Page 27 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

Amy

T he next weekend, I had to cancel date night.

Mum had been trying all summer to get me to go on a rewilding expedition with her– “expedition” felt like an extreme word for a day spent gardening, but whatever– and I’d finally committed to a day just to shut her up.

Apparently it would go on all day, and since Mum was running it, she had to stay to the bitter end.

Phil insisted he needed the time to finish the costumes anyway– I knew he felt bad putting me to work– so I didn’t really have an excuse.

I was sad not to see Ethel, but I’d seen her on Thursday when I’d driven her and Phil to her physio appointment, and I’d see her for family lunch the next day.

I’d assumed we’d just be chucking bee bombs on the side of the motorway or handing out biodegradable leaflets or something, but Mum was busier than I’d ever seen her in the week leading up to it, and I started to get a sense of the scale.

By the time we pulled up outside the garden centre on Saturday morning in the flatbed, I had a much greater appreciation for how hard she worked.

Apparently, we’d be rewilding a piece of disused farmland about forty-five minutes away.

The garden centre had donated loads of supplies, and there were so many volunteers going they’d hired a coach to take everyone, which Mum took great care to tell everyone was a zero emission, fully electric coach.

More surprising, though, was who my company would be.

As I sat by the window a few rows back, waiting for the other volunteers to filter in and praying I wouldn’t get stuck next to a chatty friend of Mum’s asking about my new boyfriend, I nearly squealed when Chloe, Morgan and Fatima climbed into the coach.

But Chloe looked less than happy.

“Don’t even,” Chloe said, holding up a hand before I could properly greet her. “I don’t wanna be here any more than you do.”

“Just think of the bees, Chlo,” Morgan said as they slid into the seats opposite me, Fatima settling in beside me.

“Oh yeah,” Chloe said, visibly cheering up. “I’d forgotten about that amidst the distinct lack of caffeine.”

“Your mum promised her coffee,” Fatima explained, “and apparently we have to wait until we get to the site.”

“Oh, diddums,” I said in a baby voice, and Chloe stuck her tongue out at me. “I didn’t even know you guys were coming.” I’d seen Chloe at film night the previous evening, and she hadn’t said anything.

“She got me on the way out last night,” Chloe said through a pout. “Threatened me with telling my parents the next time I was over so they could come say hi.”

Chloe’s avoidance of her parents was the most mysterious thing about being her friend.

I’d met them loads of times over the years– they lived on the next farm over and had loaned Uncle John equipment a couple of times, as well as letting Jack borrow their forklift when he was building his house– and they’d seemed nice enough.

But Chloe insisted there was more to it, so we didn’t probe.

“And we were supposed to have girls’ day,” Morgan added, “so Chloe insisted that we come along too.”

I felt a pang of jealousy; I missed girls’ nights and brunches and outings with Niamh and Sophie and Maya.

I’d been watching them all in the group chat arranging Niamh’s hen do for a few weeks’ time, and I had to remind myself constantly that I didn’t actually want to be there, and they probably didn’t actually want me there, either.

“Don’t even,” Fatima said, putting her head back against the seat and closing her eyes. “I’m still mourning brunch. I had my order ready.”

“You should come with us next time,” Morgan said, catching my eye, and I smiled, but I knew it was probably a pity offer. She’d been the one to ask Fatima to invite me to play D&D, I was pretty sure, and to prompt Jack to invite me camping.

“Maybe,” I said as the coach lurched into motion.

Over the drive, I listened as Chloe and Fatima argued about which video game soundtrack was best, and Morgan talked about her and Jack’s plans for their big autumn road trip up to the Isle of Skye in the new Defender.

Most of the others on the coach looked to be at least twice my age, some of whom I recognised as Mum’s friends.

The women in front of me, neither of whom I’d met before, were talking about their grandkids, both of whom apparently worked in tech, and it was hilarious listening to them trying to determine whether they did the same thing when it was clear neither of them knew what any of it was.

Fatima and I talked about our recent sessions, too– I told her that if I’d known there was tarot in D&D, I might have joined sooner.

I didn’t tell her that the reading she’d given me in-character was a bit too similar for my comfort to the reading I’d done myself, the Knight of Swords in real life mirroring the One of Stars Laszlo had pulled for Eden.

