Ivy Lane: Winter: (12 page)

‘I’m going to miss you,’ I murmured, pressing my lips to his cheeks.

‘More to the point, aren’t you going to miss Aidan?’ Gemma touched my arm gently and frowned.

I shrugged helplessly. ‘We’ll have two weeks together in the Galápagos Islands before I have to come back to school, so he’ll only be there for four weeks without me. And his next job after that is producing a programme about woodland habitats back here so it won’t be too bad. Anyway, I’ll be busy on the allotment in May, you know how it is.’

Besides which, we had the rest of our lives together. There was no rush.

The church was filling up and virtually everyone from Ivy Lane allotments was here. It was nearly time for the christening to start and I saw Mike trying to catch Gemma’s eye to come and sit down.

‘I met Aidan’s family yesterday,’ I whispered out of the corner of my mouth.

‘And?’ Her blue eyes widened with curiosity.

‘Perfectly lovely, of course.’ I grinned and lifted one eyebrow. ‘You’d love his sister, completely barmy, didn’t shut up for a second . . .’

‘Cheek!’ she tutted, pretending to be affronted but then her eyes softened and she hugged me, planting an indulgent kiss on Parker’s cheeks as she did so. ‘Seriously though, Tills, he’s just right for you and I’m delighted to see you looking so happy.’

The vicar appeared from a door at the side of the church and asked us all to take our seats. Gemma took baby Parker from my arms and joined Mike and Mia in the front row and I squeezed into the row behind next to Aidan, catching sight of Hayley as I did so, clamped to her boyfriend Ben in the back row. She winked and did a double thumbs-up and I grinned back.

The church’s double doors clattered as they opened and shut and Charlie dashed in, pulling Freya behind him, the pair of them breathless and windswept. I pressed my lips together in a secret smile. So much for her not being his type.

Gemma turned round in her seat and twinkled her eyes at the pair of us. ‘Ah, look at you two! Happy ending dot com.’

Aidan leaned forward and dotted Parker’s nose affectionately with his finger. ‘Who says it’s the end?’ he whispered to Gemma with a grin.

At that moment the vicar cleared his throat and gestured for us all to stand. ‘We are gathered here today to celebrate a new life . . .’

I turned to Aidan and gazed into his loving brown eyes. He laced his fingers through mine and we shared a knowing smile.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Dear readers,

So we come to the end of a year at Ivy Lane and what a year it has been for Tilly and Co.! Even though there is a happy ending for the lovely Tilly Parker, I don’t know about you, but I miss her already.

I just want to say a huge Heart-Felt THANK YOU to everyone who has stayed with Tilly and me throughout this year to read the whole series and for getting so swept up in her story and speculating what Tilly’s secret might be. I have enjoyed your online reviews so much as well as delighting in the many Twitter and Facebook conversations which have appeared as readers have finished each part. It has been absolute torture keeping schtum about the story, but I managed it. I didn’t even confide in my mum, the allotment aficionado, as to how the story would end!

I know that some people prefer to read their fiction in one long marathon session and that the serialized novel is not for everyone. However, writing
Ivy Lane
has made me understand just how different we are as readers and that there can be immense fun in the anticipation of the arrival of the next part.

I finished writing
Ivy Lane
in April and I immediately began to miss my fictional friends. Luckily, Harriet Bourton, my wonderful editor, who seems to know exactly what I should do next, planted a little seed in my mind for a new ebook series to follow on from
Ivy Lane
. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the waitress who’d only popped up in Ivy Lane Winter seemed to have a lot more to say that I’d given her chance to so far.

After a few days of walking around with a glazed expression, muttering to myself, looking straight through my poor family, Freya Moorcroft had her own story to tell. And soon you can read all about her and some other familiar characters in a brand new ebook series called
Appleby Farm
.

Thank you all so much for your lovely messages, emails and Tweets. Please keep them coming, they really do mean the world to me. Writing fiction is ninety-nine percent sitting alone with my computer, and receiving encouragement from my readers really does help me to keep on writing.

