Julia Williams
The Summer Season

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

THE SUMMER SEASON. Copyright © Julia Williams 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Julia Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847560889

Ebook Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780007443246

Version: 2018-07-23

To the memory of

Alfred Thomas Clark 1890–1918

Ernest Ophir Clark 1896–1916

And Jemima Clark 1863–1944 who must have been so brave

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Edward

Edward dreams of Lily. She comes to him in the…

Edward and Lily

‘Edward, you never said you were coming!’ His mother rose…

Part One

Summer’s Lease

Chapter One

‘Come on, girls, time to get up! Important day today.’…

Chapter Two

Different sounds. That was the most unusual thing about living…

Chapter Three

It was dark, just the way she liked it. Kezzie…

Chapter Four

Kezzie poked her head out of her bedroom window. The…

Edward and Lily

Chapter Five

Late. Late again. Joel hated clockwatching, particularly when he had…

Chapter Six

Lauren pushed Sam up the road on her way back…

Chapter Seven

It was Kezzie’s first morning working at Joel’s. She’d set…

Chapter Eight

Lauren was feeling frustrated with Joel. While she was sympathetic…

Edward and Lily

Chapter Nine

After Lauren left, Joel and Kezzie dragged the trunk, paperwork…

Chapter Ten

Lauren was still smiling when she let herself in. As…

Chapter Eleven

‘So?’ said Troy, as Lauren came downstairs after she’d got…

Chapter Twelve

‘Girls, do you remember who I said was visiting today?’…

Edward and Lily

Part Two

Spring Fever

Chapter Thirteen

‘The girls go to bed at 7 p.m. sharp,’ said…

Chapter Fourteen

‘So, you’re going to trust me with the girls again?’…

Chapter Fifteen

‘So you think you’ve got New Horizons?’ said Eileen, at…

Chapter Sixteen

Kezzie timed her arrival at work the next day for…

Edward and Lily

Chapter Seventeen

Kezzie spent several days mulling over what Joel had said.

Chapter Eighteen

Lauren couldn’t stop thinking about Troy, as she pushed Sam…

Chapter Nineteen

‘Right, buckets and mops at the ready,’ said Lauren to…

Chapter Twenty

‘OK you guys, let’s get cracking.’

Edward and Lily

Chapter Twenty-One

The party was in full swing by the time Lauren…

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Ouch, my head hurts.’ Kezzie woke to find sun pouring…

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Come on, Sam,’ said Joel. ‘Here’s Nanny. We’re going to…

Chapter Twenty-Four

The next morning, Kezzie woke up feeling even worse than…

Edward and Lily

Part Three

Summer’s Promise

Chapter Twenty-Five

It wasn’t just Kezzie who was unimpressed by Lauren’s news;…

Chapter Twenty-Six

Joel snuck in to the Summer Fest meeting, late again.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The weeks were speeding by and already June was upon…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Joel didn’t look at Kezzie, but stared into the gathering…

Edward and Lily

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘So, have you been to Wimbledon before?’ asked Lauren, as…

Chapter Thirty

Kezzie flew round to Eileen’s house.

Chapter Thirty-One

Lauren woke up with a headache. She hadn’t slept well.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Joel had taken Sam to pick up his mum for…

Edward and Lily

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘This is looking great,’ said Eileen. She had come over…

Chapter Thirty-Four

‘Right, how are we doing?’ Eileen asked, as she arrived…

Chapter Thirty-Five

Joel was astonished to get back at 11.30 to find…

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kezzie stood in disbelief. Richard was actually standing before her,…

Epilogue

Edward

Edward

Flower Meanings

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books by Julia Williams

About the Publisher

Edward

Edward dreams of Lily. She comes to him in the garden, holding a bunch of pansies. It is summer and she wears a sun hat, which falls down her back.

‘Here, for you,’ she proffers, ‘to ease your heart.’ She laughs, and her long, dark curls fly loose down her back in the summer breeze. It is always summer, with the Lily of his dreams.

He reaches out to touch her, to feel her, to know that she is once more real and dear to him, as she ever was. As he does so, she scatters petals to the wind, and her touch on his hand is as light and insubstantial as the breeze. As soon as he grasps her, she is gone away from him, to a place he knows he cannot reach.

Edward dreams of Lily, and awakes to a cold hearth, a lonely old age and tears forming on his face. One day soon, he knows he will join her. Why can’t it be today?

Edward and Lily

1890–1892

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love …

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’

‘Edward, you never said you were coming!’ His mother rose to greet him as Edward came into the garden; she was sitting entertaining as was her wont. He hadn’t let her know and he had walked up from the station so as to surprise her. Now he was caught, left-footed, wanting to have her to himself, unwilling to share her with these strangers spilling out of the rose arbour on the veranda, which overlooked the garden, nonchalantly sipping tea, in the wilting summer heat.

‘I wanted to surprise you,’ he said. Her delight at seeing him was infectious, and he couldn’t keep up his feelings of discontent for long. He was here, back where he belonged at Lovelace Cottage, a larger residence than its name suggested, nestling in roughly an acre of land on the Sussex, Downs where they bordered Surrey. The air always seemed better here, purer, away from the fetid smells of London where he was studying.

‘Come, sit,’ she said, linking her arm in his, ‘you must eat, I insist.’

‘Sorry to break up your party, ladies.’ Edward bowed slightly, tipping his hat. He vaguely recognized some of his mother’s companions, worthy women of the parish all, but there were one or two new to him; he had after all been away for several months.

‘You haven’t met Mrs Clark, have you?’ his mother made the introduction. ‘She’s our new vicar’s wife. And we’re very pleased to have her. The church flowers have never looked more beautiful.’

‘Oh, that’s Lily’s doing, not mine,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘My daughter has a way with flowers. Always had, ever since she was a little girl. She works magic in the garden at the rectory I tell you.’

‘Then she has something in common with Edward,’ said his mother. ‘You know he studies Botany, don’t you?’

Botany – a subject his late and unlamented father had been very sneering about. John Handford had wanted his son to follow him into the family business – as an importer of exotic goods from the colonies – it was a business that had made his father rich enough to buy this beautiful house and gardens. But like his casual acceptance of Edward’s mother, his father hadn’t appreciated what he’d had. The house and gardens were merely signs of his success, possessions to be gloated over, just as Edward’s mother was. He’d never appreciated the beauty and the peace here, preferring the hurly-burly of city life that had always sustained him.

When he’d died five years previously, Edward’s father had left the house to Edward and the business jointly to Edward and his mother. Edward had sold his share of the business to his cousin Francis, who was more suited to it than he. His mother had retained her share, which provided an income on which she could live comfortably, while she ran the house in Edward’s absence. They were both much the happier for it.

‘Talking of Lily, where is she?’ said Mrs Clark. ‘It really is about time we were going.’

‘I could sense she was getting bored with our conversation,’ said Edward’s mother, ‘so I sent her down to the wood.’

The loosely styled ‘wood’ was an area of the garden that Edward had long wanted to change, but had so far lacked time and funds to do so. In the spring it was full of blue-bells, but the trees were old and creaking, and overshadowed the house too much in Edward’s opinion. He longed to cut them back and open up the space in the middle to make a more formal garden. It was his hope that after he had completed his studies, he would design gardens for the gentry, and he planned to start here.

‘I’ll go and fetch her,’ offered Edward, happy to escape the clacking of the women for a moment. The veranda steps led down to a green lawn, which fell away from the house for nearly two hundred feet. In the bottom left-hand corner the offending trees stood in a dip, and Edward made his way down to it. He couldn’t see any sign of anyone at first, so he strode through the trees to the clearing, where he caught sight of a tiny, dark-haired girl, framed in the sunshine. She was wearing a white muslin dress, and peering intently at the flowers in her lap. Long, brown curls tumbled down her back, and her sun hat was slung halfway down it. Her dress was covered in grass stains, and her hands looked rather grubby.

Edward’s first impression was of a small, and no doubt tiresome, child, and he immediately regretted his offer to fetch her. Then she looked up at him and his preconceptions fell right away. Her green eyes opened wide and her perfect heart-shaped mouth formed an ‘oh’ of surprise at seeing him, and her slender hands flew to her mouth, as she blushed prettily with embarrassment. This was no child, but a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Her radiant beauty was like nothing he had ever seen before, made more charming by her unconscious ignorance of it.

‘Hallo,’ she said, shaking the daisies from her lap, as she rose in some disarray. He could see that even standing she was small, but her petite frame couldn’t hide her womanly figure. He swallowed hard again. ‘Are you Edward?’

‘Yes,’ said Edward, still reeling from how wrong his first impression had been. ‘How did you know who I was?’

‘Oh, your mother talks about you all the time,’ said Lily. ‘It’s Edward this and Edward that. How did you know my name?’

‘Your mother sent me to fetch you,’ Edward offered.

‘Oh,’ Lily pulled a face. ‘I was enjoying it here. No doubt I shall be summoned back home to face Papa and be told off again for my hoydenish ways.’

She looked down ruefully at her stained skirt. A stray curl fell across her face and she absentmindedly pulled it back, reminding him again of the child he had thought her to be.

‘Are you often told off for being hoydenish?’ Edward said, laughing. There was something so lively and disingenuous about her, it was impossible not to be enchanted.

‘All the time,’ said Lily, with an impish look on her face. ‘I don’t know how it happens but I was so interested in seeing the plants, I hadn’t realized I had made such a mess of my clothes. Did you know you had heartsease growing in this wood? It seems such a shame to hide it. If it were my garden, I’d cut down some of these gloomy oaks and make a proper garden here, to show them off.’

‘Oh, would you now?’ Edward was caught between captivation and irritation. She really was the most enchanting creature he’d ever seen, but he rather resented her telling him what to do in his garden.

‘Oh dear,’ Lily looked stricken. ‘I shouldn’t have said that should I? Please forgive me; it’s none of my business what you do in your garden. It’s just that gardens are rather a passion of mine.’

‘Are they?’ said Edward with a smile. ‘They’re rather a passion of mine, too.’

‘Have I drawn it properly?’ Lily looked at him anxiously, as Edward came over to see how her work was progressing. In the six months since he’d left university, Edward had become used to having Lily for his assistant on his expeditions into the Sussex countryside to document the flora and fauna. Her mother, Lily confessed, had given up trying to keep her at home and teach her how to be ladylike. And though it was an unconventional career choice, learning about flowers was still an important part of Lily’s education, so Mrs Clark had been easily persuaded to let Lily come on these trips with him, so long as Sarah the housemaid accompanied them as a chaperone. As it happened, Sarah was rather fat and lazy, so more often than not she’d accompany them as far as the first field, and sit down to await their return. It meant that Lily and Edward were spending more and more time together, and Edward for one was not sorry.

‘It’s perfect,’ declared Edward, impressed by the delicacy of the poppy that Lily had painted. She had a natural affinity with plants, and a talent for drawing them technically. It was Edward’s plan to put together the material he had collected to make a small book about the plants of Sussex, in the hope that not only could he earn some money in his own right, but also build up a reputation as a serious botanist. His desire was to go abroad, to visit far-flung corners of the globe and make his reputation by bringing back exotic plants the like of which the world had never seen.

‘Hark at you,’ teased Lily when he told her. ‘Who do you think you are? A mighty explorer like Doctor Livingstone?’

‘No,’ said Edward, very serious – Lily’s laughter made him realize just how intensely serious he could be sometimes, ‘I just want to see the wonders that are out there. Imagine trekking through the Amazon, or scouring the deserts of the Sudan. There’s such a huge world out there, I want to go out and explore it. I want to find something new and different. I’d bring it back for you.’

‘Oh, would you, now,’ said Lily, her laughter putting him in mind of silver bells. It was impossible for him not to feel cheerful when he was with Lily. It was as though she made the sun shine. ‘Suppose I don’t want your smelly plant. It might be poisonous for all I know. Besides, why do you want to search for the exotic, when we have perfectly good flowers of our own here?’

‘I could take you with me,’ he said. ‘You could come as my assistant.’

‘Shocking shocking, man,’ she declared with a coquettish smile. ‘I suppose Sarah would have to accompany us as my chaperone then. I don’t think she’d make it past the first step into the jungle.’

Her pretty green eyes danced across her face, and her boisterous curls spilled out of the plait they were supposed to be in and tumbled down her back. Edward took her upturned chin in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips.

‘You don’t have to come as my assistant,’ he said. ‘You could come as my wife.’

A wife. To have a wife. That would be quite a thing. Edward turned the word over in his head. In a few short months Lily would be his, and nothing could ever take them away from one another. In the meantime, much to the amusement of his mother, he had finally started work on creating the garden he had always envisioned, but now with renewed purpose; it was to be a wedding present for Lily.

‘Look at this!’ he would cry every day, as he pored over plans and read books about the gardens of the past. He was transfixed by the idea of creating a knot garden in the Elizabethan style – a knot garden that would be a symbol of his love for Lily.

‘Look at what, Edward?’ his mother would retort with humour. She was pleased for him, he knew. She was very fond of Lily, and only desired her son’s happiness.

‘See here,’ Edward would say, pointing out the patterns in the Compleat Gardenes Practice, a reference guide from the sixteenth century, which he was using to give him ideas to utilize and improve upon. ‘The way they created geometric patterns and wove the plants together. I could do something similar. It will be a knot garden the like of which no one has seen. And Lily will love it forever.’

‘I’m sure she will,’ said his mother, smiling. ‘With such a genius behind it, how could she not?’

Edward ignored his mother’s gentle teasing, and concentrated on his plans. He designed the garden with careful precision. He would wall off the bottom part of the garden, where the old oak trees grew, and place the knot garden centrally, enclosed by gravel paths. From the edges of the paths to the wall would be flowerbeds full of perennials. For the knot garden itself he planned to use box with an interweaving of ivy and rosemary in heart shapes, the centrepiece to include the letters E and L. As was the current vogue he planned to fill up the gaps with bedding plants: heartsease, which was abundant in the area, forget me nots, gloxinia, but in each of the four corners, he left space to plant flowers for the children who would make their happiness complete. And so Edward toiled on his garden, planted in love with hope for the future; a garden he could be proud of forever.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Lily was clearly bursting with curiosity as he led her, blindfolded, down the garden.

