and her fingers were awkward and cold but she was determined to face whatever had to be faced from the security of her tweed suit. She even ran a brush briefly through her curly white hair.
Then she was ready. She listened carefully as very cautiously she turned the key. It took a lot of courage to open the door but she did it at last and looked out.
The body had gone. The floor was clean. Everything was as it had been the night before when she first went to bed. She breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs Cosby must have found Cathie. Perhaps the ambulance had already taken her away.
Plucking up her courage she went softly down the passage towards the guests’ sitting room. A strong incongruous smell of bacon was floating up the passage. She shuddered as she pushed the door of the sitting room open. The same two tables were laid again, one for one, one for two. At the latter sat a figure.
‘Hello dear.’ Cathie peered round. ‘I knocked on your door earlier, but you must have been sound asleep.’
Harriet’s mouth fell open.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Cathie looked concerned. ‘Come and have some cornflakes. This sea air has already made me hungry.’
Harriet groped her way to the table and sat down. Her eyes were fixed on Cathie’s bosom which was covered in a pale yellow jumper.
Cathie smiled at her benignly. ‘Have some coffee, dear. That nice Mr Danway will be in soon. I was asking Mrs Cosby about him. He’s here for the duck shooting, you know. He went out in the early hours this morning. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Do you know, Hattie. It was so ridiculous last night. I dreamed he broke into your room and shot you! It really quite upset me this morning till I realised it was just a dream.’ She gave a little giggle as Harriet slumped into her chair. ‘I suppose it was the gun that did it. Silly me. Shall we go down on the beach later and look for shells, dear?’ she went on happily. ‘It’s going to be a lovely day.’
With a shaking hand Harriet reached for her napkin, guiltily pushing away the whisper of treacherous disappointment which had touched her at the sight of Cathie’s robust form. ‘You must have eaten too many sausages last night,’ she murmured with something almost approaching her usual asperity. ‘Fancy dreaming a stupid dream like that!’
The chain-link fence gleamed red in the light of the rising sun. Looking down at it from her bedroom window across the bare square of earth and rubble which would one day be their garden, Amanda sighed. Turning from the window she sat down on the end of the bed and stared round the room. Small, functional and new, like the garden. So new it still smelled of paint and varnish and the sour tang of sawn deal.
Next door the baby was crying again as it had been on and off all night. The muffled protests and the distant sound of a radio somewhere across the road only served to emphasise the silence in her own house.
‘We must live somewhere new; so new no one else has ever lived there before! I don’t want a second-hand house! I don’t want a house full of other people’s dreams and nightmares.’ Andrew’s sweep of argument carried all before it as it always had and her own dream of an old cottage with a thatched roof and roses round the door crumbled before his enthusiasm, swept away as impractical and romantic and hopeless.
So here they were, newly married, newly moved, practical and down-to-earth and Andrew had left for work, early as usual, leaving her with the long day stretching out before her, empty, soulless and alone.
‘You’ll soon find a job; make some friends. Go and knock on some doors.’ So easy for him. He had done it already and talked cars and sport and TV programmes and the relative qualities of the local pubs. Her knocks had been greeted with vague smiles, barely concealed impatience, screaming children, hurried uncomfortable exchanges in the frantic business of her neighbours’ days.
Standing up at last she went to the window again. The sun was up now, the light outdoors harsh and unforgiving. Beyond the chain-link lay all that remained of the old suburban garden in which their small development of ‘executive starter homes’ had been built. The grey stone mansion had long gone, destroyed, so she had heard, by fire, but something remained to titillate her curiosity for there, beyond the long swaying grasses and the lichen-covered apple trees, she could see the reflection of the sun on glass. Several times she had walked round the neighbouring streets, trying to find the entrance to the garden, but with no success. It seemed to be a lost enclave, an unsold, unremembered plot amongst the neat geometric streets, the small red roofs and the manicured lawns. The lost garden beckoned. It was old; it was romantic; it was the focus of her dreams. One day she knew she would find the entrance and walk there on the old land beneath the new.
She had no premonition that today would be the day, no warning that suddenly the urge would become undeniable. One minute she was standing in her lonely bedroom listening to the baby’s wails, the next she was running downstairs, knowing that she had to find what lay beyond the wire.
No one saw her. Glancing behind her at the rows of neat windows, most swathed modestly in ruched nets and fancy frills, she put her foot, without giving herself time to think, on the concrete stanchion which held the high fence in place, grabbed at the top of the wire and vaulted it. In the neat houses behind her, women got their children ready for school; they fed their babies and made their beds and looked for the car keys so they could go to a supermarket too far away to visit on foot. None looked out of the windows. There were no gardens yet to admire. Some had laid neat squares of grass bought by the metre; two had planted small whips of birch and miniature weeping willow. None looked beyond the chain-link fence. Those who did saw nothing but a wilderness of weeds and wondered, if they thought at all, why the plot had not been sold.
Amanda stood for a moment feeling the unexpected iciness of early morning dew soaking into the legs of her jeans. It made her gasp with surprise. Glancing back she saw how high the wire she had vaulted was from this side, with beyond it the blind windows, and she shivered. Ducking through the wet grasses she ran for the apple trees, suddenly afraid of being seen, feeling the catch of bramble and spear thistle, the slippery wetness in her shoes, the cling of burrs in her hair, then she was out of sight of the houses and wrapped in the silence of the garden.
She stopped, trying to steady her breath, willing the beating of her heart to quieten and steady, and at last, as the pounding in her ears subsided, she let the peace and beauty of the garden enfold her and soak into her soul. Walking slowly now, exploring, confident she could not be seen, she found that she was listening to the liquid song of a wren as it scuttled and hid in the ivy which swathed an old grey garden wall. On the top of one of the apple trees a blackbird eyed her suspiciously and then relaxed, ignoring her. Its throat swelled and it began to sing, the sound echoing gloriously round her in a cascade of liquid notes.
Enchanted, she listened without moving, conscious that in the distance she could hear the steady popping sound of ball on racquet from the municipal tennis courts in Celadon Road – surely once part of this same garden. She did not move until the blackbird stopped, flirted its tail and flew away. Then she plunged further into the undergrowth.
She saw the old man before he saw her. A trug laden with flowers on his arm, he moved slowly and silently away from her along the path and out of sight. Frightened and embarrassed she drew back into the shelter of the brambles and watched.
The half ruined, shabby greenhouse stood against a high brick wall. Most of the glass was broken; that which remained was smeared and furry with lichen. On
