Ivy Lane: Autumn: (3 page)

‘I’m not asking you to go out of your way but . . .’

There was something dodgy about this. I treated him to my special owl stare. ‘What was her offence? Anything to do with drink-driving?’

And there it was: the slightest dilation in the pupils. I had him. If I ever needed a break from teaching conjunctions, contractions and connectives to small people, I’d be a shoo-in for MI5. How dare he?

I squared my shoulders and tilted my chin. ‘Over my dead body.’

Cue lull in conversation, and my words ricocheting around the hall.

There was a communal intake of breath and all eyes were suddenly on me.

I flung back the pavilion door and ran.

Apparently I had been a bit of a talking point after my dramatic departure. Not that I’d had the guts to go back yet and find that out for myself.

Instead, I sat quivering at home like one of those Japanese dogs that has to wear a coat even when it wasn’t snowing. I only found out because Gemma sent me a text. She told me that I should be pleased; it was a definite improvement on my original reputation, she informed me, which unbeknownst to me had been an unflattering mix of meek and mild.

In the end my cabbages forced me to return. It was late September and although the weather had cooled, we hadn’t had any rain for a while. Those brave little soldiers needed me if they were to survive. Well, if not me specifically, then water and protection from slugs at any rate. And after all the effort I had put in to getting them this far, it would have been a shame to leave them orphaned now.

The fact that I had chosen the start date of the community service group to tend to my cabbages was completely and utterly coincidental.

For someone who claimed to keep herself to herself, I was, I realized, as I dragged my bike out of the hall and onto my front path, incredibly nosy and sneaking a peek at our resident ‘crims’ was too much of a temptation. It was a misty damp sort of September day, almost mitten weather, and I had purposefully donned my full safety gear of helmet and hi-vis jacket for the occasion.

Oh yes, never let it be said that Tilly Parker was not a sensible, law-abiding citizen.

The gates to Ivy Lane were locked when I got there and I had to fiddle about inside my pocket to find the key – not easy astride a bike. I hardly ever had to wrestle with the padlock these days and it made me wonder: were we keeping people out or certain people in?

Vicky scurried straight over. ‘They’re here,’ she said, nodding up past the pavilion. ‘Six of them. Got dropped off in a minibus.’

I scanned the car park for evidence. Nothing.

‘Exactly,’ said Vicky. ‘The supervisor had a chat with Christine, gave some orders and buggered off. Tell you what,’ she went on, tapping her nose, ‘don’t leave anything lying around. . .’ She made a whistling noise. ‘They’ll nick it before you can say
Midsomer Murders
.’

I liked Vicky. She was an unlikely gardener – although to be fair, most of us fitted that category – she smoked thin cigars, wore low-cut tops and kept a hipflask of gin in her shed.

I thanked her for the advice and tried not to stare as I approached them.

My heart sank.

The group was easy to spot as, rather embarrassingly, they were all wearing neon jackets. Just like me. The only difference was that theirs had COMMUNITY PAYBACK on the reverse.

They were huddled in a group on the overgrown plot opposite mine and Gemma’s, waist-high in weeds and laughing at something.

Not me, thankfully. Yet.

Bugger. One of them looked over as I was shoving my safety jacket into my rear pannier.

‘Coming to join us, miss?’ He was taller than the rest, as thin as my rake and had a massive smirk on his face.

I fumbled to undo the straps of my cycle helmet and the huddle unfolded as they all turned to stare at the red-faced nerd on a bike. Alf stood at the centre of the group, his hands full of soil that he was crumbling in front of them.

I softened instantly.

Most of the Ivy Lane community were nowhere to be seen today. So far, other than Vicky, I’d only spotted Nigel and Liz and they were both keeping their heads down. But not Alf. As promised, there he was, in the thick of it, sharing his wisdom, showing them the way.

I loved Alf. I wanted to grab hold of his big whiskery face and kiss him.

‘Morning, everyone.’ I arranged my features in a welcoming not-at-all-fazed-by-the-fact-you’re-here smile and disappeared down the path to plot 16B.

I’d watered the cabbages and removed the bamboo canes from my runner beans by the time Alf ambled towards me, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He had a girl in a hi-vis vest with him. I scanned the rest of the group.

The
only
girl. So she was the one.