‘Shh, it’s a surprise,’ said Edward. He had worked hard to keep secret from Lily what he had been planning over these last few months, pretending that the trees at the bottom of the garden had become unsafe, as a way of keeping her away from the garden. He hoped that she would love his garden as much as he did, having poured his heart and soul into the project. He felt it was quite possibly his best work to date, and maybe the best he would ever do.

‘I hate surprises,’ said Lily, ‘come on, please let me peep.’

‘No,’ said Edward firmly, ‘the sooner you cooperate the sooner you can see it.’

He took her by the hand.

‘Watch out, there’s a step here,’ he said, as he led her down into the garden. He pushed open the wrought iron gate he’d had specially commissioned. ‘Now you can see,’ he pulled back her blindfold, which was the scarf that tied her summer hat on her head.

‘Oh, Edward!’ Lily clapped her hands over her mouth in delight as she gazed on the fruits of his labour, a garden set out in love and hope. A knot garden of hearts weaving rosemary, ivy, forget me nots, and gloxinia, with borders of the heartsease which gave their village its name.

‘Do you like it?’

‘Like it? I love it!’ She danced excitedly down the paths. ‘Did you do this for me?’

‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘It’s a love knot garden, dedicated to my one true love.’

‘Edward, I don’t know what to say.’ Lily came back to him and threw her arms around his neck.

‘Just say you love me,’ said Edward, with feeling.

‘Always,’ said Lily, ‘always.’

He held Lily fast, and kissed her on the top of her head. Then he led her to the far end of the garden, where they sat on the wrought iron bench he had had specially made, with their initials on. Never had he felt more happy and content. This would always be their special place. A garden to represent their married life, a life that he knew, with Lily by his side, would be well worth the living.

Part One

Chapter One

‘Come on, girls, time to get up! Important day today.’ Lauren came softly into her twin daughters’ bedroom, to watch two tousled heads sleepily awake and register their surroundings. Two brand new uniforms hung over the end of the identical pine beds, and her daughters slowly emerged from underneath their matching pink princess duvet covers. She drew the Cath Kidston inspired floral curtains, and looked out on the little garden that belonged to her rented cottage. It had a small patch of green for the lawn, and her pots of lobelia, geraniums, busy lizzies and alyssum were still flowering in a tumbledown fashion. It was homely and neat, pretty much the way she liked it. The warm, early morning sun belied the promise of the September day. It was going to be another hot one.

Lauren turned back to look at the girls and her heart contracted with a deep spasm of love. Four years old already and starting school for the first time. Where had all that time gone? It seemed only minutes since they’d been born three weeks prematurely, on a baking hot August day. Had they been born on their due date, she’d have had a whole extra year with them. As it was they were going to be among the youngest in their class.

‘Come on, girls,’ she said again, then went to sit on Izzie’s bed and tickle her under the duvet. Izzie was usually the slower of the sisters (and being asthmatic, the one who gave Lauren most cause for concern) and sure enough her giggles brought Immie immediately over to join in the fun. The three of them romped about on the bed for a bit, laughing, before Lauren said, mock sternly, ‘Come on, time for school.’

By the time she’d helped them on with their clothes, and got them downstairs to the cosy kitchen, with its wooden pine table and cheerful mugs on mug racks, Joel had arrived with Sam – on time for once.

‘Big day today, girls,’ he said, as Izzie and Immie came to show off their school uniforms. They looked so sweet in matching grey pinafores (a size too big for them, to allow for plenty of growing room), crisp white shirts, and green cardigans. Their bright white socks were pulled high above their knees, their black Mary Jane shoes positively sparkled and their fair hair was tied up in identical ponytails, which by the end of the day Lauren was fairly sure would be coming undone.

They smiled shyly at Joel, as he popped Sam in the high chair, and watched them parade their brand new green book bags proudly in front of him.

‘You wouldn’t mind taking a photo of the three of us, would you?’ said Lauren. ‘Only, it would be nice to have a memento.’

‘No problem,’ said Joel, proceeding to snap away. ‘Are you excited, girls?’

‘Yes,’ they chorused.

‘I should say so,’ said Lauren, ‘I don’t think they slept a wink all night.’

‘Ouch,’ grimaced Joel. He looked at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I’d really better dash.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Lauren clocked his sober grey suit, and kicked herself for forgetting what day it was. ‘Good luck, today. Hope it’s not too grim.’ She touched him awkwardly on the arm, not quite sure whether the gesture would be appreciated. After Claire had died, their mutual grief had brought them very close. Too close she felt at times. Sometimes it had felt a little too intense, and now she tended to stand back more.

Joel gave her a tight, tense smile, his dark eyes brooding. His face was sombre and sad. ‘It has to be done,’ he said, before kissing Sam on the cheek. ‘Have a great day, girls.’

Poor Joel. Thirty-five was far too young to be widowed. It was tough on him being alone with Sam, she knew that. That was why, in the main, Lauren cut him some slack when he took her for granted, which he invariably did. Lauren felt she owed it to Claire to look out for Joel; he needed support, and she was going to give it, even if he didn’t always make it that easy. She felt a familiar spasm of grief for Claire too. A year on, and part of her still expected to see Claire pitch up at the cottage as she had done every day with Sam before her sudden and shocking death.

Lauren sent the twins up to brush their teeth, while she cleared up the breakfast things. She stacked the girls’ matching Belle plates in the dishwasher, next to her favourite Cath Kidston mugs and bowl set (a present from Mum, Lauren could never have afforded them). She loved her kitchen, which had been extended to make room for a dining table. It was cosy, and full of clutter. The children’s toys – a magnetic easel, a plastic car and a small table and chairs set – competed for space with her pine table, washing machine, dishwasher and fridge freezer. Though Lauren didn’t have quite as much work surface as she’d have liked, and what she had was crammed full of cookery books, this was her favourite room in the house – the real heart of her home.

Lauren lifted Sam out of the high chair, and put him into the buggy she kept here for him. She felt stupidly nervous for the girls, even though they had been going to the nursery part of the village school for nearly a year. But still. Proper school. True, being the youngest in the year, they were only part time to begin with. But before she knew it, they’d be gone all day. No longer would she have them to herself in the afternoon. If she didn’t have Sam still to look after, the days could be long and lonely. Just like her nights …

A sense of melancholy came over her as she walked down the front path, with its familiar white picket fence, and creaky iron gate. The twins were holding on to either side of the buggy, chatting away nineteen to the dozen about what was going to happen in their day. They didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. It was only Lauren who felt a vague sense of loss, with the realization that after today nothing would be quite the same again. She pushed the buggy down her road, waving hello to her neighbour Eileen, who was out walking her dog, and turned right onto the main road that led down the hill to the centre of Heartsease, where the girls were starting at the village school.

The September sun was still warm, and the day was shaping up to be one of those last blasts of summer lazy days, which you had to cherish before autumn took hold. But there were small signs of the approaching autumn. The trees were beginning to turn, the first conkers were beginning to ripen, and a gentle breeze blew a few leaves softly to the ground. It was days like these she remembered most from the period after Troy left her, and this time of year had remained bitter-sweet to her ever since. Just as she was getting used to the shock of motherhood, she’d had the bigger shock that she was going to be doing it alone. And now more then ever, sending her beautiful daughters off to school for the first time, she wished that it wasn’t so.

Joel got in the car with a heavy heart, turned left out of Lauren’s road, and drove back up the hill past his house and out of Heartsease across the Downs, towards the neighbouring town of Chiverton. He drove down a windy country road, arched with trees, their leaves beginning to shimmer with an autumn hue. He loved the countryside here and it was one of the many reasons, when his mum had inherited Lovelace Cottage and suggested he bought it from her, that he had. Even Claire, who’d at first been reluctant to leave London, and ‘live in the sticks’ as she’d put it, had agreed that when you came to the brow of the hill and looked out on the Sussex countryside, the views were stunning.

Claire. His heart contracted painfully. A year ago today. Could it only really be a year? A year and a day ago he had been so happy. So rich and fulfilled. With everything in life he needed. But he didn’t know it then, didn’t appreciate it at times, maybe didn’t even want it. It was only after he lost Claire, and his world came crashing down around him, that he belatedly realized how truly lucky he had been.

Today was going to be a painful and difficult day. Joel had promised to go with Claire’s parents to her grave, in the cemetery on the other side of Chiverton, and then for lunch. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get through another heartbreaking day with them. It wasn’t that Marion and Colin were unkind or unsupportive, far from it. Although they lived over an hour away, they would help out with Sam at the drop of a hat, and they had been an immense source of strength to him. They had shown him compassion even though they were grieving too. No, it wasn’t Marion and Colin who would make this day hard. It was Joel’s guilt about what he’d done, and how he’d let Claire down.

Every day for the last year he had said sorry to her. Every day. And today, at the graveside, he would lay freesias, her favourite flowers (which he’d bought at great expense) and say sorry again. But it was never ever going to be enough.

Joel blinked back tears as he arrived at the graveyard. It was a bright, warm September day, unlike the day of Claire’s funeral, which had been the bleakest, rainiest autumn day he could remember in his life. The church had been packed, and so many people had been so kind and thoughtful. But Joel had barely been able to acknowledge their kindness, responding like an automaton, feeling only a numbness that he now realized must have been deep jolt. The suddenness of Claire’s death still shocked him, even now, a year later. How could someone as beautiful and alive and vibrant as Claire be there one day, and not the next? He’d be trying to make sense of that till the day he died.

Joel was pleased to see he had arrived earlier than Claire’s parents. Selfishly, he wanted a bit of time on his own, for his own private grief. He walked up to her grave and felt again the sudden shock of seeing her name there:

Claire Harriet Lyle

1975–2010

Loving wife, mother and daughter

Taken from us too soon

He never got over the unreality of it. Nor, did he imagine, he would ever get used to it. Claire should be with him now, watching Sam learning to walk and talk, helping Joel restore the house and gardens as they had planned. She shouldn’t be here, on this Sussex hillside, buried six feet under. He felt a sudden sharp bolt of anguish, the pain of it almost taking his breath away. Claire was lost to him, and there was no saying sorry now.

Kezzie sat in the middle of half-packed boxes, in her tiny lounge crying. She felt like she’d been sitting in the middle of boxes crying forever, ever since she’d made the decision that she had to leave. Only weeks ago, at the height of summer, she’d been excitedly packing up to move out of her small flat in Finsbury Park and move in with Richard. The gardening course she’d completed finished, the redundancy from her much hated job in web design accepted. A whole new life lay before them. She would design the gardens, Richard, the architecture. Together they would take Chelsea and Hampton Court by storm. And now that would never happen. The last month of her life had been the most painful, confusing and ridiculous time she’d ever known.

Should she ring Richard again? Kezzie sat on her heels in the chaos of her lounge and thought about it. She was sorely tempted. It had been nearly a week since their last painfully awkward conversation. Somehow she clung to the hope that maybe he could find it in himself to forgive her for what she’d done. She flinched as she saw the cold contempt in his eyes at their last meeting, heard him say over and over: ‘You’ve let me down, Kezzie. I can’t trust you.’ That scene kept playing like it was on a hideous time loop, over and over in her brain. However much she tried to shut it out, there it was every time she closed her eyes. A reminder of what she had done, and what she had lost.

But all that ringing and texting Richard in vain were making her feel slightly unhinged, and even Flick, the kindest and most supportive of best friends, had gently pointed out she was losing dignity in trying to win him back.

‘You have to give him time, Kez,’ she said. ‘You’re going to lose him for sure this way.’

Kezzie knew she was right, but the temptation late at night to email him after a glass of red, or ring him, just to hear his voice, had proved too much for her time and time again. The last occasion had been so mortifiyingly cringe-making – Richard had answered saying, ‘Kezzie, I have my parents here, please don’t make a scene’ – that she’d hung up straight away. At that moment she decided she was losing the plot big time, and needed to escape, somewhere, anywhere, so she wouldn’t chance running into Richard, and where she wouldn’t be reminded of him, on every corner.

It was then that Aunt Jo had stepped in. Arriving on an unexpected flying visit to London, and seeing the state of her beloved niece, Jo had declared that Kezzie needed a bolt hole. ‘And as luck would have it, hon, I can offer you my place.’

‘What do you mean?’ Kezzie had asked.

‘I’m off round the world for a year with Mickey,’ said Jo, referring to her latest toy boy. ‘You remember him, don’t you? We’re going to find ourselves, and maybe get married in Thailand.’ She giggled excitedly. ‘You can stay at my cottage for as long as you want – stay all year if you need to, babe.’

‘Really?’ Kezzie gulped through her tears. It sounded like the best solution she could think of. She had to get away from London, from the car crash that had been the end of her relationship, and the mess she’d made of everything. She needed time and space to regroup, and sort herself out. Staying here moping after Richard was doing her no good whatsoever. He was never coming back to her, and all she was doing was prolonging the agony.

So here she was shoving things in boxes. Every little thing reminded her of the last two brilliant years with Richard, from the framed certificate stating she’d passed the Landscape Gardening Course she’d taken at his suggestion, to the picture of the two of them walking in the Lakes earlier in the year, when he’d asked her to move in with him. And then there were the gardening gloves he’d given her at Christmas, and the silver earrings, which had been a birthday present. In London, all she could think about was Richard. Escaping was the only chance she stood of getting over him.

She picked up her phone and rang Richard’s number. This was the last time she’d do this. The very very last time.

His answer phone kicked in. ‘Hi there, Richard isn’t here right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you later.’ She kept doing this, just to hear his voice. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew it didn’t do any good. It was time she stopped and moved on.

Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the telltale wobble in her voice, she said, ‘Hi, Richard. This is Kezzie. I’m leaving town. You won’t hear from me again.’

She put the phone down, trembling, tears spilling over her cheeks. But it was done. Kezzie surveyed the mess of the room she was in, and slowly started to rationalize the boxes. There wasn’t any other option. The summer was over, and autumn had begun.

