Love Among the Treetops: A feel good holiday read for summer 2018. Catherine Ferguson

didn’t know what to think when Lucy produced it earlier in the evening, saying she thought my café idea was fabulous and that she’d be so thrilled if her lovely late grandma’s recipe book could help inspire me to even greater things.

      ‘Gosh, well, thanks!’ I said, taking the small blue notebook and leafing respectfully through the pages of spidery writing. The gesture had taken me completely unawares and I wasn’t sure what to say. Now, I was starting to wonder if trusting me with her grandma’s book of recipes was Lucy’s way of saying sorry for all the horrible things she’d done to me in the past.

      Her fashion show certainly rounded off the evening in style. A very peculiar sort of style, admittedly, but at least it got everyone nice and relaxed and chatting away as if we only left school the week before.

      I did what Paloma said and camped it up in the Big Breakfast outfit and everyone roared with laughter, which made me feel tons better. I almost felt I’d got one over on Lucy in deciding to just go with it and not show I was embarrassed or uncomfortable wearing something so preposterous. When everyone was laughing and applauding me, my eye landed on Lucy at one point, and she was standing there, straight-faced, arms folded, just staring at me, a cold, intense look on her face. A bit like creepy Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. It freaked me out for a second, but then I remembered what Paloma said about being paranoid and I told myself not to be so silly.

      It was Lucy’s show. She was frowning because she wanted it to be a success. Of course she wouldn’t be able to kick back and have fun like everyone else.

      ‘I might try this clean eating plan of Olivia’s,’ says Paloma, snapping me back to the present. ‘If I’m going to be training for a 10k, I might as well go the whole hog and start eating healthily as well.’

      ‘Really? But you won’t be able to eat carbs.’

      ‘Won’t I?’

      ‘No. That’s the point of it. Nothing processed. No gluten. No sugar. No dairy. And the thing is, I really need your input this weekend, testing all the cakes and tray bakes I’m thinking of putting on the café menu.’

      Paloma’s face lights up at the thought. ‘Yeah? Oh well, bugger clean eating.’

      ‘So you’re seriously going to train for this 10k?’

      She shrugs. ‘Why not? It’s all in a good cause. Sending little Harry to America. And I sort of feel if Lucy and Olivia are spurring on the whole village to get involved and get fit in the process, I’d quite like to be part of it?’

      She has a point. It’s just the last time I took any serious exercise, I was running around a tea room garden in Devon, on holiday with Mum and Dad, trying to escape from a wasp that had taken a fancy to my strawberry jam scone with lashings of clotted cream.

      Mind you, I have got stamina.

      ‘We all agreed we’d sign up,’ Paloma reminds me, nodding back at the pub. ‘And to be honest, I’m quite looking forward to Lucy’s boot camp training sessions.’

      ‘You are?’ I stare at her, aghast. I can’t think of anything worse than Sergeant Major Lucy Slater breathing down my neck, yelling threats and making me run faster. (Actually, that just about sums up my schooldays in a nutshell.)

      ‘Yeah, I thought I might go dressed as a chipolata,’ says Paloma, straight-faced. ‘You know, continue the Big Breakfast motif. With perhaps a side order of fried onions on my head?’

      We look at each other and snort with laughter.

      A car draws up alongside us just as I’m doing an impression of Lucy introducing one of her fashion designs. ‘Ladies, this is my take on practical footwear with a twist. Mops for the feet! Get the housework done in no time and look super-uber-stylish while you do it. Note the fabulous grey fringing—’

      I frown at Paloma, who’s stopped laughing and is now digging me urgently in the ribs. ‘What?’

      I turn towards the car and my heart nearly gallops out of my chest when I see who it is.

      My ‘childhood sweetheart’ as Mum quaintly describes him.

      The only man I’ve ever really loved …

       Chapter 6

      Jason Findlay is smiling up at me through the open car window with that thoroughly kissable mouth and those lovely, warm brown eyes. Eyes that used to gaze at me so lovingly from behind his glasses, my heart would turn somersaults of joy.

      He must wear contact lenses these days …

      And then my face turns into a scorching radiator on max when I realise he’s just witnessed me making a total arse of myself, ridiculing his girlfriend, Lucy.

      Not that he looks anything but delighted to see me.

      ‘Well, hello,’ he says. ‘If it isn’t Scully herself.’

      A stupid smile spreads across my face at the mention of our heroes back in the day, Mulder and Scully from The X-Files.

      ‘Mulder.’ I swallow hard. ‘How are you?’

      ‘I’m good, thanks. All the better for seeing you. I hear you gave up a high-flying PR career to make pastries. Brave move.’ His eyes twinkle.

      I laugh. ‘Yeah, some might say stupid. But hey, you’ve got to follow your dreams.’

      ‘And you always were a bit of a dreamer.’

      We lock eyes and a wealth of memories shimmers in the space between us.

      Me at fifteen, on the miraculous day Jason approached me shyly after school and asked if I wanted to go to the cinema with him. I’d liked him for ages but never thought I stood a chance. After saying yes, I walked on air all the way home and squealed into my pillow when I got to my room. The movie was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but I don’t think I heard a word of it – I was so delirious with happiness just to be with Jason.

      Then at sixteen, listening to music with Jason in my bedroom after school, laughing, kissing and lounging together on the white fluffy bedspread, eating Screwball ice creams with bubble gum at the bottom.

      And at seventeen, losing my virginity in the back of Jason’s Ford Escort. People said the first time was always a disappointment, but it wasn’t like that for us. I was madly in love and thought it would last forever.

      At eighteen, I went off to university in Manchester, assuming we’d be true to each other in spite of the two hundred miles separating us. Then the horrible phone call from Paloma, six months into my course, telling me Jason had been seen out with Lucy. She’d agonised about whether or not to tell me, but I told her she’d done the right thing, letting me know.

      I phoned Jason and challenged him, and he admitted they’d gone out just as friends and that was all it would ever be as far as he was concerned. But the thing was, I knew how mad Lucy was about Jason and I just knew, deep down, that with me at a distance, she would use every trick in her power to steal him from me …

      To be fair on Jason, he ended our relationship before anything happened with Lucy, although it came as a horrible shock to me.

      I’d taken the train home for a weekend in the middle of the summer term, a few weeks after Paloma’s revelation. I’d assumed that after my stressful phone call with Jason about Lucy, things were okay between us again. More than okay. Jason and I were meant to be together; I couldn’t imagine us ever splitting up.

      We’d gone for a long walk in the lanes around the village, ending up in our special place – a secluded spot in a pretty little wood by a stream, just beyond the village boundary.

      We’d sat down and I’d leaned against him in the dappled sunlight beneath the trees, listening to the lazy gurgle of the water sliding