The Summer Season

‘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 in garden design, and he encouraged her to train up in her spare time. One thing led to another, and before long she’d found herself agreeing to move in with him, and giving up her job, once she’d finished her course in landscape gardening. Of course, none of it had worked to plan, her job giving up on her, before she had a chance to resign, and then losing Richard before she’d moved in. Something she had simply never thought would happen …

Richard had been a revelation to her. He was completely unlike any of the boyfriends she’d had before. Kezzie had had the unfortunate habit of spending most of her teens and her early twenties attracted to the wrong kind of guy, and after a disastrous liaison with a small-time drugs dealer had forsworn men, until just before her thirtieth birthday when she’d met Richard.

For starters it was unusual for Kezzie to be dating someone with a job – let alone someone like Richard in his late thirties, with such a high-powered job. Not only that, with a failed marriage behind him (‘She left me, sadly,’ he’d explained to Kezzie that he’d have done anything to make the marriage work, but his ex had been equally determined to move on), Richard also had a fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily. Kezzie didn’t even know anyone who had a baby, let alone a full grown teen. That aspect of things hadn’t been ideal, Emily being as unkeen on Kezzie as Kezzie was on her, but Kezzie had been overawed by the trendy, open-plan loft living apartment Richard had owned near Clapham Junction and ashamed to take him back to her small rented flat in Finsbury Park. But Richard was totally unfazed by the differences between their lifestyles – or some of them at any rate, later on it would be all too clear that he disapproved of the drug taking and late night partying – but to begin with he’d said, ‘We’re not that different, you and I.’

‘Really?’ Kezzie was incredulous. She stared at his fair hair, public school boy good looks and his smart shirt and Armani suit. ‘We inhabit different planets.’

‘Maybe we do now,’ said Richard, ‘but I didn’t always earn good money. And I might have gone to public school but my parents worked hard to get me there. My dad ran a pub you know. I spent most of my time at school pretending he owned a chain of hotels.’

Kezzie laughed, ‘And I used to lie to people about which estate I grew up on.’

‘See,’ said Richard, with his crooked grin, which made her fold up and melt inside, ‘not so different after all. I don’t pay any attention to trappings. They don’t mean anything. It’s the person inside who counts.’

And of course, that was how it had all gone so wrong. She had turned out to be different from the person he thought she was.

‘That was then, this is now,’ growled Kezzie to herself and continued with her work, while trying to put painful thoughts of Richard and what might have been behind her.

As she worked, she cleared away the brambles and began to see the box was really out of shape and ragged. Once upon a time, though, it had clearly formed a pattern, woven into which was rosemary and a kind of ivy she couldn’t identify.

What was hidden in this wonderful place? Ever since the day she’d climbed up the oak tree and peeked over the wall, she’d fallen in love with this secret garden, and it looked like it was about to surrender some of its secrets to her.

The more she uncovered, the more excited she grew – the box, ivy and rosemary definitely formed an interconnecting pattern. Eventually she uncovered enough to see it was in the shape of a heart.

Suddenly, she realized what she was looking at; she’d studied this kind of design. ‘It’s a knot garden,’ she said out loud. ‘That’s amazing.’

A security light flooded through the iron gate. She looked up and saw to her surprise there were lights on in the derelict house she’d seen the other week. A torch was bobbing its way down the garden. Shit. Although she’d imagined someone must own the house, it had looked so ramshackle, she’d assumed no one was living in it. She must have made a mistake. Gathering up her things, she ran to the corner of the wall and slung her bag over the top. She was scrambling up the wall, trying to grab for the branches of the oak tree, when—

‘What the hell are you doing in my garden?’ said a distinctly male and very attractive voice.

‘Um—’ Suddenly Kezzie felt very foolish. She had a feeling that guerrilla gardening might not quite have made it to this quiet corner of Sussex …

Joel shone his torch into the eyes of a petite woman – a very pretty woman he had to grudgingly admit. She had short, dark hair, and an elfin look and was dressed in oversized combat gear, which made her look like a little doll. She’d dropped back to the ground when he’d accosted her.