Chapter Two

Different sounds. That was the most unusual thing about living in the country, Kezzie decided. It wasn’t dead silent, as she’d always imagined. The previous evening, the birds had been making a right racket in the hedgerow at dusk, and she’d heard bats squeaking in the dark. This morning she’d been woken by a very early morning dawn chorus. It was still relatively light in the mornings, though approaching mid September, and having left London’s gloomy weather, it had cheered her up no end to get up and watch a very pink sunrise give way to a bright and sunny September morning.

It had taken her all day to pack up her stuff in the van she’d hired, drive down to Jo’s house in the pretty village of Heartsease on the Surrey/Sussex border which she’d fallen in love with on previous visits, and unpack it all. Kezzie knew she could have asked Flick and the others to help but she was too proud. She’d told Flick about the split, of course she had, but she still felt sore and embarrassed about the reasons for it. She couldn’t face actually telling anyone, let alone her best friend, what had really happened. And part of her need for escape was a need to re-evaluate every aspect of her life: her drinking and drug taking, and slight feeling of always living on the edge. Until she had met Richard that had been all she’d wanted, and she’d revelled in shocking him, and teasing him about being so straight-laced. But since their break-up, she’d become uncertain about her lifestyle and wondered whether she was right to always be so frenetic and spontaneous. It used to feel fun. Now she wasn’t sure. And sadly, Flick and her friends were part of all that. Maybe if she was away she could unpick what and who she was, and work out where her life went from here. Maybe.

First things first though. Kezzie realized last night, before she fell into bed, that she’d forgotten to buy milk and teabags. Jo, a caring and thoughtful individual in many ways, hadn’t thought to leave any groceries in the fridge. Mind you, as Jo appeared to have taken off on her voyage of self-discovery with one very small backpack, a few necessities, and had yet to email, perhaps that wasn’t all that surprising.

Kezzie stretched and slowly got out of her aunt’s big, cosy bed. Jo had modelled it on a Bedouin tent and built a frame above it to hang curtains from. Kezzie felt like she was emerging from a cocoon; it was the perfect bed to hide herself away in. She threw on a dressing gown and padded downstairs to the bathroom, which led off from the kitchen. Even on a warm day like today it felt chilly and slightly uninviting, with its flagstone floor and wooden door, which didn’t quite reach the floor. That was going to be draughty in winter. The bathroom was the one room Jo hadn’t got round to modernizing, and the shower was erratic to say the least, spewing out boiling water one second and icy cold the next. Kezzie spent the shortest time possible in there, got dressed quickly and left the cottage. On the way down the little lane she passed a middle-aged woman walking a Border Collie.

‘Would you mind telling me where I could buy some teabags?’ Kezzie asked.

‘Turn right out of the Lane, go down the hill, and there’s a little shop on the corner of Madans Avenue and the High Street. It’s less than five minutes. Or if you have time, walk right to the end of the High Street, and you’ll find a small local supermarket, Macey’s, which has most things you need.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Kezzie.

‘You must be Jo’s niece,’ said the woman. ‘Eileen Jones. I live across the road.’

‘Oh, hi. Kezzie Andrews,’ said Kezzie. ‘Nice to meet you.’

She set off down to the shop, taking in the wide sweep of the road lined with broad oaks and beeches as it wound its way down to the picturesque little village at the bottom of the hill. It was indeed as Eileen said, only five minutes away. Ali’s Emporium declared the sign above the door, though in truth it was more of a minimart than an emporium. Still, it sold tea and milk, though not the herbal variety.

‘You must be Jo’s niece,’ smiled the man behind the counter, who was presumably Ali. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Yes, I am,’ said Kezzie. ‘Er, nice to meet you.’

She made her way home, shaking her head with amusement. She’d been here less than twenty-four hours and already said hello to more people than she did on her street in London.

After a reviving cup of tea, Kezzie decided to go for a walk up to the Downs. She’d only been here a few times before, and remembered going for a lovely walk with Jo ages ago. She fancied a quick blow away of the cobwebs, before she got down to doing stuff she needed to, like getting on with unpacking, and sorting out her entire life. It was all very well living on her redundancy, but Kezzie knew she’d go mad with boredom if she didn’t find something constructive to do soon. Much as she hated it, at least she still had enough contacts to get her some freelance web design work, if the gardening didn’t take off straight away.

She turned right out of the house and made her way up the Lane, till she came to a fork in the road. Ahead of her was a farm, and to the left was a path which presumably led back down to the village. She struck off up to the right, figuring that would keep her walking in the right direction. She’d been walking for about five minutes up a tree-lined path, the trees laden with orange and yellow leaves, through which the sun shimmered and shone, when she came across an attractive, high, redbrick wall. Kezzie wondered idly what lay on the other side, and coming to where the wall turned a corner at the main road, she saw there was an old oak tree, with roots that were breaking up the bottom of the wall. It had a bough low enough to tempt her to swing up to see what was hidden behind the wall.

‘Wow.’ Kezzie was stunned. She had assumed it was going to be someone’s back garden, but was taken aback by what she saw. It was a sunken garden, with steps and a metal gate at one end, a square in the middle, surrounded by gravel paths and a rusty old bench near to where she was. At one time it had clearly been well maintained; the ivy, rosemary and box that now straggled over the paths, still resembled some kind of pattern, but they were now so choked with weeds it was hard to make out what it was. She swung herself slowly down. What an amazing place. A proper secret garden. She walked a little further up the hill and followed the wall round a corner, to where she saw a large, derelict-looking redbrick house. Its high windows looked soulless and empty, the paint peeling off them, and the curtains faded and old. The front door was painted a dark green, and had a charming stained-glass pattern at the top, but several of the glass panes were cracked, and the privet bushes and wisteria planted in front of the two bay windows were crowding over the cracked garden path and obscuring the doorway. The house looked unlived in and neglected, much like the garden.

‘What a shame,’ said Kezzie out loud. ‘Someone should do something about it.’ Someone? Kezzie thought back to her early guerrilla gardening days, when she, Flick and Flick’s boyfriend, Gavin had called themselves the Three Musketeers and taken it upon themselves to restore gardens that were uncared for. She’d been looking for something to do. She might just have found it.

Monday morning, and Joel was running late. It had been over a week since the painful graveside meeting with Claire’s parents. As usual, their kindness to him made him feel more fraudulent then ever, and he’d felt too guilty to take Marion up on her kind offer of babysitting at the weekend. Instead, he’d asked Eileen Jones to do it, and then felt guilty that he was depriving Marion of seeing her grandson. His evening out at the local pub, the Labourer’s Legs, had gone a bit awry. In a moment of madness he’d agreed to go out for a drink with Suzanne Cawston, a cashier at Macey’s, who clearly fancied him, as well as feeling sorry for him. Why he’d said yes he didn’t know, but he found himself sitting in the pub with her, under Lauren’s scornful eyes, as she poured him a pint. Though she had never said anything, Lauren seemed to him to be the only person who disapproved of him dating other women – or was it that looking at her reminded him of Claire?

Joel quickly established he and Suzanne had nothing in common – at twenty-two she was far too young for him – and not wanting to be rude, had drunk far more than was good for him. After that he ended up having an embarrassing fumble in the dark, outside the pub – Suzanne’s comment ‘We can’t go home, my mum and dad are in,’ reminding him how little he should be doing this – before he made his excuses and fled back home. He ignored her plaintive cry of, ‘We will see each other again won’t we?’ as he made his way up the hill.

Sunday had been spent visiting his mum. He never mentioned these women to Mum. He suspected she guessed something of his private life but she never asked him, unless he brought it up first. He’d taken her and Sam out for lunch in a cosy restaurant in nearby Chiverton, where she lived in a warden-assisted flat, and as usual, she’d cooed over her grandson. It was only towards the end of the meal, she’d tentatively asked, ‘Joel, are you OK? Only you’re very quiet. I know last week must have been so hard for you.’

‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘More than fine. It’s been hard, but we’re getting through it, aren’t we, Sammy?’ And he tickled Sam’s chin, and ignored the hand Mum held out in front of him. He didn’t refer to it again, till he dropped his mum home, gave her a kiss, and told her she worried too much.

But later when he got home, and put Sam to bed, he’d had a whole evening to brood. As he sat alone sipping a whisky, idly flicking through the TV channels in the lounge he’d started decorating just before Claire died, and had still not finished, he knew that his mum was right to worry about him.

The house weighed heavily on him – what had once seemed an exciting lifetime’s project now felt like a burden. Without Claire to share the work with him, without her to give him something to aim for, restoring this old, falling down wreck of a house seemed a pointless exercise. His enthusiasm for restoring it had died with Claire. And as for the secret garden, which had excited him so much when he and Claire had first got here, he hadn’t been in it for months. Even his great great grandfather’s old writing desk (left to him with the house), which he’d started to strip down and lovingly planned to restore, sat abandoned and unfinished. He felt in limbo. Unable to go back, unable to move on. He was very very far from all right.

Matters didn’t get any better the following morning. Sam wasn’t being cooperative and he’d got porridge all down the top that Joel had just put him in. Joel had ended up shouting, and of course Sam burst into tears, which made him feel terrible. What kind of monstrous dad shouted at their seventeen-month-old? As ever the thought – what would Claire do? – floated in his head. He sighed, got Sam changed, and then himself when he realized that he was smeared with baby porridge. Seeing the time he raced to the car, strapped Sam in, and drove like the clappers down the hill to Lauren’s house.

He got on well with Lauren, and she’d been a fantastic source of strength to him after Claire died. She had been one of the few people he could face being around in those early weeks. She didn’t ask anything of him, or besiege him with questions about how he was doing, but was quietly supportive, and they had grieved for Claire together.

Their childcare arrangement (fortunately already in place before Claire died) was a good one, but he often felt wrongfooted when he was with Lauren. It was one thing to constantly be home late for an uncomplaining wife, quite another to face Lauren’s wrath for the hundredth time, when he’d got stuck working late. He did his best, and for the most part the small charity where he worked accommodated him, but his life was now full of tense compromises between work and home. He was always joking that he was like the wife of the office, always the one rushing home early for the children. And only now was he beginning to realize quite how tough things had been for Claire when she first went back to work.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, as he thrust Sam into Lauren’s waiting arms. The twins peeped mischievously from behind her, already in their school uniforms. How did she do that? Joel wondered. She had two of them, it wasn’t yet 8 a.m., and they were both spick and span and ready. Even after a year he still felt inadequate when it came to the domestic side of his life.

‘No worries,’ said Lauren lightly, but he knew her well enough to tell she was irritated. Though she generally showed him nothing but sympathy and kindness, Lauren wasn’t above putting him in his place from time to time. She had pointed out on more than one occasion that she wasn’t his slave, and he really needed to take more responsibility for things. She’d never quite said, ‘Just because Claire put up with you, there’s no reason why I should,’ but Joel sometimes felt sure it must be on the tip of her tongue, and he knew he deserved it. He knew he should make more effort for Lauren. She was great with Sam, and filled the gap Claire left behind as well as she could. Joel never meant to take her for granted, but life was so overwhelming sometimes he leant on her a bit too heavily. Lauren loved Sam almost as much as he did. He was immensely lucky to have her.

Lauren sighed as she shut the door behind Joel. He could be so frustrating at times, it nearly drove her demented. He appeared to have no concept of time at all, or appreciate that her life didn’t just revolve around him and Sam. For the most part, Lauren felt really sorry for him – it was hard for him having to bring up a child alone, and she was sympathetic. But lately, she had also begun to feel resentful. She’d been left literally holding the babies and had had no choice but to get on with it. Everyone in Heartsease thought that Joel was an amazing dad and he was, but Lauren also knew from things Claire had let slip that he had been quite unhelpful when Sam was born. So while she was sympathetic to his situation, somehow she couldn’t quite shift her feelings of irritation.

‘It must be difficult for him, I guess,’ Claire would say, to Lauren’s annoyance. Much as Lauren had loved Claire, it drove her mad the way she constantly forgave Joel, when Lauren felt he was being so unsupportive. Claire. Lauren felt the loss of her friend keenly. The grief could still come suddenly like a deep punch to the stomach. Claire had put up with Joel’s vagaries because she loved him, Lauren should probably try and do the same.

But Lauren had found it difficult to cope with the scandalously short time it had taken Joel to start dating other women. Claire had barely been in her grave, or so it seemed, when Lauren had spotted him with the first one in the Labourer’s Legs, where she worked some evenings. True, on that occasion, Joel had been pounced on by Jenny Hunter, the village slapper, who’d been known to fell lesser men at five paces, so he didn’t have much chance. But Jenny had been swiftly followed by Mary Stevens, the Year One teacher at the village school, and Kerry Adams, who ran the chemist’s.

If she hadn’t known better – Joel had cried on her shoulder more than once in the early weeks after Claire’s death – Lauren might have thought he didn’t care about Claire at all. Only the other Saturday – a few days after Claire’s anniversary – Lauren had spotted him all over Suzanne Cawston. His behaviour exhausted her patience with him. If the boot had been on the other foot, Claire would never have done that, and Lauren felt indignant on her friend’s behalf that Joel should apparently have replaced her so lightly. But she didn’t want to fall out with him about it. Not only did she love looking after Sam, the bottom line was she needed the money.

And Joel was good to work for in many ways. He always compensated Lauren financially when he was late, but she resented the time taken away from her own girls, and hated the stress-inducing moments when the clock was ticking and she was going to be late (again) for the pub. It was like having all the disadvantages of marriage without the sex.

‘Come on, Sammy, let’s have a cuddle before we take the girls to school,’ she said. Sam, she’d noticed, loved to be tickled and played with in the mornings. She wondered if it was because Joel didn’t quite know how to – although for all her carping, Joel was clearly devoted to Sam, he just hadn’t had much practice looking after him, and it showed.

‘Maybe we should teach him, eh?’ said Lauren, and she was rewarded with a great big smile as she tickled Sam’s chin. ‘Get that silly daddy to see what he’s been missing.’

