Ivy Lane: Spring: Read Online Free PDF Page B

and she was breathless.
    ‘Bushy eyebrows?’ asked Gemma, slipping on a pair of white cotton gloves. Today her hair was clipped to one side with a giant diamanté spider.
    I nodded, wondering anew how she managed to stay so pristine in this environment.
    ‘Thick Northern Irish accent?’
    That might explain why I couldn’t understand him. ‘Possibly,’ I said.
    Gemma rolled her eyes. ‘That’s my dad, Roy.’
    ‘Oh no, he promised me he’d paint the outside lav at home today.’ Christine grunted with exasperation. ‘And I hid his Hennessy whisky on purpose till he’d finished it.’
    That explained the heresy.
    ‘Now he’ll be sitting in Dougie King’s shed drinking beer with whisky chasers all day. I’ll kill him,’ she muttered, sending a large stone whistling through the air with venom.
    And that explained the rest. Good job I didn’t call the police.
    Nigel cleared his throat. ‘It should be returned clean, undamaged and refuelled. That’ll be ten pounds, please.’ He held out his hand. ‘I would stay and help but I’m rotating my compost bins today.’
    Ten pounds for a perfect weed-free rectangle? Bargain. I handed over the cash willingly.
    ‘And leave me at the mercy of three women?’ said Charlie with a grin, not looking unhappy at the prospect.
    ‘Four!’ came a voice from Gemma’s shed.
    ‘Mia,’ Gemma answered my questioning eyebrows. ‘She’s grounded.’
    Charlie saluted at Nigel’s retreating form.
    In my head, this morning would run as follows: Charlie would operate the rotavator; I would perhaps have a little go, to show willing and because it looked fun; we would collect any big weeds and put them in my compost bin (goodness knows what Nigel’s rotating one was, but I imagine it was a great deal fancier than my broken effort); then if I had any time and energy left, I would start turning the soil over with a fork. Oh yes, I was getting the hang of this gardening jargon.
    ‘Right, the worst of the stones are out,’ said Christine, handing me a garden fork. ‘Gemma, get yours, love, and you, son. We need to get the big boys out by hand first.’
    Gemma looked as horrified as I felt and Charlie gazed at his rotavator longingly.
    ‘We can’t just go mad with that machine,’ tutted Christine, ‘or all we’ll be doing is chopping the roots of the weeds up into tiny pieces. In six weeks this plot will be ten times worse than it is now.’
    There was no use arguing.
    An hour later, my legs had seized up, my bum was aching and my wellies were well and truly christened.
    ‘Tea break!’ I announced, praying that Christine wouldn’t overrule me.
    ‘Thanks for all your help, everyone,’ I said, settling down onto a plastic bag next to Charlie on the damp grass after finding us all a receptacle for a drink. Even Mia came out to join us and perched in the apple tree with the tub of jelly babies.
    ‘I think I would have given up by now,’ I admitted. ‘It’s quite daunting, tackling something like this on your own.’
    It was true, I realized. It was one thing to potter amongst the vegetable beds sowing a few seeds and quite another to bring an overgrown plot back to life.
    Charlie smacked his lips appreciatively and reached for another biscuit. ‘No worries, that’s what friends are for.’
    My cheeks burned. Charlie and I were not friends; we knew nothing about each other, which was just the way I wanted to keep it. Try telling that to Gemma, though. I didn’t meet her eye, but I could sense her nudging her mother and winking.
    I jumped to my feet. ‘Let’s fire the rotavator up.’
    Charlie was right behind me. ‘One end to the other first, according to Nigel, then side to side.’
    Gemma returned to her half of the plot with Christine and the two of them were soon tangled up in bamboo canes and string. Mia disappeared back into the shed, moaning about her homework and lack of wifi.
    Charlie was soon into his stride and I flittered about, feeling a bit superfluous,