The Seed Collectors. Scarlett Thomas

had grown up in that place after all. Where else was she supposed to go? And where was Oleander going to get another yoga teacher that she wouldn’t have to pay? But now all the extra responsibility she gave Fleur makes sense. And of course the huge gift of the cottage. She must always have known Fleur was one of the family; that Fleur had Gardener blood in her. But leaving Namaste House – the whole operation – to her? What the fuck is that about? Charlie is pleased for Fleur, of course he is, but what are Beatrix and Augustus going to say? And what in God’s name are they all – the younger generation, the ones left behind – supposed to do with a seed pod each? What was Oleander trying to say there? Go kill yourselves? Will there be something in Quinn’s journal that explains further? But if Oleander had things and knew things that were important then why hide them for the last twenty-odd years? Clem has already asked to read the journal, and Bryony has shrugged and said yeah, for sure, but she just wants to read it first, as Quinn was her father after all. Which basically means no. And as for this hunting lodge on Jura, which he, Clem and Bryony now own, and which Fleur is still trying to make sound exciting and even better than Namaste House, no one knows how that came to be in the family at all. They’ll go and visit it in July, they have decided. It’s two plane rides away in the depths, if such a thing exists, of the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. And then to make things even more confusing there is this woman lurking about called Ina who turned up at the funeral from the Outer Hebrides . . . She was saying something about the frankincense tree before and . . .

      Fleur’s voice has long since trailed off. There’s a long pause followed by the sound of a teaspoon hitting bone china just slightly too hard.

      ‘Will you have to get some kind of qualification now? I mean, if you’re going to take over running all the therapy and yoga and everything?’

      ‘Bryony!’

      ‘Well, she’s talked about it often enough. And I’ve really enjoyed going back to uni. I just thought . . .’

      Charlie pushes the open door and calls ‘Hello?’ to let them know he’s coming, and to give the impression that he’s only just arrived and hasn’t been listening to their conversation for the last ten minutes. His Vans don’t make any sound on the black-and-white Victorian tiles in Fleur’s entrance hall. He wore a suit for the funeral itself but has since been back to Bryony’s and changed into his favourite Acne faded corduroy trousers and a white T-shirt with a yellow Alexander McQueen cardigan over the top. ‘You look like an old person,’ is what Holly said when she saw him. So he tried the Acne blazer that was his second choice but a bit matchy-matchy with the trousers. ‘You look like you’ve been to Debenhams,’ she said. ‘You are basically an old person who goes to Debenhams, and even has lunch there, with slimy peas and gravy.’ She sort of had a point; he could see that. But maybe you have to be over eleven to understand that fashion is not only – or even – about looking good. At eleven it is impossible to understand why grown-ups wouldn’t want to be happy all the time and go around in ball gowns drinking fruit juice and eating chocolates and spending their wages on puppies, kittens, board games, picnics, trips to the cinema and visits to the donkey sanctuary. Charlie supposes that if Holly were ever in charge of a budget there’d have to be a tennis court too. And cut flowers. He suddenly sees her holding vast bunches of pale pink peonies, weighing more than she does, probably, with early-summer sunlight glinting off her almost-black hair.

      The women are in the drawing room on the right. Charlie breathes deeply, as he always does when he enters this room, as if to actually take it into his body: the polished oak floorboards; the Sanderson Grandiflora wallpaper in eggshell and bronze; the antique sofas that Fleur reupholstered herself using various old Liberty fabrics, all with botanical, slightly otherworldly prints. The large vase of pussy willow on the apothecary-style coffee table. Fleur herself is sitting in the rocking chair, which has a print of dark pink and purple organisms that are almost, but not quite, recognisable flowers. Clem and Bryony are sitting together on the pinker of the two George Walton sofas. In front of them Charlie is pleased to see the Wedgwood Golden Bird tea set he bought Fleur for her thirtieth birthday. He, of course, is still wearing the labradorite pendant she made for him all those years ago. They’ve hardly spoken for months after that argument about Pi last July, although of course they saw each other earlier at the funeral, but from opposite ends of a row. Now here he is.

      ‘Hello,’ says Fleur. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea but actually we’re due to have cocktails in half an hour when the others arrive so unless you’re desperate . . .’

      The smell of Fleur’s lapsang souchong blend. But . . .

      ‘I’m fine. Can I help with anything?’

      ‘Yes, actually,’ says Fleur. ‘Come and help me pick some mint.’

      There is a frost on the morning after Oleander’s funeral. When the robin wakes up, his wings are glary and frozen, and he has to shake himself for several seconds to free them before he can even think about flying. When he gets to the large stone birdbath he finds that there is no water, just a large slab of ice that he can’t drink or bathe in. But there is something on his table, at least: not dried mealworms; not slugs. The robin likes spelt pastry but does not like smoked salmon because it tastes of fire and danger. Norman Jay does not like smoked salmon either, and the no-name woodpecker doesn’t even come to the bird table. The bad-luck magpie will have to eat it when he comes later in the morning, or else the bigfat pigeon will have it, or his mate will.

      After he has eaten several poppy seeds and the remainder of his pink macaron, the robin flies to the other birdbath on the steps leading up the side of the cottage, where it is warmer. He drinks slowly, and then washes, his lacklustre wingflap signifying that he does not want what is coming soon: finding a mate, nesting, providing. He is tired: it is his eighth spring. Through the bedroom window he can see that Fleur is nesting. Fleur often nests. But she never lays any eggs. That man in her nest has made it yblent. Did he make Fleur put out the firedangerfish? Did he eat the other macarons? Did he make her cry out in the night, as she so often does now? The robin heard nothing, so perhaps this is the one who makes her silent. The one with feathers like a blackbird, although he has not been in Fleur’s nest for years. The robin suddenly wants to be alone, so he flies to the top of the holly tree, puffs out his chest and sings his most violent song. The song, roughly translated, tells of hard beaking, in both a sexual and non-sexual way. It has woodness, but also intense fertee.

      Fleur is not asleep. Fleur is not really awake either. She is wondering about the Scottish woman, and all those things she said. And how she wants to give her something in the morning, which is more or less now. She said she had something else from Oleander, that Oleander couldn’t give Fleur while she was still alive. Fleur can hear the robin singing something deep and far away. The woman – Ina, her name obviously the end of something else, hopefully not Nina, for obvious reasons – had travelled from her croft on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Oleander used to go on mysterious ‘Scottish trips’, setting off on a sleeper train roughly twice a year. But she never talked about who she saw or what she did. Fleur had imagined her in Edinburgh, Miss-Jean-Brodieing around castles and tweedy shops before meeting sad, wildered celebrities in hotel suites or mansions overlooking the Firth of Forth. She was wrong.