Chapter Three

It was dark, just the way she liked it. Kezzie had forgotten the sheer dizzying excitement of guerrilla gardening. She felt the familiar frisson of being out on a moonlit night, in the middle of nowhere. Ever since she’d stumbled across the decaying garden a couple of weeks earlier, she’d been determined to make a statement to whoever the owner of the garden was. Presumably someone must own it. Shocking, how such a beautiful place could be left so neglected. Whoever it belonged to, clearly didn’t value it as they should.

She found the oak tree, from the which vantage point she had peered into the garden last time she was here. She hooked herself up, heart pounding, before swinging her legs from the tree to the wall, and jumping down into the garden. She rummaged round in her bag for her torch, then decided she didn’t need it. The moon was so bright she could clearly make out the contours of what had once been an orderly and well-managed garden. Overgrown with weeds it might be now, but it was obvious that once upon a time someone had lavished a lot of care and attention here.

On the far side was an ornate iron gate, with steps leading down into the garden. There were borders running round the edges, which were full of weeds creeping over the paths, and in the square in the centre was a tangled mass of ivy and rosemary and box. She spotted the rusting iron bench near where she had landed, so she put her rucksack down on it while surveying the scene. An owl hooted nearby, startling her, and she could hear the sound of foxes fighting, not far away. It gave an added thrill to what she was doing. She felt like Rapunzel’s dad, stealing lettuces in the dark. Any minute now an ugly witch would appear.

She opened her rucksack and pulled out the garden clippers, fork and trowel she’d brought with her. The garden was hideously overgrown, but she could make out an ancient hedge – box? Probably, it looked like it had been a border once – beneath the weeds. Taking her clippers, she started to hack back at the brambles and convolvulus threatening to strangle it. As she worked, she tried not to think about the night she’d done this in London – the night she’d met Richard, the night her life had changed forever. If she hadn’t broken into the rough patch of ground by the posh gated community, where he lived in Clapham, and planted daffodils, she’d never have met him at all. He was on his way home and he’d accused her of vandalism, until she pointed out that you couldn’t vandalize something you were trying to improve.

A couple of months later, when the daffodils were blooming and he’d found her admiring her handiwork, he’d grudgingly admitted that she was right and her efforts had transformed a scrubby patch of ground into a little haven of green in the city.

‘You should do that for a living,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a way with plants.’

‘I’ve got a job,’ Kezzie had replied defiantly, not wanting to admit that designing logos for a company that advertised on the web wasn’t really fulfilling her. It turned out that Richard was an architect specializing in garden design, and he encouraged her to train up in her spare time. One thing led to another, and before long she’d found herself agreeing to move in with him, and giving up her job, once she’d finished her course in landscape gardening. Of course, none of it had worked to plan, her job giving up on her, before she had a chance to resign, and then losing Richard before she’d moved in. Something she had simply never thought would happen …

Richard had been a revelation to her. He was completely unlike any of the boyfriends she’d had before. Kezzie had had the unfortunate habit of spending most of her teens and her early twenties attracted to the wrong kind of guy, and after a disastrous liaison with a small-time drugs dealer had forsworn men, until just before her thirtieth birthday when she’d met Richard.

For starters it was unusual for Kezzie to be dating someone with a job – let alone someone like Richard in his late thirties, with such a high-powered job. Not only that, with a failed marriage behind him (‘She left me, sadly,’ he’d explained to Kezzie that he’d have done anything to make the marriage work, but his ex had been equally determined to move on), Richard also had a fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily. Kezzie didn’t even know anyone who had a baby, let alone a full grown teen. That aspect of things hadn’t been ideal, Emily being as unkeen on Kezzie as Kezzie was on her, but Kezzie had been overawed by the trendy, open-plan loft living apartment Richard had owned near Clapham Junction and ashamed to take him back to her small rented flat in Finsbury Park. But Richard was totally unfazed by the differences between their lifestyles – or some of them at any rate, later on it would be all too clear that he disapproved of the drug taking and late night partying – but to begin with he’d said, ‘We’re not that different, you and I.’

‘Really?’ Kezzie was incredulous. She stared at his fair hair, public school boy good looks and his smart shirt and Armani suit. ‘We inhabit different planets.’

‘Maybe we do now,’ said Richard, ‘but I didn’t always earn good money. And I might have gone to public school but my parents worked hard to get me there. My dad ran a pub you know. I spent most of my time at school pretending he owned a chain of hotels.’

Kezzie laughed, ‘And I used to lie to people about which estate I grew up on.’

‘See,’ said Richard, with his crooked grin, which made her fold up and melt inside, ‘not so different after all. I don’t pay any attention to trappings. They don’t mean anything. It’s the person inside who counts.’

And of course, that was how it had all gone so wrong. She had turned out to be different from the person he thought she was.

‘That was then, this is now,’ growled Kezzie to herself and continued with her work, while trying to put painful thoughts of Richard and what might have been behind her.

As she worked, she cleared away the brambles and began to see the box was really out of shape and ragged. Once upon a time, though, it had clearly formed a pattern, woven into which was rosemary and a kind of ivy she couldn’t identify.

What was hidden in this wonderful place? Ever since the day she’d climbed up the oak tree and peeked over the wall, she’d fallen in love with this secret garden, and it looked like it was about to surrender some of its secrets to her.

The more she uncovered, the more excited she grew – the box, ivy and rosemary definitely formed an interconnecting pattern. Eventually she uncovered enough to see it was in the shape of a heart.

Suddenly, she realized what she was looking at; she’d studied this kind of design. ‘It’s a knot garden,’ she said out loud. ‘That’s amazing.’

A security light flooded through the iron gate. She looked up and saw to her surprise there were lights on in the derelict house she’d seen the other week. A torch was bobbing its way down the garden. Shit. Although she’d imagined someone must own the house, it had looked so ramshackle, she’d assumed no one was living in it. She must have made a mistake. Gathering up her things, she ran to the corner of the wall and slung her bag over the top. She was scrambling up the wall, trying to grab for the branches of the oak tree, when—

‘What the hell are you doing in my garden?’ said a distinctly male and very attractive voice.

‘Um—’ Suddenly Kezzie felt very foolish. She had a feeling that guerrilla gardening might not quite have made it to this quiet corner of Sussex …

Joel shone his torch into the eyes of a petite woman – a very pretty woman he had to grudgingly admit. She had short, dark hair, and an elfin look and was dressed in oversized combat gear, which made her look like a little doll. She’d dropped back to the ground when he’d accosted her.

‘I didn’t realize it was your garden,’ she said. ‘I saw the high wall and was curious, so I climbed up the oak tree and discovered your garden. I thought it looked uncared for.’

‘So you thought you’d care for it did you?’ said Joel. ‘Perhaps I prefer it this way.’

‘How can you possibly like it like this? All your beautiful plants being strangled to death by convolvulus. It’s criminal neglect. It deserves being brought back to life. If it were mine that’s what I’d do.’

‘Well it’s not yours, is it?’ said Joel, resenting this stranger telling him what he should or shouldn’t do in his garden. ‘So quite frankly it’s none of your business, and I should ask you to leave.’

‘No, it’s not,’ the stranger looked a bit sheepish. ‘Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. I saw your garden and didn’t think anyone lived in the house. It looked a bit neglected. I just wanted to help.’

Neglected. You could say that.

‘Well, it’s a work in progress,’ said Joel.

‘Doesn’t look like there’s much progress happening,’ said the stranger.

‘I’m a busy man,’ Joel said defensively. ‘I work full time, and I’ve got a young son I’m bringing up alone. There are only so many hours in the day. Not that that’s any of your business either.’

What the hell was he doing even chatting to this girl? By rights he should call the police.

‘Oh,’ his strange intruder looked a bit dumbfounded for the first time since he’d met her. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Joel. ‘Really it’s nothing to do with you what I do or don’t do with the garden. I’m going to ring the police.’

‘No – don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s not like I vandalized the place. Honestly, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I only wanted to make it better. You could come and see what I’ve been doing if you like.’

Joel tried and failed to look authoratitive. He could hardly call the police and say someone’s broken into my garden and improved it, could he? Despite himself he was intrigued by this girl who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Show me then.’

She produced a torch and shone it into the undergrowth in the furthest corner.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve been cutting back the brambles and digging up the weeds, and look what I found.’

She pointed to a ragged edge of box, with rosemary and ivy intertwined.

‘I think it must be part of a knot garden,’ the girl said, her eyes shining. ‘Did you know it was there?’

‘Yes,’ said Joel. ‘This place belonged to my great great grandfather, Edward Handford, who was a semi-famous garden designer in the nineteenth century. I think, if memory serves me right, he created a knot garden for his wife, Lily, when they got married.’

‘Edward Handford? I’ve heard of him,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t he influenced by Gertrude Jekyll? I think there was a brief mention in a book I read about an Elizabethan knot garden he’d created. Is this it then?’

‘I believe so,’ said Joel, slightly stunned that a complete stranger would even know about his great great grandfather. He frowned. One of the things he’d meant to do when he moved in was ask his mum more about his family history. He’d been fascinated with what he’d dubbed the secret garden as a child, when he’d visited as a boy. But then Sam had come along, and Claire had died, and like so many things in his life, his interest had stalled. But his strange night-time visitor had piqued it again. He would ask Mum about Edward the next time he saw her.

‘Oh, that’s such a lovely story,’ said the girl. ‘And it’s so sad that it’s been destroyed. Wouldn’t it be great to restore it?’

‘And how do you propose doing that?’ said Joel caught up in her infectious enthusiasm. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘I’m just setting up in business as a landscape gardener,’ she said.

‘Didn’t anyone tell you that landscape gardeners normally work by day? Oh, and they tend to ask their clients first, before they start work,’ said Joel.

‘Yes, well, this is a bit on the side, as it were,’ said the girl. ‘I started off in London as a guerrilla gardener and someone persuaded me I should do it for a living.’

‘What brings you down here?’ Joel’s curiosity got the better of him.

‘Long and boring story, let’s not go there,’ she said. ‘But listen, about your garden. I think it is really special. Seriously, you should do something with it.’

‘I know,’ said Joel. ‘It is a pity that the garden should have fallen into such disrepair. I’ve been meaning to sort it out since I moved in.’

‘So what’s stopping you, then?’ asked his unlikely gardener.

‘Time and money, mainly,’ said Joel, ignoring the voice that said, You wanted to, remember? ‘I don’t have enough of either.’

‘Have you thought of applying for a grant to do it?’ she asked. ‘Someone like the National Trust or the RHS might sponsor you.’

‘I hadn’t thought about that,’ admitted Joel. Haven’t thought beyond the end of my nose since Claire died, he thought to himself with a jerk. All those dreams and hopes he’d had for the future of the house and garden. They’d all died with Claire.

‘Why not?’

‘Like you said, long story,’ said Joel, taken aback by his sudden resurgence of interest in the garden. ‘The only person stopping me doing it is me. Perhaps you’re right, it is time to carry on.’

Lauren had put the children to bed and was busy baking muffins in the kitchen, when there was a knock on the door.

‘Oh hi, Eileen, what can I do for you?’ she said.

‘Something smells good,’ said Eileen, as she followed Lauren into the kitchen.

‘Muffins,’ said Lauren. ‘I love baking. I find it so relaxing, and it’s my special treat to myself when the kids are in bed. Please,’ she swept away her mixing bowl, recently purchased from the new Lakeland in Chiverton, and swiftly wiped away the crumbs from the old pine table that she loved to cook on. The kitchen was cosy, but the table was the only work surface she had. ‘Sit down, I was just about to put some coffee on.’

Lauren got out her coffee percolator, and took down her favourite Kenyan coffee while Eileen settled herself down.

‘I know it’s a long way away,’ said Eileen, ‘but I don’t know if you’d heard, I’ve just been appointed by the Parish Council to sort out next year’s summer fete.’

‘Go on,’ Lauren was wary. When the girls were at preschool, she’d found herself practically running the committee, and had had it up to here with Christmas fairs, cake sales and the like by the time they’d left. Izzie and Immie had only been at school for five minutes, and already she was having her arm twisted to join the PTA committee. Somehow everyone assumed, because she was at home with small children, and didn’t have what some people thought was a ‘proper’ job, Lauren must have loads of time to organize charitable events.

‘I know you’re really busy,’ said Eileen, ‘but I really do need some help. You see next year it’s the 140th anniversary of Edward Handford’s birth, and we want to celebrate it. He did such a lot for the village – from giving us the Memorial Gardens, to the village school, and we’ve got a lot of projects we want to fund. Quite frankly our last summer fete was a bit of a disaster, and the Parish Council is keen not to have a repeat.’

‘Oh, you mean someone noticed the fact that Andy drank more Pimms than he served?’ said Lauren with a grin. It had been a source of great amusement to her when her irritating boss from the pub had keeled over while holding court in front of half the village.

‘That was only the half of it,’ said Eileen. ‘Thanks to Cynthia Green, we had that wretched bore from Radio Chiverton opening proceedings, and he gave the longest speech I have ever heard. Plus the stalls were so drab and uninteresting, and the weather was so lousy we hardly made any money. The problem is, everyone thinks so small. We need to make it more of an event if we want to make any serious money. So Tony Symonds, who’s Chair of the Parish Council this year, has suggested we shake it all up a bit. And he asked for my help.’

‘So where do I come in?’ said Lauren. ‘I don’t have a lot of spare time.’

‘I know you don’t,’ said Eileen, ‘but we could do with some young blood, and as one of the restoration projects we’ve got in mind is the Memorial Gardens, particularly the play area, I thought a mum like you might be perfectly placed to tell us what’s needed.’

‘That’s blackmail,’ said Lauren, laughing.

‘I know,’ said Eileen, ‘but could you help? It would be great if you could.’

‘Oh go on,’ said Lauren. ‘And I’ll try and see if I can get Joel Lyle involved. You know Edward Handford was his great great grandfather, don’t you? Joel was planning to restore the garden at Lovelace Cottage when he and Claire moved in, but he’s not got round to it yet.’

