AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But it’s not realistic.
“Elodie. I hate to rain on you parade. But what you’re suggesting would tie both properties together forever. Reversing the partition of 300 years ago.”
“Would that be so bad?” she asks, still beaming, not seeing any downside to this vision of hers.
I sigh. “There is a business, a legal consideration. The lands would become completely intertwined, which means a partnership. The kind that’s impossible to dissolve.”
My mother would never agree to this; she’s still not happy about keeping Low Catch instead of selling. Any further entanglement with La Canette is not going to go down well, and especially not across the boundary with the LeFevres. She’ll never agree.
“Elodie. Have you considered what Hedge is going to say about all this?”
She gives me steady eye contact. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Me?”
“You are going to have to meet him sooner or later.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Hal
Given a choice between sleeping naked with one of Elodie’s blackthorn bushes or talking to her grandfather, I’d take the easier option and be down the hill, shedding clothes along the way.
I don’t tell her that; she’s so excited about her idea for the garden merger, it would be heartless to slosh ice water on her enthusiasm.
What do I want? That’s the million-dollar question. I don’t want a partnership with Hedge because I don’t trust him, and that’s the basic, honest truth. On the other hand, without this partnership, we’re back to square-one with Nigel. Nigel is the name Elodie and I have decided to give to the land dispute because we don’t want to keep using contentious words like dispute.
So, while the garden merger solves Nigel, talking to Hedge isn’t a welcome thought. He could refuse simply because it’s me. Or he could decide to bring up historical issues and start calling us collaborators, Murders, or even worse, thieves. If he does, I might just shout back at him, because I’m no longer a little boy and will not let anyone slander my family. But even if I swallow my temper and say nothing, Elodie will feel caught in the middle and have to either defend me or defend him. And that … is not going to be good for our little relationship.
Our little relationship. Here is the next problem. Because our ‘little relationship’ is growing serious and is no longer a holiday fling. Another decision I need to make.
For now, I’m pretending be give this garden-merger idea serious consideration. First, I insist on checking the land and making a feasibility study. Because that will prove the idea unworkable. Why hurt Elodie’s feelings by refusing when the practical, engineering, and even botanical facts will argue against creating a garden that winds around twenty or thirty protected pockets of plants and beehives. How do you lead holiday makers through a maze of prickly bushes, eight feet high, before they find a spot with a sea view to picnic?
So, we spend the next four mornings, between sunrise and when her shop opens at 9.30, traipsing around Catcher Hill. We stop every few minutes to take measurements so I can make a proper diagram that is to scale. The land-survey app on my iPad will convert into everything to a 3-D visual plan. Which I hope will make it obvious the plan isn’t practical. When she sees it in a visual mock up, she’ll realise it can’t work.
Unfortunately, the software isn’t helping; my expensive app is arguing on Elodie’s side.
B15 East: 7m x 15.5m with sea view, it would easily fit a 2-bedroom glamping pod!
G31 South: 4.8m x 2.3m can fit hot tub under the cedar tree and can lead down to a lower terrace in B2 with wooden steps.
I tuck my iPad under my arm and follow her. As she clambers over a mound in the ground. It’s one of the bushes I massacred on my way down following her when she fell.
“Tell me something, Young Elodie.” I call
“Young?” She lands hard on both feet, knees buckling for a second before she rights herself.
“It’s what people in the village call you. Haven’t you noticed they always refer to anyone under sixty as young?”
She thinks about it. “Yes, they refer to you as Young Hemingway.”
“Actually, they refer to me asthatYoung Hemingway.”
Thethatis a sign of mistrust or antipathy. I jump over the mound and land beside her.
“So, what do you want me to tell you?” she asks smiling up at me.
“If you came on holiday here, a glamping pod in the middle of this.” I indicate the space. “What would make your accommodation more special, other than the pod itself.”
