The Sunshine And Biscotti Club (8 page)

They ate their
cornetti
straight from the oven. Like lemon candyfloss the layers pulled on and on with every bite, the piping hot pastry burning their chins. But they’d barely finished their last mouthfuls when Libby said, ‘We should probably get to work.’

Eve internally sighed. She couldn’t bear another afternoon arguing with her about furnishings so, as they all heaved themselves up the path, she stopped Miles and said, ‘Do you think we could swap? I’ll do the garden.’

Miles frowned. ‘You sure? It’s really hot.’

‘Yeah, I’ll wear a hat.’ Even the midday sun was preferable to watching her beloved wallpaper disappear under a coat of white emulsion.

‘OK.’ Miles nodded and jogged up to join Libby who glanced back over her shoulder when she heard the news but didn’t object.

Eve knew it was dangerous working with Jimmy. She could feel her mind wandering. Could feel a prickle on
her skin whenever she was with him. And, because he’d hardly changed one inch, being with him made her feel younger. Made her forget about the new lines on her face and the dark circles under her eyes.

He slung his arm around her shoulder, a pair of secateurs in one hand and an electric strimmer in the other, and she felt engulfed by the strength of him. Couldn’t help comparing him to Peter who was slim built and slight—had never set foot in a gym or on a court in his life. They were exact opposites in every way. And being so close to Jimmy now, seeing how he strolled through life without a care, ignited something within her, some sense of wrong that was yet to be put right. Something completely other to the Eve she had become and right back to the core of who she was.

‘Right then, Evie. We’ve got work to do,’ he said, and they spent the next couple of hours hacking away undergrowth.

As the early afternoon sun raged above them, Eve looked at her arms and realised she was starting to burn. ‘Jimmy, I’m going to go and get some more sun cream,’ she said.

‘OK, no worries,’ he called, lopping off a frond of exotic cactus.

When she came back out, however, she couldn’t find him anywhere. The garden tools were all leaning neatly up against the outhouse alongside the wheelbarrow.

‘Jimmy?’ she called, and when there was no answer she started walking further to the bottom of the garden. She peered into the shadows of the forest, inhaling the sharp smell of pine and lemon and lake. The sliver of lake she could see was glass flat, the occasional dart of sunlight bouncing off the surface. All around her the sound of cicadas buzzed like white noise. Jimmy’s t-shirt was slung over a fence post, still warm to the touch.

She stood on tiptoe to see further and caught sight of him right in the middle of the forest, sitting legs crossed, his hands on his knees, back straight, bare chest, staring out towards the water.

The idea of him meditating made her do a little snort of laughter to herself as she climbed over the old wooden fence and walked over to join him. The trunks towered above her, the odd pine cone falling with a thump from up high. White pigeons cooed from their perches.

She pulled off her hat as the canopy of branches shaded the glare of the sun.

‘Is this mindfulness or meditation?’ she asked as she got close enough, fallen pine needles crunching underfoot.

Jimmy didn’t turn. ‘I prefer not to label it.’

Eve laughed. ‘Of course you do.’

Still he didn’t move. ‘Take a seat. I think it’d be good for you.’

‘Oh you do, do you?’ she said, with no intention of sitting down.

‘Get rid of some of the tension.’

‘I’m not tense.’

She saw his shoulders shake slightly with a laugh. ‘Eve, you’re so tense you’re like a spring.’

‘I am not.’

He gave a tiny shrug. ‘Suit yourself.’

She walked past him to look out at the water. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘I was looking at the water. Now I’m looking at you.’

She turned and realised she was completely blocking his view. ‘Oh, sorry.’

‘Seriously, come and sit down,’ he said, shifting over to make room for her on his towel.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s weird.’

‘What happened to the hippy in you?’

‘I was never a hippy.’

‘You used to try things.’

‘I still try things.’

‘Well, sit down then.’

She stood for a minute, contemplating the suggestion. The idea of meditating made her feel foolish but Jimmy didn’t seem to have any intention of doing anything but.

She folded herself down so she was sitting on the ground cross-legged. Glancing over to him for pointers
she couldn’t help but notice all his muscles, the tattoos snaking down one half of his torso.

