Read Online Peppercorn Street by Anna Jacobs - Free Book Online Page A

will taste just as good.’ He’d spoken of his wife in the past tense, she noticed. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is your wife dead?’ His face grew so sad she wished she hadn’t spoken.
    ‘Peggy’s in a home. Dementia. The poor love doesn’t even recognise me now.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Yeah. Me too. I miss her something shocking. Fifty years we’ll have been married next month. We’d such plans for celebrating it.’
    ‘Do you have children?’
    He nodded. ‘Two sons, but one lives in Reading, so I don’t see much of him and his family. The other lives here in Sexton Bassett so I see him more often. Both of them are doing well: fancy houses, wives working, holidays abroad, children at private schools. But they never seem to have time to stop and chat.’
    She nodded, but she didn’t really know how it was for people who had money, lived in fancy houses and had big four-wheel drives. She saw them sometimes as she walked along the posh end of the street, but they didn’t even notice her. Her mother worked in a shop and her father worked on an assembly line. They’d always had to be careful with money in order to buy their own house and have enough left for her father’s beer.
    They weren’t loving people and had shouted at her allthrough her childhood for the slightest thing. She wasn’t going to become a misery like them with her daughter, she’d promised herself that.
    Taking a sip of tea, she changed the subject. ‘What are you going to plant this year, Mr Shackleton?’
    ‘The usual. Carrots always do well, peas, beans, cabbages, lettuce – and a few flowers, just because they look pretty. My Peggy used to love flowers. See that rose bush? It might look like a few thorny sticks now but it’ll be a mass of pink flowers come the warmer weather.’
    Janey let him talk, enjoying sitting in the sun which had no warmth but was bright and cheerful. She was always happy to learn more about gardening.
    Millie dozed for a while, then woke up squirming uncomfortably. Janey knew the signs. ‘I’d better go now. She needs changing. Thanks for the tea. You make a good cup.’
    ‘Stop by any time you’re passing. I’ve always got a cuppa for a friend. Oh, just a minute.’ He vanished inside the hut then came back with a cabbage, which he gave her. ‘One of my own. Still good eating once you take the outer leaves off.’
    ‘I wasn’t hinting for you to give me food.’
    He grinned. ‘I know that. I can tell a cadger a mile off. I only give my stuff away to people I like. You take it, love.’
    The cabbage was huge. Janey didn’t particularly like cabbage but free vegetables were a big help when you had to watch every penny and she’d read somewhere that you could use cabbage in stir fries and salads. She’d have to borrow a cookery book from the library or buy one in a charity shop. ‘Thanks.’
    She felt quite optimistic as she walked back. Perhaps it wouldn’t be bad living here if the locals were so friendly. Perhaps she might even make some friends her own age. She’d go to the next meeting at
Just Girls
, see what the others were like, at least.
     
    On Sunday, Janey got up early, did all the housework and washing then found it was still only nine o’clock. She heard church bells pealing and stopped to listen. Should she go to church? Why not? She’d been brought up to attend regularly, but hadn’t gone for a while, not after her oh-so-Christian parents had abandoned her in her time of need.
    She wasn’t quite sure what she believed these days but suddenly there seemed something very comforting about a church service. And anyway, it’d get her out of the flat and somewhere with other people.
    She’d noticed a small church just off High Street in the other direction from the library. It didn’t seem quite as threatening as the ancient parish church, which sat squarely in the heart of the town and had a leaflet all to itself in the pile from the library.
    The small church