    ‘That’s why you imagined me as a policewoman. So that you can play with the handcuffs. I know your game, mister.’
    ‘Er, excuse me, Miss Moorcroft,’ Charlie laughed indignantly, ‘it wasn’t my idea to stay in bed all last Sunday and look at pictures of you naked. That was entirely your doing.’
    The patch of sunlight that had been warming my back suddenly disappeared and I heard a discreet cough. A prickle of embarrassment ran along my spine as I turned around to see Christine, the allotment secretary and coincidentally Gemma’s mum, standing at the end of Charlie’s plot. My eyes made their way from her wellingtons to her quilted jacket and up to her bobble hat. I scanned her face, holding my breath in case there was a sliver of hope that she hadn’t overheard.
    ‘Lovely looking beetroot, so it is,’ said Christine in her broad Irish accent, smirking away to herself.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, unsure whether Charlie grew beetroot or whether it was simply a blunt observation about the state of my face. ‘It was my baby album,’ I spluttered. ‘That’s why I was naked. And not in all of them, obviously …’ I trailed off as Christine’s shoulders began to shake with laughter.
    ‘Ah, you youngsters. It’s a long time since my husband Roy and I spent the day doing that.’
    I gulped and laughed nervously. TMI, as Shirley would say.
    ‘Hello, Christine,’ said Charlie,