Page 4 of You Had Me At Pumpkin Patch

‘I’ll put your tea in a flask. Chop chop! No time to hang about like bats.’

Rosie did her best to keep up with the older lady, as she swept down the dirt-track driveway like a whirlwind in a wax jacket and welly boots. If she’d been hoping for a bit of sympathy with her sweet tea, it didn’t look like she was going to get it.

They were almost halfway to the tumble-down house when Rosie saw him. She had to blink a few times to check she wasn’t imagining him.

His long, dark hair was tied back from his face, which looked kissed by the sun and nature’s elements, but rugged in a way that made Rosie’s breath catch.

It was like watching a wild, untamed beast as he heaved his way along the path with a stern determination, and actually grunting.

Though, in fairness, she might have done the same if she’d been carting that on her back.

It was a pumpkin. A ginormous orange one, which looked like it belonged in a prizewinning competition and would have squashed most people like a pancake.

Who even grew them that big? And why? Well, at least someone was playing the alpha role in their own story, and she was already doing her best not to cast him in one of hers.

Seeming to sense someone was staring at him, the man, who was probably a similar thirty-something age to Rosie, stopped to look up.

His eyes were like the darkest shade of wood, and Rosie instantly wished she knew more about trees so she could put a word to them.

As they met with hers, she had the overwhelming sense she wanted to write a thousand words.

About eyeballs? She shook herself off and cleared her throat.

Her wayward writer brain was playing tricks again.

Walnut would do. It was rude to ogle strangers.

The walnut-coloured eyes narrowed at her and then darted a look towards the woman in charge, who was now at the door of the house.

‘Come on, Rachel. You’re already late!’

‘No, it’s...’ Rosie didn’t have the energy to shout.

Walnutty pumpkin man grunted again and strode off, still carrying the world’s largest squash as though it was a perfectly normal pastime. Maybe it was, at Autumn Meadows Farm.

Rosie was soon inside the house, and after she’d reiterated that her name was Rosie, her host introduced herself as Agnes.

On closer inspection, Agnes still looked worryingly like the woman from the film Misery – although in truth, she seemed brusque rather than mean, and Rosie hadn’t yet spotted any sledgehammers.

After a bit of huffing, she’d even let her use the ancient downstairs toilet.

Now she’d done that, of course, Rosie knew she should ask to use a phone to call the car breakdown people and be on her way.

Though in all honesty, she had no idea where her way was.

She couldn’t face being towed back to the family home, with her half-sister, Flick, gawping and saying, ‘I told you Cassius was a nerd-geek.’ The curious inside of the farmhouse was more intriguing – and there had been mention of tea.

‘Come on, come on. Let’s not dawdle.’ Agnes ushered Rosie towards a tattered curtain that hung in a doorway, and they ducked past it, into a kitchen.

The kitchen was a jumble of mismatched furniture and yet more pumpkins – of all sorts of strange sizes, colours and knobbly shapes.

Rosie was a big fan of autumn and those cosy baskets of tiny pumpkins you saw in cute deli shops and cafés, but these were something else.

She had never seen such an array of them.

Some were pretty shades of amber, peach and fiery ginger.

Others were unashamedly warty and bordering on gruesome – yet there was something fascinating about every one.

Her fingers itched to reach out and touch them, but fondling other people’s vegetables might come across as peculiar. Or were pumpkins classed as fruit?

As she pulled her gaze away, she spotted something else that was curious, through the dimly lit room.

Various sets of eyes were appraising her.

They belonged to cats, and lots of them.

Not unlike the pumpkins, they came in all shapes and shades, yawning on rocking chairs and stretching on worktops.

Strutting across the broken floor tiles as though they were great kings and queens of who knew where.

‘My strays,’ said Agnes, who must have been busy filling a Thermos flask with the promised tea while Rosie was taking in her surroundings. She handed it to her. ‘They keep me company.’

‘Wise choice,’ said Rosie, nodding her thanks for the flask. The place might have seemed a little unusual compared to what Rosie was used to, but she’d take the company of cats and misshapen fruit or veg over the tech-nerd hell she’d just stormed out of.

There was a loud mewing as one of the cats began swinging from the doorway curtain.

‘Door fell off,’ said Agnes matter-of-factly. ‘Could probably get Zain in to fix it.’ She tipped her head in the direction of the dirt track where they’d seen the guy hulking the freak pumpkin. ‘But I couldn’t put up with all the swear words and testosterone.’

Zain. So that was his name. Rosie imagined Cassius trying to replace the missing door with a swipe-card entry system, which didn’t quite have the same appeal. Not that she’d found walnutty eyes appealing, of course. ‘Sometimes you’re better off without men altogether,’ Rosie agreed.

Ruuuuffff. Rosie jumped, glad there was a lid on her flask. For the first time, she spotted a small, scruffy brown and white terrier curled up in his basket in the corner, his eyebrows raised at her.

‘Apart from you, Onions. But you ain’t no good with a hammer.’

With Agnes’s Gloucestershire accent, the dog’s name sounded more like Un-yunz. Even though Rosie’s family spoke with an excessively well-to-do air, the local accent always made Rosie feel more at home. Rosie’s own lilt was somewhere in between.

‘He won’t hurt you. He’s as deaf as a post and he’s only got three teeth,’ said Agnes.

‘And there are the others, of course.’ She swept her arms around.

‘Fourteen stray cats, six unfortunate mongrels and...’ Before she could say the word, a chicken flapped through the kitchen.

‘A whole lot of hens. The place has become an informal sanctuary for waifs, wild things, and anything that needs a home.’

Agnes gave Rosie a quizzical look, like she was wondering which of those categories Rosie might fit into. She wasn’t far wrong.

‘Anyway, you haven’t got time for my sob story. We must get on. You carry your tea; I’ll take your bag.’

And with that, Agnes grabbed Rosie’s bag and bustled her towards the rear of the kitchen and out through a back door.

‘I’ll show you around the lake,’ said Agnes, pacing off again like she wasn’t the kind of woman who took no for an answer.

The lake? ‘I really should explain,’ shouted Rosie, hobbling to keep up. She still wasn’t sure what this was all about, and she should really ask to use a phone and be on her way.

‘Yes, yes. More time for your yapping when we get there.’

Rosie sighed and limped onwards. Well, the woman had her bag, which was stuffed with clothes and her laptop, and at least all of this was providing a welcome distraction from her Monday from hell.

In this curious place she could almost forget all of that other stuff had even happened.

In fact, she might get another glimpse of the gruff guy if she followed on.

The more she thought of it, the more she could see him as the hero in a future romantic novel.

And didn’t a writer need to embrace a bit of bookish research?