Page 66 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
Willow came to stand beside her. ‘Gooseberries, lemons, sugar and elderflower cordial. Summer in a saucepan. What do you reckon?’
‘You got that right,’ she agreed. ‘Is that how your ice cream starts? Only much as I love that, I’d be quite happy spooning this lot up straight from the pan.’
‘You wouldn’t really. It smells divine, but it’s very, very sweet, and very, very sticky.’
Freya looked around her once more. ‘I don’t think I realised quite how quickly you were going to get this all up and running. What did you do, wave a magic wand?’
‘Naked incantations by the light of the moon…hardly…’ Willow laughed. ‘No, I waved a chocolate cake, a tub of ice cream, three punnets of strawberries and some runner beans under one of our friend’s noses, and being the wondrous carpenter that he is, he put this together in an afternoon.’
‘Ah, sorry,’ said Freya, acknowledging the slight admonishment. ‘Been reading too much Harry Potter.’
‘Besides,’ continued Willow, with a wink. ‘That is most definitely not why you perform naked incantations by moonlight…’ Her smile was warm as she took Freya’s arm. ‘And look, come and see these.’
She led the way over to the work surface where a pile of elderflowers was waiting. Beside them a muslin cloth was suspended over a large bowl, the syrupy mixture it contained slowly dripping through.
‘This is my cordial. You have to steep the flower heads for twenty-four hours in the syrup before straining it, so I made this lot last night. I pretty much have to keep a batch going the whole time.’
Now that she was closer, Freya could smell the sweetness of the creamy flowers. There was nothing she liked more on a summer’s day than to wander through her orchard, the sunlight glancing off the hedgerows filled with these frothy heads. She picked up a bunch and inspected it closely before bringing it to her nose. The last time she’d done this, she’d inhaled a small bug straight up her nose.
‘So what do you think?’ asked Willow. ‘Am I mad, or do you think there’s a possibility that this might work?’
Freya’s head had done nothing but spin with ideas since she had left her friend at the weekend. With her and Sam’s own plans for Appleyard now beginning to look like reality, this was quite possibly the most amazing opportunity for them both, and for their friend Merry too if Freya wasn’t mistaken. Merry and Tom had only opened their shop a few weeks ago, and were now on the lookout for small local businesses whose produce they could showcase. The opportunity for them all to work together was serendipity indeed, and would give them all the helping hand they needed to fulfil their individual dreams about it all, of that she had no doubt.
‘I think there’s every possibility it will be bloody brilliant, Willow. It’s a shame that Merry couldn’t come today, but when I talked to her at the beginning of the week, she seemed really keen. Have you made the list of things you’re hoping to produce?’
‘Yes, it’s on the table. Come and sit down and I’ll show you.’ She handed Freya a piece of paper. ‘I still can’t believe I didn’t know that Merry had sold the hotel in Worcester and bought a shop up here; that has to be the biggest coincidence.’
‘I know. It’s brilliant what they’ve done with it, you won’t believe it until you see it.’
Freya took a few moments to read what was in front of her, and even though Willow had simply listed the products, she knew her friend well enough to know that they would all be beautifully packaged; the ice cream would be softly whipped inside smart tubs, the blackcurrant cordial would glow ruby red from glass bottles, and her gooseberry and elderflower jam would look like the pale golden glow of a winter sun. As for the smell when their lids were removed; Freya was out in the fields already. They would look perfect against her range of juices.
‘I think Merry will be thrilled to stock these. I’m going to see her on Thursday, why don’t you come with me? You could discuss how this could work for you both, and to be honest, Willow, I’d love to get involved. I think what we’re both trying to do could be the perfect complement to each other.’
Willow smiled a little shyly. ‘Are you sure it doesn’t seem a bit rude? I mean, I haven’t seen Merry for ages, or much of you for that matter, and now I feel a bit like I’m throwing this all in your faces.’
‘That’s the way of life, Willow, we’re all busy. Those strawberries out there don’t grow by themselves, do they, and I certainly don’t think you’re being rude, and neither will Merry. In fact, far from that, I’d like to view it as a wonderful turn of fate – the perfect opportunity for all of us. Perhaps after all we make our own fate…’
Freya held Willow’s look for a moment, recognising that she knew the truth of what she had said. Hopefully one day soon, she would find out the real reason why Willow was so keen to start this new venture. There would be a reason, there always was.
* * *
Willow sat still for quite a while after Freya had left, pondering the direction their conversation had taken, and wondering whether she should confide everything. There was something different about Freya, a kindred spirit perhaps, something that despite their years of friendship she had never seen before. Freya had had a tough time last year, losing her father and what had seemed then the only hope of keeping her beloved Appleyard alive. She had come close to selling up, that Willow knew, but now she seemed more alive than she had ever seen her, more in tune with things. Perhaps she would understand after all.
With a sudden start, the smell of the room hit her again, and she got up swiftly. She had ice cream to make, and then she must go and see Henry. She had a favour to ask.
Henry Whittaker should have been a banker or a stockbroker, or even a solicitor, anything but an artist; it just didn’t suit his name. You’d only need to glance at him, though, to know that he’d never picked up a copy of theFinancial Timesin his life. If he owned any clothes other than aged, paint-splattered jeans and T-shirts, Willow had never seen them.
He was, in fact, the model tenant. He’d been with them for over two years now, coming to them with impeccable references and a firm, if paint-speckled handshake. He paid his rent on time, every month, and took great care of the property; in fact, his vegetable patch rivalled Willow’s own, albeit on a smaller scale. He never had wild parties, and although Willow had made tentative enquiries, there didn’t seem to be any girlfriends on the scene; or boyfriends for that matter. She often wondered in a motherly way whether he was lonely, but two energetic spaniels accompanied him wherever he went, and that seemed to be enough. As time passed, the lines in their relationship had become blurred from tenant and landlord, mainly at Henry’s insistence and now Willow found it hard to look on Henry as anything other than a good friend.
Today, like most days, he was sitting at his computer, headphone wires trailing across his shirt. She’d been pulling faces through the window at him for over five minutes before he spotted her, his face creasing into a broad grin the minute he did. He waved at the door indicating that she should come in.
‘That’s the one thing I can never quite understand about you,’ she remarked, after she’d spent a few minutes making a fuss of the dogs. ‘Every time I come in here, you have headphones glued to your ears, and yet who’s going to hear your music? We’re too far down the road and Jude’s office is right on the other side of the courtyard, even when he is there.’
Henry held out one of the headphones. ‘Do you want to hear what I was listening to?’ he asked, his clear grey eyes dancing with mischief.
Willow took the wire tentatively in one hand, imagining her ears being pounded by some raucous thrash metal. Instead, all she could hear was a hissing noise. ‘Oh, it’s stopped,’ she said, but then registered his amused expression. She held the wire up again, listening to the rushing noise once more. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Some kind of weird white noise or something.’
Henry took back the headphones. ‘It’s pink actually. Slightly lower frequency than white noise. It helps you to concentrate, in a calm, relaxed kind of way.’
