Peas, Carrots and a Red Feather Boa, page 1
ALSO BY HANNAH LYNN
Standalone Feel Good Novels
The Afterlife of Walter Augustus
Treading Water
A Novel Marriage
The Complete Peas and Carrots Series
Peas, Carrots and an Aston Martin
Peas, Carrots and a Red Feather Boa
Peas, Carrots and Six More Feet
Peas, Carrots and Lessons in Life
Peas, Carrots and Panic at the Plot
Peas, Carrots and Happily Ever After
The Holly Berry Sweet Shop Series
The Sweet Shop of Second Chances
Love Blooms at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
Family Ties at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
High Hopes at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
Sunday Days at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
A Summer Wedding at the Second Chances Sweet Shop
The Lonely Hearts Book Club Series
Never Too Late
Lessons in Love
Illusions of Love
Table for Two
The Wildflower Lock Series
New Beginnings at Wildflower Lock
Coffee and Cake at Wildflower Lock
Blue Skies over Wildflower Lock
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Note from Hannah
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, alive or dead, events or locals is almost entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 Hannah Lynn
First published 2018
ISBN: 9781723746413
Imprint: Independently published
Edited by Emma Mitchell @ Creating Perfection and Moonlight Proofreading
Cover design by Kate Swift @ Fox Fold Designs
All rights reserved.
No part of this book should be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author.
For Mum and Dad
CHAPTER 1
ERIC YELPED AS he missed the nail and hammered his thumb for the fourth time in half as many minutes.
‘Bugger,’ he said.
It was the evening before Christmas Eve. Outside the air tasted of early winter; of ice and grey clouds and wood smoke drifting up from red brick chimneys. Inside it tasted of sawdust, drill bits, and pent up frustration.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said his long-suffering wife, Suzy, as she took the hammer from Eric and smacked the nail in perfectly on her first try. ‘I’ll call Lyds. I’m sure she’ll be happy to host.’
‘Not a chance.’ Eric took another piece of carpet track and positioned it along the floor, ready for Suzy to nail in place. ‘That’s what she wants us to do. You saw her face when I said they should spend Christmas at ours. She’s just waiting for me to screw up.’
‘That’s not true at all,’ Suzy said, although her eyes didn’t quite meet his as she spoke.
Suzy’s sister, Lydia, had had a hard time forgiving Eric for an escapade involving a mini-excavator earlier in the year; although it wasn’t so much the excavator she’d had the problem with, but rather the lying that had gone alongside it. In Eric’s defence, he had been under a lot of stress at the time. It was shortly after receiving the conditions of his inheritance, when pressure at work was high, and the tyrannical, bearded busybody with the allotment next to him was a long way from becoming the friend that Eric now so desperately missed.
As a result, for the few last months, Eric had been the picture of husbandly perfection, and while Suzy was never one to harbour a grudge, the same could not be said for her big sister, and so he had invited them over for Christmas. Not just dinner, not even the whole day, but the whole event; Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day. The lot. Lydia, her husband Tom, and their two boys were to descend on Eric’s beautiful home for three whole days, and he would graciously accept any carnage that prevailed.
Only Eric’s home wasn’t beautiful. Not even close. It was a building site. Lifting his head up from the task at hand, he took a moment to survey the chaos before huffing and slumping back down onto the bare floorboards where a protruding nail promptly impaled his left buttock.
‘Sod it. Let’s leave this room,’ he said. ‘We don’t even need it anyway. We can eat dinner in the kitchen. Or on our laps. Lots of people eat Christmas dinner on their laps. It’ll be casual. Funky.’
He puckered his lips and moved his hands in an attempt at a robotic dance move. The results looked about as funky as a hand-knitted mankini. Suzy raised her eyebrow sceptically.
‘Fine then,’ Eric said. ‘We won’t eat on our laps. But there’s no reason we can’t eat in the kitchen instead.’
‘I thought you didn’t want anyone in the kitchen? I thought you said the kitchen was the scourge of the house?’
‘I didn’t say that. Why would I? The bathroom is the scourge of the house. Then the staircase, and our bedroom and the front garden. They’re the scourges. The kitchen is more a blemish. A repulsive, abhorrent, ulcer-inducing blemish.’
Suzy pouted, her eyebrows still butting up to her hairline. Eric offered a half-smile, using only one corner of his mouth. He added a wink and finally her expression relaxed. A long sigh rattled out from her throat. Part way through it transformed into a yawn.
‘How about we take a break?’ she said. ‘Let’s go into the other room and have a drink, then we’ll do half an hour more before we head to bed.’
‘A large drink? Like, four normal drinks in one glass?’
‘A medium drink,’ Suzy said. ‘Though in fairness it might make your aim a little better with that hammer.’
