Rough Around the Hedges

Chapter One – Rose

ROSE

Hanbury Allotments

“ B ehold my schlong!”

I stabbed my trowel into the raised vegetable bed in front of me and stared over the fence at my neighbour. “George, I’ve told you not to talk about your marrows that way. I’ve already had to calm Carol down three times because her grandson told all the ladies at church to ‘behold his schlong.’”

“That sounds like Carol’s problem,” George said nonchalantly, shrugging his drooping shoulders.

“It’s mine when she complains to me as the head of the allotment committee,” I pointed out.

“I know I’ve used it frivolously in the past, but I mean it this time. Look, Rose.” He leant over the waist-high fence and held his monstrous tiger marrow out in front of me. “It’s fuckin’ massive.”

He wasn’t lying. He needed two hands to hold it, and never had I seen a man so proud of one giant vegetable.

Size really did matter, it seemed.

“Mind your language,” Susan said from the other side of my plot. “And stop referring to your vegetables as genitalia, George. It makes it sound like you’re overcompensating for something.”

“I don’t need to overcompensate for anythin’.” George huffed, hugging his marrow to his chest. “Just because you aren’t getting any.”

“I’m seventy-one. What am I supposed to be getting? The bloody flu? Backache? Cataracts surgery?”

That was a bit dramatic of her.

She wasn’t that old.

She was practically middle-aged these days. And the picture of health, thank you very much.

Then again, Susan wouldn’t be Susan if there wasn’t a little drama in her day.

“Sex, Susan. Sex,” George said, enunciating each word. “S-e-x.”

“Psh.” She waved her gloved hand through the air in front of her. “Who has the time for sex? What’s wrong with a good cup of tea and reruns of The Chase to fulfil all your needs on a Friday night?”

Well, a cup of tea, for a start, but if I said that out loud, I’d be chased out of the country.

“What needs are being fulfilled by The Chase ?”

“Bradley Walsh.” Susan licked her lips. “Now, there’s a man I’d let sex me up.”

Disgust contorted George’s aged features, and his jowls wobbled when he shuddered. “I don’t come to the allotment for casual sexual harassment like this.”

“You’re the one calling your marrow a schlong.”

“That’s less harassment than saying you’d sleep with Bradley Walsh.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I bet Bradley Walsh would.”

“How do you know? You haven’t asked him.”

“I don’t need to ask him to know what he’d think.”

“What about Gordon Ramsay instead, then? He’s a tasty thing.”

“Susan, he’d probably tell you that you’ve spent too long in the oven.”

“How rude—and what utter nonsense. If I were a meal, I’d be a dessert. No oven required.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because desserts are the best part of a meal, and I am most certainly far too good to be a mere appetiser and too sweet to be the main.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “That’s how I know.”

“Sweet? More like sour.”

I sighed and rubbed my hand down the side of my face, probably leaving a trail of dirt smeared over my cheek, but who cared? I was surrounded by chaos, which was saying something considering I was usually the chaos.

Thirty-six.

There were thirty-six plots at this allotment site, and mine was smack bang in the middle of two seventy-somethings playing out some perverted enemies-to-lovers fantasy like they were tragic protagonists in a romance novel.

I didn’t care what either of them said. They absolutely had the hots for one another, and they most certainly got a thrill out of flirt-arguing over the top of my head.

Sexual harassment? Pfft. I was the one being bloody sexually harassed here, thank you very much.

I just wanted to plant my marigolds to keep the whitefly off my tomatoes, for the love of God.

“Can you two take your flirting elsewhere?” I said, getting to my feet. “My pure and innocent ears are being corrupted by your depravity.”

“How can you call yourself pure and innocent?” George snorted. “Didn’t you pioneer the naked allotment calendar last year?”

I paused. “Yes, and that raised a lot of money for the farmer’s youth club to go on their trip this summer. We’re doing it again this year, and I’m not letting you get out of it, either.”

Susan laughed. “You can show the whole village your schlong then, George.”

He’d be showing more than just the village. Those calendars had been a viral hit.

It was truly surprising how many people were interested in a calendar of naked people covering their wobbly bits with their homegrown vegetables.

The internet was a strange place.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” I said, turning to her. “You’re getting your melons out, Susan. You didn’t do it last year, either.”

She dropped her trowel. “I can’t get naked in public!”

“You did that plenty in your younger days,” George said. “You once danced through the high street wearing nothing but a grass skirt and coconut bra.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How saucy of you, Susan.”