Warmest wishes,

Cathy Bramley

If you’ve been charmed by the unusual characters that Tilly befriended on the allotments and have beamed over Aidan and Tilly finding happiness via the vegetable patch, we’d love to hear from you.

Send a tweet to
@TransworldBooks
using #IvyLaneLove and we will mention everyone we hear from in a special ‘Thank You’ page in the
Ivy Lane
paperback, where
Spring
,
Summer
,
Autumn
and
Winter
will be published all together for the first time in February 2015.

The closing date is 31
^st
December 2014, so tweet us before Christmas to be included!

@TransworldBooks
#IvyLaneLove

Coming February 2015, a charming and funny new four-part series from Cathy Bramley...

Freya Moorcroft has wild red hair, mischievous green eyes, a warm smile and a heart of gold. She’s been happy working at the café round the corner from Ivy Lane allotments and her romance with her new boyfriend is going well, she thinks, but a part of her still misses the beautiful rolling hills of her Cumbrian childhood home: Appleby Farm.

Then a phone call out of the blue and a desperate plea for help change everything...

The farm is in financial trouble, and it’s taking its toll on the aunt and uncle who raised Freya. Heading home to lend a hand, Freya quickly learns that things are worse than she first thought. As she summons up all her creativity and determination to turn things around, Freya is surprised as her own dreams for the future begin to take shape.

Love
makes the world go round, according to Freya. Not money. But will saving Appleby Farm and following her heart come at a price?

Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at the opening chapters of the first part!

Chapter 1

The door opened with a ding of the bell, letting in a welcome blast of fresh air as a group of teenaged girls left the café.

‘Adios amigos!’ I called. ‘Ciao bellas!’

It was the Thursday before the Easter weekend, children were off school and the spring sunshine had brought us a steady stream of customers all day long. Now, at four o’clock, we were having a quiet spell, which was just as well because the service side of the counter, where I stood, looked like a scene out of
Titanic
.

I had spent the last hour training Amy, our new recruit, in the art of making espressos, cappuccinos and lattes. The work area was awash with her efforts; we were marooned in a sea of brown liquid, puddles of spilt milk and numerous abandoned mugs, spoons and jugs. The pair of us were looking a bit worse for the experience too: my red hair had turned to frizz after repeated exposure to random gusts of steam and Amy had a streak of coffee across her forehead like a third eyebrow.

On the plus side, despite the steamy atmosphere, there was a heavenly aroma of fresh coffee and I’d had enormous satisfaction from seeing her get the hang of the equipment – eventually. I watched over her shoulder, a bit close actually seeing as her short ponytail was tickling my nose, as she poured steamed milk from a stainless steel jug into a tall glass.

‘Yay! Perfect. That’s it, nice and slow so you don’t spoil the foamy bit on top,’ I cheered from behind.
Phew!
I thought she was never going to get there.

Amy placed the jug down with a shaky hand and exhaled. We both examined her first latte.

‘What do you think?’ She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and wrinkled her smeared brow.

‘I think you’ve cracked it,’ I grinned.

Which was just as well because I was hanging up my apron any second, leaving early, and then she would be on her own behind the counter. I flung an arm round her shoulders and gave the sixteen-year-old a squeeze. ‘But now you’ve got to pass the boss’s taste test.’

I nodded towards the far corner of the café. Shirley, head down over a pile of invoices, sat at a small table with one foot raised on the chair beside her. Her ankle was completely better now; it was simply a habit she’d fallen into after being told to keep it raised when she broke it last autumn.

That foot was the reason I was here. Shirley’s daughter, Anna, is a friend of mine and when Shirley had her accident, Anna begged me to come and help out in the café for a few months until her mum was back on her feet. At the time I was working in promotions, handing out free samples and money-off coupons in supermarkets around Manchester – a job which had lost its sparkle early on. So I moved to Kingsfield, a small town on the outskirts of Derbyshire, and into Anna’s spare room – and I’d been working at the café ever since.

I watched Amy creep towards Shirley, the tall glass rattling in its saucer as she placed one foot cautiously in front of the other. I held my breath; it was like witnessing a tight-rope walker crossing the Niagara Falls.