‘How stupid of me,’ said Eileen. ‘I dabble a bit in local history, but I hadn’t made the connection. I’ve always been fascinated by Edward’s story – he created that garden for his wife, when they got married. I’d love to see it.’

‘I’ve only seen it once, but it’s a bit of a mess,’ said Lauren. ‘I think it needs a lot of work.’

‘Hmm,’ said Eileen, ‘I wonder how Joel might feel if I suggested we helped him restore it.’

‘I don’t think he’s much of a committee person,’ said Lauren. ‘And since Claire died, he seems to have lost heart a bit with the house. I’m not sure he’s going to want to help, but there’s no harm in asking.’

Chapter Four

Kezzie poked her head out of her bedroom window. The dawn chorus had woken her up again. She still couldn’t get used to the fact that she could hear their chatter, which would have been drowned out in the noisy bustle of London. Apart from the sounds of wildlife, it was much quieter here though, and sometimes the stillness drove her a bit mad. But she loved the cottage, which like her aunt was quirky and homely, and full of trinkets Jo had acquired on her many travels abroad. She was grateful for Jo’s impetuous generosity. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask anyone for help, knowing she’d get none from her parents, who were in their own loved-up retirement cocoon in Spain.

But thanks to Jo, Kezzie now found herself buried in the Sussex countryside. The plus side was she did find the quiet soothing, and enjoyed living so close to nature. The downside was that she knew no one and the contacts she’d cultivated in London with the aim of setting up her own freelance gardening business, now seemed a long way away. The redundancy she’d willingly taken from her job at the website company was enough to tide her over for the time being, and she had some freelance web design work, so getting a gardening contract wasn’t urgent. But she’d have to get a job soon, so her plan today was to get down to it, and start planning her future.

Kezzie got dressed and ate her breakfast in Jo’s kitchen, looking out at the garden. She loved this room, which was dominated by a huge Aga, and decorated in muted yellows and oranges, which gave it a cosy, warm feeling. It felt very much the hub of the house, and Kezzie spent a lot of time here.

It was a beautiful, sunny October morning and the birds were running riot in the hawthorn bush that belonged to her neighbour. Kezzie hadn’t spoken to her properly yet, though she had said hello once or twice to a rather frazzled-looking young woman with long, fair hair, pushing a buggy accompanied by two little girls. Blimey. Three children and she barely looked out of school. Kezzie couldn’t help but thank her lucky stars that she’d never made that mistake. It had been bad enough discovering that Richard had a daughter. Kezzie had had no desire to play stepmum to Emily, to Richard’s evident disappointment.

‘You have to grow up some time, Kez,’ he’d said, and Kezzie had laughed and said, ‘I don’t see why I have to.’ Now she wasn’t so sure.

Breakfast over, she opened the back door and scraped the crumbs of her toast out on the bird table positioned right by the hedge for the birds who so noisily woke her, and went back inside to get her laptop. She had so much to do: pitches for commissions, putting the finishing touches to her website, sorting out a leaflet to go out with the local paper, but she ignored all that. Kezzie had been so intrigued by the garden she’d broken into last night, the first thing she had to do was find out more about it.

She typed in Lovelace Cottage, and got a few matches, but nothing very concrete. So she tried again, putting Edward Handford into the search engine. Immediately a Wikipedia entry popped up:

Edward Handford – 1871–1955, Late Victorian landscape gardener and botanist of minor importance. Heavily influenced by the work of Gertrude Jekyll and Edward Lutyens, but using his own style …

His most notable work was designing the garden of Hillcrest Manor, a stately home owned by the de Lacey family, in Nottinghamshire, but he is also known for the Elizabethan knot garden he created for his wife Lily, on the occasion of their marriage in 1892, although very little is known about it …

There was a bit more about his later work, and a mention that much of his youth had been spent hunting exotic plants in India, but nothing much about Joel’s garden. To Kezzie’s disappointment, there was no plan. Kezzie printed off what she’d found and filed it for later use. It wasn’t much to go on if she was to restore the garden properly, but it was a start. Maybe Joel would have some more information about it. She’d have to ask him the next time she saw him.

‘So have you met my new neighbour yet?’ Lauren greeted Joel as he came to drop Sam off.

‘What new neighbour?’ he asked, yawning. He had found sleep hard to come by after his moonlit encounter the previous night.

‘She’s Jo Knight’s niece. Just moved in,’ said Lauren. ‘She’s very pretty. Just up your street.’

Joel at least had the grace to blush.

‘I’m not that bad.’

‘You so are,’ said Lauren teasingly, to hide the fact that the details of Joel’s love life made her feel uncomfortable.

‘Poor lamb, left all alone up there in that big house, it’s understandable he wants some company,’ she’d heard someone say recently.

Lauren was slightly aggravated by this. The one and only time she’d disastrously dated John Townley, who worked in the village garage, she’d actually heard the word ‘strumpet’ bandied about in the local high street. ‘And her with two little ones and all,’ as if by dint of having two small children she was condemned to be a nun for the rest of her life. And secondly, it made her so mad on Claire’s behalf. Lauren still missed Claire, who’d been a sane, calming influence on Lauren’s often chaotic life, and for the life of her she couldn’t see why Joel could apparently have forgotten her so easily. Or for that matter why local opinion seemed to think it was OK that he should. If it had been anyone else, Lauren would have thought he was a prize shit, but knowing as she did what a state he had been in after Claire had died, she knew the truth was more complicated than that.

‘What does she look like?’ he asked. ‘Not that I’m interested or anything.’

‘Well, she’s a bit hippyish,’ said Lauren. ‘I was teasing, she’s not really your type at all. She’s quite small – elfin looking – dark hair, brown eyes.’

‘Oh—’ Light dawned in Joel’s eyes. ‘It’s the guerrilla gardener.’

‘The what?’

‘I found her in my garden last night,’ explained Joel. ‘She told me she was doing a spot of guerrilla gardening and then had the cheek to have a go at me about leaving it to rack and ruin. She thinks I should restore it.’

‘Well you should,’ said Lauren. ‘That was the plan, right?’

‘Yeah, well, plans change,’ Joel mumbled, and a look of such sadness shot across his face that Lauren felt her heart contract. Perhaps she was too hard on him. Her experience with Troy had left her a little too eager to be unforgiving with men. They weren’t all selfish bastards.

A stab of protective tenderness came over Lauren and she touched his arm lightly. ‘Maybe it’s time they changed again?’ she said. ‘I was talking to Eileen Jones the other day, and she was saying the village want to honour Edward Handford next year for his 140th anniversary. I suggested she get in touch with you about restoring the garden. It might be just what you need and if your guerrilla gardener can help you …’

‘Maybe.’ Joel shook himself out of his reverie, looked at his watch and gave Sam a quick hug. ‘I must dash, see you later.’

‘Have a good day,’ said Lauren.

He set off, leaving Lauren thinking that her new neighbour sounded intriguing. She’d never met anyone before who’d broken into gardens at night. Jo was a lot of fun, so maybe her niece would be too.

It wasn’t long before Lauren got her opportunity to say hello properly. She’d just got back from the school run and was unclipping Sam from his buggy, when there was a knock on the door, and the small elfin girl she’d glimpsed through the garden hedge was standing there, looking very apologetic.

‘I’m so sorry, you’re going to think me very stupid, but I’ve managed to lock myself out. I know I left the back window open, and I’ve noticed there’s a gap in your fence. I was wondering if I could shimmy through it and hop back in.’

‘No need for that,’ said Lauren, lifting Sam up. ‘Come on in. Didn’t your aunt tell you I had a spare key?’

She ushered Kezzie into the kitchen, where she kept all her keys in a little wooden box above her wooden spice rack.

‘I’m Lauren Callan by the way,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to meet you at last.’

‘Kezzie Andrews,’ said Kezzie, looking embarrassed. ‘I’m such a dope. Jo did mention it and I completely forgot.’

‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ said Lauren, who had only been planning to bake cookies with Sam. He was quite happy when she put him down, and he pottered about, putting magnetic letters on the fridge. Lauren knew that she’d be searching underneath the fridge for half of them.

‘That would be lovely,’ said her new neighbour, with a smile.

It would be nice to have someone young living next door, thought Lauren.

‘I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself properly, but I’ve been so busy sorting myself out since I got here, I haven’t had a chance.’

‘Yes, I gather,’ said Lauren. ‘Do you often break into people’s gardens in the middle of the night?’

‘Oh my God, how did you know about that?’

‘Small place, Heartsease,’ grinned Lauren, flicking on the kettle and getting her favourite Cath Kidston mugs from the cupboard. She motioned to Kezzie to sit down at the cosy kitchen table.

‘Blimey,’ said Kezzie, ‘this country living is going to take some getting used to. I expect the whole village knows by now.’

Lauren took pity on her. ‘Actually, I only know about it because Sam here is Joel’s son.’

‘Joel?’ said the girl.

‘The guy who owns the garden. He’s quite discreet, I’m sure he won’t tell anyone. I look after Sam for him. Here, have a muffin.’

She opened a Tupperware box and offered Kezzie one of the blueberry muffins she’d made a few days earlier.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Kezzie. ‘So all those children I’ve seen you with don’t belong to you then?’

‘Just the two girls,’ said Lauren, ‘they’re my terrible twins.’

‘Twins. Must be a handful,’ said Kezzie.

‘Sure are,’ said Lauren, ‘particularly when you’re on your own.’

‘I take my hat off to you,’ said Kezzie. ‘I can barely look after myself, let alone twins. If you don’t mind me saying, you’re very young to have kids.’

Lauren grimaced. ‘I was twenty-one, way too young. It’s the old old story. I fell for the wrong guy at uni, who promised me the world and then left me literally holding the babies.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kezzie.

‘Don’t be,’ said Lauren. ‘We’re well shot of him, and even though he doesn’t pay anything towards their upkeep, I manage. I look after Sam for Joel, who’s very generous, and then work in the pub a couple of evenings a week, while my mum looks after the girls. Luckily she lives nearby. Anyway, tell me about breaking into Joel’s garden. I’d have loved to have seen his face!’

‘I was walking past the bottom of the garden and out of curiosity climbed up in a tree to see what was hidden behind the wall. I thought it wasn’t being cared for,’ said Kezzie, ‘so I went in for a spot of guerrilla gardening. I used to do it in London all the time, though admittedly there’s less cause for it here. I hadn’t realized that the garden belonged to the big house up the road. Joel should restore it. It’s criminal that he doesn’t.’

‘That’s what I keep telling him,’ said Lauren. ‘There’s a lovely history attached to the garden. The guy who designed it created it for his wife on their wedding day.’

‘I know,’ said Kezzie, ‘I looked it up on Wikipedia this morning. So I’m curious, why doesn’t Joel do something about it?’

‘He’s had a really difficult time,’ said Lauren. ‘His wife died very suddenly last year. She had an undiagnosed heart condition that no one knew about. Joel was restoring the house and garden for her. I think he’s lost a bit of hope with it now.’

‘Oh, bugger,’ said Kezzie, ‘typical of me, I’ve gone and put my great clomping size 10s in it again. I told him he should restore it. God, I wish I’d known.’

‘Well you didn’t,’ said Lauren, ‘and I have been saying the same thing for months. Maybe it’s time he started to do something about it.’

‘I did offer to help him,’ said Kezzie. ‘I’m setting up a gardening business and maybe eventually planning to show a garden at Chelsea. If Joel would let me I’d love to recreate Edward Handford’s knot garden.’

‘That is a fantastic idea,’ said Lauren. ‘I think we should both work on him, don’t you?’

Later that day Joel was at home, thinking about what Lauren had said earlier about his guerrilla gardener. He wrapped Sam up snugly and opened the back door, stepping out onto the patio. The last throes of a crimson sunset set the trees alight, and a shiver ran down Joel’s spine as he stood looking out onto his garden properly for the first time since Claire’s death. It was neglected and overrun. It wasn’t just the sunken garden at the bottom that needed attention, the grass on the main lawn was too high, the flowerbeds that lined it were choked with brambles and ivy, and the bushes needed pruning badly. Even up here on the crumbling patio, where the remains of a little wall and some cracked steps bore the evidence of something previously much grander, the rose bushes that had once formed an arbour were wild and rambling, and could do with cutting back. Joel sighed. It was such a huge job. One more thing for him to think about, and one of many reasons not to tackle it. Everything had halted since Claire died. The house and gardens were frozen in a time warp of his grief. And yet, and yet …

Despite the neglect, and the thought of hard work, for the first time since Claire had died, Joel was suddenly reminded of the vision he’d had when he came here, and saw the legacy he’d been left. This had once been a beautiful home and gardens, but because Uncle Jack had lived alone for many years, both house and garden had suffered. Joel had wanted to restore both to their former glory when Claire was alive, and had lost heart. But as he held Sam, and watched him laughing at the bats that were swooping and diving over his head, Joel felt something stir inside him. He’d lost Claire but he still had Sam. Maybe it was time to start again.

Since Claire had died, Joel had barely spent any time in the garden, and only had half-hearted attempts at the DIY he’d started inside. The ancient scullery, which he’d stripped out, extended and thoroughly modernized, with the intention of making it the heart of a happy home, had been finished for over a year. But far from being a heart, it felt like an empty shell, with its expanse of gleaming surfaces, and cupboards filled with pots and pans that Joel hardly ever used. The lounge, which had French windows that opened onto the garden terrace, had still to be redecorated, and he hadn’t had the heart to start on the dining room. When he and Claire had moved in, one of his first actions was to strip out the dark wooden panelling in the hall, which Claire had found gloomy. He hadn’t got round to replacing them with lighter wood, nor had he carpeted the floor as he intended, so every day the bare floorboards of the hallway were just another reminder of how the house was in limbo. It was no wonder. Kezzie had thought the place was empty, he realized, looking at the house through her eyes. The windows and front door needed painting, and the back guttering was looking fairly crazy. He’d have to sort that out soon with winter approaching.

