Page 21 of The Winter of Second Chances
‘Oh, damn,’ said Annie. ‘I really fancied a roast too.’
‘Wait a mo,’ said Samantha brightly. ‘I’ll call Pam.’
Samantha whipped out her phone.
‘Hi, Pam,’ she trilled down the phone. ‘I’m with Annie, the lady who’s looking after Mari’s place...Oh, did she?’ Samantha laughed. ‘It’s happened to us all.’
Annie guessed Pam was telling Samantha about her bird-shit-hair incident.
‘Listen,’ Samantha continued. ‘Would you mind putting a roasty dinner by for her? She’s not going to make it up the hill before you stop serving. Great!’
She turned to Annie, still with the phone to her ear.
‘Chicken or pork?’ Samantha asked.
‘Um, pork, please,’ said Annie.
‘Did you hear that?’ Samantha said into the phone. ‘All the trimmings?’ Samantha looked at Annie again.
‘Yes please,’ said Annie. She didn’t know what all the trimmings entailed but she figured she’d be wanting them by the time she’d climbed the hill.
‘Brilliant. Thanks, Pam, you’re a superstar!’ said Samantha.
‘Legend!’ Tom called into Samantha’s phone.
Samantha slipped her phone back into her pocket.
‘All done,’ she said. ‘It’ll be waiting for you when you get there.’
‘At The Sunken Willow,’ added Tom.
‘Thank you so much,’ said Annie. ‘That was really kind of you.’
‘If you want to throw yourself into village life, the pubs are the best place to start,’ said Tom. ‘They’re kind of the heart of the community.’
‘And our shop is its arteries,’ added Samantha proudly.
‘We came down from London three years ago and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be,’ Tom said, and Samantha nodded in agreement.
‘Welcome to Willow Bay!’ Samantha trilled as they headed down a set of steps and onto the beach.
Annie began to climb, crossing driveways that snaked down to the houses hidden in the hillside.
Within minutes she was sweating and panting. She peeled off her jumper – a charming fair isle affair, in olive greens and dusky pinks that she had felt suited her new position of intelligent, financially secure (when she got her money back) single woman of a certain age living on the coast – and tied it round her waist. The cool air felt wonderful as it landed on her damp neck.
The gulls’ cries still dominated the skies but here they were joined by the chirrups of other birds: the warbling coos of woodpigeons and doves, the sharp, high-pitched whistle of starlings, jostling for position in the trees above.
There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air and somewhere, in one of the gardens hidden behind the dense wall of yellowing rhododendrons, someone was listening to a tinny radio.
Annie’s shadow bobbed along ahead of her, as if encouraging her to keep going. No wonder it took Mari an hour to climb this hill, she thought. The trees here arched over and sheltered Annie from the sun, and the dappled light that filtered through picked out golds and reds in the smattering of leaves on the ground. After another five minutes, Annie reached the summit of the hill and stood with her hands on her hips. She felt triumphant. She looked at her watch; it had taken her forty minutes. She mentally challenged herself to have smashed that time out of the park by the time she left Willow Bay next spring.
The change from high summer to autumn was reflected in the busy front gardens. Japanese anemones waved for attention, craning their cherry-blossom pink heads above the spent nigella flowers. Reedy hollyhocks listed drunkenly, their blousy blooms replaced with brown papery seed-heads that looked as though they would jangle like morris dancer bells if you shook them.
Annie thought about her kitchen garden back at The Pomegranate Seed. The squash would be ripe, the courgettes all but finished. The new menu would be in full flow. She would miss pulling the parsnips for winter soups and stripping the sprout trees for the hundreds of Christmas dinners they would cook in December. But she had weathered change before: when her parents had died, so close together in time that the pain was still raw when the next wave of grief crashed over her. When the boys went off to uni and later when they truly left home to begin careers and build their own lives. Yes. She had experienced greater upheavals than the loss of a kitchen garden. Strange, she thought, that these were the things she missed and not the husband she had equally left behind.
The Sunken Willow was significantly busier than it had been on Annie’s last visit. It was dark and invitingly warm. The smell of the open fire mixed with the rich scents of roasting meats and the earthy notes of cauliflower cheese made Annie’s stomach growl.
Annie spotted Pam’s ample cleavage at the pumps through a gap in the crowd before she saw her face. One of the patrons moved his head and Pam’s face came into view. Pam met her eyes.
