Read Ivy Lane: Autumn: for Free Online

I’m afraid.’
    ‘Ahh.’ Her shoulders drooped; in fact, her whole body drooped. ‘He was so cute.’
    My face softened. He would have loved being described as cute.
    Hayley gazed at me and to my surprise I saw tears in her eyes. ‘He was so nice to me. Like a proper granddad.’
    The tone of her voice broke my heart. Was it so uncommon, I wondered, that someone was nice to her?
    Shivers ran down my spine as a gravelly voice vibrated in my ear:
You’ll never know if someone’s trustworthy until you trust ’em.
    I held my arms open, she stepped into them and we hugged silently, with our cheeks pressed together and our tears mingling.
    After a long moment she pulled away and we both wiped our tears away.
    I smiled at her. ‘OK?’
    She nodded. ‘Don’t know why I’m so cut up. But, you know.’ She shrugged.
    I nodded back. ‘Alf had that effect on people. Hey, fancy coming round to my house one day to help me bake a cake?’
    A little one-sided smile appeared and she nodded.
    I beamed back at her. ‘Safe,’ I said, raising my hand for a high-five.
    Hayley sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Seriously? No one does that any more.’
    I couldn’t help smiling. Perhaps Mr Cohen was right. If not quite a steadying influence, then certainly pathologically uncool. That would have to do.

Chapter 5
    I spent the week following Alf’s death in a bit of a daze and by the day of his funeral I was a mess.
    The day turned out to be an emotional journey round mood-swinging bends, down plunging ravines of melancholy and up teetering precipices of hysteria. And it
would
have to be on October the fourth. Looking on the bright side, at least it had kept me occupied for most of the day.
    I glanced round the crowded pavilion and then down at my watch. Four o’clock. There were still five hours to go before I would allow myself to go to bed. And even then I knew I wouldn’t sleep.
    The mood in the church had been sombre but pragmatic; Alf had had a good innings, it was what he would have wanted, he’ll be with his beloved Celia . . . and yes, that was all very true, but it didn’t stop me from feeling incredibly sad. The service had been much as I’d expected until the final song: the body left the church for the cemetery to the tune of ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Doctor and the Medics, which had me and Gemma chuckling and sobbing in equal measure.
    Most of the allotment crowd had been at the church. I nearly didn’t go but I was glad I did in the end. Hayley had begged me to go with her; she said that even though she’d only met Alf once, he’d made a big impression on her. He had that effect on people, I’d told her, remembering all the little stories he’d told me since I’d come to Ivy Lane. Hayley said that other than me and him, no one had been very welcoming. I’d flushed at this point; I had been just as guilty until I’d got to know her. She said the other people from Ivy Lane allotments shot her daggers and made her feel like she wasn’t wanted.
    Which was another thing.
    There had been more thefts at Ivy Lane. Some of Charlie’s butternut squashes had gone, Peter’s kohlrabi had vanished, stuff had been taken from Nigel’s greenhouse, Graham’s prize parsnips had all been plucked out and more of Brenda’s potatoes were missing, this time from her own plot. In fact, nearly everyone had lost something. It was only Liz and me who hadn’t been affected. If I hadn’t been quite so preoccupied, I might have taken umbrage at the oversight.
    The atmosphere of mistrust had driven me to distraction over the last week. I was almost glad Alf wasn’t here to see it; he would have been so disappointed in them all. But at least now that most of us had suffered some sort of loss, everyone had stopped accusing each other. Unfortunately, the finger of suspicion was now firmly directed at the community service team, which was ludicrous. Even if they had wanted to, sneaking basket-loads of fruit and vegetables into the