Chapter 16
MAY
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
— HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The days were much longer now, every hour of them filled with a never-ending round of things to do.
All the seedlings Willow had nursed over the winter months needed to be coaxed from their trays and into the gently warming soil of the kitchen garden – peas, cabbages, carrots, leeks: the list seemed endless.
It was backbreaking work, but Gemma was glad of it.
She’d hardly seen Leo since their argument, and the days had rolled onward without him.
Today, however, Willow had declared that she needed a break from the endless planting, and had suggested they spend the day in Gemma’s garden instead.
No one had known what to say when it had become clear that she and Leo were no longer talking – or at least the forced politeness-on-the-surface conversation which passed for it.
He was still sleeping in the old farmhouse, taking all his meals with them and staying with them throughout the evening, and although Gemma tried to keep out of his way, that wasn’t particularly easy in a house which wasn’t overly big in the first place.
She was also very conscious that Leo had been around long before she came on the scene.
Willow and Rowan never took sides, but the last thing Gemma wanted was to make their friendship with Leo feel awkward in any way. She’d offer to leave but…
Gemma apologised, not for the first time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she watched Willow unearth another clump of nettles. ‘This whole thing with Leo is making things really difficult for you.’
‘Is it?’ countered Willow. ‘I’d say it was making things really difficult for you, and I would imagine his presence here was the last thing you expected.’
Gemma smiled. ‘It was, but we’re letting our past grievances with each other get the better of us, and that’s no way to repay you for all your kindness.
We’re both adults; we ought to be able to behave with a little more maturity.
’ She screwed up her face. ‘It’s just that he…
argh…’ She groaned. ‘Correction, we… really know how to push each other’s buttons. ’
Willow regarded her for a moment, head tipped to one side.
‘So where did you guys meet anyway?’
Gemma lifted her head, shielding her eyes from the low sun.
‘In a little tearoom, on a day just like today,’ she said.
‘We’d had weeks of rain, and then out of the blue there was this stunning spring day.
’ Gemma could still remember how the hills had been alive with colour, the sky a perfect contrast to their vivid hues.
‘I’d gone walking with two friends of mine and just as we reached the last half mile we got caught in a sudden deluge – one of those romantic-sounding April showers which come from nowhere and are not in the least romantic or enjoyable when they arrive.
Except that, on that day, when we tumbled into the tearoom which marked the end of our walk, a fire had been lit and it was heaven inside.
We pulled up some chairs beside it and I fell over trying to take my boots off, crashing into the chair of a guy sitting behind me. ’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘Ah…’ said Willow. ‘Don’t tell me, it was love at first sight.’
Gemma was caught by the warmth of her memory, the feeling of that day, how alive she had felt, how vibrant.
She remembered Leo’s laugh and the way she’d known within minutes that— She quashed the thought.
‘Not exactly. But I went into the same tearoom every weekend for a month to make sure I “bumped” into him again, and I did, eventually. The rest, as they say, is history.’
Willow shook the earth from a clump of nettles she had dug up. ‘Okay, good start, but what happened next?’
‘We went walking mostly. He lived nearly an hour and a half away from me, which made meeting up of an evening difficult, so we saw each other at weekends, walking miles, and talking like we were the last two people left on earth.’ She paused, feeling her way back to her younger self.
‘It’s stupid because I was only twenty, so what did I know?
But I honestly thought there was no one else alive on the planet like him. ’
Willow smiled, a wistful look on her face. ‘Sounds familiar,’ she said. ‘I thought exactly the same about Rowan.’
‘Was he your first love, too?’
‘No… the first is too awful to contemplate now. I didn’t meet Rowan until quite late in my life, and although there weren’t many relationships before him, there was one in particular which…
well, let’s just say he came close to being the love of my life.
But it ended, and not long after, I met Rowan.
I kept telling myself I was on the rebound, and not to take our relationship so seriously, but he made the other guy look like he would have been the biggest mistake of my life, and all I felt was relief – that I had found Rowan and wouldn’t have to keep looking. ’
‘So how long have you been together?’
