style="font-size:15px;"> 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.