‘Delicious. Well done, both of you,’ Shirley declared, lifting her latte in approval. ‘Amy, you’re now officially allowed to use the coffee machine and, FYI, I like three sugars in mine.’

‘Go Amy, go Amy,’ I hollered, waving my fist in the air as my student smiled bashfully, dipped her head and twisted one foot behind her other leg, looking far less than sixteen all of a sudden.

I also dropped into a curtsey, holding imaginary skirts out with my fingertips. ‘And my work here is done.’

Shirley chuckled, shook her head and went back to her paperwork.

Is it?

As soon as the words were out of my mouth a fluttering sensation worked its way from my head to my heart.
Was
my work here actually done? Was it time to move on? Again. Eek! I stared at the top of Shirley’s bowed head until it dawned on me that Amy was looking at me rather oddly.

I gave myself a shake, pointed Amy in the direction of the floor mop and, leaving her to soak up the spillages, went to clear the table vacated by the teenagers.

Yikes. My face felt scarlet now after that unbidden thought, which, seeing as I almost qualified for official albino status in the pale skin department, was pretty hard to hide.

Freya Moorcroft, you are up to your old tricks. Can’t you stick at a job for more than five minutes? And anyway, what about you-know-who? Aren’t you in L.O.V.E.?

I puffed out my cheeks and began to stack plates loudly to crowd out my snarky inner-thoughts.

Shirley’s café was booming. And without being big-headed about it, the boom had something to do with me. When I arrived six months ago the coffee had been instant, the menu consisted almost entirely of jacket potatoes and barely any customers bothered coming to the café after two o’clock.

Now we had a fancy chrome coffee machine hissing like a contemptuous goose on the counter, a Panini grill permanently making posh toasties and we did a roaring business in afternoon tea. The free WiFi, which I’d suggested we install, had also proved a hit, especially with teenagers. The café was heaving with youthful hormones for an hour after school, earning us the reputation of being the place to hang out and doubling our sales of hot chocolate and smoothies. A win-win as far as I was concerned.

It had been a whirlwind few months, which was exactly how I liked my life to be. The whirlier the better, in fact. Shirley had pretty much let me have free rein once I’d convinced her to pimp the place up a bit and I’d had a ball. And, outside of work, my life was good too. I loved living with Anna, I’d made loads of new friends and most importantly, I’d met Charlie, my boyfriend of four months.

Charlie.

You know those ads for yogurt where the actors go all dreamy when the spoon goes into their mouth? Well, that’s what happens to me just thinking about him. Tall, fit, amazing blue eyes, the cheekiest smile in the universe and to top it all, he was a fireman. I mean, hello?

So yep, my life in Kingsfield was pretty good.

But now – I paused from swiping cake crumbs into my hand and glanced out of the window at the row of shops, the pub on the corner, the parked cars, the total lack of greenery... the same view I’d been looking at since November. I could do the job standing on my head. Blindfolded. One hand tied behind my back.

Unlike Amy, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, who was making hard work of clearing up the kitchen.

I took the dirty crockery over to counter and handed it to her. ‘So how has your first day been?’ I asked. ‘Can you see yourself as a waitress? Or have I scared you off with caffeine-options overload?’

‘It’s OK,’ she replied, nodding earnestly. ‘As a part time job. Till I go to uni.’

‘Great.’ I suppressed a smile but I must have raised my eyebrows higher than I’d intended because Amy blushed. Nothing like being told by a teenager that your career choice was merely their stepping stone to greater things.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, plunging her arms into the sink. ‘That came out wrong. Not that there’s anything wrong... Oh god.’ She bent low over the sink so I couldn’t see her face.

‘Hey, no worries,’ I laughed. ‘Good on you for knowing what you want to do with your life. I got the grades at A-level to go to uni, but had no idea what to study.’ I shrugged. ‘So I opted for a gap year instead.’

Ten gap years as it turned out...

Auntie Sue referred to my decision to go travelling after sixth form as studying at the university of life. My mother called it a waste of a private education.