Summer at the Little Wedding Shop: The hottest new release of summer 2017 - perfect for the beach!. Jane Linfoot

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       Chapter 5

      Wednesday, 15th February

      At Heavenly Heights: Tangerine jeans and matching slippers

      ‘Ring the bell? Knock and say “hi”? Or what …?’

      It’s the weirdest feeling. Standing in front of the house where I lived since I was eleven. Muttering. Staring at the stonework, not daring to go in, because so much changed in those few minutes’ yesterday afternoon. It’s not only what I might be interrupting. Walking in on my mum snogging? Don’t even go there. It just doesn’t have the certainty of home any more.

      ‘Dahling, it’s you!’

      ‘Shit.’ I jolt as the door opens. And I’m off to a bad start, dammit, given Heavenly Heights is a curse-free cul-de-sac. The language at this altitude is so clean, they don’t even need swear boxes. It’s also the kind of road where domestic perfection is a competition sport. If home tidying was in the Olympics, they’d have more gold medals than Bradley Wiggins.

      ‘Well, this is a lovely surprise. But where did all that dirt come from?’ One glance at my feet, and my mum’s already got her long-suffering face on. Sad to say, it’s pretty much her full-time resting expression when we’re together. ‘Why are you loitering out here, come on in.’ She never looks this disappointed when she’s with her friends.

      It might be worth flagging up here that of her two kids, she’d always rather see my brother, Zac. Eleven months younger than me, he’s always been her real dahling. But since he absconded to the job of the century in Silicon Valley in the US, she’s been stuck with second best. And what the hell does she mean by ‘surprise’ when I rang to pre-book eight hours ago? Remembering Poppy’s ‘act happy’ instruction, I wrench my mouth into a smile.

      Then as I stumble past a terracotta pot in the porch, I get my lucky break. ‘Hey, lovely primroses.’ My mum warms to compliments, as much as I’m warming to these flowers. ‘Orange ones too.’ My dad’s favourite. His winter borders in our gardens were always bursting with polyanthus plants. We used to love pouring over the plant catalogues together, planning the colour schemes. I can still remember the thrill of persuading him to try oranges and yellows, when he was still a sucker for blues and reds. Every October, from when I was small, he’d wrap me up in his warmest windcheater, and he’d dig the holes, and I’d hand him the plants. And even though my fingers were burning with the cold, I’d stay out there with him for as long as it took to get every last plant into the borders. It’s a relief to find there’s still a little bit of that left. Even if it’s just one pot.

      My mum’s pained expression melts with the compliment. ‘David helped me do it. He bought the pot when we went for lunch at the Happy Dolphin Garden Centre.’

      ‘David?’ From nowhere, there’s an iron hand gripping my guts. Although I’m going to have to get used to the name. And he has to be tame, if he’s up for traipsing round garden centres. It was a point of honour. My dad preferred nurseries, and he refused point blank to go to places with poncey names, and logos depicting frolicking sea life. Then I do a double take that leaves my heart racing so hard, I almost have a coronary. ‘What the hell’s that?’ I’m pointing at a plastic gnome. And lurid doesn’t begin to describe it.

      My mum laughs. ‘Oh, that’s Trevor. He’s another of David’s gifts. Don’t his tangerine trousers go perfectly with the petals?’ She lets out a kind of high, spontaneous giggle I haven’t heard before. Very unlike her.

      ‘But you don’t like gnomes. You think they’re tasteless and moronic.’ I’m quoting here, and I can’t help that my voice has gone all high either. It goes with the ‘gobsmacked’ territory. That gnome might fit in with my СКАЧАТЬ