Summer Season (19 page)

‘Right, buckets and mops at the ready,’ said Lauren to the crowd who had gathered outside the Memorial Gardens as they posed for a photo for the local paper. She had been amazed at how easy it had been to get people galvanized to come and clean up the mess that the vandals had made. She’d put the word out with the school-run mums, and once the jungle drums began to roll everyone was keen to get involved. Lauren felt a renewed sense of vigour and optimism as she looked at the number of people who’d come to help. Even the newly appointed local MP, who had a young family of his own and a keen eye for good PR, was eager to be seen at the playground. This was great from Lauren’s point of view as it brought the added bonus of the local TV covering the story.

‘We could do with more of this sort of community spirit in Chiverton, where I live,’ the MP was saying. ‘It’s exactly the sort of thing the government want to promote.’

He was so enthusiastic he was even prepared to take the mop and bucket he’d used for his photocall and put it to use. His minders had to persuade him to stop scrubbing before getting him to his next appointment.

‘Well, look at you,’ said Kezzie, who was taking a break from working on her website to offer her services. ‘Hobnobbing with MPs and appearing on national telly.’

‘Hardly national,’ said Lauren, ‘we’ll be lucky if we get a minute on the local news bulletin.’

‘Whatever. I’ll make a campaigner out of you yet!’

Lauren grinned.

‘Do you know, I’m enjoying all this. It feels like the first time I’ve properly used my brain since the girls were born.’

‘You’ve certainly gathered a willing workforce,’ said Kezzie, looking around as Lauren’s friends swept up glass, scrubbed off graffiti and disposed of chip wrappers.

‘They’ve been great,’ said Lauren. ‘Do you know Rose Carmichael?’ She pointed at a small, rotund woman, who was laughing and joking while she swept up. ‘Her husband works for B&Q in Chiverton and he got us a whole load of paint so we can make the playground look better until we get a new one sorted.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Kezzie. ‘And I’ve got some more good news for you. A gang of my mates are coming down in a few weeks to help plant out the borders that Joel and I dug over. In no time at all we’ll have the place looking fantastic.’

‘I just hope we can keep the vandals away,’ said Lauren. ‘Locking the gardens at night doesn’t seem to deter them.’

‘Well, a locked gate has never deterred me,’ said Kezzie, ‘but if we surprise them by being
in
the gardens, they might think again.’

‘What if they’re six feet tall and wielding an axe?’ said Lauren, wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew.

‘I’ll run like hell,’ said Kezzie. ‘But I reckon they’re just kids, and if we could only get them on our side, we might be able to turn it round and persuade them to help us make things better.’

‘You’re optimistic.’

‘Well, you never know,’ said Kezzie cheerfully. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before, but there’s always a first time.’

Kezzie and Joel sat in the park drinking a flask of tea. It was a chilly spring evening in March and they were both wearing warm fleeces and scarves. As arranged with Lauren, Sam was staying there for the night.

‘Do you really think anyone will come?’ said Joel. ‘After all there’s been a lot of publicity. They’ll probably go and find somewhere else to deface.’

‘I do think it’s likely to be kids,’ said Kezzie. ‘I feel quite sorry for them. They haven’t got anything to do or anywhere to go, so they’re bored and destructive. Heartsease could do with a community centre for teens. We should bring it to the attention of the committee.’

‘Can you imagine what Cynthia will say?’ snorted Joel.

‘“Ai really don’t think it is necessary. We are not some inner London housing estate,”’ Kezzie mimicked Cynthia’s modulated tones perfectly.

‘Still, I’m not that sympathetic with them,’ said Joel. ‘I was frequently bored as a teenager and I didn’t graffiti things.’

‘I did,’ admitted Kezzie. ‘The estate where I grew up was like that. You started drinking at thirteen, hung around with your mates, and knocked things down for fun. It was either that, or get into knife crime.’

‘So how did you get out of it then?’ said Joel. ‘I mean, you didn’t turn into a hardened criminal, did you?’

‘I was lucky,’ said Kezzie. ‘I had a couple of good teachers who spotted I was good at art, and encouraged me to go into design. Then I fell in with a bunch of guerrilla gardeners when I was at college, and realized what I really liked doing was gardening. But I needed to work, so I got a job in web design, but I never really liked it. I’d probably still be there now if it weren’t for Richard …’

Kezzie paused. There was something about the two of them being here, after dark, that seemed to encourage intimacy. A sudden memory of the kiss they shared made her
flush in the dark. She hoped that Joel wasn’t thinking about it too.

‘Why?’ said Joel.

