‘If you’ll notice, at the end of the garden,’ Smarmy Simon was saying, ‘there’s a gate that leads onto the allotments. I believe the owner still pays rent on hers, and if you were interested she probably wouldn’t have any objection to you using it.’
‘May I?’ Amy asked, pointing at the gate.
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Smarmy Simon. ‘It’s open. No one bothers to lock things much around here.’ His phone started to ring. ‘Will you excuse me for a minute?’ He answered it while waving her on down the path.
As Amy opened the gate, she had to restrain herself from letting rip to whoops of delight. Josh ran round and round in excited circles, shouting loudly. Amy tried to shush him – there didn’t appear to be any other children on the allotments, and she didn’t want to irritate people – but his enthusiasm was infectious. It was perfect, absolutely perfect.
From the road, she would have had no idea this was here. The allotments spread out before her, a tiny green oasis in the middle of a small but busy market town. They were alive with the sound of birdsong, and looked well cared for. Presently, being the middle of the day, they were mainly empty. She heard the sound of a mower in the distance, and was startled by the appearance of a rather hairy-looking man, dressed in black leather, who appeared to be talking to something in a bucket.
‘There you are, me beauties,’ he was muttering, ‘have I got a treat for you.’
Passing by his plot, a ramshackle affair with gnarled fruit trees protected by netting, and strange wooden contraptions that Amy supposed were homemade compost heaps, she and Josh wandered down a wide path. This was glorious, quite glorious.
She could see another man pausing from digging up vegetables on one of the other plots. A black Labrador sat at his side, panting in the midday sun. The man had obviously been exerting himself – he had taken his shirt off, and was swigging some water. There was something vaguely familiar about him. He leaned on his spade for a moment, before returning to his digging. Amy turned away.
This place, it was wonderful. When she had seen the details of the house Amy had had no idea it backed onto allotments, and it was the icing on the cake. She squinted in the sun, taking in the beauty of her surroundings. There were blackberries ripening in the late August sunshine, and beans, tomatoes and potatoes all coming into fruition. The odd hut was dotted about, and some plots seemed to consist of fruit trees. It had been a poor summer – today was one of the few hot days they’d had – but the trees seemed laden with fruit anyway. There was a sense of abundance, and ripeness – the time for harvesting near. Amy couldn’t help the catch in her throat, as she thought about how much Jamie would have loved this. Autumn had always been his favourite time of year – a golden time to catch his golden girl he had used to tease her. They had met in the autumn, nearly fourteen years ago, the early days of their courtship punctuated with long country walks crunching their way through leaf-strewn fields. If they had only been able to do this together.
Together. They would never do anything together again. A hard, familiar knot tightened in her stomach. It was nearly two years ago now, but the thought of never seeing Jamie again was still enough to take her breath away. She had promised herself she would be strong for Josh, but it took all her self-control not to let out the raw pain, which she concealed so well these days. She was determined to leave all that behind her. This was a new start for her and Josh. A new beginning, a way forward to slough off the pain of the past.
She took a deep breath and stared around her once again. She and Jamie had always dreamed of decamping to the countryside and living in an old farmhouse. A memory forced its way into her mind – a snapshot of a perfect day on a long weekend, not far from here, a sunny day in late summer, much like this, visiting Amy’s Auntie Grace in Aldeburgh.
Jamie strode ahead of her through fields of golden corn, with Josh on his back. The sun shone, but the air was crisp and bracing, a fresh wind coming from the sea.
‘Isn’t this perfect?’ Jamie shouted into the wind as it whipped his hair, his eyes alight with laughter.
‘We should come and live here,’ Amy said from behind a camera, taking a photo to capture the moment.
‘We’d need a big house,’ Jamie said. ‘For all of Josh’s brothers and sisters.’
‘And a big garden,’ Amy laughed. ‘With a vegetable patch.’
‘And we’d have to have a dog.’
‘We could keep chickens,’ offered Amy.
‘I’d rather have a goat,’ replied Jamie with a smile.
‘Now you’re just being silly.’ Amy punched him on the shoulder, and he grabbed her hands and pulled her to him.
‘Still, it would be nice,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t it just,’ said Jamie, kissing her. ‘One day, I promise you, one day …’
It was the photo from that day, which she still kept beside the bed, that had made her determined to make this move. In the early days, when she had cried herself to sleep every night, she could hardly bear to look at it. But of late, she had found the picture comforting. As if he were still with her, somehow. She couldn’t live the dream with Jamie, but maybe she could do it for him.
Amy had havered for months before taking the plunge. It was Auntie Grace who finally proved the catalyst. Actually a great-aunt, Auntie Grace had lived grumpily alone for many years in the depths of Suffolk. She wasn’t an easy person, but Amy didn’t have much family, so she had dutifully visited from time to time, though admittedly after Jamie had died, when every day had been such a trial, just getting up was difficult on some days, so the visits had tailed off. On the last occasion, a year ago, Grace had fixed her with a beady eye, and said, ‘It seems tough now, you know, but it will get better. Remember my motto: Always look forward. Never back.’
Amy had taken no notice of her at the time, but when, after Grace’s not unexpected demise at the age of eighty-nine several months earlier, she learned that her aunt had left her a considerable sum of money, it seemed like a sign. Jamie had died so suddenly, so young, he had left no will, and Amy had struggled to keep up with the mortgage payments ever since. Mary had been fantastic, prepared to babysit Josh at the drop of a hat, helping out so Amy didn’t have to pay childcare fees for the whole week, pushing Amy to carry on with the gardening course she had started before Jamie’s death, coming to the rescue when money was especially tight. Amy owed her a huge debt, both financial and emotional. Guilt flared in her chest once more at depriving Mary of Josh.
But now, fortunately, she had enough money to pay off the debts Jamie had left behind and even have some left over. Amy had finished her course, and she could actually afford to stop teaching and forge out a new career as she had always planned to do when Jamie was alive. Maybe it was time to look forward and not back. Living round the corner from Mary, whose grief had taken the form of a kind of suffocating blanket covering both Amy and Josh, she’d never be able to do that. Besides, she and Jamie had always talked of coming out this way. If only she could persuade Mary it was the right thing for them to do.
Apart from her brother Danny, who lived in Surrey, and Auntie Grace, Jamie and Mary had been her only family for years now. Her own mother had moved to the States when Amy was at college, and she and Danny had no idea where their father was. Amy’s parents had split up when she was fourteen. Her dad had just walked out one day, and though she and Danny had tried over the years to contact him, their efforts had been in vain. They’d both given up now. Although Amy and her mother Jennifer had never been close they had always stayed in touch,