Chapter Twenty Seven

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Dear Diary,

Farley had never even heard of Café Bilberry. Can you believe that? He’s been parked up in his barge right next to Ellwood for ages now and he had never once been into the most legendary café ever. That’s where I dragged him to after the water display… It took us about twenty minutes of trekking through the wilds to get into the center of the village, Alvin at our heels the whole way.

As soon as we got there it felt like the entire population and his dog were staring at us. We might as well have been wearing a pair of giant green hats and hopping along on one leg for all the attention we got. God damn! I never knew people had that much interest in my love life. I mean, there was one woman who looked like she was about to drop her shopping and let her apples roll down the street.

I just love the way the people of Ellwood don’t even pretend not to be staring – no such thing as polite glances – just full on eye-popping stares. Farley noticed it too, he must have thought he had entered an alternate universe or something. He keep looking at me with a bemused face. I just muttered to him to keep walking and ignore them. What else were we supposed to do? Get a microphone set up in the village square and give them a speech on how we had met and how our relationship was going?

As soon as we got into Café Bilberry Jennifer, the old woman who owns the cafe almost dropped the teapot she was pouring and immediately said:

‘Where’s Leo?’ whilst staring at Farley.

‘He’s at home. And, yeah, hello to you too, Jen,’ I said.

The sarcasm was completely lost.

‘Uh huh,’ she replied, moving towards the kitchen. ‘Well, have a seat, have a seat. We’ll pop you two by the corner. Oh, and your little dog as well. I’ll just get you a few flowers, there’s no flowers on the table.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about the flowers,’ I said.

‘No!’ she said, ‘You must have flowers, it just, it just wouldn’t be the same…’

I rolled my eyes at Farley and he laughed. What he must have thought of all this I have no clue.

‘You’re sort of a celebrity?’ he said.

So sweet.

‘No, no, it’s not that,’ I said, moving towards the table in the corner.

‘What is it then?’ he said, still smiling.

‘I think they’re just not used to seeing me with anyone,’ I said.

‘With anyone? What do you mean?’ he said, as we both slid into the pine chairs.

‘Well, I guess they’re used to seeing me with Leo,’ I said.

‘Oh. Right,’ he said, still looking confused as he tied Alvin's lead to the leg of his chair.

‘Well, my brother and I… We hang out, a lot… We always have done,’ I said.

‘I see,’ he said.

‘Anyway,’ I said, trying to change the conversation as quickly as possible now we seemed to be out of the glare of Ellwood’s limelight. ‘What do you want to eat? The prawn sandwich is yum. It’s my favorite.’

‘Sounds good. I’m more of a pork pie man myself though,’ he said with a grin.

‘Pork pie? That’s not very civilised,’ I said.

‘Oh and a prawn sandwich is?’ he said.

‘Yeah, it’s a delicacy I’ll have you know,’ I said.

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