It had seemed like such a good idea taking on Norman’s house after his passing; the big bay windows, the garden, the views out over the river. Even now, with the dining room carpet rolled up in the living room, their teak coffee table upturned and getting damp in the conservatory, twenty-year-old peach cabinets gracing the kitchen walls, and a bathroom that caused Eric to weaken when he happened to pass it, he was sure they’d made the right decision in packing up London life and moving to the quiet riverside town of Burnham-on-Crouch. Still, it hadn’t been easy.
Technically it was Cynthia’s fault the bathroom had been a disaster, although in Eric’s opinion, Norman could shoulder a fair bit of the blame too. Had Cynthia – Norman’s widow – not made a flippant comment about seeing Norman’s reflection in the mirror every day, then perhaps Eric would have been slightly less hasty and considered the problem a little longer before he began to tear away at the fixtures and fittings. They had been in the house a week when he decided to take on the task and attack the tiles. After all, he told himself, he had renovated a bathroom before. How naïve he was.
Each day, a new issue appeared; be it corroded pipes, layers of lead-based paint, or old tiles set in enough cement to fill all the potholes from Burnham to Chelmsford. Water leaked from places where water shouldn’t have been and bare wires twisted and sparked through gaps in the walls. His daughter, Abi, had been spending every weekend at Tom and Lydia’s, and only now, with Eric having spent every hour from dusk to dawn working on the project, were they anywhere close to having a fully serviceable bathroom. Only now, of course, it was Christmas and the plumbers didn’t work Christmas.
‘I’ll do it myself,’ Eric had said three days ago, when the finish line was so close he could practically taste the sealant. ‘How hard can it be? I’m intelligent.’
Suzy’s eyebrows had lifted to their accustomed position of doubt. ‘Have you forgotten what happened with the downstairs toilet?’
‘That was an entirely different situation,’ Eric pouted. ‘I just miscalculated, that’s all. Anyway, you’re the one who’s always on about saving the environment. What’s more environmentally friendly than baking soda and vinegar?’
Suzy didn’t flinch.
Eric had relented on the bathroom, although he had put his foot down at the dining room carpet and refused to pay for someone to fit that, insisting instead that he could do the work himself.
As he sipped on his gin and cast an eye over the half-finished room, he began to regret that decision.
At twelve-forty the pair finally went to bed. Eric’s eyes stung from the dust and the strain, but the carpet was down, the table repositioned – with chairs – and even one or two Christmas ornaments laid down the centre.
‘What do you think?’ he said, slipping his arm around Suzy’s waist and pulling her into his chest.
‘I think it’s shaping up to be a very good Christmas,’ she replied.
If Eric
had thought Christmas Eve in the countryside would be less stressful than in London, he was bitterly disappointed. At 9 am, with the Audi heaters blasting on full power, he crawled along the lanes towards Maldon and the nearest big supermarket. It was a last-minute decision to go, and he had stupidly agreed to take their nine-year-old daughter with him, giving Suzy a chance to wrap all the presents.
Although they’d left in plenty of time, the queue at the petrol station, urgent toilet stop – for Abi, not Eric – and now being stuck behind the world’s slowest salt truck meant they were already an hour behind schedule.
In the supermarket, herds of Christmas-crazed adults barged their way to the front of the chiller cabinets and grappled for the last ready-washed, giblet-free turkey and discount Buck’s Fizz.
‘Can we get one of these?’ Abi said, picking up a pack of battered and broken mince pies.
‘I guess so.’
‘And these?’ Grabbing half a dozen chocolate oranges off the shelf. ‘These are my favourite.’
‘Fine.’
‘Oh, oh, oh! I love—’
‘Just put them in the trolley,’ Eric said.
Ninety minutes and seventy pounds later, Eric left with four bags of shopping, a sugar-high nine-year-old, and a novelty headband that had transformed his daughter into a Christmas elf, complete with oversized ears and a hat. All he had gone in for was some chestnuts and a galia melon.
When they finally arrived home, Tom and Lydia were already there.
‘We thought we’d come a bit early,’ Lydia said. ‘See if we could help with anything?’
‘That’s very kind. You shouldn’t have. You really, really shouldn’t have,’ Eric said.
Suzy shot him a decidedly evil eye.
‘But we’re very glad you’re here,’ Eric added, then wrapped his arms around his sister-in-law for the longest sober hug he could recall.
‘Yes … well …’ replied a flustered Lydia as she brushed herself down. ‘Anyway, I suspected your house might be a little bare, so I’ve bought some paint and a few little bits and bobs and thought the children could spend the afternoon making some decorations? Make it feel a bit more, you know, Christmassy.’ And there it was, disguised as helpfulness, the subtle dig Eric had been expecting since the moment the invitation was sent out. But he had prepared. If Lydia wanted Christmassy, she would see Christmassy.
