Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Miss Lissy met me at her succulent-roofed mailbox.
“You’re late.” Her arms were crossed in her favourite stance. I knew what she was thinking. But a gastric bypass had removed her ability to punish my still-small body in the traditional way.
“Didn’t realise I was on your schedule,” I said, letting myself through the gate.
“It’s common sense to arrive at the same time you did last time.” Her tone was all ice.
“What is it they say about common sense?” I tapped my finger against my lip as I walked the path to the patio, her eyes burning into my back. “Oh, hi Em!” I added, relieved to see the teenager sitting cross-legged and surrounded by books on the wooden stairs.
She nodded quickly, her black hair falling in front of her eyes, before turning her attention back to her reading.
“You might be able to help me, Ema,” I said, continuing my question.
Partly because I felt like I might be able to decipher her wellbeing from her answer and partly because I could tell Miss Lissy was pissed that I wasn’t grovelling at her feet for my tardiness.
“Do you know what they say about common sense? It’s a funny saying. I can’t seem to remember it.”
She shook her head without looking at me. I wondered how her parents hadn’t come to figure out that something was wrong. Although I guess I had no proof that anything was officially wrong. But I knew Miss Lissy, and that was all the proof I needed.
Didn’t she still have to call her parents? Perhaps she had parents like me, or like my dad at least, who worried in silence but talked about nothing.
“It’s not very common,” Miss Lissy answered for her, her spectacled eyes fixed on mine.
“I heard you were doing a spot of gardening yesterday. That’s what I thought you could help me with this morning,” she said.
Tiny alarm bells sounded a warning within me.
Quiet, but they were there. Like a tinkling in my gut.
“How on earth did you hear that?”
She tilted her head. “I’ve got birdies everywhere. You should know that by now.”
Did I ever. I let my backpack slump to the ground and followed her through the garden.
This. We had to make a little piece of Breeze’s yard like this. Except nothing like it.
“Have you used a swing hoe before?”
I narrowed my eyes, waiting for a joke that didn’t come. “Do I look like I have?”
She handed me a long-handled tool with a squared copper end and pushed it gently back and forth across the soil, pulling up small weeds as she went. “It’s more productive. Hoes on both the forward and backward motion,” she said, thrusting it into my hands.
I couldn’t help snorting. Don’t we all.
I wasn’t sure how I’d been roped into gardening duty today when my agreement was to visit Miss Lissy once a week until I left.
It clearly had some kind of servant fine print I had missed, and my comfort outfit was overheating me in the mid-morning sun.
Apparently, Glades Bay was five degrees warmer than anywhere surrounding it, as well as having more old people fall over per square metre than anywhere in the region, on account of its large elderly population.
Sounds like two additional good reasons to get the hell out of here.
“Do you know what these are called?” She gestured to the bell-shaped pink flowers that towered above her compact frame.
My eyes formed slits as I considered her.
Foxglove was my middle name, but I doubted she remembered.
More likely, one of her little birdies had passed it along. She was gearing up for a point.
“Foxgloves,” I replied flatly, inspecting the copper blade of the tool in my hand. Pretty.
“Well done,” she said with forced delight, her smile stretching.
“It’s a funny thing about flowers. They all have symbolic meanings.
” She waved an arm around her garden. “These, for example, symbolise love.” She pulled another pink bloom I didn’t recognise towards her face.
“Chrysanthemums bring comfort in sorrow,” she added, brushing her hand across a bed of yellow.
“And these—” she clipped the tallest foxglove’s head with her secateurs, “these symbolise riddles and secrets.”
She looked at me. Just a flicker. Measuring the impact before snipping another.
The alarm bells in my gut rang louder.
“Why do you think someone would name you after that?” she asked, pinching the bloom between her fingertips.
“I doubt they gave it much thought. Or maybe they heard it was good for the heart.”
“Or poisonous?” Her words were sharp. Her stance mirrored mine.
“Maybe my parents had a morbid streak.”
“Or,” she said, drawing the word out as she clipped another stem, “they knew a thing or two about secrets.”
I kept at the rhythmic motion of the swing hoe. Forward and back. Forward and back. The repetition helped me appear calm, even as my chest raced. I would not give her the satisfaction. How dare she talk about my parents as if she knew them?
