Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm. Jaimie Admans
‘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 ready for harvesting, dwelling included that needs renovation … Don’t you think “dwelling” is an odd way to describe a house?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I say because it’s something that’s been bothering me too, but by the time I’d decided I was going to go for it, it was too late to ask any questions. ‘It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Chels. Someone else was bidding as well, and I was going to lose it if I didn’t go for it then and there. How often do you see a Christmas tree farm up for sale and at a price you can afford? I made a split-second decision. It doesn’t matter what state the farmhouse is in. My flat’s not exactly posh, is it?’ I think of the dark stairwells that always smell of pee, and you count yourself lucky if pee is the only stench. It’s got to be better than that. ‘All right, so maybe it needs a bit of cleaning and decorating, but I can do that. There’s no point worrying about it now, I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
‘It’s a bit odd that they haven’t even included a picture of it …’ She looks up at my face and trails off.
All right, it is an odd way to describe the cute country farmhouse nestled among a garden of Christmas trees that I’m imagining, and it is unusual that there isn’t a picture of it. ‘Maybe they thought the fact it needs renovation might put buyers off? Maybe it’s got, like, boarded-up windows and stuff and they didn’t think it added to the appeal so they left it out of the auction listing?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ She sips her coffee in an attempt to hide the look of apprehension on her face. ‘I’m sure it’s not important. At least you know there’s a dwelling of some sort there. It probably just needs a coat of paint. I’ve got some spare Dulux in the shed if you want to take it with you?’
I love her for being supportive even though she thinks I’m a maniac. Even I think I’m a maniac. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I’m not sorry I went for it. I just hope I feel the same once I actually get there.
‘You might find your very own David Tennant!’ She squeals out loud at the thought and then ducks her head when several other customers turn to look at us.
Chelsea’s