Chapter Eighteen – Oliver
OLIVER
The Price of Attraction
I was no genius, but I was going to assume there’d be nothing accidental about Rose’s gardening fork going straight through my foot.
Sure, she’d play it off as if it were, but I already knew she’d been plotting some serious bodily harm where I was concerned, so I wasn’t bloody buying it.
“It’s just gardening, princess. I think I can manage in my sandals,” I replied after a moment, noting the way irritation flashed across her face at my use of the nickname
Excellent.
“And you can call me a city person all you like, but I was born here, you know,” I reminded her.
“Born but not raised.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“It does to me.”
I blinked at her.
My God, keeping up with this woman was a full-time job.
So why the fuck couldn’t I bring myself to quit?
“Would you like to get your grievances out of the way before we get started? I’m sure you’ll feel much better if you just unload your thoughts right now, and it’ll no doubt reduce the threat towards my feet.” I paused. “From both the garden fork and the chicken shit.”
Rose cleared her throat, then pushed her wild waves away from her face. “You lot can’t drive. Is it because you’re always stuck in traffic and moving at thirteen miles an hour? Is that why you see an open road and start panicking? Do you even know what an accelerator is? How about a speed limit?”
“You were stuck behind a tourist today, weren’t you?” Isadora asked, amusement flashing across her face.
“Three of!” Rose snapped, jerking around.
“On the same road! It wasn’t even a single-lane road, nor were they stuck behind a tractor or held up by sheep.
Nope. They were just driving thirty-five miles an hour in a fucking sixty.
Why do I get a speeding ticket if I drive six miles over the limit, but these bastards can drive twenty-five under and that’s absolutely fine?
If there are speeding tickets, there should be slow tickets, too.
They’re way more dangerous. I’ve seen tractors drive faster. ”
I’d made a terrible mistake asking her to air her grievances.
“I couldn’t even overtake them because they were all bunched up like those little wooden train sets kids have—you know, the ones with the magnets?
The only thing worse is bloody cyclists meandering about in the middle of the road.
Why can’t they just move over to the side?
They’re riding a bike, not driving a tank.
And why do they always tut when I overtake?
Can’t they calm down? It’s Harry from the corner shop, not Bradley bloody Wiggins! ”
A terrible, terrible mistake.
“And don’t even get me started on—”
“All right, we won’t,” I said, interrupting her before she continued her tirade. “That sounds like plenty of grievances aired if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you,” she shot back.
“I don’t care,” I replied. “You’re the one who demanded my time, yet it’s just being wasted. I have a hundred and one things to do, so if you’re just going to whine, I’m going to leave.”
She glared at me, then grabbed Waffles the rooster, tucked him against her upper body, and leant in towards him. “You see that man there, Waffles?”
He clucked.
“He’s the one I’ve been telling you about.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh? You’ve been talking about me? I didn’t know you thought about me that much, princess.”
She twitched as if my words had startled her and quickly sputtered out, “I don’t!”
Isadora leant forwards, grinning. “Oh, this is fun. It’s rare to see the Ice Queen this flustered.”
“I am not flustered!” Rose’s voice squeaked, belying her real emotions, and Waffles escaped her grasp with a weird clucking noise.
“You look flustered to me, bestie.”
“Don’t you have a job to go to?”
I looked on with amusement as Isadora shook her head. “Nope. It’s my day off.”
“Don’t you have your own plot to tend to? Or your mum’s strawberries to check on?” Rose ground out—through gritted teeth, if the clenching of her jaw was anything to go by.
“While you’re losing an argument to this guy?” She cocked her thumb at me, her grin sliding into a smirk. “Absolutely not. This is way more fun.”
Rose carefully removed the chick from her head and set it on the ground, then got up and stalked into her shed where she retrieved a fork from the wall and brandished the prongs in the direction of Isadora. “Say that again.”
“Perhaps we should put the fork down, Rose,” I said dryly. “Like you said, I’m liable to call the police, and I’m sure Shaun wouldn’t mind letting you make use of your cell for a little while.”
She dropped with the fork with a resounding, “Ugh!” before hanging it back up. “When did you two get so buddy-buddy? We’ve been friends our entire lives. I can’t believe he’d side with you over me.”
“I can,” Isadora said brightly.
“Actually, you’re right, I can,” Rose continued. “Shaun has been looking for excuses to get rid of me for years.”