Act cool, Tilly, ice-cool, I advised myself, as my nostrils flared in readiness.

Unfortunately, my knees went all wobbly and I inadvertently curtsied before the pair of them.

‘Tilly, I’ve been teaching Hayley about enriching the soil,’ said Alf in his gravelly voice.

Well, that would be useful next time she got behind the wheel of a car after a few Barcardi Breezers.

‘Really.’ I flicked a surreptitious eye over her, ripped a handful of runner bean stems up out of the ground and threw them behind me.

Hayley had thick blonde hair, darting green eyes and barely reached Alf’s shoulder. It was doubtful whether she would even be able to see over a steering wheel, let alone reach the pedals.

Alf scooped up my dead beans with a grunt and tottered over to the compost bin.

‘You get out what you put in,’ he said, giving me a pointed look, ‘with gardening.’

‘Are these broad beans?’ asked Hayley. I couldn’t help it; I glared at her and she flushed. Then I felt ashamed. She had sounded genuinely interested.

I coughed. ‘Yes,’ I mumbled, ‘I’m just about to dig them up for the compost too.’

‘Mmm,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘My absolute favourite vegetable. What did you do with them?’

She didn’t sound like a criminal. Not that they were easily identifiable by their voices, of course. Otherwise the police wouldn’t have such a tricky job catching them.

‘I ate them.’

She blinked at me. ‘Well, yeah . . .’

‘Oh, I see.’ My turn to blush. ‘Boiled. With a pork chop.’

She raised an eyebrow and didn’t look impressed. ‘I like to fry them off with garlic and pancetta. Huh, although you’d be lucky to find as much as a rasher of streaky bacon in our house.’

Well, that put me in my place.

Alf took a knife out of his pocket and stooped to the broad beans.

‘Take the stalks off, leave the roots in,’ he panted and cut through the first couple of plants. ‘Here you go.’ He passed the knife to Hayley and straightened up to catch his breath. ‘You do the rest.’

There was an offender on my plot. With a knife. Surely this had to contravene at least fifty European health and safety laws?

‘What for?’ asked Hayley, slicing through the bean stalks with far too much relish for my liking. I could see the top of her thong when she bent down. I glanced at Alf. That would do his blood pressure no good at all.

‘Nitrogen,’ said Alf as I ushered him to the bench where Hayley’s underwear was less visible. ‘The roots will add nitrogen to the soil. Next spring, when Tilly plants a new crop, it’ll have super powers.’

‘Safe,’ said Hayley with a solemn nod.

Alf frowned at me.

‘It means cool,’ I whispered, proud that I knew that. ‘Shouldn’t you be working with your group, Hayley?’

She shook her head and flicked the blade of the pocket knife in and out. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. ‘Tea break.’

She stared at me defiantly. ‘You want to know what I’ve done, don’t you? I can see it in your face. You don’t trust me, do you?’

‘Noooo,’ I said, trying to laugh off my embarrassment. ‘I mean, yeeees.’

Nicely handled. In fact, what did I mean? I wished
I
could see my face. Was this the steadying influence that Mr Cohen had hoped for? I wondered. Unlikely.

‘None of our business, is it, Tilly?’ said Alf, slapping my knee.

‘Well, the answer is, I didn’t do nothing.’

I winced internally at the double negative. I almost corrected her but she did still have the knife.

‘What it was was,’ she huffed impatiently, ‘my mum’s idiot boyfriend said we’d taken his car without consent. I hate him, the pervert,’ she added under her breath, bending down to hack her way through another clump of my broad beans.

Alf folded his arms, whistled a tuneless tune through his teeth, looked up at the gathering clouds and generally tried to give the impression that he wasn’t interested.

I was though. Very.

‘And had you?’

‘Well . . .’ She hesitated with her mouth open and considered her answer, hand on hip. She looked like a little teapot.

Yes, then.

‘Technically . . . yes.’

Ha. Guilty as charged.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said haughtily, drawing a circle in the air with her knife.

I swallowed.

‘He always let us borrow it—’

‘Us?’

‘Me and my mate Andrew.’

I nodded slowly.

‘He only reported it stolen because we’d had a row that night. I knee’d him in the balls for trying to feel me up. He blamed Mum for him being horny because she was away seeing her sister in London. So to pay him back I lifted the keys from the kitchen drawer and took the car to get to a party instead of going by bus. Only I can’t drive so I gave Andrew the keys. What I didn’t know was that he’d had a Magners. The police pulled us over and he failed the breathalyser test.’

