‘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