had dawdled through the shabby high street, which smelt of vinegar from the chippies and old, unwashed clothes. Mum would have adored it: there were charity shops from end to end. I glanced at this and that, then drifted down towards the sea.
I leant over the railings and stared at families on the beach. Their white shoulders were going red, their plastic seaside stuff was piled around on the sand. No sign of Dad’s sculptures, but I saw his donkeys, waiting in a row. If I hadn’t had the sandwiches in my hand, I’d have asked how much, and climbed up.
I wandered along the promenade, biting into the warm, fishy bread and then the jam. As I tipped back my head and put Gran’s bottle of squash to my lips, I saw something flash, and for once I didn’t turn away. I walked across.
The mirrored garden was in the space between a pink bungalow and the last terraced house. Two children with sandy legs, stood on the pavement and stared.
‘Come on,’ their mother, or somebody like one, nagged. ‘You don’t want to look at that!’ But they did so she grabbed their hands, and dragged them past.
I drained the bottle and went in.
There were no flowers in the garden or anything that grew with roots and stems and fluttering green leaves. Instead, someone had gathered up the remains of all the broken and shattered things in the world: ends of green wine bottles, triangles of blue willow pattern with pagodas and stick-like trees; pebbles and shells and thick fragments of pottery soaked in an old, yellow glaze. Someone had collected these thousands and thousands of smashed and abandoned bits together and cemented them into place. Then they’d built towers and spires and houses the size of shoe boxes and paths and a mountain with tea-cup white peaks of snow above a turquoise tiled sea. Everywhere, mirrors and bits of mirrors had been set into the concrete and they sparkled and flashed and blazed.
It was ugly and beautiful and it must have taken someone years and years.
‘Oh, it did,’ said a voice at my elbow as if I had spoken aloud. ‘Twenty-eight, to be exact. And I’m not finished yet.’
I nodded. I understood what he meant.
‘Like it, do you?’ He was a small, sun-burnt man with a thin mouth and wild, wiry hair.
I nodded again. In a cracked mirror I saw myself fractured into a million pieces of light, and scattered around.
The man’s nails were broken, his hands ugly and worn. I imagined him walking with shoulders bent and eyes downcast. His pockets would bulge as he scoured the ground.
I don’t know how long I spent in the mirrored garden, but I had to run through the summer shadows to make it back in time.
‘Had a nice day, dear?’ Gran helped me to more chips.
‘Yes.’
‘Your father phoned.’
‘What did he say?’ I could barely get my breath.
‘Not much. The weather was hot.’
‘You’d expect that,’ Grandpa speared a pea, ‘in Spain.’
That night I left the flowered curtains open and imagined things in the moonlight as I lay on the narrow bed.
‘See that?’ The next afternoon the man pointed to a circle of mirrored petals around half a plastic throne. ‘That’s where I started, twenty-eight years ago.’
‘Oh.’ I hadn’t asked but it was nice to know. I scratched the skin on the back of my knee. Earlier, I’d ridden a donkey up and down the beach and now I itched. ‘It’s very…’ I stared at the little drops of reflected light which danced on a doll’s hand, and a piece of smoothed, bleached bone.
‘Isn’t it just.’ He sighed and set something straight. ‘But now I don’t really care.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. Or not much. Or I say something back. But mainly I just keep quiet and do a bit more. Like over there. See? That’s where I’m working now.’
‘What’ll you do when it’s finished?’
‘Finished?’ He rubbed his hands together and his rough skin rustled like leaves. ‘It’ll never be that.’
Back at the house after supper, I dried while Grandpa washed up. ‘A mirrored garden?’ He paused as he steered the head of the mop round the rim of a glass. ‘On the promenade, did you say, Chris? I don’t think I’ve heard about that.’ He looked down at Jasper. ‘But we don’t go far now, do we, old boy?’
The dog didn’t move.
‘But it’s been there twenty-eight years! That’s what the man said.’
‘Has it really? Just think of that.’ Grandpa rinsed out the bowl and squeezed the mop.
That night I heard a summer storm in my dreams and when I woke in the morning, everything smelled wet. Before I left, I held up the basin of wrung-out clothes while Gran pegged out the wash. Later, I walked bare-footed on the cold, ridged sand. I ate my sandwiches and spent time with a little kid who was trying to fish off the rocks.
I heard the noise as I was walking back. It was like thunder with a car crash thrown in. When I’d belted up the littered, sandy steps I saw a cloud of dust that was as dark as smoke. A small, sunburnt workman had stopped the traffic and held back the curious crowd as the bulldozers moved in.
‘What are they doing?’ I cried out to no one in particular, so no one answered back.
In ten minutes the mirrored garden had gone and the place where it had been was flat. The workman stepped back, and the seaside traffic moved once more. The holiday crowd licked ice cream and rolled on. The workman connected up the water and began to hose down the billowing dust. As I watched, he bent down and picked up something that flashed. He rubbed it clean with his hand, then put it carefully in the pocket of his jeans.
‘Your father phoned,’ Gran was pouring custard into Jasper’s bowl. ‘They’ll be back tomorrow, like they said.’ She smiled as she tipped the rest into a jug.
I smiled as I watched Jasper lap.
And I was glad, really. I was glad.
Lesley Howarth MIRRORS DOT COM
It started four days before Samantha Lamb’s birthday.
You know there’s a Year of the Rat, a Year of the Pig, the Dog, the Horse, in the Chinese calendar? They knew more than we did, the people who started that stuff.
I know about that stuff now. Did you know there’s an animal – a secret self – hidden in your reflection? Oh, yes. And the way to see it