That entire incident was awful on so many levels that it was hard for my head to know where to start. Her face had gone all red from screwing it up. Alf, on the other hand, had gone white.

‘Anyway,’ she sighed, looking down at the broad beans in surprise, as if she couldn’t remember what she was doing here, ‘it was worth it because Mum dumped him for pressing charges.’

How could she be so blasé about it?

‘No.’ I stood and descended on her in slow-motion mode until I towered over her. ‘No, it wasn’t worth it.’

Hayley blinked at me and took a step back as I took the knife from her hand. My pulse had doubled and was throbbing loudly in my ears. I thought for a moment that I might burst out of my clothes like the Incredible Hulk. Perhaps that would help, get rid of some fury, perhaps I should throw in an almighty roar for good measure.

‘Now then, Tilly,’ said a gruff voice of reason from the bench.

I took a deep breath and exhaled sharply.

‘You could have killed someone. Your friend. He could have hit another car or a pedestrian. Would it have been worth it then? Hmm?’

‘Well, no.’ She blinked at me and paled, as if the thought had just occurred to her. ‘Obviously. But he didn’t, did he?’ She folded her arms and looked at me sideways like I was a lunatic then stomped off to re-join the rest of her group.

I made short work of the remaining broad beans, bending down, letting my hair cover my face to hide the frustrated tears.

When I stood up, Alf was poking the end of his walking stick at my cabbages.

‘Want to talk about it?’ he asked.

I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head.

‘I’m glad you’re coming back next year,’ he said. ‘I’ll enjoy thinking of you here, learning and growing,’ he lowered his voice, ‘and healing.’

My throat throbbed and I could do nothing more than nod.

‘I shan’t be here. I’m packing it in. I know the committee don’t believe me. But I am. Come on, my plot next,’ he said, offering me his arm.

It had all got too much for him, I could see that now; he hadn’t kept on top of it and although he had a wide variety of crops, they were fighting a losing battle with the weeds. The sight of his beloved plot looking less than perfect was upsetting. For me and for him.

‘So really,’ he said, wheezing after all the effort of bending down, showing me his Heath Robinson irrigation system, the last of his beetroots, his top-notch turnips and ready-to-come-up potatoes, ‘everything’s ready now and then the plot will be just right for some young blood to take on fresh next year.’

Normally, I would have nudged him and teased him that of course he’d be back next year, but this time I squeezed his hand and placed a kiss on his whiskery cheek.

‘Right you are,’ I said, leading him to the pair of deckchairs in the shed.

He unzipped his anorak and rearranged it as he sat down. The pictures of him and Celia that used to be pinned up had gone from the shed wall. I think that made me feel sadder than anything. He’d packed up already, mentally moved out of Ivy Lane.

Anyway. Time to change the subject before I got all miserable.

‘That was a brave move back there, Alf,’ I laughed, ‘giving that girl a knife.’

He flapped a hand at me and chuckled. ‘That’s the thing with trust. You’ll never know if someone’s trustworthy until you trust ’em.’

God, I was going to miss him. He was so wise. My chest heaved and I reached out a hand and patted his arm.

‘You’re such a kind man, Alf. A much better person than me.’

‘Codswallop, girl. Besides, we’ve all got history.’ He stared at me for a few seconds and I wondered what was coming. ‘I’ve been inside, you know. Prison.’

I held my breath.

‘Broke into a builder’s yard with my mates. There was no CCTV then, but there was a vicious Alsatian who took a chunk out of my backside and I had to go to hospital. No sooner had the nurse started to clean the wound than an orderly whipped back the curtain round my bed. Next thing I knew a copper appeared and caught me with my pants down. The orderly was Celia. We always joked that she saw my bare arse before she saw my face. She must have liked what she saw, though.’

Funny how life turned out. If Alf hadn’t committed a crime, he’d never have met his Celia. I bet he didn’t regret a thing.

‘You’re full of surprises, you.’ I grinned at him and shook my head.

‘Well, there you go,’ he said, eyeing me apologetically. ‘My criminal past. Got three months for that. Nowadays I’d probably get away with community service like this lot.’