Joel loved the view from the top of the garden, which sloped gradually away from the house for nearly two hundred feet. The sunken garden was in the left-hand corner of the plot and the main part of the garden ended at the bottom of a lane, which led straight on to a farm. When Sam was a bit bigger, he was going to enjoy seeing the horses in the farmer’s field, which ate the apples from the apple tree next to the right side fence at the bottom of the garden.

The autumn sun cast a fiery light on the trees, as he stood with Sam watching the rooks cawing in the branches above them, and the sheep on the far side of the hill gently baaing. It was this view and the sunken garden, which had first captured his heart and convinced him that this was the home for them.

‘Let’s go and look at the secret garden, shall we, Sam?’ he said, and carried his son down the slope towards the garden. He unlocked the gate and surveyed the ruin of what must once have been a magnificent display of plants. Joel remembered showing Claire this garden before they moved in and how she had been as inspired as him to restore it to its former glory. She’d been in the early stages of pregnancy then, and both of them had been looking forward to a wonderful future together. The reality of parenthood was still a long way off, and they had joked about working on the garden together in the summer, while the baby slept in its crib.

Of course, when the summer came and Sam was born, Claire was too exhausted to do much more than sit at the top end of the garden on the cracked patio, which was large enough to accommodate a table and chairs, bemoaning the loss of their tidy little London patch, while Joel had been so determined to get the house just right for her, he hadn’t taken the time to sit out with his family in those precious, precious moments. He regretted that so deeply now.

Joel swallowed hard, and blinked a tear back. He couldn’t go on like this, living in the past and never looking forward to the future. He no longer had a future with Claire, but he did have one with Sam. Maybe he should let Kezzie have her way and help him restore the garden. It would be something to look forward to, something to achieve. And maybe, just maybe, it could help him heal.

Edward and Lily

Summer 1892

Lily – how often Edward would later think of her as she was in those early days of their marriage at Lovelace Cottage, when they had shut the world out – his mother had gone on a trip to London – and they had sent the servants away, and lived for a blissful few days as if they were the only two people left on earth.

Lily, as she lay in their marriage bed, dark hair tumbling all about her, looking at him with those lazy, alluring come-hither eyes. He’d never even known what that meant until now.

Lily, waking up as he flung the shutters wide open to allow a bright summer morning to flood sunlight into their little kingdom.

Lily, protesting about him getting up and leaving the warmth and comfort of their marriage bed. Lily, wanting to always keep him to herself.

Always Lily, laughing, joyous, as they wallowed in the sensuous happiness of being together, alone, with no one but themselves to consider.

In his memory, the sun always shone on those early days of marriage. Every morning they would awaken, and walk down the lane at the end of the garden to fetch milk and eggs from the farmer. Then Lily would make breakfast on the stove, determined to show him that not all domestic skills were beyond her.

Often he sketched her, sitting in the garden, or lying on the grass, staring up at the bright summer sky.

‘Come and join me,’ she’d say. ‘You see the world differently from here.’

And together they would lie and look up at the bright, white clouds scudding across the azure blue sky. Lily seeing all sorts of things in them he could never have imagined. Where he saw soft, rolling shapes, Lily saw castles, animals, witches and princesses. He loved the way she allowed her imagination to transport her somewhere completely different. She had an other-worldly quality that he found entrancing.

At other times they walked down the hill to the brook, and followed it to where it widened to a stream and then a river. There they would picnic underneath an old willow tree, delighting in the freedom of being unchaperoned, and leaning against each other, talking about their plans for the future.

‘We shall have six children,’ declared Lily, ‘three boys and three girls.’

‘When we come back from India,’ promised Edward, who had arranged for them to go on a three-month expedition to Lahore in order to search for exotic plants. ‘We can bring back plants for each of the children we are going to have. I shall build a greenhouse, so we can nurture them.’

‘And plant them in the knot garden,’ said Lily. ‘It will be wonderful, you’ll see.’

Those days seemed endless and gloriously heady, in Edward’s memory, filled with laughter and fun and love. He wished the time could stretch out endlessly, but alas, honeymoons cannot last forever, and all too soon, real life intruded. Work must be done, Lily must become the lady of the house, though he hadn’t quite realized how very ill-suited she was to the task, prone as she was to wandering off into the gardens to smell the roses when she was meant to be telling Cook what to prepare for dinner. Or helplessly looking to him for advice when it came to the servants’ wages. Though she had been brought up to it, Lily simply didn’t possess the right character for the ladylike genteel world she had to inhabit; her spirit was far too free for that. And with his mother away for several months, there was no one for Lily to ask. He knew she chafed at the constrictions of afternoon teas with the neighbours and visits to the poor of the parish. His wild and wandering Lily, tamed and hemmed in by domesticity. He should have known it would lead to trouble.

Chapter Five

Late. Late again. Joel hated clockwatching, particularly when he had to discuss painful decisions about funding cuts that a few months of coalition government was forcing the small charity he worked for to make. Redundancies he had reluctantly had to tell Dan Walters, the director, were going to be necessary. At the very least they’d have to have a job freeze, and this at a time when services were going to be more squeezed than ever.

When he and Claire had first mooted a move to the country, Joel had been tempted to jack in his job and retrain in carpentry – something that had been a slightly obsessive hobby in his pre-married life, but which had gone by the board in the years since he’d met Claire. But with a big mortgage, and a baby coming, both he and Claire had decided this wasn’t the time. So the compromise had been that he joined the charity Look Up!, which catered for the needs of the blind, as a finance director. Up until now he’d enjoyed it, feeling at least he was working on something that made a difference to people’s lives. But hearing the staff regaling stories of the difficulties encountered by various service users, who were finding it harder and harder to get the help they needed, had made him feel pretty depressed about the future.

The meeting broke up, to Joel’s relief, but he felt gloomy as he left the room. In the main, people were supportive of his domestic situation. Most of them had families too, but everyone else worked hard and late in the office; Joel didn’t like them to think he was being a slacker, but he knew he was already late for Lauren.

Finally – too late – he understood Claire’s point of view. She’d frequently complained about the stress of leaving work early to get home for Lauren on the couple of days a week she’d worked (thank God they’d employed Lauren while Claire was still alive. It had ensured at least some stability for Sam). Joel hadn’t understood. Like so much else. Too late. He’d always been too late.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

‘Can we review the situation in a month, Joel?’ Dan said, calling Joel back in. ‘Any chance you can get those figures I need by tomorrow?’

Joel surreptitiously looked at his text message. Lauren. Of course. Where r u? The message glowed at him, bristling with resentment. It was amazing how guilty Lauren could make him feel. But then he often felt racked with guilt these days.

‘Sure thing,’ said Joel, looking forward to another late night date with his laptop.

‘Brilliant,’ said Dan. ‘On my desk, first thing?’

Joel had never been late yet delivering figures, but Dan always made him feel as if somehow he were likely to be.

‘First thing,’ he promised, and tried not to leg it out of the meeting room and to his office.

He rang Lauren as soon as he was back at his desk, rooting around for the information he needed to take home with him that night.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be with you as quick as I can.’

Thank God he’d got a job not too far outside Chiverton. Switching jobs when they moved to Heartsease had felt risky at the time, but turned out to be a godsend. There was no way he could manage a job that involved a big commute now.

Ten minutes later he came flying up Lauren’s path, his heart pounding, sweating like a pig, and feeling like he might be about to have a coronary any minute. Lauren already had the door open, Sam in her arms, bag ready, disapproval rippling from her every pore. He couldn’t blame her. If life was tough for him, he knew it was equally hard for her. Lauren had told him snippets, and Claire had told him more, about Troy, the feckless father who’d left her in the labour ward, and on several occasions she’d confided in him how tough she found it being a single parent.

‘I’m so sorry, Lauren,’ said Joel. ‘I was stuck in the meeting from hell.’

‘It’s not me you’ll have to answer to, it’s my mum,’ said Lauren, her voice tight with evident frustration. ‘I’ve just had to put up with twenty minutes of nagging about why I let you get away with it. Mum did offer to stay with Sam, but I don’t like to leave him with anyone else.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Joel, again, feeling terrible. It was unusual for Lauren to actually say what she thought. ‘I promise I’ll do better next time.’

‘You always say that,’ said Lauren, but her tone was softening.

He took Sam from her. ‘Thanks, Lauren,’ he said. ‘Look. I don’t say it very often, and I should.’

‘Should say what?’ He could still feel some hostility.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Since – since Claire died, I don’t know what we’d have done without you, Sam and I. You’re always there for us, and I take you for granted.’

There was a silence and Joel felt more awkward than ever.

‘And I am sorry,’ he added.

‘Oh stop,’ he detected a wobble in Lauren’s voice. ‘You know I’d do anything for the pair of you. It’s the least I can do for – for Claire.’

She turned away from him for a moment, and he thought maybe she’d wiped a tear away from her eye, but she looked back and added casually, ‘Oh, by the way I had coffee with your guerrilla gardener. Her name’s Kezzie and she thinks you should get back on with restoring your garden.’

‘I gathered,’ said Joel.

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ said Lauren. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I told her I thought you should.’

Kezzie stood outside Joel’s house wondering whether she’d made a mistake. She felt absurdly nervous. Having rashly declared to Lauren that she was going to take on Joel’s garden for him, she’d decided she should go round and just tell him that’s what she was going to do. Logically she knew all that could happen was that Joel would say no. But somehow it mattered to her more than she thought possible that she restore the garden. Not only had the magic of the place infected her, but if she could do this, and do it well, she might be halfway to her dream of getting a show garden ready for Chelsea, just as she and Richard had always planned. And she did want to fulfil that dream. If only to show Richard what he was missing.

‘Come on, Kezzie, are you a woman or mouse?’ she said out loud, then pushed open the creaking gate, and walked up the cracked path. Now she was up close to the house, she could see there were evident signs of occupation – a pair of boots by the front door, a child’s plastic scooter hidden in the privet bush that jammed its way up against the bay windows, a light faintly shining through the stained-glass window. But it had a sad, lonely air, as if it were a house that had been left to its own devices for a very long time. Even the wisteria bush which clung to the front of the house looked lost and untended.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked hard on the door. There was no reply, so she knocked again. Still no reply. Oh well, perhaps she should come back another day. She was about to leave when suddenly the door was opened and Joel was standing there. Taller than she remembered, with dark, floppy hair, and kind blue eyes. Her heart gave a little flip. He was more attractive than she’d realized on their previous encounter.

‘Right, here’s the thing,’ she said, ‘I want to restore your garden for you.’

‘Sorry?’ His voice wrapped itself round her like dark velvet. She hadn’t noticed how warm and deep it was.

‘It’s me, Kezzie. I did tell you my name was Kezzie, didn’t I? I’ve decided I want to restore your garden. May I come in?’

‘Er. OK,’ said Joel, looking and sounding bemused. ‘If you just give me a minute. I’ve just put my son to bed, and I’d better just check he’s settled down. Go on straight through to the kitchen.’

‘No problem.’

Not that she was interested in Joel, but he was the only halfway decent male she’d met in the bruising months since Richard had ditched her. It had occurred to her she needed a nice uncomplicated fling to get Richard out of her system, but attractive as Joel seemed, she had a feeling he’d be very, very complicated.

She walked through the hall noticing the unfinished floors, and unpainted walls. It all felt so terribly sad. She was surprised when she turned left into the kitchen, that it was shiny and new, with the latest modern gadgets, and a dazzling array of equipment. It was a kitchen to die for, and yet somehow it seemed to lack soul. She sat down on a bar stool, which she found tucked under the breakfast bar, and sat at the kitchen window looking into the dark. What was she doing here? She didn’t know this man from Adam. If Joel had wanted to do something about his garden he’d have done something about it by now. She was just interfering in something that she had no business interfering with. Kezzie sat there, irresolute, her heart churning, her palms sweating.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Joel, interrupting her thoughts as he came silently into the room. ‘So what is it you want exactly?’

Kezzie took a deep breath. He hadn’t told her to get lost, maybe this could work. It was worth a try at least. ‘I know we didn’t exactly get off to a good start, and you probably think I’m interfering, but I really would be interested in doing up your garden. I want to exhibit at Chelsea at some point and I think restoring your knot garden would be a fabulous project to work on. And Lauren said you always wanted to restore it …’ her voice trailed away. ‘Look, I’ll understand if you say no, it’s just an idea.’

‘No, you’re OK,’ said Joel. ‘I did – do – want to restore it. Life’s got in the way a bit, that’s all. I’d like you to do it, if you still want to.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Kezzie. ‘I’d love to.’

‘I can’t pay you,’ warned Joel, ‘or not much. And I can’t help except at weekends. I have to go to work.’

‘I’ve some money put aside from my redundancy, and I’ve got some freelance work, so I can survive for a bit. Besides, it could be my showcase garden, and help me get other business. You would be doing me a favour. And I can look into the possibility of getting a grant to help restore if you like,’ said Kezzie, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. ‘Edward Handford is of historical significance, I’m sure someone would be prepared to help with the restoration. I really am keen. I’ve been looking into Edward’s work. He adapted a lover’s knot garden from an original Elizabethan design and made his own version, which was more in keeping with Victorian times. But that might seem a little over the top for modern tastes, so I thought I could stay true to the basic vision, but simplify it a bit, and have heartsease at the heart of the garden. It seems appropriate.’

‘If you say so,’ said Joel looking amused.

‘Sorry, running away with myself again,’ said Kezzie. ‘Bad habit I have. But look, I’ve printed off some stuff that I thought might be interesting.’

She showed Joel everything she’d found so far along with a plan of an Elizabethan knot garden, which Edward had apparently used as a guide.

‘This is amazing,’ said Joel. ‘I had no idea of any of this. You’ve really inspired me to start again with it.’

‘I’m really frustrated that I haven’t managed to track down Edward’s actual design,’ said Kezzie. ‘Having that would be an enormous help.’