Eric pushed his shoulders back, a wide grin shining from his face.
‘I think you need to come into the drawing room,’ he beamed, ‘and see our tree.’
The seven-foot Norwegian spruce was truly an example of nature at her finest. Procured by Hank – one of Eric’s recently acquired allotment friends – through some black-market tree dealer, the emerald needles were illuminated with tastefully subtle white lights and decorated with a select choice of handmade wooden ornaments. Eric had spent a full day positioning every bulb and bauble, pruning and shifting until absolute perfection had been achieved.
‘Oh,’ Lydia said, her eyes scanning up, down, and then all the way back up again. ‘It’s very …’ she pondered for the right word. ‘Minimalistic?’
On reflection, the arts and crafts activity was an excellent time filler. While Eric prepared the turkey for its final salty bath, Tom peeled and prepared the vegetables, and Lydia and Suzy helped the children in their construction of cork Christmas tree decorations and papier mâché antlers for Rudolph.
‘And you’ve grown all of this?’ Tom said as he scrubbed the dirt from a nine-inch parsnip and tossed it onto the pile of clean vegetables that were accumulating on the draining board.
‘It’s all come from the allotment, but not all of it is mine. If I’m honest, a lot of it’s from Norman’s plot.’
After what was initially a very shaky start to their relationship, Norman had very much taken Eric under his wing as he’d attempted to breathe life back into his late father’s allotment. It was for this reason that Eric had felt duty-bound to take over the maintenance and upkeep after his passing.
Eric stared at his hands as he shifted the turkey around in the salt solution. A large ache spread up from just below his sternum and caused his eyes to prick. Even dead, the man managed to grow better vegetables than he did.
‘So, what’s happening with that?’ Tom said, his voice puncturing Eric’s moment of reflection. ‘I’m assuming they won’t just let you carry on using it?’
Eric shook his head.
‘No, unfortunately not. Although to be fair, it’s tough enough trying to get down there for an hour a day at the minute, even not working. By the time I’ve taken Abi to school, got the shopping, then done a bit of work on this place, it’s almost time to pick her up again.’
‘The trials of being a man of leisure, eh?’
Eric laughed. ‘I suppose I’ve got it pretty easy.’ He opened the door and slotted the turkey-filled container into the ready-cleared space at the bottom of the fridge. ‘But as for Norman’s allotment, I’m still not sure what will happen. I was hoping Cynthia would take it over. I know she said she didn’t want to, but I thought perhaps if she’d had a bit of time to mull it over …’
‘So that’s not going to happen?’ Tom said.
Eric shook his head.
‘No. I don’t think so. I spoke to her last week, and she’d just booked a round-the-world ticket. Paris to Malaysia, then on to Australia and New Zealand to visit the relatives, and finally Peru for a twelve-week tour of South America.’
‘Wow,’ Tom said.
‘Yeah. I think she’s worried about what will happen if she stays still too long.’
‘It doesn’t sound like that’ll happen.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
Out in the conservatory, someone shrieked. It was followed by several more squeals, then an unmistakable yell from Lydia.
‘I’d better go and see if she needs some help,’ Tom said, wiping his hands on his apron before slipping it off over his head. ‘Though if it’s the bloody superglue again, they can stay like it. You have no idea how ridiculous we looked at A&E last year.’
Tom, still grumbling about cemented fingertips, ambled out to the conservatory while Eric continued his military style preparation for tomorrow’s dinner.
With the turkey ready, Eric started on the Brussels sprouts. He peeled the outer yellow leaves and threw them into the green-lined bin. The draining board was already full of veg, as were the two colanders on the worktop and the large saucepan waiting on the hob. By the looks of things, they were going to have enough food to feed the entire company of Burnham amateur dramatics society, although, on the plus side, he was going to be getting some great compost next year.
At five o’clock, Suzy appeared in the kitchen. Eric, now onto the final stages of preparation, was wrist deep in a mixture of bread, onions, and herb extractions. He squeezed the pulp together with a satisfying squelch.
‘If you want a shower, you’re going to need to grab a quick one now,’ Suzy said. ‘I’ve told the kids to go get their warm things on. I want to leave in fifteen minutes.’
Eric squeezed the mixture again and let out a long groan.
‘You’re not serious about this, are you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I am. You said you wanted to be part of a community. This is a community.’
‘I meant a fun community,’
‘For goodness’ sake, Eric. It’s one day a year.’
Eric pouted.
‘Until Easter. Then you’ll say it’s only two days a year.’
‘Fine. Two days a year.’
‘No, because then there’ll be Mothering Sunday, and Holy Tuesday, and Harvest-bloody-Festival where not only will you force me to go to church, but you’ll take half my tinned goods to boot.’
