The Unorthodox Arrival of Pumpkin Allan Read Online Free PDF Page A

village five years ago. They loved living in “The Park”. It had been a perfect place for their children, Gemma and Stephen, to spend the latter parts of their childhood. Lilac Cottage was sold to them with a paddock that ran behind the pair of cottages. Gemma had loved riding and was able to have a pony during her teens. Now she was at university in York. Stephen was in his first year of GCSEs and had the potential to follow in his sister’s footsteps and make it to a good university. Provided, as his dad would frequently say, he cut down on the three Fs, Facebook, football and flirting and took his homework a little more seriously.
    Dave owned a main-dealer franchise for a company specializing in four-wheel drives. Unfortunately, due to the combination of increased road tax for such vehicles, higher fuel prices and a country that had plummeted into recession, his once successful business was now struggling to the point that he was talking to accountants about taking it into liquidation. He had tried to discuss his financial worries with Annie, but she always just shrugged them off. “We’ve a long way to go before we’re on the bread line!” was her general response.
    Feeling that he needed to take steps to stop them becoming destitute, Dave had decided to get the house valued. Annie was right; they did have assets after all. The house was bigger than necessary now that Gemma was at university. The pony had been sold last year, so they didn’t need the paddock, which was rapidly filling with weeds. Three years ago they had built a large detached garage with a spacious loft, that Dave had christened the “Coach House”, which must have added considerably to the value of the property. Gradually Dave talked himself around to the idea that it would actually be very sensible for them to move, he just hadn’t quite plucked up the courage to discuss it with Annie.
    Meanwhile, Annie had, in fact, been giving a great deal of thought to their financial situation. She hadn’t wanted to stress Dave by showing too much concern about the way his business was heading. She worried about his mental stability in a crisis. He’d experienced some problems with anxiety in the past and clearly suffered with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. She had indeed also been considering the assets they could sell.
    In Annie’s opinion, it was obvious their boat should be the first thing to go. That would free up at least thirty thousand, provided they could find a buyer. The mooring on the Thames cost a small fortune and they hardly ever used it. She knew Dave had always dreamed of owning a cruiser, but if their financial situation picked up, they could buy another one. She would sell the idea to him as, “they could always buy a bigger one.”
    Then there was the paddock at the back of the house. Annie was sure that there were several sets of neighbours who would jump at the chance of becoming landowners. Annie had dreamed of hosting Gemma’s wedding there, in a beautiful marquee, but it had been harder to imagine recently with the paddock being in the state it was. A brief Internet search of land prices gave Annie the impression that the paddock was worth at least seventy-five thousand. Now that would keep the wolves from the door for a bit. They had no mortgage on the house; fortunately they had paid that off when Dave’s business was booming.
    The other asset was the loft space over the garage. Now, if they spent a bit of money converting that into a studio flat, they could let it long-term. Annie had spent some time researching the various possibilities on the ‘net’ during a particularly quiet two days temping the previous week. She had decided that if they did the work themselves, Dave being quite handy at DIY, and bought relatively cheap fittings and second-hand furniture, they could probably do the whole thing for about fifteen hundred pounds. They should be able to get a hundred pounds a week in rent, which would soon put