Chapter Five
The following Saturday, Rosie got up even earlier than she did on a working day. Being a long-serving member of staff came with privileges, one of which was she only worked Monday to Friday and didn’t have to cover weekends, unlike more junior members of staff.
Today she was determined to make progress on the garden.
She had put her new garden tools in the car last night, together with a garden trug, several large rubbish bags and a folding camping chair, which had sat in the second bedroom for years and never been used.
After a quick breakfast, she made up some sandwiches for later and stuffed a cereal bar in her pocket.
As she drove the short distance to Mickleborough Gardens, she felt her spirits lift.
It was like leaving behind the ordinary and everyday, and venturing into an exciting unknown that glowed with promise.
She was forced to admit that the glow wasn’t quite so obvious as she stood once again in the middle of her wilderness after unloading her kit, but as they always said on those telly programmes that Simon was fond of, it was all about “the journey”.
As Dorothy had promised, the lawnmower was out and ready for use together with a strimmer, but the neighbours might not appreciate that racket at half past eight in the morning. She looked up at the flats. Curtains were still closed in the upstairs windows.
She started by picking all the blackberries within reach and putting them in a large pot.
She then cut back the ivy and all the bramble stalks to around eight inches in height before starting to dig them out.
On gardening programmes, they made this look ridiculously easy, but as Rosie stamped her fork into the hard ground, she was beginning to wonder whether this was going to turn into Mission Impossible.
Connor’s sneering words echoed inside her head:
It would probably be too much work anyway…
‘Oh really,’ she said out loud. ‘Well, just watch and learn, Cooking Boy.’
For the next two hours she worked solidly and determinedly, digging carefully around anything that looked like a shrub, and excavating the tough, resistant bramble roots one by one.
By midday she had a heap of bramble and other unwanted foliage piled up in the middle of the garden but there was still plenty left to do.
Rosie tugged off her gardening gloves and sat down on the camping chair to eat her sandwiches.
She looked around her, trying to picture what she would like to grow.
As the adjoining garden already had a fence, she could plant lots of flowers there, and in the meantime she could fill up the spaces with bulbs.
Next time there was a farmers’ market she would go along and see what bargains she could find.
While packing away her sandwich box, she remembered about the blackberries.
James always insisted on washing fruit before eating it, but it wasn’t as if anyone had used weed killer in this garden.
She tried a couple. The plump berries exploded with sweet juice in her mouth – they would make a wonderful crumble.
Technically though, she ought to give Connor first refusal.
Or at least offer to go halves. She decided she would call in when she’d finished and if he wasn’t in – well, the dilemma went away.
It took almost as long to persuade the thorny brambles into the plastic rubbish bags as it had to cut them down, and she realised rather belatedly that it would have been better to chop up the stalks into smaller pieces.
‘Get in the bloody bag will you!’ she shouted as a long spiny stalk flipped back out for the second time.
‘Anything I can help with?’ said a male voice.
Rosie looked up expecting Connor, and turned almost a complete circle before she noticed a face peering over the fence panel, clearly another of Connor’s neighbours.
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise anyone was out here. I’m trying to persuade these brambles to stay in the bag.’ She pointed at the ripped bag in front of her.
‘I think you need stronger bags. Give us a minute and I’ll bring you something.’
The friendly face disappeared and Rosie ate a few more blackberries while she waited.
A few minutes later, a man appeared at the little wooden gate, which Rosie had left open.
He looked to be in his sixties, and he had several tattoos on his muscly arms and very short grey hair in what her mother would describe as a National Front look.
He was dressed in jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, and in his hand, he was holding several large empty bags which he offered to Rosie.
‘Rubble sacks. That’s what you need for that lot.
I’ll give you a hand.’ As he spoke, he pulled on a pair of sturdy, leather gauntlet gloves and crushed the brambles into submission before stuffing them into the sack.
‘My name’s Bob, by the way. And don’t bother doing any of them Bob the Builder jokes, coz I’ve heard them all, trust me. ’
Rosie couldn’t help but smile at his response. ‘Are you actually a builder then?’
‘I used to ’ave my own firm, but my partner injured his back and couldn’t carry on, and then our apprentice left, so I sold up and now I just do the odd bit ’ere and there.
It’s all word of mouth and contacts. To tell the truth, I like keeping busy.
I’d go mad if I were at home all day, and the missus would soon get fed up of me loitering about the place.
’ He grinned ruefully and Rosie could tell that he wasn’t being entirely truthful.
‘So,’ Bob continued, ‘who might you be? Other than a damsel in distress of course.’
Coming from anyone else, Rosie would have bristled at such a sexist remark, but he had such a down-to-earth manner she couldn’t take offence.
‘I’m Rosie. And my husband was James – Jim for short – so I know all about stupid jokes.’
Bob gave her a quizzical look. ‘Not sure I follow you, luv.’
‘The children’s programme? Rosie and Jim?’
Bob shook his head.
That was a bonus as far as Rosie was concerned.
Before James died there had been many social events where her friends had spontaneously burst into a quick chorus of the Rosie and Jim theme tune, and Emma had sneakily got the DJ to play it at their wedding reception.
She could more or less guarantee he’d never had that requested before or since.
‘So this husband of yours, he’s not a gardener then?’
Rosie experienced a familiar anxiety. Even now, fourteen months on, she still found it hard to talk about what happened.
‘He died in a car accident last year.’
Bob held up his hand. ‘Sorry, luv. Me and my big mouth.’ He paused and pinched his lips together for a second. ‘Did you ’ave any kids?’
‘No.’
For a few moments neither of them spoke, and the only sounds were a twittering of birdsong and the distant sound of someone’s music.
Bob jerked his thumb in the direction of Connor’s flat. ‘So, how did you two meet then?’ he asked, as if determined to pull the conversation onto a less sensitive footing.
‘I saw an ad for renting a garden so’—Rosie threw open her hands as though she was appearing on stage—‘here I am!’ She looked around at the pile of rubbish. ‘It’ll look better once I’ve got rid of the overgrown stuff and cut the grass.’
If she made these statements confidently and repeatedly, they might actually become true, although she’d already realised that the job would take a lot longer than she expected.
Bob helped her load the sacks into the back of her car and she spent the next couple of hours continuing her clearance mission. The strimmer was a godsend and made mincemeat of the long grass and she drove home with a boot full of stuff for the tip.
It was only as she was unloading the car that she remembered she hadn’t asked Connor about the blackberries.
It was too late to go back now but maybe she could make something with them and offer him a blackberry crumble by way of compensation.
Not that he deserved anything; he hadn’t even bothered to come out and see what she’d been doing, but then from his internet profile, he didn’t strike her as the interested-in-other-people sort, unlike his neighbours who were clearly all too delighted with her efforts and keen to find out who she was.
Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation she’d had with Bob.
She hoped she hadn’t offended him, but talking about James was still intensely personal, as was the question about children.
Given her age, it wasn’t an unreasonable or unusual question, it just wasn’t something she wanted to discuss.
And why would she tell the truth to a complete stranger when she hadn’t even told her own mother?