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Chapter 17

‘So I’m meant to dig over this entire patch of land with a hand trowel?’ Alyssa asked Teijo, after ten minutes of trying and failing. She didn’t know much about allotments, but following a few hot gardeners on Instagram had told her there had to be better kit. ‘Haven’t we got a proper fork?’

Teijo scratched his head and consulted his notes. He did that a lot.

‘Here, borrow this.’ Devan arrived back at their patch after having skived for half of the morning, under the guise of ‘getting inspiration from other plots’. Alyssa had blatantly seen him lolling about under the apple trees, chatting and drinking tea.

He was carrying an armful of gardening tools and looking particularly pleased with himself.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She was far from fine, on her hands and knees in a pair of borrowed overalls, pretending she knew about horticulture. She wasn’t even sure what the word meant. But she wasn’t about to accept help from Devan cocky Shaw.

‘As someone who’s big on “tending to gardens, and things” you’ll know we need to dig this over and prepare the beds for sowing seeds in a month or two?’ Devan swept his arm across the whole patch of land, which was the length of a good-sized garden. ‘And that you’ll need more than a tiny hand tool?’

‘Yes, of course I know that.’ He was the only tiny tool around here. She stood and brushed herself down. At least the overalls Jess had lent her were a nice shade of green and a reasonably flattering fit. She could not have faced this in ankle swingers. ‘I’m just completing some … ground testing. It’s intricate work. Not everybody knows about it.’ She wiped an arm across her forehead in a way that looked like she’d been toiling hard. She was blagging, of course. But it was better than being a tea-swigging shirker.

‘And what do your ground tests conclude?’ Devan asked, sagely.

‘That it’s about time you pulled your weight.’ She snatched the only garden fork from him and swapped it for her hand trowel. There. That wasn’t accepting help. It was simple fair trading.

When Alyssa got into the swing of digging over, she was surprised at how time flew. She’d only meant to stick around to pose for photos and pretend she’d given gardening a go. In fact, she’d only checked her phone a few times, having given up when her hands got muddy. Devan had borrowed another fork and was digging from the other end of the plot. Although at some point, they’d surely have to meet in the middle – and she wasn’t sure how she’d navigate that part.

‘You’ll need to cover that with a thick layer of compost,’ said Horace from the plot next door. ‘Have you got some?’

Alyssa looked to Teijo, who was sitting on a deckchair, scribbling notes. He checked another list. ‘We have some.’

‘We’ve got spare, if you run out,’ her mother called over. She was the ultimate nosy neighbour. Alyssa wasn’t even sure what she’d been doing all morning, other than smooching Alyssa’s father, posing for Teijo’s social media promo photos and eating cake.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Alyssa replied firmly. She knew she would have to woman up and face this predicament with her parents at some point, but she had quite enough on right then.

‘Do you have wheelbarrows?’

Teijo jumped up from his lounging spot. ‘Erm, I did order one. Though I think there’s something wrong with the wheel.’

Devan offered to take a look, but Alyssa scowled him down.

She marched to the shed and began shovelling compost into the wheelbarrow, unsure what she was doing but determined to style it out. The effort was making her out of breath, but somehow, the mud-slinging was satisfying.

From the corner of her eye, she could spy Devan leaning on his fork, watching her. He was probably waiting for her to cock something up so he could rush in and save the day. Well, he could bugger off. When the wheelbarrow looked full, she moved to lift it, bending sensibly at the knees like any good gardener would probably do, and took a deep breath. She had to get this right, because she could not go looking weedy-armed in front of Devan and his monster pecs.

‘Heave,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Huh … ohhhh!’

Who knew she had such a strong right arm? The barrow tipped to one side, spilling half of her load and sending her cheeks a hot shade of mortified.

‘Yes, well that was what I meant to do,’ she said through a fixed smile, grabbing at the mess with her thankfully gloved hands and scooping it back into the barrow. ‘Aeration. You know. Getting air into the soil.’ That was a thing, wasn’t it?

Teijo hadn’t been joking about the dodgy wheel. When she got herself going again, it squealed and wobbled, coming to another juddering halt and spilling yet more compost.

‘She’s just aerating,’ she heard Devan shout to her mother, using actual air quotes as he said it.

Earthworm.

‘Here, duck. I’ve got a spare wheelbarrow,’ said Horace.

He’d kindly offered them tea earlier and seemed like exactly the sort of man you’d want to adopt as a granddad. Not that she was one for getting too attached to people.

‘No, it’s fine, I …’

‘It’s OK to accept a bit of help,’ Horace said, discreetly. ‘I can tell you’re one of those independent sorts, like Beyoncé sings about. But life’s hard enough. When someone offers you a hand, grab on to it and don’t sink.’