it’s a question I haven’t been asking myself all morning. It’s a big thing, but without Steve, without a job and without Mum and Dad two hours’ drive outside the city, what have I got to stay in London for? Chelsea is the only person I’d miss, and it’s not like we’d lose touch. The more I think about it, the question changes from why I’d move to Scotland to why I’d stay here.
‘I’m stagnating here,’ I say eventually. ‘Since my parents died, I’ve been standing still, waiting for something to happen. I thought that something was Steve, but it clearly wasn’t. And now what? Back to the job centre to hunt for another mind-numbing data entry clerk role that gradually sucks the life out of me day by day? And let’s face it, I’m not exactly going to get a glowing reference from my boss, am I? Not after I stood in front of the whole office and invited him to do unpleasant things to himself with a turnip. And definitely not after I poured a hot cup of coffee down his neck and probably scalded his willy which was still waving about all over the place, and then topped it off by storming out without formally handing in my notice. What’s he going to say to my next potential employer? “Oh yeah, hire Leah, she’s great for a quick fumble behind the photocopier but don’t let her catch you humping the head accountant if you prefer your willy un-scalded.”’
Chelsea laughs and I sigh. ‘After the initial shock of Mum and Dad, the weeks of paperwork and organising funerals and then probate and solicitors and clearing the house and everything … I’ve been motionless, waiting for the punchline to this terrible joke I’m trapped in while life moves on around me. I’m like one of those stagnant ponds full of dead reeds. There might actually be insects living in me.’
‘If there’s green slime, you really need to get that checked out by a doctor.’
‘Ha ha,’ I say, even though I’m trying not to smile. I’m pleasantly surprised that Chels hasn’t told me I’m insane. She knows how I’ve been feeling, but I still expected her to tell me I’m mad for spending so much – literally my parents’ legacy – on a drunken whim, and doing something that will change my life without thinking it through. But I had thought it through. I’ve been thinking of nothing but that auction since the moment I saw a quirky news story about a Christmas tree farm being up for sale last week.
‘What happened with Steve? I thought you really liked him until that series of very drunken text messages you sent me in the middle of the night.’
I cringe.
‘Don’t worry, they were so badly misspelled that even autocorrect had given up. I thought things were going well with him?’
‘Yeah. Turns out things were going well for him and Lucia in accounting too. And Amanda in customer service. And Linda in acquisitions. Even Penny in printing had photocopied their bum cheeks together.’ I tell her the whole sorry story about walking into his office to find him giving the aforementioned Lucia a right good accounting to on his desk with his trousers round his ankles, complete with grotty underwear on show. Why did I never notice his ugly boxer shorts before? ‘I was too trusting. I mean, who really falls for their boss and expects it to work out? It’s a fantasy, isn’t it? I should never have let myself believe it … but I was so lonely that being with him was better than nothing.’ I bite the inside of my cheek as tears threaten to fall again. I can’t possibly cry over him any more than I did yesterday.
She makes a noise of sympathy and I wonder if I shouldn’t have said it. She’s been amazing since my parents died, she’s stayed overnight at my flat on more than one occasion, she’s offered to let me stay with her and Lewis, she’s dropped plans just to sit in my living room and keep me company because I didn’t know what to do. I tried to carry on with normal life while this gaping hole was still inside me, and then Steve got promoted into my department at work and flirted outrageously and it was nice to feel something again, anything. Harmless fun, innuendo in professional emails, the odd stolen snog in the stationery supplies cupboard, a cheeky raised eyebrow in a meeting that set off a round of giggles. Looking back, I see I wasn’t the only one giggling. Other girls went to get a lot of supplies and it took them a mysteriously long time too. I knew that. And I still trusted him.
‘You seem remarkably okay with it?’ Chels ventures.
‘What other options are there? After everything that’s happened in the past couple of years, a man being so much of a pig that it’s an insult to pigs to compare them is the least of my problems. The office is welcome to Steve, I’ve got more important things to think about.’ She can probably hear the wobble in my voice, but there’s nothing I can do but forget about Steve. He doesn’t matter anymore because I bought a Christmas tree farm last night. Even thinking the words in my head seems unreal. It’s like something out of a Christmas movie …
‘What are you going to do with a Christmas tree farm?’
‘I had this crazy idea about growing Christmas trees on it …’
She laughs. ‘You know what I mean. I didn’t know you had any interest whatsoever in plants. Do you know the first thing about growing Christmas trees?’
‘Not really, but I can learn, can’t I?’ I sigh. ‘I know, okay, Chels? I know it’s crazy and I know I haven’t thought it through completely and I know I shouldn’t have done it, but …’ I trail off, unsure of what comes after that ‘but’ or why it’s there in the first place. Really the sentence should end at ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it’.
Whatever it is that I don’t say, Chels hears it anyway. ‘You know, when you called me earlier, I put my legal hat on and tried to remember everything I’ve learned from work about property law. I thought we’d spend this coffee picking through terms and conditions while you begged me to find a loophole to get you out of this contract, but I don’t need to, do I?’
I think about it for a moment because it’s what I expected too. Chels is an assistant at a big London law firm, she’s the perfect person to ask for legal advice if I wanted to back out of this. ‘I felt like I lit up last night,’ I say eventually. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt as alive as when I won that auction. I know it’s crazy, but something drove me to stay online and not talk myself out of it. I expected to regret it in the morning, but I don’t. I’m excited, and it’s the first time I’ve been excited about anything in a really long time. Or maybe I’m just jittery from the six bucketfuls of coffee I had before I left the flat.’
‘You do know how dodgy it is to buy a property without even seeing it? What about a surveyor? You don’t know anything about this place.’
I shrug. Honestly, I’ve never bought a property before, I don’t know the first thing about what I should have done before handing over that amount of cash, but it’s a bit late now. ‘There are pictures?’ My voice sounds feeble and pitifully hopeful even to my own ears.
She holds her hand out for my phone, and I slide my thumb up the screen and go to my most visited browser tab. Over the past week, the auction listing for the Christmas tree farm has been at the top of my internet history. I had a look as soon as I heard about it and spent a few minutes fantasising about owning a Christmas tree farm, instantly dismissed it as a silly daydream and went back to real life. But since then, whenever things have been slow at work or I’ve been on my lunchbreak, I’ve found myself pulling out my phone and going back there, staring at the photos that show fields and fields of uniform green trees, tall ones that tower above the photographer, medium ones, and tiny saplings planted row by row in fields of grass and earth.
Chelsea scrolls through my phone, expanding the pictures and squinting at them, reading aloud from the closed listing. ‘Twenty-five acres, five species of tree
