‘A community orchard?’ I asked Daniel an hour later, lying on the sofa with a hot chocolate, my feet in his lap. ‘When did you decide that?’
‘About two minutes before I said it,’ he smiled. ‘While I’ve been doing research for the orchard, the idea kept cropping up. There are plenty of places where it seems to work.’ He shrugged. ‘I think Dad would have liked the idea.’
‘Charlie would have loved it.’
He rested his mug on my knee. ‘What do you think? Will you mind having the whole community hanging about just over the garden fence? Helping themselves to our apples?’
I pursed my lips. ‘I have one major problem with it.’
‘Oh?’
‘What about my arbour?’ I poked him in the stomach with my foot, causing his drink to wobble precariously.
‘I will personally see your arbour relocated to the garden. Around the side of the house where the retreat guests won’t spot it, either.’
‘Hmm…’
‘There’s a corner where the hedge is low enough to see over if you’re sitting down, with a view right across the valley.’
‘Sounds perfect. I give my wholehearted endorsement and support to the Damson Farm community orchard.’
He grabbed my hand, pulling it up to kiss the palm. ‘You did realise the date of the launch?’
‘I know! Our first proper guests arrive two days before Damson Day.’
‘It’ll be a busy month.’
‘Right now, keeping busy might be the only thing that keeps me sane.’
And there it was again, the shadow from my past life leering over us, forever hanging there ominously.
The next few weeks were indeed jam-packed with our joint ventures. For the first two weeks Daniel was still working full-time while trying to get things started with the orchard, and with Becky and I getting everything ready for the upcoming retreat, we had little time or energy to do much more than share the odd meal, and hand over Hope with a quick kiss and a catch-up. However, as the days rolled by, things were gradually taking shape, transforming before our eyes, and the joy of seeing the finishing touches, final programmes printed and the pantry overflowing with ingredients ready for both events was exhilarating.
An army of locals had been pruning, planting and constructing in the orchard, like some amateur farming version of DIY SOS. There were now sturdy fences and a beautiful new gate opening onto the footpath that led through the meadow and along the river into the village. By the second week, there were raised beds and a pagoda with benches and tables for the educational area. It turned out that Ziva’s husband, John, was an admin whizz, and he spent hours looking into charity applications and setting up a board of trustees. Various staff from the pubs and takeaways made regular trips bearing drinks and trays of sandwiches or pizza. There was a clear sense of rivalry between the different eateries, but it was gradually becoming a friendly one, and if it meant the food grew better by the day, no one was about to intervene.
One of the teenagers bashed out a basic website, and where she’d created a bookings page for carpentry workshops, a range of gardening and horticultural classes and Ziva’s beekeeping for beginners, the places were getting filled quicker than she could organise them.
Daniel was reborn. His face shone, he laughed with new vigour and strode about the farm as if he finally owned the place, and loved every inch. Hope was, if possible, even more delighted. She spent hours outside, transfixed by the sawing and sowing, charming everyone who stopped to say hello when she was confined to her pushchair, and inspecting every leaf and ladybird in the times she was free to explore. She grew more like her mother every day.
Becky and I had to reluctantly miss out on this stage of the community reformation, although Becky minded a lot less during the first week, when Luke was still finishing off the work inside, than she did once he’d joined the orchard volunteer crew. The first day he was out there, she spent a whole afternoon cleaning the windows on the orchard side of the house, and found every excuse going to ‘nip outside’. Despite this, we were making fantastic progress, and as each room was signed off and various plans were finalised, our excitement blossomed.
We had opened the website for further bookings, and Becky was putting together a marketing plan. While Charlie’s brilliant but ridiculous notion of ‘exclusivity’ had enabled us to charge a fortune to those who could afford it, it also went against her original dream, that anyone who needed a Damson Farm Retreat was welcome, and for that to happen they needed to be able to find us. We decided to try offering a range of events that balanced a viable profit with being able to look our customers in the eye while handing them the bill. The ultra-exclusive breaks that offered extra ‘luxuries’, a full programme of jargon-soaked activities and unlimited everything, through to a simple stay where guests could enjoy good, nourishing food in beautiful surroundings, and then join in with group sessions or laze in the hammock with a cold drink.
After holding our breath for a couple of days while Becky bombarded her contacts with promotional links, we had our next booking. And then the next, and by the time we were ready to open our doors we had at least one booking every month until the end of the year.
The weekend before the first guests arrived, Daniel and I celebrated with leftovers from the Pepper’s Pizza lunch run.
‘I know you’ve spent hours crafting perfectly planned menus, but nothing beats a Pepper’s Pizza.’ Daniel breathed a sigh of pleasure, leaning back against the newly positioned arbour.
I pointed my half-eaten slice at him. ‘That’s because food is intrinsically emotional. Pizza to you is all about relaxing at the end of a busy week, it’s like an automatic trigger to chill out.’
