‘No.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’
‘Susie, I’m very fond of you but no, a big loud not-in-a-million-years, over-my-dead-body no. Just no. No!’
‘But, Matt—’
‘No. I’ll come back to London if I have to and tear the contract up…’ He wouldn’t; he liked Penmenna too much, but he was playing hardball on this one. What were they thinking? ‘There’s no way. This is my debut and I know I should do as I’m told, and I’m happy to. But to be packaged up as some kind of gardening sex toy, it’s not happening. I’m sorry, Susie, you’re going to have to get them to come up with something a little less exploitative.’
‘But you know this is how things work, and you’re a good-looking man. Where’s the harm?’
‘I really don’t like it, Susie. Please go back and see if they’ve got anything else.’
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell them and I’ll ask them to brainstorm more ideas but I know they’re really happy with this and it’s the direction they want. I hear what you’re saying and I will try, but in return, can you just sit with it for a couple of weeks and see if you feel any better as time goes by? Please.’
‘I can’t see me changing my mind, but if you promise to try, I’ll promise to sit with it and see. How’s that?’
‘Matt, I love you. Always said you were my favourite client.’
‘Well, I haven’t been on your books that long!’
Susie laughed and terminated the call.Green-fingered and Gorgeous. It was embarrassing. Mind you, he bet it would make Rosy laugh. Which reminded him of his project.
He had been having Rosy flashbacks all week long, although he hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of her in real life since the weekend. Spending Sunday together, despite all his resolutions to keep it neighbourly, had changed the dynamic for him more than he could have thought possible. He was now thinking that celibacy wasn’t useful for harnessing creative juices at all, but was just a frustrating state of being that meant he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on what he should be doing but could while away hours thinking of hair tendrils, big grins and cute little pyjama sets.
He had obviously been looking at this the wrong way and had decided action and declaration was a more sensible path, and with this in mind he had come up with two great plans. One was to make this Sunday as memorable as the last and the other was to prepare a beautiful gift for Valentine’s Day, a romantic gesture that would show the best side of him, and hope it trumped anything the guy she was seeing came up with. Failing that, he could tell her about this name thing; she might pity-date him if nothing else. Armed with some black weed-control fabric, some gravel and a glue gun, he was going to start on project number one as soon as those drawers were scrubbed – if he could keep the daft grin off his face long enough to concentrate.
Chapter Eleven
Sunday came around and, instead of her usual windblown walk on the beach or coffee and newspapers in her pyjamas, Rosy was sitting on the floor in the middle of her living room surrounded by millions of red cut-out hearts, several more bits of card and the desperate desire for some light relief.
She padded over on her hands and knees to the laptop to change the music but in that second of silence her ears caught a wisp of something rather bizarre. Frozen, she hovered her finger over the computer, in case she could hear it again. She was most likely imagining things, but she paused to be sure.
Pling pling pling.
Pling pling pling.
No, that was definitely the same sound. What was going on out there? Getting up off the floor and standing dead still, she listened and then followed the twanging to the front window, peeking out to see what was happening.
No! She couldn’t believe her eyes. There was Matt in the front garden, underneath her misshapen tree, with some kind of roughly fashioned velvet pearl-seeded Tudor cap on and a medieval fiddle in his hands, the strings of which he was twanging badly.
‘Alas, my lo-ove…’ Matt began to sing ‘Greensleeves’ at her, complete with mournful look in his eye.
Laughing out loud, Rosy threw open the latticed window so she could hear him better. And as he finished the first verse and started the chorus she joined in. Two little voices singing their hearts out together, one slightly more tuneful than the other.
‘What are you doing! You’re such an idiot.’
Matt stopped twanging and giggled too. ‘Well, I thought you might be in withdrawal so I decided to serenade you myself this Sunday. Did you like it?’
‘Haha, yes I did. Although I’m not sure I deserve the sentiment. Of the words, that is. The sentiment of being serenaded, I like that very much indeed!’
‘It’s the only old-fashioned song I know, I remember it from school. We’d be allowed to either butcher it on the recorder or with our voices.’
‘Nothing much changes, believe me. Well, actually it does. Do you know what, I don’t want to talk about school. You would not believe the week I’ve had.’
‘Well, let’s not then. I’ve got a proposition that may make you smile,’ Matt said.
‘Hmmm. I bet you have.’
