Page 47 of The Village Shop for Lonely Hearts

He looked at her with bleary eyes. ‘Are you feeling as bad as I look?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Good.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ she told him.

He smiled, although even that looked a bit painful. ‘Misery loves company,’ he said.

She looked at the tractor. ‘Well, here we all are,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’ He reached out and grasped the steering wheel. ‘I was just trying to work out how we can get it towed out of here. And I am completely and utterly clueless as to how to make that happen.’

He looked sad for a moment and Amber remembered their conversation in the pub about how restoring the tractor had been a dream of his late father’s.

‘Maybe it doesn’t need to go,’ she found herself blurting out.

He looked up at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘When I was down here the other night drawing, you know, in my, er, towel,’ she began, blushing furiously.

Josh grinned. ‘I remember,’ he said, his eyes gleaming.

She gulped and forced herself to carry on. ‘Yes, well, er, what I was doing was designing the shop. But there was something missing.’

‘You’re telling me that the thing missing in your wonderful professional design was a filthy broken-down tractor.’ He laughed. ‘Are you still drunk?’

‘No, I’m serious,’ she told him. ‘Look, if you really think that the engine can’t be fixed, then why not restore the bodywork instead. Paint the sides, polish the rest of it.’ She began to walk slowly around it, thinking out loud. ‘It could work. I think it could really work.’

‘Amber,’ he began to say.

But she held up her hand. ‘I know what you’re going to say! Look, let me show you the sketch so you can see for yourself.’ She looked at him and couldn’t stop herself from smiling with excitement at the idea.

However, Josh wasn’t smiling back. ‘Look, I don’t know about this kind of stuff,’ he said.

‘But I do,’ she told him, for once filled with confidence. ‘Just think. It’s different. It’s unique.’

‘It’s certainly something,’ he drawled, rolling his eyes.

Despite her hangover, Amber felt sure that she was on the right track. ‘It could make a really nice display.’ Her mind went back to Grandma Tilly’s old photographs and suddenly she was full of ideas. ‘We could get some of those crates at the back and place them around the tractor. Make it really farmhouse pretty. Country.’

She was getting more and more excited.

But Josh wasn’t joining in with her enthusiasm.

‘What?’ she asked him. ‘Why can’t we do this?’

‘Because it’s not going to change anything,’ he said, climbing down from the battered leather seat of the tractor. ‘Maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead. Or rather, before the bank closes us down.’

‘Don’t you think your mum would be upset about that?’

To her surprise, he shook his head. ‘This shop wasn’t her dream. It never was. This was just another selfish act from my dad, dragging us all out to the middle of nowhere. We were just following him.’

‘Maybe he was right,’ she told him.

‘Maybe he was wrong, as per usual, and now he’s not here and I am. Stuck here every day, watching all his dreams die.’ His voice caught. ‘Just like him.’

Amber stayed quiet. He was clearly upset and all she wanted to do was, surprisingly, give him a hug.