He shook his head. ‘No. That’s not it. Pizza is all those evenings when instead of eating alone, sat at my desk, praying my baby didn’t start screaming so I could get some work done before I collapsed face-down into my laptop, I got to spend my evening in the company of an astoundingly beautiful and interesting woman.’ He paused. ‘I mean beautiful on the inside.’
‘Oh, what, and interesting on the outside?’
He laughed. ‘You are interesting on the outside. I could watch you all day. You’re both those things, inside and out. And you make me laugh. You give me hope… You are quite possibly the loveliest woman I know, and I love Pepper’s Pizza because it reminds me of you.’
‘Wow.’ It wasn’t possible to hide behind a tiny chunk of pizza crust, but I tried anyway.
‘You’ve changed everything, for the better.’
‘You’re one to talk. You’ve given me a whole new life.’
Daniel frowned. ‘You gave yourself that life. I just offered a stuffy old box room and free rein of my kitchen.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You gave me hope.’
‘Well, sounds like we’re even then. Do you think we should have pizza at our wedding reception?’
He winked, but it didn’t stop the flood of elation and guilt and panic all the same. I didn’t know how to feel about this horrible shadow that still hovered two steps behind me. Wandering through a sunny orchard packed with cheerfully hardworking people, the threat seemed a silly, distant memory from another lifetime. When Daniel was shut up in his study working all evening, or out on orchard business past sunset, every creak was approaching doom.
I lay awake at night, and in the early hours of the morning, repeating Brenda’s reassurances like a mantra: It was a harmless stunt. Try not to worry.
Until, two days before the guests were due to arrive, four days before Damson Day, as I sat down at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and a slice of rye bread with Damson Farm honey, a new message arrived through the website contact page:
Your ‘about us’ page on the website appears to be missing some important information. Like who you really are and what you’ve done.
Needless to say, my tea went cold.
Daniel was down by the river with Luke and some of the older men who’d been helping out. He called and waved when he saw me coming, his face glowing, body barely able to contain his energy.
‘You’ll never guess what Frank and Eddie found!’ he grinned, bursting with glee.
I eyed the enormous piles of lopped off branches.
‘Loads of brambles and undergrowth?’
‘Underneath the brambles and undergrowth. Take a look!’
I waited for Luke to drop another huge branch on the pile, and then peered around it, my head in no state to start guessing what might be there.
Oh, now that was worth getting excited about. It was a bridge.
A narrow stone strip, no rails or other features, about ten feet from one bank to the other, and wide enough for one large man or a couple of children to walk across without risk of toppling into the water.
‘This bridge has been here all along? Did you know?’
‘I had no idea! This has been a thick mess of weeds for as long as I can remember. The brambles made it impossible to get near to it, even if we’d have wanted to. It was these guys who found it.’
Frank pulled off his cap and scratched his bald head before putting it back again. ‘We got to talking, me and Eddie. Remembered that back in the day some of the New Side lads had used a different way to get over the river to the mine. Alec Perry let the bushes grow so that folks who didn’t need to know wouldn’t. We kept the smallest gap through the middle, had to crawl on hands and knees with every inch of skin covered to avoid getting half-scratched to death. We didn’t know if it would still be here, let alone be safe to carry any weight, but thought it worth a look, save us New Siders taking the long way round.’
‘It looks all right though, doesn’t it?’ Eddie added, with a smug smile. ‘James Perry knew how to build things to last.’
‘James?’ I glanced at Daniel.
‘My great-grandfather.’
‘Wow. This is incredible.’
‘Means we’ll need to get them young lads back, to get a path sorted, save us churning the meadow into a mud-pit,’ Frank said, rocking back on his boot heels.
‘I’ll put something on the Facebook page.’ Luke wiped a smear of dirt off his forehead with his wrist.
‘Tell them Damson Farm will pay good wages if they put the work in.’
‘Aye.’ Eddie nodded his approval. ‘We know the Perrys’ll do us right.’
As I turned to go, Daniel took hold of my hand. ‘Did you need to ask me something, or did you just come to have a nosy?’
I looked at my boyfriend, how his face shone, a Perry farmer in his element. I swallowed back the terror and dismay and offered them all a cup of tea.
For the rest of the day, I sat at the laptop and scrutinised all those who had booked a stay so far, racking my brains as I scrolled through online images and LinkedIn profiles for any hint of a restaurant connection.
I don’t know why I deleted the email as soon as I’d copied it into a new folder on my laptop. I don’t know why I didn’t call Brenda or alert Becky, who I knew would make me stop being an idiot and tell Daniel. I didn’t want it to be real.
I told myself that I didn’t want to contaminate something as brilliant as Damson Day. I also didn’t want our first proper retreat to be riddled with fear and anxiety.
I didn’t want to ruin everything.
I made a promise, in order to prove to myself that I wasn’t always going to be a coward and a liar, that I would tell Daniel everything, including that I had invented Nora Sharp, as soon as Damson Day was over. I even put it in the calendar on my phone: confess.
Did the thought enter my mind that in four days’ time it might be too late?
If it did, I soon chased it out again.