Page 103 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

At last she stopped shaking, and Dee gripped her shoulders and drew her gently away. She pulled a tissue out of the pocket of the faded jeans she wore and dabbed at Ellie’s cheeks.

‘Better?’ she said.

‘Not much.’

Dee gave a weary chuckle. ‘I agree. I’ve always thought crying is overrated. I’ve done enough of it since Pam died, and it usually just makes me feel more crap.’

Ellie had to agree, finding the observation stupidly comforting.

Dee levered herself up. She took a strainer from the kitchen drawer, then poured Ellie a mug of the fragrant brew and passed it to her. ‘Let’s try this next then.’

Feeling weak and still shaky, and not even sure where the storm of tears had come from, or what they were for, Ellie picked the mug up and blew on the tea. She took a cautious sip of the chamomile, glad of her mother’s presence even though she still had no idea what to say to her.

‘How long have you known?’ she asked at last, because it seemed like the obvious question.

Dee smiled. ‘About you and Art? Did it start about a fortnight ago?’

Ellie put the mug down. ‘You’ve known all along? Terrific.’ She scowled into her mug. ‘Now I feel ridiculous as well as mortified.’

‘Don’t. There isn’t much that gets past me. I don’t sleep well since…’ She paused, letting Ellie fill in the gap.

‘Since Pam died.’ Ellie reached across the table to squeeze her mother’s hand. ‘You don’t need to feel uncomfortable about saying that, Mum.’

‘I don’t,’ Dee said. ‘I just don’t want to burden you with all that.’ Her smile was sad and somehow pensive. ‘A bit like you didn’t want to burden me with your love affair with Art.’

‘It’s not a love affair.’ The pang of regret sharpened under her heart. ‘It’s a sex-for-the-sake-of-it affair.’ She sniffed back another pointless tear. ‘And anyway, it’s over. We decided it wasn’t going to work with my husband sleeping in the room between us. A bit too awkward.’ Or at least she had decided that.

‘Those were an awful lot of tears to mark the end of a sex-for-the-sake-of-it affair.’

‘That’s not what the tears were about.’ Ellie toyed with the slice of sticky toffee, peeled off one of the caramelised almonds and put it in her mouth. The rich burnt sugar tasted like chalk.

‘Are you sure?’ her mother asked.

The question made Ellie’s hand tremble. She took it off the table and tucked it into her lap.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, a bit too adamantly to be convincing. ‘I’m just tired and uber stressed what with the wedding and now Dan.’

She frowned at the scarred wood of the tabletop, knowing that those weren’t the reasons she suddenly felt so crushed and fragile. How ridiculous. What exactly had she been expecting Art to say this evening?

*

Arthur, why are you such a dope?

‘So your sex-for-the-sake-of-it affair is definitely over then?’ Dee said, trying to quell the urge to march up to the caravan on the rise and give the man himself a good talking-to.

Ellie nodded, the movement so dejected Dee’s stomach hurt. She had always hated to see her daughter unhappy. But seeing her broken like this felt so desperately unfair, because it undermined everything Ellie had achieved this summer.

Her daughter had worked so hard to turn herself around. It had been a pleasure, no, an honour, to see how much she’d changed over the last weeks and months from that fragile, insecure, weary woman who had walked into this kitchen in June. But, in the last fortnight, she had seen Ellie truly blossom. And she’d known Art was responsible for that. He was a good man, a steady, responsible, hard-working man, but more than that he was the sort of man her daughter deserved. Handsome on the inside as well as the outside, unlike the shallow entitled young fool who had arrived this afternoon, who clearly believed that all he had to do was flash a pretty smile and he would get anything he desired.

But, unfortunately, Arthur was and always had been his own worst enemy. His fear of rejection so huge he would turn away the best thing ever to happen to him rather than admit his feelings. But as much as Dee might want to, she couldn’t alter that. All she could do was make sure that Ellie didn’t let Art’s foolishness undermine the woman she’d become over this summer.

Her daughter had some important decisions to make now that her husband had appeared so unexpectedly – and Dee wanted to give her every chance of making the right one. Not just for her, but for Josh too.

‘You know what’s really ironic?’ Ellie sniffed, and took another sip of her chamomile tea. ‘I thought I loved Art that summer nineteen years ago.’ Her lips tipped up in a watery smile. ‘At least this time I didn’t humiliate myself beyond belief and fall down that rabbit hole all over again.’ Her gaze rose from the cake platter to meet Dee’s.

‘I always suspected that you had a crush on Arthur that summer,’ Dee said. ‘But you do know, he had one on you too?’

And if Art had become an expert at disguising his feelings before he’d ever met Ellie, Ellie had learned to do the same in the years since that summer. Which might explain why now they both had no idea how deep those feelings went for each other.

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