‘Eleven years, all told. So not long at all.’
‘But you seem so solid, so in tune with one another. You do this thing where you—’
‘Finish each other’s sentences?’ She laughed, raising an eyebrow.
‘But you do… and you’re both so committed to what you’re doing here.
Even when we first met, Leo had this dream for his eco houses.
He was going to change the world and I was going to help him do it, but I’m not sure I was ever that committed to it, not really.
I couldn’t have been. Look what happened. ’
‘But you must have really believed in what he was trying to do at some point, if that was the spark which brought you together?’
Gemma paused, looking down at the freshly turned earth, yet seeing only the past. ‘The difference was that when times got tough, I couldn’t weather it. I started looking for ways out of it.’
Gemma dropped her head. She knew exactly why she’d done what she had.
She’d been terrified. Terrified of a life which might easily backfire.
Always afraid of what might be around the corner – some disaster which might befall them that they couldn’t pay for – a broken boiler, an expensive car repair.
She needed a safety net beneath her, a little pot of money which would smooth over the bumps in the road, and so she had turned away from the dreams she and Leo had once shared and instead set about making her life the way she wanted it.
‘But my life with Rowan hasn’t been all plain sailing,’ said Willow.
‘It isn’t now. We’re only ever an inch away from going under, and that’s hard.
What happened with the break-in might not have mattered all that much to some people, but for us that was years of work – building up a store of equipment so that what we’re doing now would even be possible.
Losing it hurts like hell, but experience has taught us that we’ll always have enough, even if we have to redefine what our definition of enough is.
Fortunately, we’re both quite good at that. ’
Gemma nodded. She could see it in the way they spoke to one another, the way Rowan would wrap his arms around Willow without saying a word because he was there, and that was all she needed.
‘So how did you and Rowan first meet Leo?’ she asked.
‘At a sustainable living exhibition. It was one of these huge events, full of hundreds of stands and equally full of people who could all talk the talk, but very few we suspected who had ever walked the walk.’ She held up her fingers, adding quotes around her last words.
‘It was ridiculous, really. Their stands were shiny and new, their brochures glossy, but somehow you knew that what was on show was all for show and fundamentally different from the way in which the company normally operated. Just like the staff manning the stand, who were all guzzling water from disposable plastic bottles behind the counter. When we met Leo, he was perched on a stool he’d evidently brought from home and was eating a cheese and pickle sandwich out of tinfoil.
It was the first truly honest conversation we’d had all day, and I virtually had to prise Rowan away from him.
Plus, he was the only one offering anything different.
He wasn’t interested in one size fits all but clearly wanted to work with people to help fulfil their dreams, not his.
We weren’t quite ready when we first met him, but we stayed in touch and, as soon as we signed on this place, we invited him to stay. ’
‘And the rest, as they say, is history,’ said Gemma, repeating her earlier words.
‘It sounds like he came along at just the right time,’ she added, knowing that that too was how she had felt about Leo.
She waited until Willow had finished digging the area she was working on, the edge of the beautiful stone path now clear.
‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ she said.
Willow looked up, not a trace of guile on her face. ‘And what would that be?’
‘Walking me down memory lane where the sun always shines and the view is always rose-tinted.’
‘It doesn’t hurt from time to time,’ Willow replied.
‘I look back at my younger self and wince more often than not. But I also know that that person, who made a lot of mistakes and often cared far too deeply about things which didn’t really matter, was the person I grew up from, and I still have a lot to thank her for, even if she was an idiot.
Every thing has its time, and maybe you and Leo have missed yours, but unfinished business is unfinished business. ’
Gemma gave her a quizzical look. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Only that whenever Leo and I have talked, I’ve always got the sense that there’s something big he still carries around with him. A sadness… or maybe it’s even deeper than that. I don’t know if that’s you, or something else, but whatever it is, it’s something he’s been running from for years.’