“That was her nickname back then: Saucy Susan.”

“It was not!” Susan’s cheeks flamed red. “Those were different times!”

“So, get out some maracas and channel your nineteen-year-old self.” He tilted his head to the side. “On second thought, I don’t think Susan is a good choice, Rose.”

I glanced between them. “Why not? We can’t use all the same people as last year. We have to make it fair. That’s why we drew lots for last year’s contributors.”

“Well.” He gestured to his chest in the universal sign for boob-grabbing. “Her melons aren’t as ripe as they were back in the seventies.”

“Sexual. Harassment!” Susan exclaimed, grabbing her gardening bag and turning around. “Rose, sign me up for this year’s calendar! I’ll show you ripe melons in September, George Hathaway!”

Susan stomped off into her shed and slammed the door.

Well, at least I had her on the list. And for September, apparently.

God knows where she was getting actual melons from, though. Had she even sown any this year? It was better if we all used our own homegrown produce, even if it’d been touch and go with Clive and his cherry tomatoes last year.

I turned back to George, and he was grinning as if he’d just won the lottery.

“You deliberately provoked her, didn’t you?” I asked.

He held up his thumb, looking mightily proud of himself with his big old smile.

“Why don’t you just ask her out?”

That wiped the smile off his face. “Why would I do that?”

“The same reason most people go on a date. Because you la-la-la-loooove her.”

He picked his marrow back up and took a step away from the fence. “I don’t think you’re in a position to give me love advice. When was the last time you went on a date, Rose?”

“That’s neither here nor there,” I replied. “You should still ask her out. I’m tired of you flirting all over my plot. Use the path instead when you want to have your dirty little foreplay.”

George narrowed his eyes at me. “We weren’t flirting.”

“She said she’s going to show you her melons. In September. She was very specific.”

“She wasn’t very appreciative of my marrow, though.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to grow an even bigger one to impress her.” I pulled my glove back on. “Now scoot. You’re blocking my sun.”

He huffed as he got out of the way. “Maybe Susan would prefer my knobbly carrots.”

George was famous for his ability to grow scarily phallic carrots. His final attempt at them last year had ended on Christmas Eve when he’d come to harvest his carrots for Christmas dinner and almost all of them had split into three, resembling two legs and a tiny schlong in the middle.

It didn’t matter what he did to his soil either, bless him. No matter how he sieved it or how much sand he added to soften it, his carrots just wouldn’t play ball.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Susan—or any other woman, for that matter—probably wouldn’t know what to do if a gentleman offered them a phallic vegetable.

Not including myself.

I’d just put a picture of it on the allotment’s Instagram account and make the thirty thousand or so people who followed the account very happy.

I had no idea why thirty thousand people followed the adventures of Hanbury Allotments, either, but I had a heck of a time as the ringleader of my little circus.

When George and Susan weren’t engaging in cross-plot flirting and traumatising my innocent mind, that was.

“Rosieeeeeeeeee.”

I jerked my head around and glared at my best friend. “It’s like you want me to throw my trowel at you. On second thought, the hand fork would do better damage. If I can just get the right whip on it…”

Isadora grinned and popped open my gate, letting herself into my plot. “I have cake.”

I pressed my hand to my chest. “I missed you so much, bestie. You look so pretty today. Is that new lipstick? It’s totally your colour.”

“Suck up,” she said. “And yes, it is new lipstick. Thank you for noticing.”

But of course.

That was my job as best friend.

Her newest fling wasn’t going to notice it, the useless lump of—

“Oh, excuse me, Mr Waffles. Come on in. I see you’ve brought the family.”

I leant back. She was holding the gate open for Waffles the rooster who was being closely followed by his chicken wife, Pancake, and the chicks she’d hatched three weeks ago. After much consideration, I’d lovingly named them Roll, Bap, and Barmcake.

And yes.

I had set off a whole round of fighting over what a bread roll was actually called when I’d announced that.

For the record, it was roll.

It was a bread roll. After all, the whole argument was what the proper name for a bread roll was, thus it was a bread roll.

I could maybe accept bap on a good day, but barmcake was simply out of the question.

There was nothing quite like a cultural debate over the name of a bit of baked dough to wake you up on a morning.

Or just haunt you and make you regret all your life choices when, three weeks later, said cultural debate was still ongoing and causing the occasional chaos.

Was I talking about myself? Who knew. It was a mystery.