“Well, dead women tell no tales.” Isadora’s voice was far too chirpy for the sentence she’d just said. “Nor do they get put in time-out at the age of twenty-nine.”
I cleared my throat and tapped my watch. “Whenever you’re ready, Rose.”
She sighed heavily and closed the shed door behind her. “All right, all right. But you’re changing your shoes. I don’t want to be responsible for you breaking your toes.”
“I don’t have any other shoes.”
“George!” She leant over a fence. “I know you’re in there! Stop hiding from Susan! It’s not a big deal that you saw up her skirt this morning!”
“Goddamn it, Rose!” An elderly man I recognised as the wearer of a leafy loin cloth during the protest stomped out of the shed in the adjoining plot and huffed in her direction. “Stop telling everyone my private business!”
“Just admit you fancy her and put me out of my misery,” she retorted. “I need a favour.”
“After you were just shouting about how I saw Susan’s bloomers? Absolutely not.”
“Aw, come on. I’ll put in a good word for you.” She reached over and nudged him with her elbow, smiling sweetly.
“I don’t need you to put in a good word for me. I’m not interested,” he grumbled. After a moment, he followed it up with, “What are you thinking?”
Isadora coughed into her hand, almost certainly masking a laugh.
Rose motioned for George to come closer, and she leant towards him to whisper in his ear.
He nodded along with whatever it was she was saying to him, and a minute later, he stood upright, cleared his throat, and shuffled off into his shed.
He quickly returned with a pair of boots and held them up in my direction.
“Does a size ten work for you?”
I blinked between them before nodding and going over to take them from him. “They do. Thank you.”
“There’re socks stuffed inside them. Clean ones.” He looked down at my feet and sniffed. “Stupid shoes for an allotment.”
“George,” Rose deadpanned. “You’re wearing sandals, too.”
“I never said I wasn’t stupid.” With that, he turned his back to us and shuffled back into his shed.
Rose sighed and shook her head. “Put those on and follow me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
“And you,” she said, pointing to Isadora. “Go and find something else to do.”
Isadora whipped a white cardboard envelope out from the bag next to her. “I should have known better than to think you’d help me worm the cat.”
“You’re a vet. You’ll manage just fine.” Rose waved her off. “Just don’t forget his Dreamies.”
“Oh, yes,” Isadora drawled. “The cat who decapitates rabbits and eats their innards simply cannot have his quarterly medicine without his Dreamies. God forbid.”
Rose shot her a look, but she responded with a simple grin, then glanced at me.
“Good luck,” she said to me. “She’s in a fiery mood today.”
“As opposed to her usual, calm disposition?” I replied, putting my shoes in Rose’s shed.
“Good point.”
Rose opened the gate with a pointed cough. “If you’re done shit-talking me, can we get on with it?”
There was something strangely captivating about watching Rose in her element. It was obvious that this place meant a great deal to her—it was more than her just being the chairman, but a real, true love that came from somewhere I couldn’t quite understand.
It wasn’t as though I’d never understood where she was coming from in her opposition against my decision, but now the vehemence of it all make a little more sense.
It was as if this place were a part of her, and by closing it down and selling it off, I was tearing away a piece of what made her, her .
But that didn’t change my position, no matter how a flicker of guilt kept on creeping into my consciousness.
The Hanbury estate had been haemorrhaging money during the last five years of my grandfather’s life, and he’d left me nothing short of a complete disaster to fix.
The separation of company and estate meant I couldn’t just fix it, even if I had the funds available to me.
There was also only so much of my own money I could funnel into the estate for the necessary maintenance, but this place…
The money from the developers was too good to be true. It would not only plug a hole in the estate’s finances, but fix several other leaks, too.
I sighed as I gazed around at the plots.
It was quieter now that evening was falling.
Those with young children had come and gone after school hours, and with temperatures still dropping as the sun set, many older people had also left.
There were but a few stragglers left tending to a few things, and none of them were paying us any mind.
Rose opened the roof of the coop and counted the chickens inside, then bent over on her tiptoes until she was almost toppling over into it. “Tortilla, stop stealing the bread rolls. Give them back to Pancake.”
That was a sentence I never thought I’d hear.
“Thank you.” With a huff, she closed the roof down, made sure the box attached to the side was securely locked, and bent down to do something to the weird stake behind her.
“What’s that?”