He glanced over and caught her staring. Smiling, he said, ‘Now just sit and let your mind become quiet.’

‘Don’t I need a mantra?’ she remembered her dad with all his hippy cronies sitting on the hill at Glastonbury chanting but, in retrospect, that was probably more to do with the drugs than any form of meditation.

‘Do you want a mantra?’

‘Do you have a mantra?’ she asked.

‘I prefer not to have a mantra but I can give you one if you’d like.’

‘No, no. If you don’t need one, I don’t need one.’

Jimmy laughed through his nose.

They sat together in silence.

Eve kept glancing across at him without moving her head.

Jimmy was completely still.

She looked out at the sun. It was bigger here than at home, dangling like a Christmas bauble from the thin wisps of cloud, teetering on the verge of plunging straight into the lake.

She looked at the water; rays of sun reflected like landing strips in the blue.

She looked at the trees; the shadows danced on the rough, ridged bark.

She looked back at Jimmy.

There was so much she wanted to say. A blob of bird poo had fallen from the tree and she wanted to laugh. She wanted to make sure that underneath it all Jimmy thought this was all a bit ridiculous. She wanted to know if they were going to go for a drink afterwards or carry on with the garden. At the very least she wanted to make some funny quip about the fact that his
cornetto
hadn’t risen at all, coming out of the oven more like a pancake.

‘So what do you think about?’ she said into the silence.

‘I try not to think about anything.’

‘Nothing? I can’t think about nothing.’

‘Well, try to let your thoughts just flow past you,’ he said without moving his head. ‘Observe but don’t get involved.’

‘Like a conveyer belt?’ Eve said. ‘Like the
Generation Game
?’ she added with a little smirk.

Jimmy didn’t reply.

Peter would have laughed.

Peter would have laughed at the whole set-up. Rolled his eyes at the very notion of sitting in a pine forest meditating.

And somehow, while that made her miss him, it also hardened her resolve to sit in the pine forest and meditate, purely because he wouldn’t have done it. Because they were on a break and this was the time to do all the things she didn’t do as one half of their couple.

But it was so boring.

‘I think there’s an ant trying to get into my pants,’ she said after a minute.

‘Probably.’

‘What if it’s a poisonous red ant?’

‘Eve?’

‘Yes.’

‘Be quiet.’

She made a face but, chastened, sat in silence staring at the sun. Then she shut her eyes and watched the bright blue stain on her retina play on her closed lids. She could smell the pine. She could smell the lemons. It had been months since she’d come up with a new fragrance. She should have had a new drop for summer but she hadn’t been satisfied with anything and had instead gone back to her archive and rereleased a classic—geranium and white rose. She had assumed the inspiration would come, but for five months she’d been staring at her notebook trying to think of something that excited her.

The previous year she’d been giddy with excitement, overflowing with it, because she’d been approached by a department store for a brand partnership. In her haste to secure the deal, terrified that they might come to their senses and choose someone else, she’d misunderstood the contractual small print and handed over almost complete exclusivity which, in the end, had come close to breaking her. She had watched her name and her beloved brand suddenly skewed and morphed
to whatever the store wanted. She lost the majority of her other stockists, had to renege on smaller deals and all fledgling projects, while her life became a constant publicity campaign for the brand partnership events. All while juggling the twins. A lawyer she drafted in too late confirmed that she could do nothing but sit and wait it out.

And when the term ended at the beginning of the year she had been expecting, alongside her new freedom, a giant wave of creativity. But instead she had found herself frozen rigid. Her creative spirit flattened. Her muse squashed. Preferring to skirt the issue completely she poured more and more energy into the kids. Into the kale. Or lack thereof.

Now as she sat, her life moving slowly past her eyes on a supermarket conveyer belt in her head, she found herself thinking about fragrance. About the pine and the lemon and how it was sweetened somehow with the freshness that came from the lake. To recreate it, she maybe needed a herb. Thyme, perhaps, or bay. And something to replicate the warmth. A sliver of chilli or maybe amber oil. Honey could work but might make it all too sweet. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to imagine the smell.

