Lettie pictured her beautiful clothes and hectic life that until recently she thought she was destined to follow. ‘I know, but things hadn’t gone so well over there,’ she admitted, frowning when she thought of Scott and all the aggro he had caused her. ‘And although I’ve never considered farming, growing up on a farm and watching Dad, Mum and you and Auntie Sue’s lives going on around me, it’s not as if I’m completely unaware of what this life is like.’
He mumbled something to himself. ‘True. But watching someone doing something and carrying out the work yourself are two very different things, as last night must have shown you. Not that it is the usual sort of thing that happens obviously. I just wanted to remind you that I’m here to help you while your dad is away.’
It was reassuring to hear him say so, Lettie thought feeling slightly better. ‘Thank you – I appreciate that.’
‘I suppose I should let you get on,’ he said. ‘What have you got planned today?’
Lettie told him about harvesting seaweed on the beach.
‘Good idea.’ He went quiet for a few seconds and she wondered if he was thinking or whether she should say something to fill the silence. ‘I tell you what, I’m busy for the next few hours here with the herd but I’ll pop over to the farm mid-morning and help you put the seaweed onto the field. How does that sound?’
It sounded great. ‘Wonderful. Thanks, Uncle Leonard. I’ll see you later then.’
Lettie looked out of the window, glad to see how quiet it was after the storm. It had been a little frightening worrying about how the high winds were battering her crops, especially after the horror of the smaller barn being struck by lightning. She shivered at the memory, then smiled recalling how amazing Brodie had been during the emergency. She thought of Brodie and her stomach did a little somersault.
Her thoughts morphed into what might have happened if Brodie hadn’t been there. No. She wasn’t going to let herself go there. He had been there and he had been amazing. Now he had left and if she wasn’t going to become an anxious mess she would need to find something to take her mind off the dramas the night before.
‘Seaweed.’ She quickly checked high tide again to remind herself when it would be best to go and collect a mound of it. She had a few hours.
Showered and dressed and after wasting twenty minutes attaching her dad’s trailer to the back of his pickup truck, she eventually drove onto the beach. She wasn’t the first one there but that didn’t surprise her. She knew well enough how early some farmworkers began their day, especially at times like these when there was a time limit to a job that needed to be done.
Hearing a tractor engine, she looked up to see a large vehicle with a huge trailer and mechanical digger coming down the nearby slipway. ‘Bugger.’ She needed to hurry if she wasn’t going to let them take all the seaweed before she had a chance to collect enough for herself. She wouldn’t need as much as them as she only had to cover two small fields.
She heard amused voices and saw two men talking to each other and looking her way. So what if she didn’t have their fancyequipment. Maybe she should have thought about hiring someone to do this sort of thing for her, but it hadn’t occurred to her. Another lesson learnt, she realised.
Determined not to let her error or lack of equipment stop her, Lettie slung another fork-load of vraic onto the back of the trailer and wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve on the back of her right forearm. It was almost 9a.m. and she had already been here for an hour and still the trailer was only half filled.
‘Urgh, why did I think this was ever going to be easy?’
No point in moaning to herself, she decided. She needed this for her small field of Jersey Royals. The tide was starting to come in and she was proud of herself for putting in this effort to make the most of the island’s natural resources for her land. It was a relief that the storm had happened on a Thursday because if it had happened the following night she wouldn’t be able to harvest this valuable commodity because it was illegal to collect the dead seaweed that had been washed up on the beach over the weekend.
After a while, she noticed the trailer was almost two-thirds full. Hell, this was taking forever. Next time she was going to have to ask someone to come and help her. Her uncle might even have his own equipment to come and do this for her in the future. It was something she would definitely ask him about.
She heard a male voice calling her name and looked up to see a dark-haired man with messy hair striding towards her carrying something. She peered at him then realised who it was.
‘Joe?’
‘I thought it was you,’ he said grinning from her to the trailer and back to the fork in her hand. ‘You’ve not loaded all this by hand, have you?’
‘Why, don’t you think me capable?’ She smiled to show she was only teasing, then realising how knackered she must appear,groaned. ‘Actually, I hadn’t considered how long it would take me or how heavy this work would be.’
‘The wet sand that gets caught up in it makes is even heavier than it already is. Here, this coffee and bacon roll are for you. I’ll put mine in your tractor while I have a go at doing this and you eat your breakfast and catch your breath.’
She had no intention of arguing with such a welcome offer, and although she had already eaten that morning, it was several hours before and the physical work loading the trailer had made her hungry and thirsty.
‘Thanks, that’s really thoughtful of you.’ She rested the fork against the vehicle and took one of the cups and a bag containing a bacon roll from him and watched him take his to the tractor cabin. Lettie leant against the side of the trailer and breathed in the delicious-smelling coffee. ‘This is wonderful, thank you.’
‘No problem at all.’ He began forking the seaweed into the trailer. ‘How are you after last night?’
‘Last night?’ she asked mortified.
Joe stopped what he was doing and turned to her, then seeing the look on her face smiled. ‘I was referring to the fire, at the barn?’
Embarrassed that her reaction had said more about her relationship with Brodie than she was happy to share, she cleared her throat. ‘Oh that. It was a bit of a shock. Thank you for all you and your colleagues did though with getting the fire under control so quickly.’
‘It wasn’t too difficult. You must have noticed the fire immediately and called us soon after because it hadn’t really got hold too badly.’
‘It was an enormous relief to see you all, and I appreciated you checking that I was all right before you left.’ She took a bite of her roll then drank some coffee. ‘Delicious.’
