Their childcare arrangement (fortunately already in place before Claire died) was a good one, but he often felt wrongfooted when he was with Lauren. It was one thing to constantly be home late for an uncomplaining wife, quite another to face Lauren’s wrath for the hundredth time, when he’d got stuck working late. He did his best, and for the most part the small charity where he worked accommodated him, but his life was now full of tense compromises between work and home. He was always joking that he was like the wife of the office, always the one rushing home early for the children. And only now was he beginning to realize quite how tough things had been for Claire when she first went back to work.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, as he thrust Sam into Lauren’s waiting arms. The twins peeped mischievously from behind her, already in their school uniforms. How did she do that? Joel wondered. She had two of them, it wasn’t yet 8 a.m., and they were both spick and span and ready. Even after a year he still felt inadequate when it came to the domestic side of his life.
‘No worries,’ said Lauren lightly, but he knew her well enough to tell she was irritated. Though she generally showed him nothing but sympathy and kindness, Lauren wasn’t above putting him in his place from time to time. She had pointed out on more than one occasion that she wasn’t his slave, and he really needed to take more responsibility for things. She’d never quite said, ‘Just because Claire put up with you, there’s no reason why I should,’ but Joel sometimes felt sure it must be on the tip of her tongue, and he knew he deserved it. He knew he should make more effort for Lauren. She was great with Sam, and filled the gap Claire left behind as well as she could. Joel never meant to take her for granted, but life was so overwhelming sometimes he leant on her a bit too heavily. Lauren loved Sam almost as much as he did. He was immensely lucky to have her.
Lauren sighed as she shut the door behind Joel. He could be so frustrating at times, it nearly drove her demented. He appeared to have no concept of time at all, or appreciate that her life didn’t just revolve around him and Sam. For the most part, Lauren felt really sorry for him – it was hard for him having to bring up a child alone, and she was sympathetic. But lately, she had also begun to feel resentful. She’d been left literally holding the babies and had had no choice but to get on with it. Everyone in Heartsease thought that Joel was an amazing dad and he was, but Lauren also knew from things Claire had let slip that he had been quite unhelpful when Sam was born. So while she was sympathetic to his situation, somehow she couldn’t quite shift her feelings of irritation.
‘It must be difficult for him, I guess,’ Claire would say, to Lauren’s annoyance. Much as Lauren had loved Claire, it drove her mad the way she constantly forgave Joel, when Lauren felt he was being so unsupportive. Claire. Lauren felt the loss of her friend keenly. The grief could still come suddenly like a deep punch to the stomach. Claire had put up with Joel’s vagaries because she loved him, Lauren should probably try and do the same.
But Lauren had found it difficult to cope with the scandalously short time it had taken Joel to start dating other women. Claire had barely been in her grave, or so it seemed, when Lauren had spotted him with the first one in the Labourer’s Legs, where she worked some evenings. True, on that occasion, Joel had been pounced on by Jenny Hunter, the village slapper, who’d been known to fell lesser men at five paces, so he didn’t have much chance. But Jenny had been swiftly followed by Mary Stevens, the Year One teacher at the village school, and Kerry Adams, who ran the chemist’s.
If she hadn’t known better – Joel had cried on her shoulder more than once in the early weeks after Claire’s death – Lauren might have thought he didn’t care about Claire at all. Only the other Saturday – a few days after Claire’s anniversary – Lauren had spotted him all over Suzanne Cawston. His behaviour exhausted her patience with him. If the boot had been on the other foot, Claire would never have done that, and Lauren felt indignant on her friend’s behalf that Joel should apparently have replaced her so lightly. But she didn’t want to fall out with him about it. Not only did she love looking after Sam, the bottom line was she needed the money.
And Joel was good to work for in many ways. He always compensated Lauren financially when he was late, but she resented the time taken away from her own girls, and hated the stress-inducing moments when the clock was ticking and she was going to be late (again) for the pub. It was like having all the disadvantages of marriage without the sex.
‘Come on, Sammy, let’s have a cuddle before we take the girls to school,’ she said. Sam, she’d noticed, loved to be tickled and played with in the mornings. She wondered if it was because Joel didn’t quite know how to – although for all her carping, Joel was clearly devoted to Sam, he just hadn’t had much practice looking after him, and it showed.
‘Maybe we should teach him, eh?’ said Lauren, and she was rewarded with a great big smile as she tickled Sam’s chin. ‘Get that silly daddy to see what he’s been missing.’
Chapter Three
It was dark, just the way she liked it. Kezzie had forgotten the sheer dizzying excitement of guerrilla gardening. She felt the familiar frisson of being out on a moonlit night, in the middle of nowhere. Ever since she’d stumbled across the decaying garden a couple of weeks earlier, she’d been determined to make a statement to whoever the owner of the garden was. Presumably someone must own it. Shocking, how such a beautiful place could be left so neglected. Whoever it belonged to, clearly didn’t value it as they should.
She found the oak tree, from the which vantage point she had peered into the garden last time she was here. She hooked herself up, heart pounding, before swinging her legs from the tree to the wall, and jumping down into the garden. She rummaged round in her bag for her torch, then decided she didn’t need it. The moon was so bright she could clearly make out the contours of what had once been an orderly and well-managed garden. Overgrown with weeds it might be now, but it was obvious that once upon a time someone had lavished a lot of care and attention here.
On the far side was an ornate iron gate, with steps leading down into the garden. There were borders running round the edges, which were full of weeds creeping over the paths, and in the square in the centre was a tangled mass of ivy and rosemary and box. She spotted the rusting iron bench near where she had landed, so she put her rucksack down on it while surveying the scene. An owl hooted nearby, startling her, and she could hear the sound of foxes fighting, not far away. It gave an added thrill to what she was doing. She felt like Rapunzel’s dad, stealing lettuces in the dark. Any minute now an ugly witch would appear.
She opened her rucksack and pulled out the garden clippers, fork and trowel she’d brought with her. The garden was hideously overgrown, but she could make out an ancient hedge – box? Probably, it looked like it had been a border once – beneath the weeds. Taking her clippers, she started to hack back at the brambles and convolvulus threatening to strangle it. As she worked, she tried not to think about the night she’d done this in London – the night she’d met Richard, the night her life had changed forever. If she hadn’t broken into the rough patch of ground by the posh gated community, where he lived in Clapham, and planted daffodils, she’d never have met him at all. He was on his way home and he’d accused her of vandalism, until she pointed out that you couldn’t vandalize something you were trying to improve.
A couple of months later, when the daffodils were blooming and he’d found her admiring her handiwork, he’d grudgingly admitted that she was right and her efforts had transformed a scrubby patch of ground into a little haven of green in the city.
‘You should do that for a living,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a way with plants.’
‘I’ve got a job,’ Kezzie had replied defiantly, not wanting to admit that designing logos for a company that advertised on the web wasn’t really fulfilling her. It turned out that Richard was an architect specializing