Still, I was loving my character, and loving how collaborative everything was.

I could tell Phil got annoyed with me sometimes, but honestly, that was a bonus.

The coach pulled off the A road onto a small dirt track, where we parked alongside a digger, two horse boxes, and half a dozen flatbed trucks full of plants, ours included.

As we got off the coach, there was a woman standing next to a car with a giant catering carafe and a stack of paper cups. Chloe ditched us immediately to queue for her promised coffee. She came back with what looked more like a cup of tar, though she didn’t seem to mind it.

Then Mum called the chaos to order. She gathered the few dozen people she’d recruited around her and explained that the six-acre piece of land had been used for farming for decades, then for grazing for the last few years.

When the landowner had passed, his kids had donated a chunk of it to the rewilding trust Mum worked for, but it needed a lot of work.

“As many of you know,” she said, “the pigs have been doing their job for the last few months. Now, if we just left the land alone, it would turn into a high canopy woodland with negligible biodiversity and few valuable habitats.” I had no idea what that meant in a practical sense, but it was clear from the way she said it that it would be a bad thing.

It was actually quite impressive how knowledgeable and passionate she was, and I wished I’d taken it more seriously.

“So today we’re focusing on coppicing, digging another pond, and introducing local tree and shrub varieties cultivated over the last year by our wonderful partners at the local nursery.” She pointed to an older couple stood behind one of the flatbeds, and everyone clapped.

“How long have they been working towards this?” Chloe whispered to me, and I shrugged, a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t answer.

“All this work should help increase heterogeneity?—”

“Ew,” Chloe whispered, making Morgan cough-laugh into her fist?—

“—and allow this land to contribute to the local ecosystem. Now, everyone go to your stations you’ve been assigned, and if you’re not sure where you’re meant to be, come see me.”

The four of us wandered over to her, queueing behind a few other lost souls.

“Dibs on a chainsaw,” Morgan said when we got to Mum, but she shook her head without looking down at her clipboard.

“Only the people who brought the chainsaws get to use them,” she said.

“I can’t be held liable if one of you chops your fingers off.

No, Morgan, you and Fatima are on planting duty.

You can go see Desi by the truck.” She pointed at another person armed with an identical-looking clipboard, and Fatima linked her arm in Morgan’s as they walked off.

“I’ve got a special job for each of you,” Mum said, smiling, and I couldn’t help but smile too. It was fun seeing her in her element. “Chloe, how do you feel about bees?”

I watched as Chloe’s caffeine-deprived face pulled up in excitement. “You know damn well how I feel about them, Patricia!”

Mum laughed. “Well, you get to help put in the bee boxes. You can go see Jess at the horse box.”

Chloe skipped off, leaving just me. I was bummed I wouldn’t be with any of them, but I was actually getting quite excited about the day, despite the fact that it was already hot enough for sweat to prick at my brow.

“And me?” I asked, trying to lean over and see what was on Mum’s clipboard.

“You remember what your favourite job was when we were building that barn at Uncle John’s a few years ago?”

I gasped. “The digger?”

Mum nodded. “The digger.”

I clapped my hands together. I loved using the digger– it made me feel so powerful. And the best part was that the digger I could see on the other end of the lineup was a nice enclosed one, meaning it would most likely have air conditioning.

Mum rode in it with me out to the pond site, and I spent most of her orientation trying to get the cold air going.

By the time I did, she’d given me the brief for the pond: no real shape requirements, no more than thirty centimetres deep, gentle slopes.

Then she hopped out to walk back to the group, where the trucks were beginning to disperse with the saplings.

I spent the next hour happily digging, starting with the centre so I could get the depth right before sloping outward, even pulling up a true crime podcast on my phone to listen to.

I could barely hear it over the engine, even at full volume, but it added a nice escape from my thoughts, which were mostly focused on what to get Chris and Niamh as a wedding gift since I wouldn’t be at the wedding itself.

Phil had told me not to get them anything, but I liked the idea of using a gift as a subtle jab.

Maybe something that said Mr & Mrs Arden on it, despite the fact that I knew Niamh wouldn’t be changing her name?

Though my feminist principles wouldn’t quite let me go there.