‘He persuaded me to retrain and do gardening properly. He’s a garden architect, and we were planning to go into business together.’ Kezzie sighed. It had been such a great dream. She was going to design a winning garden for Chelsea, and he was going to create the structures to go inside. Together she knew they could have been a winning team. That was never going to happen now.

‘What happened?’

‘I was a bloody idiot’s what happened,’ said Kezzie. She shivered, and thought about her chat with Lauren. Richard was in the past. Time to let go. ‘Never mind. He made it clear from that email he sent me. It’s over now, and I’m here, and here’s where I plan to stay.’

‘So you wouldn’t go back to London?’ said Joel.

A bleak look crossed Kezzie’s face.

‘Nothing to go back for,’ she muttered.

There was a rustling in the bushes. Kezzie shone her torch, and disturbed a fox, which looked quizzically at them.

‘False alarm,’ she said.

‘I think we might have frightened the vandals off,’ said Joel.

‘With any luck,’ said Kezzie. ‘I’d hate to see all Lauren’s hard work go to waste. The paint’s barely dry on the swings.’

They sat in companionable silence for another half an hour. It was nearly eleven.

‘I doubt anyone’s going to break in now,’ said Joel. ‘If it is kids, they should all be tucked up in bed by now.’

‘I never was,’ said Kezzie with a grin.

‘What a rebel,’ said Joel. ‘You clearly had more of a chequered youth than me.’

‘If you knew the half of it,’ said Kezzie.

‘So none of the patrols have spotted anyone at night. That’s great.’ Lauren was chairing a meeting at her house to update everyone on the progress of the clean-up operation so far. They’d been running the patrols for nearly a month, and it was now midway through April. Whoever had been causing the damage appeared to have been scared away. Which was something; though Joel privately thought the minute they stopped watching out for the vandals, they would be back.

‘I think our next plan should be to renovate the pavilion and see if we can’t turn it into some kind of community hall. I’m looking into seeing if we can get any lottery funds for it. I think if we can set up somewhere for teens to go, then we might not have such a huge vandalism problem.’

‘Great idea,’ said Rose Carmichael. ‘I know my lot get really bored of a summer’s evening. I’d love it if they could find something constructive to do.’

‘But who would run it?’ said Joel, thinking practically. ‘Presumably we’d need to get CRB checked, and there will definitely be things like insurance to consider.’

‘That’s true,’ said Kezzie, ‘but surely as a community we can all pull together.’

‘I’ve been a youth worker,’ put in Troy, much to Joel’s annoyance. He seemed to be everywhere Lauren was these days, and now it looked as if he could actually be useful, which was even more galling. Joel chided himself for being so petty minded, but he couldn’t help it. As far as Troy was concerned, everything annoyed him.

‘You? Really?’ Lauren looked at him in disbelief. Good, at least Lauren wasn’t totally blinded.

‘Yeah, me,’ said Troy. ‘I retrained last year and worked on an estate in Southampton. It was challenging and rewarding, and I’d love to do something like that here.’

‘I didn’t think you’d want to stay that long.’ Lauren gave Troy a look that was impossible to misinterpret, and Joel felt
his heart sink. Blinded enough, though. She was going to end up back with the worthless sap, and had clearly fallen for that I’ve-changed malarkey. A sudden stabbing sensation of jealousy shot through him. Jealousy? Why should he feel jealous of Troy? It wasn’t as though he had even thought about Lauren in that way. But since Troy had been on the scene, Joel felt like he barely saw her. He missed the chats they used to have when he came to pick Sam up in the evening. If Lauren and Troy became an item, Joel would see her even less. Joel was used to Lauren being there, framing every day for him. She’d been his steady support system since Claire died. He couldn’t bear to think of that changing.

Troy said, ‘I told you I wanted to stay here.’ But to Joel his words were loaded with significance. Troy was using Lauren again, getting involved with her, trying to impress her. It was so damned obvious, but she clearly couldn’t see it.

‘Well, we can certainly look into that,’ said Lauren, ‘but I think to get things really up and running we need to put all this before the Parish Council, and we need to restore the pavilion first. It’s a mess. In the meantime, anyone keen to help Kezzie on Saturday, please come along to the Memorial Gardens at around 10 a.m. We’re going to need people with green fingers.’

‘And depending on how much we get done,’ said Kezzie, ‘it’s all back to mine for drinks afterwards.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ said Troy.

‘You would,’ said Lauren, and shoved him.

‘Careful,’ he said, and shoved her back.

The warmth of their banter was not lost on Joel. Lauren was going back to Troy, he was certain. And there was nothing at all he could do about it.

‘OK you guys, let’s get cracking.’

It was early on an April Saturday morning, and Joel, finding that Sam had already woken and they were both unable to sleep, had come down to the Memorial Gardens to see if Kezzie and her friends needed any help.

