‘I always do it that way. Don’t tell me you’re a jam-first girl?’

Madi took a big bite, the jam dribbling out from under its cream topping and down her chin. ‘Just proves how different we all are,’ she said, swallowing her first mouthful and rootling in her bag for a tissue to clean her face. ‘We don’t even say it the same way. It’s scone like stone, not scon like gone! But there’s room for all sorts in this world. Go on, Donny, help yourself to one. I won’t tell your mum, if you don’t. And from the way Mr Bishop here is smiling, it looks as if we may have something to celebrate.’

Chapter 21

PRUE

When Prue heard noises down below and peered out of the bedroom window, she was pleased to see there was a young man making a start on cutting the grass. This could only be the famous Simon, who by some miracle had turned up the very day after she and Aaron had been talking about him.

Well, there was no time like the present to get out there and introduce herself, even if she was still wearing her pyjamas and hadn’t yet got around to brushing her hair. It was only when she was dressed and halfway down the stairs ten minutes later that her nerves began to kick in. She really wasn’t all that good at talking to complete strangers, and, to be honest, she hadn’t given any thought to exactly what she was going to say. ‘Hello, I don’t even live here but I have this great idea for transforming this overgrown tip into a garden’ did sound a bit presumptuous, if not totally mad.

She stopped on the middle landing, half hoping that Aaron might emerge from the door of his flat and go with her, but all was quiet, so she plodded on alone. There were muddy footprints across the floor down in the hall and the door to the back was propped open, a long electrical lead snaking its way out from the socket under the stairs. Prue could hear the drone of the electric mower getting louder and then softer as it struggled to work its way up and down the grass.

She went outside and stood for a few moments watching, the young man totally unaware of her presence behind him as he guided the mower around the bench at the base of the tree and carried on his way, with no attempt to move the bench or mow the patch of grass underneath. As he reached the end and turned back, flipping the trailing cable over his shoulder to keep it out of the way of the blades, he saw her.

He let go of the trigger on the handle and the machine shuddered to a halt. ‘Hello,’ he said, leaving the mower where it was and wiping his sleeve over his forehead as he walked towards her. ‘Can I help you?’

He was tall, fair-haired, about her own age or maybe a couple of years older, and his skin had that weathered look that so many of the men back home had, that marked them very much as someone used to working outdoors.