‘At least you didn’t say life partner that’s the most cringe-worthy term of them all.’
The two women grinned at each other in silent understanding as Ben filled in the blanks. ‘How about just calling him by his name? You women always have to over complicate everything.’
‘Thank you, Ben. Yes, Kris.’ Annie sniggered. ‘My man friend teaches history at the high school.’
‘He’s a good bloke, your man friend.’ Ben winked at Annie as he gave her ‘man friend’ the seal of approval.
‘I think so.’ A silly look drifted over her face.
‘They met in Greece,’ Ben said. ‘It was front page news in the Bibury Times that the school was employing a foreign senior history teacher.’
‘I can imagine it would’ve been, just like Violet McDougall retiring.’ She couldn’t help herself.
Ben didn’t take the bait to mention his new girlfriend, though. ‘Miss Seastrand’s gone too, a bloke called Callum Packer’s replaced her.’
‘Not before time.’ Isla recalled the Deputy Head, a grey-haired harridan. She was convinced the woman had it in for her. ‘I caught her smoking cigarettes on the school field again,’ Miss Seastrand announce to Principal Bishop as though she had just collared a criminal mastermind and was awaiting her reward.
‘She was a holy terror that woman.’
Ben laughed. ‘Yeah, she was. I remember the time she caught Ryan and me down the Four Square trying to buy cigarettes when we were supposed to be in Science class.’
‘Oh, I remember that! Gosh, I would’ve been about twelve, and you guys were fourteen. Dad brought home a pack of Benson and Hedges and made Ryan smoke the lot. He was green; it was more entertaining than watching The Sopranos.’
‘Ah, they don’t do good TV like that anymore.’ They smiled at each other until Isla became aware of Annie’s hovering presence.
‘So how did you meet Kris, Annie?’
‘We met at the Acropolis in Athens. He was on a day trip with some of his students.’
‘Oh, how romantic! I was in Athens a few years ago. The Acropolis blew me away. To be able to walk amongst all that history was amazing. He’s Greek then, your man friend?’ She smiled.
‘Yes, he’s from Naxos, and it was romantic apart from my friend Carl who I was travelling with coming down with the traveller’s trots. He’s a bit of a drama queen at the best of times. Anyway, it’s a long story, and I’ll tell you it when we know each other better, but the gist of it is that Carl had stampeded off to find a loo and I was sitting admiring the view when Kris left his students and came over to say hi. I’m Annie Rivers by the way. It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Isla Brookes and it’s nice to meet you too.’ They smiled at each other before Annie headed back behind the counter to fill the coffee plunger.
Isla was pleased Annie thought that they would get to know each other better, and she watched her potential new friend as she busied herself filling Ben’s order. He was staring at her, she realized, and she felt the need to babble bubbling up in her throat. She swallowed it back down when he broke the silence.
‘You don’t want to let that get cold.’
‘No,’ she said picking up her knife. ‘Yum, it looks good.’
‘Here you go Ben, coffee to go, white with one sugar and a sausage roll.’
‘Cheers Annie.’ He took the takeaway cup and the paper bag through which the grease from his sausage roll was already seeping and hovered, watching as Isla cut into the pinwheel. ‘It’s good to see you again Isla; I’ll see you around then.’
‘Yeah, it was good to see you too. See you around.’ She kept her gaze fixed on her plate until she heard the door bang shut behind him.
‘Well, that last goodbye was like a scene from a Nicholas Sparks movie. All the two of you needed to look the part was a cowboy hat each.’
Isla looked up at Annie, startled.
‘You obviously have a history.’
‘You could say that, yes and I know where I can get hold of a cowboy hat.’
Annie grinned, pulling the chair out opposite Isla, where a few seconds ago Ben’s hands had been resting. ‘So come on then, spill.’
‘I will when I know you better,’ Isla said smiling before she stuffed in as much scroll as she could fit in her mouth.
‘Touché.’
‘Yum.’ Isla could hear her gran telling her not to talk with her mouthful. ‘What’s in this? It’s divine.’
Annie was only too pleased to share her recipe secret, it was all in the relish apparently, and the two women whiled away an uninterrupted half an hour chatting about food. Annie told Isla how she’d fallen in love with cooking while staying with a Greek family who ran a guest house in Crete. ‘All the produce they cooked with was picked fresh straight from their garden.’
Just then, a middle-aged man who looked like he’d just crawled out of the bush after a week-long tramp barrelled into the tearooms, and greeted Annie cheerily nodding in Isla’s direction. Annie excused herself, taking herself around to the business side of the counter as he inquired loudly as to whether the toasted cheese rolls were any good. Left to her own devices, Isla found her mind drifting back as she recalled the pleasure she got from gardening during her stay at Break-Free Haven. She could almost feel the arable soil running through her fingers and the Californian sun warming her back.
Break-Free Haven Lodge
The last of the morning mist was hanging like a thin vapour stream over the meadow by the time Isla donned a floppy hat and ventured outside. She was a week into her stay at Break-Free and knew it wouldn’t be long before the sun broke through the mist – and then it would be hot. She’d inherited her gran’s olive skin, and dark eyes which Bridget always reckoned was a nod to her Irish Celtic ancestry. And, although she tanned easily, she was part of the Kiwi slip-slop-slap sunscreen generation and was wary of too much sun. This colouring had bypassed her mum much to Mary’s chagrin; she was a fair-skinned blonde with a penchant for spray tans.
As a moody teen, every time Isla had fallen out with her mum, she’d be sure to go and look at an old school photo that still hung in the halls of Bibury Area School. Gran had told her the story of how her mother, as a know it all fifteen-year-old had basted herself in cooking oil before lying out in the sun despite being told not to, to be tanned for her class photo. The sight of Mary Collins as she had been back then, lobster-like in the front row of the class of seventy-five, always made Isla snigger and put her life back into perspective.
Now, she pulled on the pair of gardening gloves she’d been given and headed over to the greenhouse. The first time she’d taken part in the vegetable garden therapy session, she’d felt vaguely resentful at the situation she found herself in. She’d been perched on the wooden side of one of six raised boxes in a sunny spot behind the main red barn building, half-heartedly thinning out a row of carrots. Why should she have to get her hands dirty when she was paying a small fortune to be here? It wasn’t as if she’d get to eat the fruits of her labour either because by the time these spindly baby carrot thingies grew to an edible length she’d be long gone.
Her father was a gardener; his veggie patch was his pride and joy. She started to understand what drove him as she planted out the beetroot seedlings. There was something satisfying in knowing that by doing what she was doing she’d be providing nourishing, organic food