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. ‘Youareinteresting 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?’
‘Underneaththe 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 abridge.
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.
