Page 9 of The Christmas Fayre on Holly Field

Harriet lifted her chin and stuck her nose in the air. ‘I’m not speaking to you any more.’

‘Not even to tell me you’d like to work tomorrow?’

‘Not even then.’

Pen chuckled. ‘I’ll see you at nine thirty. You’d better get off home: Bobby will be out of school soon.’

Harriet checked the time. ‘He’s got football practice so he won’t be home for another hour.’ Sara finished at three, but with the secondary school being some distance away and her daughter having to catch the bus, Harriet had a few minutes to herself until madness descended on the house.

She undid her apron, folded it neatly and popped it on a shelf under the counter, then went out the back to fetch her bag. When she came back into the cafe, she saw Pen standing by the window, gazing out of it.

‘His van is still there,’ Pen observed.

‘So it is.’ Harriet stared at it – it wasn’t exactly subtle, was it? Not with what looked like a jungle painted on it. And was that a parrot? She squinted: yep, a parrot, and there was a monkey peeping out from behind a tree, too, and… a leopard? Goodness, he certainly didn’t mind being noticed.

‘Is he in it, do you think?’ Pen wondered.

‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘You cared enough to let him talk you into not buying anything new for the next couple of months,’ Pen quipped.

‘With the state my finances are in at the moment, it’s hardly going to be difficult,’ Harriet shot back.

Although, saying that, maybe she had been a little hasty. Christmas was coming and she didn’t think her kids would thank Santa if he brought them someone else’s discarded and unwanted items. And she still had the thorny problem of Sara’s birthday invitation to deal with. Her daughter wouldn’t take kindly to being told that Darlene wasn’t going to be given an expensive gift. The way things were going, Darlene would be lucky to receive a gift from Sara at all.

Harriet said goodbye to Pen and made her way home, trying not to appear too interested in Owen’s van as she sauntered past.

Was he inside?she wondered. And had he meant it when he’d said he intended to stay around to make sure she kept her word?

To be honest, she would be very surprised if he hung around longer than a week. Two, at the most. Foxmore was lovely and Harriet wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, but she couldn’t picture a man like Owen making the village his home for any length of time.

How long would he be able to live in that van for anyway? Not permanently, surely?

Then again, such a thing wasn’t unheard of, although she couldn’t imagine it. She liked her creature comforts too much – such as heating and the TV, for example. And showering.

She hoped he had a loo in there, because the thought of having to tramp across a wet, muddy field every time she needed to spend a penny made her shudder.

And there was something else that was bothering her. Didn’t he have a job? Although, saying that, many people did work from home these days, so it was entirely plausible that he was gainfully employed and still able to travel around the country in a camper van: if, in fact, that was what he was doing. He might just have rented it for a holiday, for all she knew.

But then again, hehadimplied that he could stay in Foxmore for a while…

Wishing she knew more about him, yet at the same time irritated that he was taking up valuable headspace, Harriet had just returned to the problem of Sara and the forthcoming birthday party, when something made her pause.

Did buying birthday cards count as buying something new?

She supposed it must.

Did that mean she’d have to try to find a second-hand one?

The idea made her giggle. Who’d ever heard of second-hand birthday cards? How ridiculous!

Yet another thought popped into her head – maybe Sara could make one? There were lots of bits and pieces in the house which Harriet had put to one side in case they came in handy for arts and crafts sessions with the kids on rainy days – old Christmas cards, ribbon, those shiny wrappers found on Christmas chocolates, scraps of fabric – plus the glitter, bits of coloured card, marker pens and glue that everyone with young kids had hanging around the house.

Surely Darlene would appreciate a card that had some thought put into it, rather than one grabbed off a rack in the supermarket while doing the weekly grocery shop?

Or maybe not.

Kids could be funny about things like that. Sara might even be bullied for daring to be different.

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