Then the silence was broken as Jimmy said, ‘So you’re on a break, then?’

Her head flicked round, the perfume ideas gone; she hadn’t expected him to be the one to speak first. ‘Not so
much a break as just a bit of thinking time,’ she said, a little bemused that he’d interrupted the silence.

‘Oh, right.’

‘I was deep in conveyer belt thought just then, you know.’

Jimmy chuckled. ‘Sorry.’

Eve closed her eyes again to try and reclaim her scent.

‘So tell me about these chickens.’

Her eyes flicked open and she sighed, her fragrance gone. ‘Actually I hate the chickens.’

Jimmy laughed. Deep and loud, it echoed through the trees.

Eve lay back and laughed as well, staring up at all the millions of pine needles above her and the cracks of light peeking through.

‘They came from Noah and Maisey’s school fair,’ she said snapping a pine needle between her fingers. ‘They used to be battery chickens. We were new to the area and all the other parents were going on about bloody chickens and what good pets they make and I wanted to look like we fitted in so I said we’d have them.’ She rolled her head to look at Jimmy and saw amusement dancing in his eyes. ‘Don’t look at me like that. No one had talked to me for two weeks before that. And it worked, they let me in the gang. Probably because I was suddenly saddled with two bloody annoying chickens just like all of them. They don’t do
anything except squawk and peck and poo everywhere. They don’t even bloody lay eggs. But Noah and Maisey love them. I sometimes think about just leaving the door open so the foxes can get them but I can’t do it. They look at me with their ugly little eyes and guilt overtakes me.’

Jimmy laughed and lay back next to her. ‘So you think you shouldn’t have moved?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I thought that it would be all idyllic but I think maybe it’s just lonely. In my head I’d go on long country walks and come up with ideas but I don’t walk anywhere. I go in the car.’ She snapped another pine needle between her fingers. ‘I miss being able to walk to things. To shops. To life. I suppose it makes me feel a bit trapped.’

‘And that’s why you’re on a break?’

She paused; they were lying with their heads turned so their faces were a few inches apart, and she could see all the lines and marks on his face. The little scar across the bridge of his nose from when he’d been punched for getting off with some bloke’s girlfriend. Eve had held the frozen peas on his face.

‘Maybe that’s why,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. But yes, it could have something to do with it. It’s all much more concentrated. Like everyone knows everything about me and I’m not very good with that. It makes me too self-conscious. I want to be able to choose if I want to be part of the gang, you
know? I don’t want to have to be part of it just so I have someone to talk to in the day.’

Jimmy blew out a breath and said, ‘Eve, I live on a boat away from all civilisation. Of course I know. It sounds horrendous.’

She smiled.

She saw his eyes light up.

He sighed. ‘I wish you had come with me.’

Eve tried to play it cool. It took every muscle in her body to keep her lying where she was and not to jerk upright.

‘I knew from the moment I picked up my bike it was a mistake.’ He propped himself up on his elbows, looking up at the sky rather than at Eve. ‘It’s pretty damn lonely cycling round the world on your own,’ he said with a sad little laugh.

The sun flickered between the pine needles above them like a reel of old cine film. The pigeons cooed at each other.

Eve tucked her hair behind her ears and then toyed with another fallen needle. ‘So why didn’t you come back?’ she asked.

He sat up and looked down at her. ‘Because I’d already gone,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Never go back,’ he added, as if that was explanation enough.

Eve sat up as well. ‘That’s not a real answer,’ she said, running her fingers through her hair to brush out the needles.

‘I suppose I’d told everyone I was going so I thought I may as well get on with it.’

‘What, so it was pride?’

He laughed. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It was really good fun, but—well, I just shouldn’t have left you behind,’ he said, jumping up and swiping the pine needles from his shorts.

She didn’t correct him. She didn’t say, ‘But you didn’t leave me, I chose not to go,’ because Jimmy was reaching out a hand to help her to standing and the sun was dancing in the air between them and he had a big, wide grin on his face. She knew that saying anything more would spoil the moment. Would make him frown and go back to tearing the garden apart when actually he was pointing towards the white boathouse on the shore, saying, ‘Fancy a drink?’