Read Online The Great Allotment Proposal by Jenny Oliver - Free Book Online

shook his head and said, ‘Sorry, Emily but there just isn’t anywhere.’
    ‘There is somewhere, Jonathan,’ she said, thinking maybe, Enid, this is how I tell you that you were right. ‘There’s my bloody house. You can have your show there. And we’ll make it the best goddamn show you’ve ever had.’
    She heard Martha laugh, deep and husky. Jonathan looked puzzled, as if trying to work out how he could quash this new option. Annie clapped her hands together with delight. And Jane smiled, nodding at Emily, almost to say well done, to say that she was proud of her.
    ‘It’ll be the
Great
Cherry Pie Show,’ someone from the crowd shouted.
    ‘Exactly!’ said Emily. ‘The Great Cherry Pie Show.’

Chapter Ten
    After the meeting, everything suddenly got a bit more serious. Emily got her assistant to talk to a man about a marquee, Annie designed the poster – all bunting, cherries and rosettes dotted around the scrolled
Great Cherry Pie Show
lettering. Holly called from France to say that her and Wilf would be back the weekend of the show but they didn’t think their ice cream van would make it. It was arranged that the Dandelion Cafe would cater the event with one stall selling cherry pie and tea and another, run by Ludo the cafe chef, would be a big barbecue with a suckling pig and all sorts of tapas. Barney from the pub would get some barrels in and The Duck and Cherry would decamp for the day into the grounds of Mont Manor. But, most of all, people started preparing in earnest. The bakers among the island decided whether to make a lemon drizzle or a coffee and walnut, the young photographers got snapping and the quilters knuckled down to their wall-hangings – a perennial favourite of the competitions. Most babies on Cherry Pie Island had a quilted wall-hanging in their nurseries purchased from the show.
    The tension at the allotment increased dramatically. Not only were they competing against each other, there was now a clear divide between Jonathan’s horticulturists and Emily’s amateur gardeners. The latter being the majority; Emily had become a mini-celebrity of a different kind now. No longer the revered famous person suspected of causing mayhem where ever she went, she was now the saviour of the everyman. She had given to the community and expected nothing in return. Now when she walked through the allotment in her Hunter wellies and designer shorts, she got big waves of hello and a couple of free courgettes.
    The girls’ allotment now had a schedule. Annie would water and hoe every Monday and Wednesday after work. Emily had Tuesdays and Thursdays. Jane would do the weekends. And Friday was on rotation. The sole aim was no longer just to keep everything alive, there was now a desire to grow something of merit. Something that they could display on one of the competition tables. Something that might prove them worthy. Something that would do Holly and Enid’s memory proud.
    Tuesday Emily had to dash home from the office midmorning ahead of the launch party of her new Cherry Blossom fragrance because she’d forgotten the notepad with her speech and her shoes.
    It was another scorcher of a day. The party was being held on a roof garden overlooking St James’s Park and her assistant had come back from a morning recce to tell her that the paving stones up there were steaming – scalding her foot when her flip flop slipped off. Emily had spent most of the morning refreshing her weather app to see if any cloud cover was due, trying to track down some giant sun umbrellas, and ignoring a great email hullabaloo about the article Faye Starkey had written post Emily’s interview walkout. She hadn’t read it. She didn’t want to read it. She wanted it to go away and not ruin her party. But her PR company wanted her to agree to an interview with a rival magazine that would lay the truth bare, which Emily had no intention of doing. She was reading the email as she walked in the front door of Mont Manor,