Chapter Nine
There’s something you learn if, like me, you’ve grown up with rejection – coming second, being ignored.
Do not be left standing like an abandoned suitcase in the middle of the station. If someone walks away from you, look busy, find something to do. Quickly.
Even as my heart and mind are stunned at the sudden change in Osian, I turn back to investigate the blue tiles.
Teacup in hand, I walk toward the steps, scoffing the last of the bread roll Osian had given me as I study the wall.
The ivy is thick, so it takes a lot of work to push even a small part of it out of the way.
To be honest, wrestling with long-dead twisty gnarled branches and dry leaves is the last thing I feel like doing, but I make myself grab handfuls of the stuff and peel them off the wall.
The blue tiles continue all the way down to the bottom step.
But the wall doesn’t end there as expected.
No, it curves around in a tight circle. It’s hard to make out with all the bushes obscuring it.
Now is as good a time as any to start my job. Let’s face it, working is better than running after Osian to assure him I’m not a celebrity chaser.
One of the things I brought with me from London was a box of quick gardening tools. It takes a couple of minutes to dash upstairs to my apartment and collect gloves and secateurs.
And yes, my eyes do wander to next door, but he doesn’t seem to be in his rooms. Who cares? I’m busy anyway. Look how fast I go downstairs, jumping three steps at a time, and back out to the terrace.
The ivy takes a lot of cutting, and what a filthy job it turns out to be.
Layers and layers of dead leaves have turned to dust, which flies up when disturbed.
Underneath, decades of dust and rain have created a dank, soggy habitat for all kinds of mould, yeast and a million insects that all start crawling out.
No one has ever called me squeamish, but this is just ugh.
Today was my day for research and prep while waiting for the movers to bring all my stuff from London.
Stuff that included all my large heavy-duty gardening tools that don’t fit in my car.
Yet here I am, working without any planning.
Isn’t that typical of this whole new business?
Jump after the ball before thinking, before looking.
The pile of cuttings on the ground behind me is growing to the point where I have to stop and move it out of my way. Where has it all come from? Because the bloody ivy – and bramble and bindweed – on the wall doesn’t seem any thinner.
No one would believe I’ve been cutting away for an hour.
Or they might, because I am filthy from my face to my shoes.
And what have I achieved? Barely thirty inches of wall cleared.
That’s what’s scaring me: the wall is a perfect example of the entire grounds – fascinating but too big; too much for me.
“Do you need help?”
I swivel on my heels to find a boy and a girl – teenagers – standing on the terrace above me.
“Hi.” I stand up.
“I’m Rhian,” the girl says. “And he’s Ricky.” She speaks with that lovely Welsh lilt.
Ricky’s pin-straight hair is so long on top, it hangs down over his eyes to his nose, but the back and sides are shaved. It’s the kind of look that says trouble. Had I met him on a London street at night, I’d have crossed the road to avoid him.
Rhian has slightly outgrown micro braids that she’s gathered in a ponytail. Her green eyes are a striking contrast to her café-au-lait skin. She’s ringed her eyes with lots of kohl.
“Haneen sent us to you. Says you’re bound to need a hand.” The girl nods to the pile of debris. The boy starts rolling his sleeves and grabs an armful of very muddy twigs.
“Don’t do that.” I stop him. Whatever creepy crawlies are hiding among all that will soon crawl all over him.
“Uh, I thought it was all rubbish.” He drops everything back on the heap.
“It is, but I think it’s better if we find something to carry it in.
Do they have refuse sacks or some cardboard boxes?
” I ask tentatively. This is something I should have considered before starting this task.
Normally I would have, but my mind was trying to escape from the mini embarrassment earlier.
“Osian has a wheelbarrow. I can ask him to have a lend.”
“Okay…” I say, uncertain if this is a good idea. “Or a box or a bin from the house. Do you think you could find a spade?”
For some strange reason, they both laugh. “Yes, we have shovels.” Ricky sets off, presumably to locate the tools.
“What’s so funny?” I ask Rhian.
“Didn’t Evan and Haneen tell you about what happened with her ex?
” she says with that gleeful expression that says she has a story she can’t wait for me to know.
I don’t want to encourage gossip, so I don’t ask, instead I turn back to the ivy.
“If you want to help,” I say, “you can pull these branches away from the wall so I can cut them.”
