Wedding Tiers. Trisha Ashley

loved to…

      Still, the upside was that at least I hadn’t got Ben’s ghastly, social-climbing mother as my ma-in-law. I hadn’t even seen them since they moved to Wilmslow several years previously, though Ben visited them sometimes. They still thought I ruined his life by making him move back to Neatslake instead of staying in London and becoming famous, which they were convinced he would have been before now. But it was his decision just as much as mine. I sometimes wondered if he had ever told them that. But I expect he had and they just didn’t believe it.

      ‘Ben and I’ve been together since I was thirteen, Libby. That’s rock-solid enough, isn’t it,’ I asked, ‘even without a wedding ring?’

      She gave me a sideways look from her deceptively innocent eyes. ‘But haven’t you ever found that a bit smothering? You’ve never really fallen in love, or out of love, just jogged comfortably along on a plateau of contentment, doing everything the way Ben wanted it.’

      ‘The way we both wanted it,’ I corrected her. ‘I’m living the life I always dreamed of and I’m not a slave, even if I do think it’s important to create a comfortable environment for him to work in. And, what’s more, I did fall in love with Ben, the moment he first spoke to me!’

      ‘Puppy love!’

      ‘Maybe it started that way, but it’s still going strong. If you remember, my game plan was the direct opposite of yours. I just wanted to stay in Neatslake for ever when I grew up.’

      ‘Which you have, apart from two years in London, while Ben was at college. But while I’ve just really and truly fallen deeply in love for the first time with husband number three, there you are, still ambling along in your little rut with Ben. I don’t suppose you’ve ever even looked at anyone else?’

      ‘No—well, apart from Sting, before he started to look like that coconut head in the Tom Hanks castaway film. But Ben hasn’t looked at anyone else either, Libs. We’re fine as we are. Everything in the garden is perfect…or almost perfect,’ I qualified honestly. ‘I wish he didn’t have to go off to London so much lately, for instance. That is a fly in the ointment.’

      ‘It’s the price of fame,’ she shrugged. ‘You should be glad he’s finally made it big and his work is fetching good money. All the more reason to marry him now, before some other woman decides he’s a good prospect and snaps him up.’

      I smiled. ‘Libby, that’s not going to happen and you know it!’

      ‘You can’t bank on that. He looks pretty tasty in an expensive suit and with a decent haircut.’

      ‘It wasn’t expensive. He bought it from Tesco, though it was quite a good fit.’

      ‘The one I last saw him wearing didn’t come from Tesco,’ she said positively.

      ‘Oh? Actually, he did say something about buying another one and he’s got some smarter jeans, but he mainly keeps his London clothes at Russell and Mary’s flat so I haven’t seen most of them.’

      ‘You should see that suit. I wouldn’t have known it was the same Ben, when I popped into the opening of his one-man exhibition at the Egremont Gallery in May.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t see me; he was talking to a tall blonde for ages—fortyish, expensive-looking. He seemed quite engrossed in what she was saying.’

      I grinned. ‘I think I know who that must have been. He told me all about her—he calls her his patroness! I’ve forgotten her name, but she’s an investment banker and nearer fifty than forty, though I expect she’s very well preserved. There’s family money too, and she must be very well off because she’s bought several pieces of his work and he’s charging quite steep prices now.’

      ‘Hmm…Well, he certainly looks expensive these days,’ Libby said ambiguously, ‘and I still think you ought to go down to London with him more often and keep an eye on him.’

      I felt a sudden, unexpected, pang of doubt. It was true that the Ben I knew and loved, the tall, rugged one in hand-knitted jumpers and tattered jeans, with his thick, light-brown hair rumpled and all on end, had to spruce himself up a bit when he was away and often even returned looking like a total stranger, until he’d changed back into his old clothes again.

      But I said firmly, ‘I trust Ben and he hates having to leave me so often. He phones me up every night when he’s away, from Russell and Mary’s house. We both enjoyed living in London when he was at the RCA, but it wasn’t where we wanted to live for ever, and now we just prefer it for visits. Neatslake is home.’

      ‘Is Mary still making those dreary pots?’

      ‘Mostly large one-off ceramic pieces, and they sell very well. She and Russell have studio space in a converted warehouse in Camden and Ben’s just taken one there, to give him a London base to store his stuff. He and some of his ex-RCA friends have formed a group to exhibit together, but of course his inspiration is here, so he’ll always want to spend most of his time here.’

      ‘Well, I still think you ought to make more effort, Josie—spice the relationship up a bit. And with men, even old ones, never, ever take your eye off the ball.’ She thought about that for a minute, blinked her preposterously long, tinted eyelashes and amended, ‘Balls.’

      She may be the expert on most men, but Ben was different. ‘I know you mean it for the best, Libs, but you don’t understand. Ben loves me the way I am and we’re happily living the life we always wanted. Money, material things and marriage have never been that important to us. Ben’s work is, though, and it’s wonderful that it’s getting the recognition it deserves at last. Besides, even if I wanted to go to London with him, I couldn’t keep going off and leaving Harry to cope with everything. He’s getting so frail now that I’m always afraid he’s going to fall over and really hurt himself.

      ‘You can’t build your life around an elderly neighbour, even if you do have some sort of gardening commune going with him!’

      ‘You know Harry is far more to me than just a neighbour, Libs, and he’s been a huge support over the years. But now he’s getting too frail even to walk his dog every day…and then sometimes he forgets to shut the hens up and I’m afraid that that fox I saw one evening will come back and take them.’

      Especially Aggie, my beloved but overly adventurous speckled friend…

      ‘Then there are my Acorns to keep an eye on,’ I added.

      Soon after Ben and I settled in Neatslake I’d been horrified to discover that the three elderly Grace sisters’ pensions were barely enough to keep them alive since the General died, let alone warm, amused and well fed, and Dorrie Spottiswode had been in much the same situation. My weekly boxes of fruit, vegetables and eggs, plus anything else I could pretend to have a glut of, helped to keep them all going.

      ‘Dorrie’s been really struggling to make ends meet since Tim’s father died. She could have grown her own vegetables, but she’s devoted herself to trying to keep the Blessings gardens in some kind of order, especially the roses, so she’s been bartering things for eggs and stuff instead.’ And most of what she had been bartering was the fruit from the Blessings orchard, I thought guiltily, plus the occasional bunch of Tim’s grapes from the greenhouse!

      ‘Josie, it’s the twenty-first century, and the way you’re trying to live is totally perverse—if you can even call all this scraping by on what you can grow “living”. And you can’t tell me that you’re charging enough for your cakes to make a decent profit, either.’

      ‘You’d be surprised! And I only make unusual cakes, which are fun to do. I’m not tied to producing boring, royal-iced, tiered ones—I leave that to the bakery. And I write my magazine piece every month too, which I also enjoy. They’re both just a way of making enough to pay the utility bills. And actually, the self-sufficiency, make-do-and-mend, thrifty lifestyle is terribly fashionable again, you know. That’s why Country at Heart did the piece about us.’

      ‘Yes, but now Ben’s