Page 106 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

‘I guess I’ll come then,’ Toto said, not sounding overexcited at the prospect of spending an evening doing arts and crafts with a bunch of grown women. Ellie understood. She’d much rather be doing anything other than wedding prep right about now, too.

Stop being a killjoy.

Ellie forced a smile. ‘It’s a deal then. I’ll see you in an hour by the shop and we can walk over together.’

Toto nodded and left.

The false brightness died on Ellie’s face as she turned back to the data entry.

Bloody men, how did they always manage to screw up the best laid plans of women everywhere without even trying.

*

‘OK, spill it…’ Annie leant across the jam jar she was tinting red and fixed Ellie with her do-not-mess-with-me stare.

So much for Toto being an effective deterrent. Ellie’s shield had spent less than twenty minutes painting jam jars, then got bored and headed off into the woods with Melody and Jacob to forage for more ivy for the centrepieces.

‘What the hell is going on with you and Art now?’ Annie finished.

Now?

Ellie’s hands cramped on the reed grass she was weaving through the bases her mother had designed for the flower arrangements.

‘Is it the arrival of the smarmy ex that has put a crimp in things?’ Annie continued, confirming Ellie’s worst fears when Tess and Maddy sent her equally knowing looks – part concern and part curiosity. ‘Because, if it is, I’m going to run him off myself.’

The base dropped out of Ellie’s numbed fingers. ‘Bloody hell, was Art and I’s secret liaison actually a secret from anybody at all?’

‘Did you really think it would be?’ Tess said, still threading dried ivy through the wicker structures Dee had made to hold the rest of the flower centrepieces. ‘Once you started looking as if you’d discovered the secret of life. And Art began to smile on a regular basis?’

‘Not the secret of life. More like the secret of the female orgasm.’ Maddy grinned like someone who had discovered it too, and wasn’t ashamed to let everyone know it as often as was humanly possible.

Ellie swore softly under her breath. Not sure whether to be relieved or depressed that her friends had known about the worst kept secret in Wiltshire all along. A week ago, she would have been amused, delighted even, and probably jumped at the chance to tell them everything. Well, almost everything. Now, not so much.

‘Wait a minute,’ Annie said. ‘Were doing? I thought so, you’ve stopped having spectacular nooky with Art just because Dan the Skank has turned up.’ Apparently Annie hadn’t fallen for Dan’s charm either. ‘I thought we already discussed this. You don’t owe him fidelity. And anyway, you’re divorcing him. Unless…’ Annie’s eyes went wide with horror. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about that.’

‘No, I spoke to a lawyer two days ago and I’ve told Dan. I’m not sure he believes me.’ In fact, she was fairly positive he didn’t believe her, because he had simply told her they could talk it through when they got back to Orchard Harbor, as if there was actually anything left to discuss that didn’t involve their lawyers. ‘But he’ll find out soon enough when he gets home and the papers are waiting for him.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ Annie said. ‘So what’s going on with Art then? Why have you stopped looking born again and why has he stopped smiling?’

‘We’re guessing there’s no more secret orgasms going on, but why?’ Maddy poured Ellie a glass of wine from the bottle Tess had brought with her.

‘Honestly, it’s complicated,’ Ellie said, feeling like a fraud. Why couldn’t she just tell them what she’d told her mum, that she and Art had never been more than a fling?

‘We can handle complicated,’ Annie said. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

Ellie’s eyes began to sting. The simple statement making her realise that she hadn’t cried herself dry during Dee’s pep talk the way she thought.

Her mother had been wonderful, so supportive and so insightful. And it had made her even more aware of how much she had gained from this summer – with or without Art’s help. And seeing how worried and willing to help Tess and Annie and Maddy were too only confirmed that.

So why did she still feel so shit about the fact that she and Art were over now?

She knew for all his moodiness, and his general unwillingness to talk about his feelings, Art was not an insensitive man. Not by a long shot. If he were, he wouldn’t have been so freaked out about Toto’s periods, or got so worked up and overprotective of Dee when Ellie had first suggested the shop project, or been so deeply scarred by his father’s brutality and his mother’s neglect that he’d ended up with a phobia of hospitals. But it seemed somehow that even though she had thought they were friends, had come to care for him, he’d never cared that deeply for her. Not even as a friend. And that hurt. It made her feel less than the way she now realised she had always felt every time Dan had cheated on her. And that was something she never wanted to feel like again.

‘If you put an end to it because of your divorce not being final,’ Annie continued, ‘we’re here to make you see the error of your ways.’

Tess and Maddy nodded enthusiastically, having abandoned their art and crafts too.

Ellie sipped her wine, to give herself strength, deeply touched by their support. ‘It wasn’t Dan’s arrival so much as…’ She paused. ‘As the fact that it was going nowhere. We both knew it would have to end eventually.’ Hadn’t they? ‘It just seemed less awkward to end it before things got messy.’

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