‘You can just about see the shapes of the original,’ Joel said. ‘It has been semi maintained over the years I think. But in the latter years, poor old Uncle Jack couldn’t cope any more and it fell into a complete state of disrepair. So now it’s full of weeds as you’ve seen, and needs cutting back and starting again. I only got as far as trimming back the box hedge.’

‘I think it was beautiful, what Edward Handford did for his wife,’ said Kezzie. ‘All that effort to create a garden that spelt a message of how much he loved her.’

‘I don’t really know an awful lot about Mum’s side of the family,’ said Joel, with a frown. ‘My Uncle Jack – well not so much an uncle, more of a second cousin, we just called him Uncle Jack – lived here alone. I think his mother was one of Edward’s children, but I’m not sure. I should ask Mum about it. She must know something.’

‘So how did you end up with this place?’ said Kezzie.

‘By dint of being the only one left,’ said Joel. ‘My mum’s got Parkinson’s so though Uncle Jack left it to her, Claire and I did a deal where we took out a mortgage on this house, and bought Mum a warden-assisted flat in Chiverton. She always used to go on about the garden here, and I was intrigued. I came here a few times when I was a small child, and I remember breaking into the knot garden. It was like a secret place, all locked up. When Jack died there was no one else but Mum and me to leave it to. I fell in love with it immediately. Claire and I had so many plans …’

His voice trailed off wistfully, and Kezzie felt as if she’d walked in on some private grief. She wished she knew him well enough to give him a hug.

‘Claire never liked it though,’ he continued. ‘She thought it was gloomy. I took out the heavy oak panelling in the hallway and made it lighter, but what with work and looking after Sam, I haven’t really had time to finish what I started.’

He looked sad, as if something pained him.

‘You’re right about the garden of course, that was the one bit of the place Claire really liked. I should have got it sorted.’

‘Well, now you’ve got me here, you can,’ said Kezzie.

‘Really?’ Joel looked as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

‘Really,’ said Kezzie.

‘It’s masses of work,’ said Joel, ‘and I won’t be able to help you much.’

‘I know,’ said Kezzie. ‘But I think it would be amazing to restore it, a huge privilege. Please let me.’

Joel stood for a moment looking as if he were battling with some inner demon, then he gave Kezzie a huge, and charismatic grin.

‘You’re on,’ said Joel, and it was all Kezzie could do to stop herself from punching the air in delight.

It was a quiet evening in the Labourer’s Legs, only a few punters had wandered in. It was the middle of the month, so people were probably saving their money till pay day, there wasn’t any football on and the darts match scheduled for the night had been cancelled, leaving the sandwiches that Sally the landlady had laid on wilting on the bar.

‘Go on, take them home with you at the end of your shift,’ Sally said to Lauren, with a slightly patronizing, sympathetic tone, as if she’d never be so foolish as to have been left holding one baby, let alone two. She also seemed to assume because Lauren was young she couldn’t do anything for herself. Lauren had to bite her tongue from saying that it was most unlikely that two four-year-olds would be interested in stale prawn sandwiches, let alone risk a tummy bug. It was a battle at the best of times to get them to eat anything other than chicken nuggets and chips.

The clock dragged slowly towards 8 p.m. Two hours into her shift and already Lauren was losing the will to live.

‘Mind if I pop upstairs to put my feet up for a bit, love?’ Sally’s inevitable request came as it always did, early on in the shift. Then a bit later on she would wander down, and say, ‘You’re all OK for locking up, aren’t you, love?’ before disappearing again to leave Lauren cashing up alone.

Lauren’s mother was always telling her to stand up for herself, but jobs for single mums didn’t come easy in Heartsease and she couldn’t afford to give it up, much as she frequently felt like telling Sally to stick her job.

Bored, she half-heartedly let her eyes settle on the TV screen in the corner, which was tuned in to Sky Sport, and began to clean the bar surface down.

Phil Machin, one of the regulars, walked up to the bar. ‘Barrel’s gone, love,’ he said smiling cheerfully. So off she went down to the cellars to change it.

When she came back, she spotted a missed call on her phone, which she’d left at the bar. It wasn’t a number she recognized. Odd. She wondered who it could be. It was probably a wrong number.

Around 9.30 the place started to fill up a bit. The lads from the cricket club were on a pub crawl, so it was nearly 11 p.m. before she spotted another two missed calls. Who on earth could be trying to contact her?

As it had got busy, Sally and her equally lazy partner, Andy, had made their way downstairs, and Lauren was relieved that for once they let her go at just after 11. At least she’d be on time for her mum.

As she walked back up the road home, the phone rang again.

‘Who is this?’ she said.

‘Lauren? Is that you?’

Oh my God. Lauren stood stock still, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, as she heard a voice she hadn’t heard in a very very long time. ‘Troy?’ she said incredulously.

Chapter Six

Lauren pushed Sam up the road on her way back from the school run. It was nearly half term, the weather had turned from bright autumn golden days, to a wet, windy drizzle which was doing little to lift her spirits. She was dog tired. The phone call from Troy had unsettled her to say the least. Troy had spectacularly left her in the labour ward, claiming that because he lost his mother to cancer when he was very young, he ‘didn’t do’ hospitals, running out on her when she needed him the most. After which he had shown no interest whatsoever in meeting his daughters until he’d turned up out of the blue when they were eighteen months old. Lauren hadn’t wanted to see him, all the more so when it was apparent he was only after somewhere to crash after he’d lost the latest in a string of jobs and had no money and nowhere else to go.

Looking back now, Lauren couldn’t believe how naive she had been to be taken in again by Troy. But he had this trick when you were with him of making you think you were the only person in the world who mattered. It was terribly beguiling, and the months of loneliness without him had left her unprepared for the sheer animal magnetism of his presence. He had a sensuality about him that was hard to resist. She had told herself that it would be good for the twins if she let him move in. Lauren’s parents had split up when she was young, and she’d been desperate for her own children to have a stable family life. Lauren couldn’t admit to herself that she still had the hots for Troy, so had made the mistake of letting him stay a while. And if she was totally honest with herself, despite everything he’d done to her, she was still a little in love with him, even now.

It turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The twins were unsettled by this strange man who sometimes wanted to play with them, but often shouted at them for no apparent reason. It was clear to Lauren, too, that he was quite happy to sponge off her, pay no maintenance, and had no intention of getting another job while his life was this cushy. In the end she’d had enough and chucked him out, and apart from the odd message via mutual friends, she hadn’t heard from him since. The twins barely remembered him, and used as they were to Sam not having a mummy, didn’t appear to find it odd that they didn’t have a daddy. And now their daddy was back and apparently he wanted to see them.

She had played the phone call with Troy over and over in her head all night.

‘Why?’ Lauren demanded. ‘Why now, after all this time? You can’t just waltz back into our lives and expect to become a dad when it suits you. I have to protect them.’

‘I know,’ Troy had pleaded. For once he sounded really sincere. ‘I’ve been useless, but I’ve changed, really I have. Look. There’s been stuff going on in my life. Stuff that’s made me realize I want to be a proper dad to them. I know what I’ve been missing and I want to make it up to them and you.’

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ said Lauren, ‘I’m not about to let you turn the girls’ lives upside down.’

‘I’m their dad, I have a right to see them,’ said Troy.

Lauren was silent. That was something she’d always promised herself. If Troy ever came back and wanted to see the girls, she’d let him. Whatever she thought of Troy, he was their dad.

‘You’ve taken me by surprise,’ she said eventually. ‘You haven’t seen the girls for over two years, and you’ve never paid a penny towards their upkeep. How can I be sure that you have changed?’

‘Oh, but I have,’ Troy said hurriedly. ‘I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I want to put them right. Please let me.’

There was a pleading, desperate note in his voice that she’d never heard before. God knows, maybe he really did mean it.

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Lauren.

Everyone deserved a second chance, didn’t they? Troy had sounded sincere, and she didn’t want her girls growing up not knowing their dad. But did a leopard really change its spots? Troy hadn’t been reliable in the past, why would he be now?

Lauren was roused from her reverie when she noticed Eileen Jones walking towards her waving enthusiastically. She smiled. Lauren liked Eileen; not only was she kind and thoughtful, but she occasionally sat for the girls when her mum couldn’t. Her husband Ted had, as Eileen put it, become a cliché and run off with his much younger secretary, leaving Eileen on her own at fifty-two. And on top of all that her youngest son, Jamie, was soon off to do a tour of Afghanistan.

Lauren had really hit it off with Eileen, despite the difference in their ages. While she’d been left holding the babies, Eileen had brought hers up, a devoted wife and mother, and still ended up alone. Although recently, Lauren had noticed, she was spending a lot of time with Tony Symonds, who was the new Chair of the Parish Council. Eileen had a real twinkle in her eye and Lauren was pleased to see her so happy.

‘Lauren, I’m glad I caught you.’

‘Don’t tell me … the fete?’ said Lauren.

‘How did you guess?’ said Eileen.

‘Something about the determined way you were making a beeline for me,’ said Lauren, laughing.

‘It’s just to let you know we’ve got our preliminary meeting coming up in a couple of weeks, and I wondered if you’d had a chance to talk to Joel about it yet.’

‘I did mention it to him,’ Lauren said, ‘but he was fairly noncommittal. I’ll talk to him about it this evening.’

‘That would be great,’ said Eileen. ‘It would be fantastic to have access to the house and gardens.’

‘It would, wouldn’t it?’ said Lauren. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Kezzie was back on the internet researching more about Edward Handford. She was interested to learn that he’d been something of a philanthropist, creating a little park in the village for the children of the poor. Originally known as Heartsease Public Gardens, they were renamed the Memorial Gardens after the First World War. Edward also paid for the village school, now very small and barely surviving. Most of the local kids were bussed into the bigger primary in nearby Chiverton. Lauren, with whom Kezzie was fast becoming friends, was unusual apparently in having opted to put the twins into the village school, but as she’d explained to Kezzie, ‘Someone’s got to support the local community and services, or we’ll lose them. Besides, the twins are too small to go on the bus, and as I don’t drive I don’t have much choice.’

Having lived all her life in an urban setting, Kezzie was coming to appreciate the pleasure of living in a small community, even if it meant people knowing all your business. She’d been stunned when she walked into Ali’s Emporium to be told by Ali how great it was that she was working on Joel’s garden.

‘That poor boy,’ Ali said, with a cheerful smile. ‘He needs something good in his life. It is wonderful what you are doing for him.’

Not wanting to point out that she wasn’t exactly doing it for charity, Kezzie had muttered, ‘Yes, it’s great to be working on it,’ and fled with her pint of milk and loaf of bread before she got the Spanish Inquisition.

Kezzie decided she’d done enough research for now. The one time she’d tried to visit the Memorial Gardens, they’d been locked and she’d only had a chance to glimpse through the gate. She wanted to take a closer look, as it might give her a better feel for the kind of vision Edward Handford had had. While wanting to give his garden a modern feel, Kezzie wanted to be faithful to that vision. Somehow, she felt that was important.

She walked down the hill into the centre of the village, as ever getting a little thrill as she turned the bend and saw Heartsease spread before her, nestling cosily in the lea of the hill. The broad tree-lined road that swept down into the village was now littered with fallen leaves, but there were still a few remaining on the branches, to brighten up the greyish day. Kezzie couldn’t have felt further away from London if she’d tried.

When she got down to the High Street, Kezzie followed the signs to the Memorial Gardens, past the butcher’s, Keef’s Café where Kezzie had learnt you could purchase a mean latte, the tiny chemist’s situated in the oldest building in Heartsease, and the baker’s. Heartsease wasn’t exactly big, but she’d not yet had time to explore it all. What she saw when she arrived at the Memorial Gardens was utterly depressing. A rusting, wrought iron gate, bearing the name Heartsease Memorial Gardens, screeched open onto a forlorn-looking patch of green. At the far end was a pavilion, which was in desperate need of repair. Raggedy bits of grass were covered in glass beer bottles and fag ends. Graffiti on the walls proclaimed that Daz Loved Zoe 4 eva. The rest of the village wasn’t like this. A cracked path ran down the middle of the grass, ending in a circle in which stood an enormous concrete plinth, which was empty. Presumably, it had been home to a war memorial. Kezzie vaguely remembered reading that Edward had erected one after the war. So where was it?

‘What a shame,’ she said out loud.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Eileen was out walking her dog. ‘I’m really hoping we can persuade the Parish Council to restore it.’

‘Why have they let it get into such a state?’ said Kezzie.

‘It’s been a gradual thing,’ explained Eileen. ‘When my children were small we used to come here all the time, particularly in the summer. But then kids started to go on the bus to the school in Chiverton, so they stopped coming. And then the County Council built the big leisure centre in Chiverton and everyone went there, and before you knew it, the vandals and graffiti artists had moved in, so even if the locals still wanted to come they got pushed out. At least we don’t get the drugs any more. We had a spate of that but it’s stopped, fortunately.’

‘What happened to the war memorial?’ said Kezzie.

‘The local council took it away for restoration,’ snorted Eileen, ‘and never thought to bring it back.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Kezzie.

‘I know,’ said Eileen. ‘We always used to have our Remembrance Day parade here, but now the Heartsease British Legion have to go to Chiverton.’

‘Someone should do something about it,’ said Kezzie.

‘Someone is,’ said Eileen. ‘Me. I’ve been writing to the County Council about it for months, and now my friend Tony is the Chair of the Parish Council I’m hoping I can get things moving a bit more. But we could always do with some new blood. Maybe you could help?’

‘Maybe I could,’ said Kezzie. ‘But I’ve got a lot on at the moment, I’m going to help Joel Lyle restore his garden.’

‘Lauren mentioned that,’ said Eileen, ‘and I think it’s wonderful. Lauren was hoping to persuade Joel to help out at next year’s summer fete, perhaps you could put in a word too?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Kezzie, laughing.

Joel was playing with Sam in the lounge. Sam had recently discovered peekaboo and a significant part of the bedtime routine now involved Sam hiding and Joel pretending to try to find him. It was silly but fun, and Joel was starting to really look forward to these precious moments at the end of a long day at work. He had, he realized, lost the capacity to laugh spontaneously, but Sam was slowly beginning to tease it out of him.

