Page 51 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

An array of salads would be perfect to start the feast – maybe the carrot and ginger, baked aubergine and mint yoghurt, plus some faro and roasted red pepper, she’d have to check her pantry. She’d pick up fresh salmon to bake with lime and organic lamb for kebabs in Gillingham while she was at the farmers’ market, maybe do a trade-off with Donald Allsop and Christy Jenkins who ran the relevant stalls – if not she knew they’d give her a good price. Perhaps she’d pull out the Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook Tess had given her for Christmas to spice up the menu with something new. She rarely stuck to the recipes verbatim, because where was the fun in that, but Yotam never failed to inspire her.

Her back twinged again. The only thing she needed to make sure of was that nothing on her menu required her to spend six hours standing at the stove stirring boiling fruit like she had yesterday while making gooseberry jam to stock the shop when it was ready.

She added a layer of concealer and rimmed her mouth with gloss. Maybe it was a vain indulgence, seeing as no one was going to see her who was likely to notice. She shrugged off the depressing thought as she dropped the lipstick back into her make-up bag. As she picked a shirt from the wardrobe, she spotted the one outfit of Pam’s that she’d kept. The outfit Pam had worn to their civil partnership a year before her terminal cancer diagnosis.

Dee stroked the emerald green lace.

They’d been so stupidly happy that day, not knowing what was in store for them. Tucking the body-con dress behind a set of overalls, she closed the closet door on the painful memories, and the aching sense of loss that would never completely go away.

Pammy was gone now. And she wasn’t ever coming back. But Ellie was here. And so was Josh. Life was so fickle and unpredictable, you needed to grab every ounce of happiness where you could.

Maybe today would be a good day to finally begin to breach the chasm that still existed between them, and ask Ellie about her life in America. She’d made a point of not pressing, not pushing Ellie for details, but it was becoming glaringly apparent that Ellie still hadn’t mentioned Josh’s father. Not once. Something was wrong, and Dee had begun to despair of Ellie ever coming to her.

She laced up her Converse pumps, tied her hair up and headed down the stairs. Would it really be so terrible to probe gently? Just to make sure everything was OK? If Ellie wasn’t receptive, or it seemed too intrusive, she could always just back off again.

Dee brewed coffee in the quiet kitchen, got flour and yeast out and began measuring out by eye the ingredients in her bread maker for the morning batch. She grabbed some buttermilk from the pantry.

Sourdough today, with sunflower and poppy seeds. And maybe a focaccia with the sun-dried tomatoes she’d left soaking in olive oil yesterday. She’d make an extra couple of loaves to add to tonight’s feast.

As she grabbed a couple of packets of yeast to add to the mix, the dull ache in her lower back returned. What she wouldn’t give right now to feel Pammy’s strong hands digging into the sore muscles, taking the pain away and replacing it with the delicious ache of sexual arousal. Dee blinked, the stinging in her tear duct surprising her.

She tipped the ingredients into a large earthenware bowl, and began dribbling in the water. She definitely needed the distraction of kneading by hand today.

She heard the tread of someone on the stairs.

Ellie wandered into the room, her eyes snapping shut as she covered her face with her forearm. ‘Crap.’

‘Everything all right?’ Dee asked, concerned by the grey pallor of Ellie’s skin as she reached over to tug the curtain closed. ‘Do you want to go back to bed?’ she asked. ‘I could bring you up some tea?’ It was barely six o’clock. And a Saturday. The back barn clear-out wasn’t scheduled to start until midday, so no one else needed to be up at this ungodly hour on a weekend except her and Rob, who’d be busy in the dairy barn organising the milking.

Ellie slumped into one of the chairs.

‘No tea,’ she groaned. ‘Just lots more water. This is all self-inflicted so I don’t deserve your sympathy.’

Dee wiped her hands on her apron. Of course, Ellie had gone over to Annie’s last night with Maddy and Tess.

‘You got into this state getting a manicure?’ she said, shocked. Maddy was young and occasionally reckless, but both Annie and Tess had young children and she wouldn’t have expected them to drink to excess.

Ellie lifted bloodshot eyes. Dee winced, she could see the headache in them and it did not look pretty.

‘No, your sloe gin did actually, once I got back here,’ Ellie countered. ‘And please keep your voice down or my head may shatter into a billion pieces.’

Dee filled a glass with home-made lemonade from the pitcher she kept in the fridge and hunted out a couple of extra-strength painkillers.

Ellie groaned her appreciation, then chased the painkillers with a long gulp of the lemonade.

Anxiety leapt in Dee’s chest. She’d been trying to respect Ellie’s boundaries, not to probe into her daughter’s personal life until she was willing and eager to talk about it. But if something was wrong, she wanted Ellie to know she was here for her. The truth was, she hadn’t been a mother to Ellie for nineteen years. Cooking and cleaning and redecorating wasn’t enough. Ever since Ellie had made the choice to leave with her father, Dee had not been present in her daughter’s life – the postcards and emails and home-made gifts she’d sent over the last four years could never replace all the things they’d lost that day. And that had always been Dee’s fault for making decisions that had ultimately pushed her daughter away. It was way past time to remedy that.

Sitting down beside Ellie, she took her daughter’s hand. ‘Sweetheart, why were you drinking on your own? Is something the matter?’

‘I wasn’t drinking on my own precisely,’ Ellie said, the pallor replaced by a burning in her cheeks. ‘I had Art for company.’

‘Art?’ Dee said, trying for nonchalant and missing by several miles. ‘That’s…’ Astonishing? Intriguing? ‘Surprising,’ she settled on.

Ellie didn’t elaborate.

‘I thought you and Art were avoiding each other?’ she said.

‘Not any more,’ Ellie said, not sounding at all pleased about the new development.

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