Day Six: Saturday - Whispers in the Orchard

 Saturdays are different. No work on the estate, which sounds like freedom until Mum inevitably finds me a “helpful” list of jobs to do around the house. Still, Saturdays hold one great consolation: I usually manage to find Adam.

Adam doesn’t work on the estate. He and his mother rent one of the flats in the old stables, and he’s something of a local legend—depending on who you ask. Some call him the oracle, because somehow he knows everything before anyone else does. Being on the right side of his gossip feels like having inside information at court. Being on the wrong side… well, let’s just say you’ll find out quickly enough when Mrs. Jenkins raises an eyebrow at you in the village shop.

Adam himself is a big, middle-aged man, not much to look at, but there’s something about him that still… bakes my muffin. (Yes, that muffin.) It all began one frosty morning last winter while I was walking the dog. We’d finally solved the problem of him chewing through his lead by buying a metal chain one, but the chain was brutal on cold fingers.

I must have looked particularly pathetic because Adam stopped, listened to my complaints, and casually suggested I make use of his trouser pockets—“lovely and warm,” he said with a grin—if I wanted to thaw my frozen fingers.

Reader, I declined. Politely. Like the good girl I’m supposed to be.

But on the walk home… my thoughts betrayed me. Let’s just say my muffin developed a familiar itch at the idea of those pockets, and I’ve been scratching it in secret ever since.

So now every Saturday I head to our usual meeting spot in the old apple orchard with more anticipation than I care to admit. Dreams, fantasies, schemes. I’ve even tested the waters: summer mornings in the tiniest shorts, the tightest T-shirts, playing the innocent nymph among the apple trees. And yet—nothing. Not a squeeze, not a nibble. Dumplings unpoked, muffin unsavoured.

And today? The same. Gossip, innuendo, the odd flirt. But no pocket-warming offers. No orchard-dark rendezvous. Just me, and the unshakable frustration that comes with it.

Still… a girl can hope. And the way Adam lingered today, just a moment too long, eyes darting toward the deeper shadows of the orchard—well. Perhaps next Saturday, something will finally give.