Chances. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ as if Vita had sawn them herself instead of simply ripping up the old carpets. Both had been to the cottage many times and could see that she’d done little more to it since they were last there. Still, they cooed over her soft furnishings, ran their hands over windowsills and doors and told her the kitchen smelt amazing, even though she was merely heating up the finger food they’d brought with them.

      Their enthusiasm was excessive – especially as neither saw her staying there indefinitely. They saw the cottage as a good, solid foothold on her road to independence, a good thing financially – she’d bought just at the right time – but ultimately wouldn’t the hip-and-happening canal-side development better suit a single woman in her mid-thirties?

      ‘Let’s eat outside,’ Vita said.

      ‘Have you done much to the garden?’

      ‘Come and see.’

      Michelle and Candy brought out a kitchen chair each and Vita followed with cushions. To make room for the extra chairs, Vita scurried about moving the pots of pansies, a galvanized trough with chives and thyme doing well, a trowel and a plastic watering can. The deckchair that Michelle had bought her was positioned to catch the last of the sun that lingered on the small paved area right outside the kitchen door as if blessing it. It couldn’t really be called a patio – just as the small patch of grass couldn’t be called a lawn; nor could the bed which ran the short length to the back of the garden be called a herbaceous border. But Vita’s friends noted the planting she’d done – just busy-lizzies and geraniums but a quick colour fix to welcome the summer nonetheless.

      ‘I really need a table – sorry, laps’ll have to do.’

      ‘What’s in the shed at the back?’

      ‘Spiders.’

      Back in midwinter, when she’d first shown them around, Vita had gone on and on about trees being the cathedrals of the natural world while Candy had described the pear tree as more like a derelict sixties tower block. The tree had seemed so dark, so overbearing and ominous with its thrust and scratch of bare branches, its dense trunk. Today, it struck Michelle and Candy as a more benign presence, like an over-the-top prop at a Hollywood wedding, billowing with blossom which wafted down gently around them like confetti, like manna, like fake snow in a department-store window display at Christmas. Soft and pretty – if you ignored the little brown bits which were surprisingly itchy. Vita, however, was grinning at it inanely.

      ‘Who needs acreage and fancy shrubs when you have something like that in the garden,’ she said. ‘The tree is the garden!’

      ‘Can you imagine the amount of pears you’re going to have,’ said Candy, with slight unease. She wasn’t entirely sure whether each flower on Vita’s tree equalled a future fruit.

      ‘I know!’ she said, ignoring the point. ‘I thought I might try making chutney or something, perhaps a cordial – and I could bottle it and do labels and sell it in the shop.’

      ‘Tim’ll love that,’ Candy said under her breath.

      ‘I heard that,’ Vita said.

      ‘How is the charming son-of-a?’ Candy asked.

      The pause that ensued really should have been long enough for Candy to check in with Michelle and note a glower which said, Don’t go there. But she didn’t. She was picking petals from her wine.

      ‘I miss the company but I don’t miss him,’ Vita announced brightly, a mantra she’d trained herself to deliver. ‘It’s a bugger about the business – but neither of us can afford to buy the other out.’

      ‘You wouldn’t sell to him, would you?’

      ‘I’d rather have That Shop to myself. But I can’t afford it.’

      ‘How’s his day job?’

      Vita shrugged. ‘I don’t know how much marketing consultants are wanted – or worth – in a recession.’

      ‘Here’s to you,’ said Candy, ‘not him.’ She chinked her glass against Vita’s.

      ‘And you.’

      ‘May a gallant knight ride by soon and sweep you off your feet.’

      ‘No, thanks,’ said Vita.

      ‘A bit of rough, then?’

      Vita laughed. ‘I think I should be on my own for a while, actually.’

      ‘Yay! Girl power and women’s lib and all that.’

      Candy always had the other two giggling.

      ‘It’s warm, isn’t it. I can’t believe there’s going to be a heatwave – when we’ve just raided the piggy bank to go to Florida this summer,’ said Michelle.

      ‘I’m going to have a staycation,’ said Vita, ‘here in my garden.’

      ‘Gathering pears and churning chutney?’ said Candy.

      ‘How delightfully Thomas Hardy,’ said Michelle.

      ‘Oh shit! The spring rolls!’ Vita darted back into the kitchen to rescue them.

      ‘Don’t tell her,’ Michelle said to Candy.

      ‘Don’t tell her about what?’ Candy said to Michelle.

      ‘About Tim,’ Michelle said to Candy as if she was dense.

      ‘Don’t tell me what about Tim?’ Vita said to both of them, standing there with a plate of spring rolls so over-cooked they looked like cigarillos.

      ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Candy. ‘I do love busy-lizzies.’

      ‘They’re called Impatiens,’ said Michelle.

      ‘Stop changing the subject,’ said Vita, hiding growing unease behind a larky tone.

      ‘Actually – you know what? It’s no bad thing for her to hear,’ Candy said to Michelle who turned her head and stared stubbornly at the old fence that looked as though it was staggering along at the back of the garden.

      ‘Candy?’ Vita gestured that she’d be ransoming nibbles for information.

      ‘I had lunch at the Nags Head the other day,’ Candy said. ‘I hadn’t been in there for ages – anyway, the landlady greeted me like a long-lost friend. She asked after all of us – you especially. Well, you know how she likes a gossip.’

      ‘And she said –?’ Vita was fixing her best carefree smile to her face.

      ‘Oh, she just said that Tim often goes in there. Gets plastered.’

      ‘That’s nothing new.’

      Candy was in her stride. ‘Yes, but here’s the funny part. He tends to go in there with this girl and invariably they get drunk, have flaming rows and one or other storms off.’ *

      Who is she? Who is she?

      ‘Anyway, СКАЧАТЬ