“Good afternoon, Waffles, Pancake, kids,” I said, looking at the allotment’s most famous chicken family.

Why were they famous?

Easy.

The internet loved a good chicken.

I really had started The Polyamorous Adventures of Waffles as a joke, but there was a surprisingly large group of followers who were anxiously awaiting the moment Pancake found out Waffles had a whole harem of chickens he was servicing on a regular basis.

And no, before anyone asked, I’d never seen him ride another one of his girls while she was nearby.

Yes, it was weird.

No, I didn’t care.

Weird was my middle name. It’d taken me a long time, but now at my ripe old age of twenty-nine years, four months, three weeks, and two days, I had fully come to embrace my weirdness and roll with it.

It made the whole dating part of my life a bit on the tough side, but eh. If a man couldn’t handle me at my weirdest, then he didn’t deserve my normal.

Because there was no normal.

There was only weird.

“I’m starting to think that chicken has a fetish where you’re concerned,” Isa said, staring at Waffles as he hopped up into my lap and settled down.

I smoothed my hand across his back. “He’s my little baby. It would be my pleasure to be his fetish.”

“Some of the things that come out of your mouth scare me.” She sighed, perching on the edge of one of my vegetable beds. “I know you hatched him, but aren’t you too attached?”

“I didn’t hatch him. He was the only one that made it out alive from that stupid school project,” I said. “I rescued him and raised him.”

“And then lobbied the late duke for permission to keep chickens at the allotment.”

“Lobbied is a strong word.”

“Rose. You made banners that said, ‘Justice for Waffles,’ and superglued them on his gates in the middle of the night. If that isn’t lobbying, I don’t know what is.”

I cleared my throat and looked away. “I prefer to think of it as convincing .”

“Yes, but it wasn’t convincing. It didn’t work.”

“That’s why I hung up those lost posters all over town.”

Isa stared at me. “Ah, yes. The campaign to find the late duke’s lost humanity. What was the reward again? A dozen fresh eggs?”

“Hey, have you seen the price of eggs? That was a solid reward.”

“Yes, but you only had Waffles at that point, and Waffles doesn’t lay eggs.”

“I didn’t know he was a boy back then. He could have laid eggs for all I knew.” I held up my hands. “But did the posters work?”

“Given that Waffles is now the allotment’s resident six-timing heathen and a father several times over, yes.”

She made him sound like such a slut.

All right.

Maybe he was a little.

“And I got the primary school to stop doing their spring hatch project unless a farmer was involved from start to finish, so it was a double win in my eyes.” I reached up into the vegetable bed and used my nail to break off a spinach leaf that I offered to Pancake.

She plucked it from my fingers and turned, immediately dropping it on the ground and making a weird little clucking noise that was almost turkey-esque.

The bread babies immediately scurried back to her and started pecking at the spinach leaf, so I broke off another couple of them and added to their collection.

I didn’t want my precious breadcrumbs to fight.

“Well, I have to agree with you there,” Isa said. “We get calls at the office so often from people who don’t know what to do with chicks. People don’t realise how much heat they need.”

Barmcake shuffled under Pancake’s wing as if to emphasise Isa’s point about warmth.

“Just like that.” She laughed. “Anyway, I tried to call Jake earlier to confirm the collection of Bongo’s balls, but he didn’t pick up. Are you seeing him later?”

Yeah.

That sounded about right.

My brother was useless at picking up the phone. It wouldn’t surprise me if he showed up at the vet’s office to get his kitten’s balls chopped off at six a.m. on a Sunday morning.

I nodded. “Yeah, just text me the details and I’ll make him call you tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Isa checked her watch. “I have to go. I’ll leave the cake in your shed.”

“Did you come all the way here just to ask me about Jake?”

“No, Mum wanted me to check on her strawberries. The birds keep getting to them before she can despite her coverings, and she’s losing her marbles.

She wants to see if the painted pebbles have worked.

” She got to her feet and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Don’t stay here too long. You’ll get sunburnt, and people are really going to think we’re dating if anyone else sees me rubbing after-sun all over your back again. ”

“I’m a catch. You should be honoured that people think you’re my girlfriend.”

“Well, I’m not.” She glared at me. “Rose. Promise me.”

I grinned up at her. “I won’t stay too long. I promise.”

“Make sure she keeps her word, George!” Isa hollered over the fence.

George touched his fingertips to his head in a salute. “Yes, milady!”