‘Two – two, Da-da,’ Sam clapped his hands over his eyes, as Joel mentioned the dreaded ‘b’ word just before bedtime, and this was Sam’s way of telling Joel it was time to play their hiding game.

‘Daddy hide, or Sam hide?’ asked Joel, tickling his son on his tummy.

‘Sam, hide,’ squealed Sam, delightedly, toddling off while Joel made a great show of shutting his eyes and counting to ten. Usually Sam’s hiding places were very obvious – and Joel spotted him within seconds, but Joel realized, when he opened his eyes, that Sam had squeezed through the lounge door, which was a bit ominous. He could just about get upstairs now, but was still a bit wobbly, and not very safe. Joel went out into the hall, and was relieved to hear Sam talking to himself in the little study on his left, which faced out onto the front garden.

Sure enough, he found Sam playing with his favourite rabbit, underneath the desk, the game momentarily abandoned.

‘Come on, tiddler,’ said Joel, swooping his son up in his arms, ‘time for bed, now.’

‘Two, two?’ Sam looked hopeful.

‘No more two, two,’ said Joel, ‘time for bed and milk and a story.’

He took Sam up to bed, got him changed, and sat down with him and read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which was one of Sam’s favourites. Having tucked him into his cot with a bottle of milk, Joel went downstairs to check on the carnage Sam had left behind, before settling down to another lonely evening in front of the TV. It never failed to amaze him how much havoc one small boy could wreak, so he went back to the study, which he rarely used, to make sure Sam hadn’t left anything else under the desk. Sure enough, he found a couple of bits of duplo, a baby board book, and bizarrely two spoons, which he presumed Sam had managed to swipe from the kitchen. Laughing to himself, he picked everything up and went to take them away, when he suddenly stopped and stared at the desk. He’d not paid it any attention for so long, and it was gathering dust, but he was suddenly struck anew by what a beautiful object it was.

It had been a real labour of love working on that desk, but then Claire died, and like so many other things, Joel hadn’t touched it for months. But since Kezzie’s arrival, Joel had felt something shift slightly. For the first time, he could see the point in moving on, making things better, if not for him at least for Sam.

He ran his hand over the rolltop desk lid. It really was a stunning piece of furniture, made of walnut, with several drawers on either side. When he lifted the roll top up, there were several little compartments. Joel recalled Uncle Jack sitting at it, on one of the few occasions Joel had visited as a child, and Uncle Jack had seemed very old, though he probably hadn’t been much more than sixty.

‘There’s a secret compartment in this desk, young man,’ Jack had said, tapping the side of his nose.

‘Show me! Show me!’ Joel had begged, but then they were interrupted, by his mum probably, as it was time to go home. When they’d first got to Lovelace Cottage, Joel had tried and failed to find the secret compartment, and concluded that Jack had been teasing him. For some reason tonight he had a sudden compulsion to see if it was there. He put Sam’s toys down, rolled the top back, and fiddled around in all the compartments, to no avail. Maybe there was something underneath?

He felt underneath the desk, but there was nothing. Then he opened all the drawers one by one. Still nothing. Oh well. He was about to turn and leave again, when a tiny, frayed edge of paper caught in the corner of the smallest compartment to the far right of the desk caught his eye. He tugged at it, and as he did so, realized that there was a slight indentation in the side of the desk, just small enough for him to get his fingers in. With growing excitement, he slid his fingers in, and found a knob, which he pressed. He was rewarded with a sudden click, and a small shelf swung out to greet him. On it was an old and dusty leather-bound book, the pages yellow with age.

He picked it up, and running his fingers slowly along the spine, he blew the dust off it. He opened it carefully and read: Edward Handford. His personal diary. A black and white sketch floated out to the floor. Joel picked it up and instantly recognized the girl in it, from her photographs. She was very young, very beautiful and laughing. Lily, June 1892 was written by hand underneath it. How lovely. Edward must have drawn her. Joel felt a pang. He had no pictures like that of Claire, but plenty of photographs, sad, stolen records of a far happier time.

He carried on leafing through the book. This was incredible. Edward Handford’s actual diary. A real connection with the past. For the first time in a long time, Joel felt excitement coursing through his veins. He sat down and read the first page, it was dated May 1893:

This is my last night in England, for tomorrow I leave Lovelace Cottage on a great adventure, he read. I am only sorry that Lily will not accompany me on my journey to India, but Doctor Blake thinks it would be foolish for her to travel in her condition. I will of course miss her, and am apprehensive of the journey ahead, but I cannot help but be excited by thoughts of the plants I may yet discover …

Wow. Edward travelled to India. How wonderful. Joel flicked through the diary to see if there was anything about the garden. He’d have to show this to Kezzie. Perhaps it could help her restore Edward’s layouts. Joel put the book down and laughed out loud. Despite his initial reluctance, he was hooked. Finding out about Edward Handford and restoring the knot garden was too intriguing a proposition to ignore.

Chapter Seven

It was Kezzie’s first morning working at Joel’s. She’d set off early and it was only just light. She shivered in the chilly autumn morning; winter would soon be on its way. Still, the icy rain of the last few days appeared to have eased off, and she walked up the hill, crunching through the autumn leaves, watching the sky turn from blue to metallic grey, feeling relatively cheerful. A feeble sun was trying to peep through the clouds when she finally reached Joel’s house. She pushed open the creaky front gate, and went to knock on the dilapidated front door.

‘Hi.’ Joel held Sam in his arms as he let Kezzie in. ‘You’re early. I’m impressed.’

‘I like the early mornings,’ said Kezzie, ‘you can get so much more done, particularly at this time of year when you lose the light so soon.’

‘Shows how wrong you can be about people,’ said Joel. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as an early bird.’

‘Cheeky bugger,’ said Kezzie. ‘I may not look the part, but you will get your money’s worth out of me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Joel, looking embarrassed. ‘Can you bear with me a minute as I sort Sam out?’

Kezzie was still in the process of drawing up plans, but she’d agreed with Joel she would make a start on tackling the weeds in the garden and find out what lay underneath. Given that winter was on its way, it seemed a good opportunity to try and tidy things up.

‘Feel free to come in and have a cup of tea whenever you want,’ Joel added, as he expertly changed his son’s nappy. Gross, thought Kezzie. She’d been very grateful to discover that Richard’s daughter was already fourteen. She couldn’t have coped with a baby.

‘Right, that’s you done,’ Joel tickled Sam’s tummy and he giggled infectiously. OK, the nappies were gross, but Kezzie had to admit Sam was cute.

‘You’re very good with him,’ Kezzie said, as she followed Joel, still carrying Sam, cosy and warm in his winter coat, into the garden.

In the short time Kezzie had been in Heartsease, the leaves had fallen from the trees and she was now crunching them on the ground. She loved being outside this time of year, but preferred to garden in spring with the hope of summer and all the glories that were to come.

Joel pulled a face and Sam immediately giggled.

‘Do you think so? I feel fairly useless on the parenting front most of the time. Lauren is much better with him than I am. I used to leave it up to Claire, because she was so good at it. She was a natural mother right from the start, whereas I was all fingers and thumbs. Now she’s not here, I muddle through, but I wouldn’t say I was much cop at it.’

‘He doesn’t seem to be doing too badly,’ said Kezzie, as Sam gurgled contentedly in his dad’s arms. ‘And you’re probably doing better at it than I would. I’ve not got a maternal bone in my body. I wouldn’t know where to start with a toddler.’

Joel smiled. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, but I’m sure that can’t be true. Haven’t any of your friends had babies?’

‘A couple have,’ said Kezzie, shuddering. ‘But they’ve put me off for life.’

‘Surely you don’t mean that?’ he said teasingly. ‘I thought most women wanted children, underneath it all.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Kezzie, firmly. ‘This planet’s overpopulated enough without me adding to the numbers. Besides, I’m far too selfish to become a mum. I like my freedom too much.’

Joel took Kezzie down the garden towards the shed.

‘I think you’ll find everything you need here,’ he said. ‘Uncle Jack did have a sort of layabout handyman, who occasionally cut the hedges back, but clearly he didn’t know what he was doing, which is why the garden’s such a mess. I did have a go at keeping the weeds under control, the first summer we were here, but then Claire died, and …’ his voice trailed off. ‘Well, let’s say I’ve barely touched it since.’

‘Well, I’m here now,’ said Kezzie. ‘And I can’t wait to get going.’

‘I’d better shoot off,’ Joel said, anxiously looking at the time, ‘or I’ll be late dropping Sam off at Lauren’s. Can I leave you to it? There’s a spare key hanging up in the kitchen, if you need to go out. I’ll get you a set cut so you don’t have to come up so early next time.’

‘It’s no problem, really,’ said Kezzie, which was true, it wasn’t. She liked the feel of an early autumn morning, like this one, when the sun was beginning to peep through the mist, the crows were cawing mournfully in the trees and the air was crisp and clear.

As Joel left, she gathered together a fork, trowel, rake, spade, some garden shears, and bin bags and put them all in a wheelbarrow. She let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. She was going to enjoy this.

Lauren walked through her front door after the school run with the twins jabbering excitedly in her ear about their harvest festival, which was to take place the following week. Sam had fallen asleep in the buggy, so she left him in the tiny hallway that led into the kitchen. The girls were demanding to make cookies after lunch, which was often an afternoon treat for all of them. Lauren was on the point of agreeing, when she noticed her answer phone was flashing.

‘Just give me a minute, girls,’ she said, helping them off with their coats, which she hung up in the small understairs cupboard. ‘Why don’t you run upstairs and wash your hands while I get lunch ready?’

The girls thundered up the stairs, and Lauren clicked on the answer message while she took a bag of flour and a packet of chocolate chips out of the larder.

‘Hey, babe.’ Oh God, Lauren sat down quickly on one of her pine kitchen chairs, feeling her knees turning to jelly. Troy. Again. Lauren had still not decided what to do about him. She hadn’t rung him back, nor had she discussed the situation with anyone else. Mum was out of the question, she’d have flipped her lid if she knew Troy was trying to get in touch again. Lauren didn’t feel she knew Kezzie well enough to confide in her. That left Eileen, who was a reliable source of comfort, or Joel. When Claire was still alive, Lauren wouldn’t have dreamt of confiding in Joel. He was her friend’s husband, with whom she got on well, but it was Claire who knew all her secrets.

Lauren had met Claire out walking with Sam when he was a baby and the twins were two years old. The girls had been particularly lively that day, and Lauren had had another call from the CSA to say they hadn’t heard from Troy, and she’d been up to her neck in debt. Somehow, over a coffee in Keef’s Café, the whole story had come out. The two women had hit it off immediately. Claire was looking for someone to care for Sam when she went back to work, and somehow Lauren had come away agreeing to register as a childminder so she could look after him. Thereafter when she’d had a wobble about Troy or anything really, it was always Claire she’d turned to. Claire had been such a good friend to her, and Lauren felt a familiar gut-wrenching sense of loss, at the thought that she no longer had her friend for support. Claire had always been full of sound practical advice, and Lauren missed her wisdom. When she died, Lauren had on occasion found herself confiding in Joel, but it wasn’t the same, and she wasn’t sure if she should ask his advice on this.

She listened again to Troy’s message. ‘Have you thought any more about it, babe? I need to know soon. Call me.’ She clicked the answer phone off. She couldn’t face this right now.

Joel was so dog tired by the time he got home he’d completely forgotten Kezzie was there. For a moment, when he came in the kitchen and saw a half-drunk cup of tea on the drainer, and the kitchen door wide open, he’d had the sudden dizzying sensation that Claire was back, somehow returned to him. He’d had lots of those moments in the early months, but it had happened less often of late. He nearly called her name, but stopped himself in time, when a very dishevelled and rather muddy Kezzie appeared, divesting herself of her wellies as she went.

‘Mind if I leave these here?’ she said, putting them by the back door. ‘It seems a bit silly taking them back and forth each day.’

‘Yeah, no problem,’ said Joel, as he put Sam down and let him potter around the kitchen.

‘You look knackered, if you don’t mind me saying,’ said Kezzie. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

‘That would be great,’ Joel yawned. ‘It’s been a long day. But first I need to get munchkin here into his bath.’

‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Kezzie.

‘None indeed,’ said Joel, with feeling. ‘Come on, Sammy boy, bathtime.’

‘Ba, Ba!’ Sam clapped his hands and giggled.

When Joel had first bathed Sam alone, he’d hated it. He worried about the slipperiness of a wriggly baby in water; he was scared the water was too cold or too scalding. Some of Joel’s tension had seemed to affect Sam and bath times had been neurotic, miserable affairs.

But one time, knowing he was going to be late from work, Lauren had offered to bath Sam for him. When Joel had come to pick him up, he had discovered Sam happily sitting in the bath blowing bubbles and pouring water over his head.

Joel had immediately invested in a couple of plastic cups and bubble bath, and bath times had been a cinch ever since. It was the one point in the day he felt he could really relax with his son.

He was sitting on the floor, singing stupid songs while Sam put bubbles on his nose, when Kezzie came up with a cup of tea.

‘That looks fun,’ she said.

‘Fun, fun,’ burbled Sam.

‘It is, actually,’ said Joel, ‘an unexpected but absurdly simple pleasure of fatherhood.’

‘Are you hungry?’ said Kezzie, ‘only you look half starved. Do you ever eat?’

‘I don’t often cook for myself,’ admitted Joel. ‘Lauren feeds Sam most days, and while I don’t mind cooking, there never seems much point for one.’

‘Thought so,’ said Kezzie. ‘You stay there. I’ll forage in your kitchen, and see if we can’t get you a square meal for once.’

Half an hour later, with Sam happily ensconced in his cot, cuddling his favourite toy rabbit, Snuffles, Joel emerged downstairs to the smell of something delicious on the stove.

Tears prickled his eyes. It was a long time since anyone had cooked for him. He came into the kitchen to find Kezzie stirring a bubbling pot.

‘I’ve rustled up some pasta,’ she said, ‘I hope that’s OK.’

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