Page 102 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

Especially as Ellie didn’t even want to do that any more.

Fine by him.

But, as he lay in the bunk, the asteroid crushing his chest turned into a supernova, sucking all his anger and frustration into a hollow aching void in the pit of his stomach.

*

‘Ellie, is everything OK?’

Dee stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding one of her teapots.

Ellie toed off her wellington boots in the hallway. What was her mother doing in the kitchen? Why hadn’t she gone to bed? ‘Yes, I’m fine, I just…’ What? The raft of lame explanations spun through her head.

She just wanted to get back to her room. And wallow in her misery. She felt like she was fourteen years old again. Fragile and pathetic. And she really wasn’t.

She’d made a mistake. A stupid, romantic mistake. That was all. Art wasn’t her friend, her soul mate. They’d just been having insanely great sex for two solid weeks. Plus, she’d been working herself to the bone for three months, dealing with a divorce, and then Dan had arrived out of the blue and tipped her over into insanity.

It all made perfect sense. Or it would in the morning, once she’d taken a sleeping pill, or possibly four, and got a decent night’s sleep for a change.

‘I didn’t expect you back so soon,’ her mother said, her voice gentle.

‘What?’ Ellie said, the idiotic tears that she refused to shed clogging her throat.

‘You don’t usually get back from Art’s caravan before 2 a.m.’

She just stared at her mother, the wellington boot she’d taken off fell over and hit the hall floor with a loud thump. ‘I…’ What did she say? Her mother knew. About her and Art. And had obviously known for quite a while.

She wasn’t sure what was worse – that she’d lied about it, that she’d been found out, or that it didn’t matter any more. Because she would never be making that 2 a.m. dash back through the woods again. Everything had turned upside down and inside out in the space of one evening. She wanted that sense of excitement and exhilaration back – to cover up the huge gaping hole in her chest, that choking sense of confusion, which felt as if it was never going to go away again.

Her mother lifted the teapot. ‘Why don’t you come into the kitchen and have a cup of chamomile tea.’

She didn’t want to talk to her mother about Art. Because it would just make her feel like more of a failure. And a nincompoop. For investing too much in a summer sex fling.

However close she and Dee had become in the last three months, however much of their relationship they’d managed to repair, talking to her mum about her sex life felt like a step too far.

Was that another reason why she’d been so determined to keep her relationship with Art a secret? Because she did not want to invite this sort of conversation? But, as her mother stood waiting for her response, Ellie stalled, too tired and dispirited to come up with another lame excuse. So instead of escaping upstairs, she nodded and trailed after her mum to sit down at the kitchen table.

‘Why don’t you have a slice of cake?’ Dee placed the remnants of the cake they’d eaten that afternoon when Dan had arrived onto the table and lifted the perspex cover.

Ellie shook her head, utterly unable to speak.

Dee sliced off a chunk of the sticky toffee and plopped it on the plate. Then placed it in front of her. ‘There’s nothing much a sugar rush won’t cure,’ she said.

Ellie nodded mutely, unconvinced, as she fidgeted with a few of the crumbs that had fallen onto the table.

She could hear her mother moving around the kitchen, filling the kettle, placing it on the Aga hob, going to the pantry to get the tin of dried chamomile flowers that grew wild in the hedgerows, the gush of water as she filled the kettle, the whistle of steam as the kettle boiled. But the sounds felt muffled by the pain in her sinuses, and the pounding in her ears.

‘I take it Art d

ecided to stay in the caravan tonight?’ her mother said.

Ellie’s gaze fixed on the caramelised almonds and fruit peel on the top of Dee’s cake. She blinked, trying to dispel the mist forming in front of her eyes.

Then Dee’s arms were around her, holding her head to the soft cotton of her lavender-scented T-shirt.

‘Just cry, Ellie, don’t hold it in.’

They came slowly at first, burning down her cheeks, and then it felt like a tsunami of choking sobs – a wild and turbulent storm wrenched from deep down inside her.