“I don’t know if my parents were that creatively cryptic. Riddles seem more your style.”
A flash of something crossed her face—anger, momentary and sharp—before she smoothed it away. Satisfaction crept into me like sun through a crack. I’d landed a hit, even if it was accidental.
It was known in the children’s home that Miss Lissy had taken work with children because she couldn’t have any of her own, just like Mr Bellamy’s wife Margaret.
Miss Lissy, on the other hand, had a husband who left her because of it.
Unpack that as you will. What I’d gleaned from it was that she had decided to punish all other children for the rest of eternity for not being hers.
I think her infertility was the universe doing souls everywhere a solid and making sure they didn’t have to spend a lifetime related to her.
“All adults keep secrets from children,” she continued. “If you think about it, it’s impossible not to. Santa. The farm your old dog went to. The Easter Bunny. You’d have heard some of those, surely?”
I sighed and leaned on the handle of the hoe. “Sure.”
A glint appeared in her eyes, and her eyebrows curved. “Perhaps they weren’t the only secrets, is all I’m saying. Especially with a name like that.”
Then she turned on her heel and wandered over to the roses, deliberately leaving her words to fester. She was cryptic by design. Torment was her language. Her words always pierced just enough to send their poison through your bloodstream.
I’d never given much thought to my middle name before. I didn’t plan to start now. Especially not for her.
Forward and back. Forward and back.
Hands on the handle. Sun on my back.
I focused on the rhythm of my stupid rhyme, letting it ground me.
I hated being at her house, but I couldn’t say the same about her garden.
Each day I spent with my hands in the dirt or feeling the repetitive motions of the maintenance didn’t feel like a drain, but the opposite.
It energised me. More than copywriting ever had.
I felt the same about clearing the yard at Breeze’s.
After my patch was clear of weeds, I took a break.
I wasn’t a prisoner after all. Ema looked alarmed as I sat down next to her, unzipping my navy backpack.
I’d come prepared after last time; no risks would be taken accepting food or drink from Miss Lissy.
I took out a tall thermos, pouring the sweet tea into the two cups I’d brought along with me.
The egg from the club sandwiches I was unwrapping filled the air as I handed one to Ema and thrust a tea in her other hand.
“Got to have a break sometime,” I said, eyes crinkling as I smiled at her. “Now, I can’t claim to have made these. My food still tastes like necessity, but Breeze—who owns Steamy Sips in town—she’s a natural at the whole nurturing provider thing. These are from her.”
I took a bite of my sandwich, the tang of mayonnaise hitting my tongue. Ema’s brows pinched together as she took a tentative bite.
“The café that Miss Lissy is to buy?” she asked softly as she swallowed, and I nearly choked.
“The café she wants to buy,” I corrected. “But definitely won’t.”
Still, I was relieved to hear her speak. It showed she hadn’t been completely muted by the tyrant’s mind control.
“Here, take this,” I whispered. I leaned forward and tucked another tightly wrapped sandwich into the inside pocket of her vest. You couldn’t be too careful when it came to the smell of eggs.
Ema didn’t look starved, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
She smiled before glancing around the garden again. We sipped our tea quickly.
“Do you get to keep in touch with your parents much?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Ema whispered, her eyes darting around once more. “Miss Lissy says not to bother them. She keeps my phone and only lets me use it at 8 p.m. for study and research. I call my parents once a month, but Miss Lissy says they’ll be enjoying the break from me. She’s usually right.”
My heart ached at that last line.
“Don’t they wonder why they’re not hearing from you more?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Miss Lissy tells them UK schooling is different from Japanese schooling. She says it takes a lot of immersion and tells them not to interrupt my learning. They want me to do well. They want me to get a good job after. So they accept that.”
“I’m sure they miss you very much,” I said gently, dipping my head to meet her eyes. “And I don’t believe for a second they need a break from you.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. The darkness had already spread through her veins from a slow and prolonged Miss Lissy attack.
We finished our tea, and I packed everything back into my bag, looping the straps over my shoulders.
“I’ll see you again soon, okay?” I said from the bottom of the steps.
Ema’s eyes blinked into mine for a long moment, searching. She gave a small nod. A whisper of a smile touched her lips before it vanished again.
“Going somewhere?” came the crisp voice behind me.