Before long, Ricky comes back with not only a wheelbarrow but also a shovel and a large rake. “Osian had these.”
“And he doesn’t mind us using them?” My eyes flick quickly towards the terrace doors to see if he’s there.
“He said, ‘sure’.”
Of course he did.
We work well, the three of us. With Rhian holding the branches for me, the cutting process goes much faster. Ricky doesn’t need much supervision and fills the wheelbarrow over and over to wheel it away to some dump out front.
“Last year when Evan and Haneen first came, this house was disgusting. Full of so much dirt; nothing like you’ve ever seen. Animal shit like up to your knees. We had to shovel out the pigeon shit and made a big bonfire outside to burn it all.”
She natters on and on. I ooh and aah in all the right places; my verbal autopilot takes charge. But my eyes keep stealing towards the terrace doors in case Osian comes to investigate how we’re using his tools.
Should I have introduced myself properly this morning? Reminded him of our past?
Yes, I should have.
Now he thinks I’m some random TV presenter who’s carried a torch for a celebrity tennis star and probably has posters of him on her wall.
“It’s all dead; why’s it so hard to pull off the wall?” Rhian snaps my attention back. “Like they’re glued to each other or something.”
“That’s ivy for you. It has a very sophisticated gripping system.” I show her where the roots have attached to other branches and to the cracks in the wall. “Once we’ve cut enough, you’ll need to scrape this off.”
Ricky, bless him, keeps clearing the rubbish so we can move around.
“I really want to be a teacher,” Rhian continues, picking back up her previous conversation.
“But to get accepted into college, you need good GCSEs and my school…” She hesitates, then continues, pretending nonchalance.
“They’re only nice to their pet students.
Try being the only biracial girl in the whole school. ”
“School can be like a war zone. Here, grab this.” I hold out a thick bundle of branches so I can get under them and cut the base.
“I was never one of the popular girls. Many kids made fun of me because of dirt under my nails or on the knees of my trousers from gardening. They used to call me Titch.”
“What’s a Titch?”
“Short for Alan Titchmarsh,” I explain. “He used to present a gardening show on the BBC long ago.”
“Was he sexy?”
I laugh. “No. At least not to schoolgirls.”
“Stupid. Our maths teacher”—her voice takes on a confiding note as if she’s already decided to trust me—“was a hundred percent in love with one girl, always giving her attention. And if you dared to ask a question he just mocked you.”
She pulls hard on the branches so when my secateurs finally cut through just above the ground, the entire section comes off.
“Anyway,” she says with vehemence. “I’ll show them!”
“My sister told me that the best way to ‘show them’, was to work hard and get better at whatever I wanted to become. So if you want to be a teacher, hold on to your dream and don’t think about what others say.”
“Like you showed them. Because look at you now. You’re gorgeous and you’re famous – on TV and everything. I bet those girls who called you Titch are secretly all following you on Instagram and pretending they were your friends at school.”
“Thank you.” It’s touching how quick she is to defend me. “I’m not really on Instagram.” Please God, I hope I never make it on social media.
“I want to work with small children and special needs.” Rhian emerges from under the canopy of some green-and-brown leaves and sits back on her heels. “Like Rhys – he goes to this incredible school for deaf children.”
“Rhys?”
“You’re new. Sorry. Forgot. You don’t know anyone here.
He’s Evan’s nephew. A super-intelligent boy; he can read very fast. And then there’s Henrietta who is very shy and sometimes gets the selective mutism?
Haneen lets me help her with homework. And you know what?
When I’m a teacher, I’m going to be a million times better than Llancaradoc High School.
Evan says if I show myself to be reliable and hardworking, he’ll sponsor me to go to Aberystwyth University and get a PGCE. ”
“So why are you helping me cut ivy?” Surely it doesn’t have much relevance to a special needs teacher.
“Everything counts. The professor says no work is wasted if it’s useful to someone. And he’s teaching us.”
“The professor?”
See, this is my skill as a TV presenter: to ask the right question to draw someone out and keep them talking. The professor, one of the Kendric House partners, didn’t strike me as an obvious teacher for troubled teens.
“The professor makes learning fun. He says if we work hard, we can pass two GCSEs this summer and do the rest next year,” Rhian tells me with genuine excitement. “And the old people help too. Have you met the Squad?”
It’s starting to dawn on me that Kendric House is indeed a community in many ways.