They were an ill-assorted mob, who’d arrived in a battered old minibus. Kezzie introduced Flick, a standard vegan kind of anarchist, who fitted the stereotype so neatly. Joel was convinced she was a lesbian, till she planted a kiss on the lips of a tall and scary-looking individual, who was covered in so many tattoos and piercings he wouldn’t have looked out of place in the
Guinness Book of Records
. Kezzie introduced him as Gavin, known as Space Cadet, who was an amiable giant (‘and hugely clever’ according to Kezzie), who had earned his moniker from the way he’d get distracted by his fascination in all things botanical.

‘Did you know the botanical name for weed is
cannabis sativa
?’ he was saying. ‘You can grow it anywhere, you know.’

‘Well, we’re not growing it here,’ said Kezzie firmly.

There were also two elderly ladies called June and Flo, who despite looking as though they belonged in the WI, possessed filthy laughs, a dirty sense of humour, and were veterans of Greenham Common, according to Kezzie. Joel
was somewhat stunned to discover it was they who were the lesbians.

The party was completed by Tom, a morose young man who barely spoke, except when he was waxing forth about the state of the planet and giving gloomy predictions that global warming was accelerating at a speed beyond which the world had been told.

‘It’s a cover-up, I tell you,’ he was earnestly discussing Wikileaks with Gavin, ‘they’re all in it together.’

‘You think everything is a cover-up,’ said Kezzie, with fondness. ‘There aren’t enough conspiracy theories in the world to satisfy you.’

Kezzie clearly treated Tom like a daft little brother, but from the adoration that Joel was amused to see in his eyes, he was evidently besotted with her.

They might have been a motley crew, but Joel quickly realized they worked well as a team. Kezzie and Flick concentrated on hacking down bushes and carrying rubbish away, while Tom and Gavin put their not inconsiderable muscles to use, digging over the ground. Flo and June dug in the compost, or where there was already space for them, put in some bedding plants which the Parish Council had supplied. And as more people slowly joined in, Kezzie, Flick and Gavin soon got them helping out in the most efficient ways. Before his eyes, the gardens were being slowly transformed.

Joel helped with the digging in between attending to Sam, who fortunately seemed quite happy gurgling in his buggy and watching proceedings.

By mid morning one complete bed had been cleared and Flo and June were readying themselves to fill it with buzy lizzies, verbena, pansies and geraniums.

They spent most of the time in raucous fits of laughter, and Joel soon found it was infectious. It was impossible not
to laugh with them, and Joel felt a sudden zestful feeling about the glory of being alive on such a wonderful day, doing something so useful. He looked over to where Sam was chewing contentedly on his buggy book, and was filled with an overwhelming joy of being with his son, shot through with sadness that Claire wasn’t here to share the moment. But for once the joy seemed stronger than the sadness. He’d lost Sam’s mother, but Sam gave him a lot to live for. And over the last few months he’d really begun to feel life was worth living again.

In the end Sam started getting fractious, so Joel said to Kezzie, ‘Sorry, I think that’s my lot. I’ll come down again tomorrow if you like.’

‘Not to worry, we’ve got reinforcements coming,’ said Kezzie, as Lauren and Troy approached, with the twins dancing between them. ‘Do you fancy coming back to mine later and having a drink with us all? We usually crack open a bottle when we’ve been working together. I’ll ask Lauren too. You can bring Sam if you like. I should think we’ll all be too knackered to be too raucous.’

‘Sounds great,’ said Joel. ‘I’ll see you there.’

‘Hi Lauren, Troy.’ He felt forced to acknowledge Troy’s presence, but felt like punching the guy on the nose. He had such a self-satisfied air about him, and seemed to be almost proprietorial about Lauren, touching her arm constantly, as if he somehow had some claim over her. Why couldn’t she see it?

‘So how’s it going?’ Flick said, as she and Kezzie transported another load of branches to the skip the council had provided.

‘The garden?’ said Kezzie. ‘It’s fantastic. I’ll ask Joel if we can go and look at it later, if you like.’

‘Durr!’ said Flick. ‘Not the garden, dummy. I’m talking about Richard. Have you heard from him at all?’

‘Oh,’ said Kezzie, heaving a particularly heavy branch into the skip. ‘Richard.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, nothing,’ said Kezzie. ‘I emailed him to ask for some advice about contacting gardening celebrities, which he did, but he also made it clear he doesn’t want any more contact. End of story. It’s over.’

‘Oh, Kez, I’m so sorry.’ Flick came over and gave Kezzie a huge hug.

‘Don’t,’ said Kezzie, her lip wobbling, ‘otherwise, I’m going to be a puddle.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Flick, backing off. ‘Did you at least get any contacts out of it?’

