I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,64

grew a hell of a plant from that small verbal seed, pun intended.’

‘Jack, I’m under no illusions that the unwittingly donated company name has been instrumental in my success, even if I did make Bridge mad enough to clobber me with a vegetable, and boy she really was furious. Admittedly I had just told her that I was thinking of walking out of my job on a whim because I wanted to give everything I had to a new business venture making vegetarian food – me, who couldn’t boil an egg.’ He laughed at the farcical nature of it, though it hadn’t been that funny at the time because it was the most insane of impulsive gambles. Plus, he’d always been of the belief that vegetarians were akin to circus freaks, along with the four-legged lady and the man with an arse for a head.

‘The name stuck in my mind, accompanied by her shrill delivery,’ continued Luke. ‘Every time I hit a stumbling block, I replayed her screaming it at me and it drove me on. I couldn’t bear her to think I’d fail.’

Jack could easily picture the scene. Bridge, he imagined, could make Medusa look reasonable.

‘She didn’t try to claim credit for the Plant Boy name, then?’ he asked Luke.

‘Course she did; just after we split up for the final time, she told me she was coming after me for three-quarters of everything it had made, and that would have been a lot to hand over because I was making money faster than I could bank it.’

Jack’s eyebrows raised. ‘Split up for the final time? How many times did you split up in all, then?’

‘I did hear that it takes couples about five or six false attempts before they make that decisive break. I think with us the number was about thirty-two,’ Luke said with a long drawn-out sigh.

* * *

‘How did you and Luke meet?’ asked Mary, sitting up in bed now, not even thinking about nodding off.

Bridge sat up also, her action mirroring Mary’s. ‘Remember I told you that I once worked in a plumbing factory in Derby? Well, the day after I’d twatted that boss for slapping my bum, I was walking to work rehearsing what I was going to say if I was pulled in by HR to explain my actions. It was winter, the ground was covered with snow, I wasn’t looking where I was going because I was preoccupied and I tripped, and this man appeared from nowhere with a smiley face and angelic mad hair.’

‘Luke.’

‘Yep. That was the start of it.’

‘And you say you gave him the idea for Plant Boy?’ Mary’s fascination was clear.

‘We’d been together about eight years. I was working for a company selling property by then. I took Luke to a works dinner with me and the vegetarian option was lazy, some disgusting boiled cauliflower with paprika sitting in what looked like wallpaper paste, everyone was complaining about it. At the time Luke was trying to find something to sink his teeth into work-wise. He wanted his own business, so he said, but if get up and go was dynamite, Luke wouldn’t have had enough to blow his own nose with. So I was joking when I said something on the lines of that he should look at making vegetarian food more interesting because there was obviously a major gap in the market. Luke had only just learned how to pour milk on his cornflakes, so I had no idea what I’d kick off with that remark.’ Bridge shook her head in the dark, remembering the scene she had walked into the day after. Luke had spent all the rent money on food they wouldn’t eat, and not only that but he’d skived the day off work to buy it. ‘To cut a long story short I ended up throwing some broccoli at him and told him to make his first million out of it. I called him Plant Boy. I was so fucking cross.’

‘Wow,’ said Mary. ‘Just wow.’

‘Yes, and he did make his first million out of a broccoli burger. You couldn’t make it up.’

‘All that from throwing a sprig of broccoli at him?’ Mary gave an impressed whistle.

‘It wasn’t a sprig, it was a massive head of it,’ said Bridge. She thought she’d fractured his eye socket, although bloody-mindedness had prevented her from giving him the slightest hint of apology or concern. But then, it had been a time when she thought all her softness had