‘I didn’t realize it was your garden,’ she said. ‘I saw the high wall and was curious, so I climbed up the oak tree and discovered your garden. I thought it looked uncared for.’

‘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 had been a source of great amusement to her when her irritating boss from the pub had keeled over while holding court in front of half the village.

‘That was only the half of it,’ said Eileen. ‘Thanks to Cynthia Green, we had that wretched bore from Radio Chiverton opening proceedings, and he gave the longest speech I have ever heard. Plus the stalls were so drab and uninteresting, and the weather was so lousy we hardly made any money. The problem is, everyone thinks so small. We need to make it more of an event if we want to make any serious money. So Tony Symonds, who’s Chair of the Parish Council this year, has suggested we shake it all up a bit. And he asked for my help.’

‘So where do I come in?’ said Lauren. ‘I don’t have a lot of spare time.’

‘I know you don’t,’ said Eileen, ‘but we could do with some young blood, and as one of the restoration projects we’ve got in mind is the Memorial Gardens, particularly the play area, I thought a mum like you might be perfectly placed to tell us what’s needed.’

‘That’s blackmail,’ said Lauren, laughing.

‘I know,’ said Eileen, ‘but could you help? It would be great if you could.’

‘Oh go on,’ said Lauren. ‘And I’ll try and see if I can get Joel Lyle involved. You know Edward Handford was his great great grandfather, don’t you? Joel was planning to restore the garden at Lovelace Cottage when he and Claire moved in, but he’s not got round to it yet.’

‘How stupid of me,’ said Eileen. ‘I dabble a bit in local history, but I hadn’t made the connection. I’ve always been fascinated by Edward’s story – he created that garden for his wife, when they got married. I’d love to see it.’

‘I’ve only seen it once, but it’s a bit of a mess,’ said Lauren. ‘I think it needs a lot of work.’

‘Hmm,’ said Eileen, ‘I wonder how Joel might feel if I suggested we helped him restore it.’

‘I don’t think he’s much of a committee person,’ said Lauren. ‘And since Claire died, he seems to have lost heart a bit with the house. I’m not sure he’s going to want to help, but there’s no harm in asking.’

Chapter Four

Kezzie poked her head out of her bedroom window. The dawn chorus had woken her up again. She still couldn’t get used to the fact that she could hear their chatter, which would have been drowned out in the noisy bustle of London. Apart from the sounds of wildlife, it was much quieter here though, and sometimes the stillness drove her a bit mad. But she loved the cottage, which like her aunt was quirky and homely, and full of trinkets Jo had acquired on her many travels abroad. She was grateful for Jo’s impetuous generosity. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask anyone for help, knowing she’d get none from her parents, who were in their own loved-up retirement cocoon in Spain.

But thanks to Jo, Kezzie now found herself buried in the Sussex countryside. The plus side was she did find the quiet soothing, and enjoyed living so close to nature. The downside was that she knew no one and the contacts she’d cultivated in London with the aim of setting up her own freelance gardening business, now seemed a long way away. The redundancy she’d willingly taken from her job at the website company was enough to tide her over for the time being, and she had some freelance web design work, so getting a gardening contract wasn’t urgent. But she’d have to get a job soon, so her plan today was to get down to it, and start planning her future.

Kezzie got dressed and ate her breakfast in Jo’s kitchen, looking out at the garden. She loved this room, which was dominated by a huge Aga, and decorated in muted yellows and oranges, which gave it a cosy, warm feeling. It felt very much the hub of the house, and Kezzie spent a lot of time here.

It was a beautiful, sunny October morning and the birds were running riot in the hawthorn bush that belonged to her neighbour. Kezzie hadn’t spoken to her properly yet, though she had said hello once or twice to a rather frazzled-looking young woman with long, fair hair, pushing a buggy accompanied by two little girls. Blimey. Three children and she barely looked out of school. Kezzie couldn’t help but thank her lucky stars that she’d never made that mistake. It had been bad enough discovering that Richard had a daughter. Kezzie had had no desire to play stepmum to Emily, to Richard’s evident disappointment.

‘You have to grow up some time, Kez,’ he’d said, and Kezzie had laughed and said, ‘I don’t see why I have to.’ Now she wasn’t so sure.