Annie pushed the bowl of cherry pie over to Wilbur and he started scooping it into his mouth like he’d never eaten before in his life.
‘He’s always hungry,’ sighed Suzi as she pulled up a chair and sat at the end of the table. Immaculate as always, she was dressed in diamanté jeans, a jumper with a zebra sequinned on the front and a jacket with a huge fur collar. ‘Have you said thanks, Wil?’
‘Thanks, Aunty Annie,’ Wilbur said, voice muffled with pie.
Annie nodded, feeling herself shrink back into the corner of her seat. Overwhelmed by so much family. She blamed the pie. If she hadn’t ordered it then she’d have left fifteen minutes ago.
‘Aunty Annie?’ Gertrude said in the kind of up-talking singsong voice that they use in Gossip Girl.
‘Yes, Gerty?’ Annie adored her niece. She was naughty and funny and like a quirky little munchkin.
‘Granny Winifred said the other day that she thought I might be like you and Daddy pulled a face and said that he hoped not.’
Suzi gave an embarrassed giggle but Jonathan glanced up from his menu and barked a laugh as if it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
Valtar put his newspaper down. ‘Is not good to be like Annie? What’s wrong with Annie?’
Her mum did a little eye roll and said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Annie. Not now anyway.’
Annie didn’t say anything, just looked up to see River standing with a huge tray of cappuccinos and pots of tea, clearly intrigued by the chat.
‘She was a nightmare,’ Jonathan said as the drinks were being divvied out. ‘She was married and divorced by the time she was twenty-one. And the less said about that the better. I’d be driving around in a 1956 Jaguar XK140 if Dad hadn’t had to sell it to pay off that disaster.’
Annie blew out a breath. ‘I can’t believe you’re still going on about that car, Jonathan.’
‘I’d like to be like Aunty Annie,’ Gerty said without looking up from her iPad, and banging her trainers against the legs of her chair. ‘I think she’s cool.’
Annie held in a smile but couldn’t help wishing that the conversation wasn’t taking place with River watching, listening.
Jonathan snorted. ‘Yes it’s just all the stuff it took to get to this stage.’
Annie suddenly felt really warm.
‘She was a bit of a terror, darling,’ Winifred said to Valtar.
‘A bit?’ Jonathan frowned as if that was a huge understatement.
River smirked.
‘Life was never dull,’ Winifred appeased.
‘Gerty, sit up straight.’ Suzi leant over and pushed her daughter’s shoulders back so she wasn’t slouched over the iPad.
Annie couldn’t sit there any longer.
‘I have to go to the loo,’ she said, starting to stand. Jonathan sighed because it meant he had to move as well, along with Wilbur.
The bathroom was outside. Through the kitchen and out into a tiny yard that backed onto the cherry orchard. On the ground, scattered over the many pots of herbs and green shoots, the winged seeds of the sycamore still lay where they’d helicoptered down in autumn. Annie didn’t need to go to the loo at all, she needed a moment just to get herself back.
It was always the same. Whatever she did, they’d still just remember her for the bad exam results, the late nights, the cigarette packets stashed in the shed, the teenage stuff that everyone did apart from her bloody brother. The arguments, the parties, the secrets, the mistakes. The marriage. The money.
She thought about her brother, raised as high as the family pedestal would allow without him bashing his head on the ceiling, with his perfect family and his degree from Oxford and his PhD from Cambridge and his GP practice and his comments about how Dad should never have had to bail her out.
Her one regret was not being able to pay that money back. She’d had these fantasies of buying her dad another Jaguar and leading him over the bridge to see it parked by the river, sparkling like the sun catching the waves.
‘You OK?’
Annie jumped when she heard the drawl.
‘Shit! Sorry, you startled me. I was just erm—’ She pointed to the cherry trees. ‘Just, you know, looking.’
The guy from the bar was standing in the doorway. Matthew. She noticed in the daylight how tanned his face was. The lines of his cheekbones rusty with sunburn and his nose freckled. His hair was pushed back from his face, like it was held back with salt water from the sea, brown with dirty-blond streaks.
He didn’t say anything and the silence made her nervous.
‘I just needed a…’ She pointed again to the cherry trees and then, not wanting him to think that she was talking about needing to go to the loo added, ‘I just needed a break.’
‘Understandable,’ he said.
‘I should probably go back inside,’ Annie said, pulling the sleeves down on her sweater and wishing she went to the gym a bit more given the lines of muscle down his arms and legs.
He strolled over to where she was standing looking over the wall at the trees. The slight breeze was making Annie shiver and the branches rub together like little animals were tapping at the bark.
‘So you own this place now?’ he said after a moment.
‘Yeah,’ Annie said with a laugh. ‘Yeah. I’m not sure anyone’s too happy about it.’
He shrugged. ‘They’re just scared.’
‘Of me?’ She shook her head as if the idea was preposterous.
He turned around so his back was leaning against the crumbling wall and raised a brow to suggest she was deliberately misunderstanding him.
Annie looked from him down to her shoes and then out across at the orchard. She spotted one of the trees that was about to burst. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, it would be full colour.
‘You gonna close the place?’ he asked.
She sucked in her bottom lip. A fat wood pigeon landed on one of the branches in front of her making it bend almost to the floor. The pigeon grappled to hold on.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well you’d better come up with something quick,’ he said. ‘There’s people depending on you.’
Annie was surprised by the sudden queasy feeling she had in her stomach at that comment. As if someone had sliced through her and she’d just fallen to the ground.
‘Have a word with my brother,’ she said, adding a self-deprecating laugh. ‘He’ll assure them that that’s the worst situation to find themselves in. Get new jobs quick!’
Matthew put his hands in his pockets and pushed himself up from the wall with his shoulders. ‘I have very little time for your brother. As far as I can tell it’s his fault there’s that horrific development on the island. On land he’d agreed to sell to me,’ he said before walking away, back towards the door of the kitchen. He paused on the step, turned her way, hands still in his pockets, and he added, ‘I think we’re all hoping you might be a little different.’