‘I’m working on it,’ said Kezzie, as they wandered back to pick up more garden rubbish. ‘Couldn’t find anyone to help us with the Memorial Gardens, but I have been talking to Anthony Grantham’s agent – you know the guy who presents
Dig It!
– and he may do a piece on Edward’s garden at the Summer Fest.’

‘See,’ Flick dug Kezzie in the ribs, ‘there’s always a silver lining.’

‘I suppose,’ said Kezzie, dragging a massive branch back to the skip. ‘I just need to work out a way of getting over Richard permanently.’

‘What you need is to get out there again,’ said Flick. ‘Surely there must be someone interesting here.’

‘In Heartsease? I don’t think so!’ said Kezzie.

‘What about Joel?’ argued Flick. ‘He seems nice.’

Kezzie sighed, ‘Been there, done that, realized it wouldn’t work. Joel’s great, but we’re friends, nothing more.’

‘What about him?’ Flick pointed over to Troy, who was helping Gavin dig up a flowerbed. He’d taken his top off to reveal a sixpack which was both toned and tanned to perfection.

‘Troy? Puh-lease!’ snorted Kezzie. ‘He’s Lauren’s ex, and very very bad news. Wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Kezzie. ‘I’m just going to wait till I’m over Richard. It has to happen sometime.’

Lauren had had a great day. To begin with she’d been helping Flo and June planting the bedding plants with the twins. The girls had enjoyed digging and got thoroughly muddy. Flo and June had been immensely patient with them, and let them help plant the bedding plants, while not appearing to mind too much that a lot of the flowers had been decapitated by the time they went in.

‘Oh well, saves us dead-heading them,’ Flo had twinkled. ‘And they’re so enthusiastic, the pets, I wouldn’t like to stop them helping.’

Enthusiastic. That was
one
way to describe the way both girls threw themselves wholeheartedly into every activity, whatever their ability.

Later on Lauren had worked with Kezzie and Flick cutting down bushes, and enjoyed some rare girlie chat, most of which centred around Flick and Gavin’s athletic sex life.

‘You did what?’ giggled Lauren. ‘How on earth did you manage that?’ as Flick described one particularly gymnastic kind of manoeuvre.

‘Well, what can I say?’ grinned Flick. ‘That man is an animal.’

‘Grrr, tiger, watch him roar,’ said Kezzie, and they all collapsed in fits of laughter.

‘What’s so funny?’ Gavin wanted to know.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Flick said innocently.

‘Grr,’ said Kezzie, and the three of them laughed some more.

‘Honestly,’ said Lauren, tears streaming down her face,
as Gavin walked away puzzled. ‘I don’t know when I last laughed like that.’

She wiped the tears away.

‘You’ve got a smudge now,’ said Kezzie. ‘Really, Lauren, you need to get out more.’

‘Well it’s not that easy,’ said Lauren.

‘I know,’ said Kezzie. ‘But now he’s here, why don’t you make more use of Troy? If he means what he says, he should take a bit more responsibility for the girls.’

‘That’s true,’ said Lauren, ‘but it is still early days. I want him to get to know the girls better before I start leaving them with him too often. That’s why I got him to come along today.’

‘Doesn’t look like he’s doing too badly,’ said Flick. They watched Troy take a break from digging and play around with the girls, taking it in turns to throw each one over his shoulder.

‘It doesn’t, does it?’ said Lauren with a smile. Maybe Troy would be here for the duration after all. She was beginning to allow herself the small smidgeon of hope that he would. And in her weaker moments the flame of attraction that she had felt when he first showed up was growing stronger. She was wondering if she shouldn’t perhaps fan it some more.

‘You are coming round to mine tonight, aren’t you?’ said Kezzie, over fish and chips, which Gavin and Flick had gone to get for lunch.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Lauren. ‘I haven’t got a sitter.’

‘Bring the girls,’ said Kezzie. ‘It’s only informal drinks. I told Joel to bring Sam.’

‘You won’t be smoking anything funny, will you?’ said Lauren. She’d recently spotted the little plastic bag that Flick had given Kezzie on the kitchen window sill and clearly disapproved.

‘
No
. Cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Kezzie. ‘I know what I told you about Emily, but really, I wouldn’t do that round kids. Come on. It’ll be a laugh. It won’t be the same without you.’

‘Oh go on then,’ said Lauren, ‘you’ve twisted my arm.’

‘It will do you good to have some fun for once,’ said Kezzie.

Lauren sat back in the sunshine munching her chips, watching the twins running around with Troy. Kezzie was right, it would do her good to get out. Today had been great fun, and the evening should round it off nicely.