Chapter Three
Shortly before two o’clock, Rosie turned into Mickleborough Gardens.
According to Google Maps, it was a cul-de-sac and mainly lined with two or three-storey blocks of flats.
She recalled James telling her that this part of Haxford near to the railway line had been heavily redeveloped after the war, and whatever had stood here originally had clearly been knocked down and replaced with more practical-sized housing.
She was still garden gazing when the door opened and she snapped her attention back to the person now framed in the doorway.
Standing two steps lower and in her flat shoes made him seem like a giant.
After yesterday’s brief conversation she had expected to see a middle-aged, grumpy, possibly even snarling individual, but he looked surprisingly normal and a lot younger than she’d expected.
He had the sort of face that belonged in the pages of a designer clothing magazine, with eyes like pools of melted chocolate.
He was dressed neatly in designer jeans and a navy-blue Ralph Lauren T-shirt – not what she’d expected from round here.
‘Hello, I’m Rosie Steadman. You must be Connor? I’ve come to view the garden.’ Her voice sounded all breathy and rushed and she forced herself to breathe a bit slower.
She waited as he shoved his feet into a pair of shoes lying inside the door and then she followed him back down the steps and along the path that led down the side of the flats.
From behind, his neatly cropped dark brown hair looked like someone had just ruffled it up with their fingers, and she could see from the way he carried himself that he was fit.
Possibly in more than one sense of the word.
Her mother would definitely have put him in the layabout-who-couldn’t-be-bothered-to-shave category, but the three-day-stubble look totally suited him.
The path continued in a straight line alongside the garden, separated by a low trellis fence that ended at an equally low wooden gate.
She paused as they reached the gate, where she got her first proper look at the colourful garden.
The marigolds formed part of a larger herbaceous border, and in the corner was a small rowan tree.
Adjoining the building was a patio area on which an array of glazed terracotta pots were arranged and overflowing with flowers.
It was perfect, and Rosie felt a rush of enthusiasm just gazing at it.
‘Wow, it’s lovely! You have obviously worked really hard on this, so you must let me know what I can and can’t change.
’ She turned as she spoke, but Connor was walking on.
The path continued past the garden towards a wild area, presumably common land of some sort and he had paused at a scruffier looking version of the first wooden gate, tapping his hand impatiently on the gate post. Rosie hurried to catch up.
‘Sorry, I was just saying how lovely your garden looks and how—’
Connor made an irritated noise. ‘I’m afraid you’re admiring the wrong garden. That one’—he pointed back to where she’d been standing—‘belongs to old Mrs Thingummy downstairs. This is my part.’
Rosie followed his pointing finger and immediately experienced a massive dollop of disappointment.
Connor unlatched the waist-height gate and shoved it open. He gestured with his hand. ‘After you.’
The grass was knee high, but that was the least of the problems. The area that Rosie had assumed was a field was obviously the garden in question, although calling it a garden was something of a massive overstatement.
It wasn’t even clear where the boundary was at the far end, but if there was one, it was buried under a mass of ivy and brambles.
The dividing line between Connor’s garden and his downstairs neighbour was a wooden trellis, but she could see the tall grasses, nettles and other weeds poking their way through the gaps.
The adjacent garden – presumably belonging to one of the neighbours on the left-hand side of the block – had a more robust boundary in the form of a five-foot wooden fence sitting on sturdy wooden gravel boards.
It looked quite new and Rosie wondered whether the neighbours had erected it as a deterrent to the encroaching weeds.
Why the hell would anyone want to rent this garden? Now she could see why he wanted her to come yesterday evening, not that dusk would make this disaster look any better! She took a few steps forward and pretended to look around while she attempted to rein in her frustration.
Connor cleared his throat. ‘Look, I know it needs a bit of work…’
A laugh bubbled up from Rosie’s throat. ‘A bit of work?’ she echoed. ‘This is a wilderness. It’s not a garden, it’s a…’ She struggled to find any words suitable to describe what she was looking at.
‘So, do you want it or not? I have other people enquiring.’ She recognised a familiar acerbic tone of voice.
‘No, I don’t.’
Connor shrugged. ‘It would probably be too much work anyway.’
Common sense said she should really let his remark go.
After all, he was obviously rude, opinionated and god knows what else, but she was fed up of people making assumptions about what she could and couldn’t do, which had never happened when she was with James.
Connor had barely taken two paces back towards the gate when Rosie marched after him.
‘Actually, I’ll take it. But I’m not paying ten pounds. I’ll give you a fiver.’
Connor stopped mid-stride and wheeled around. ‘Seven.’
‘Done.’
Rosie threw him a triumphant look. She would show him she was quite capable of getting this garden under control and she was not as feeble as he obviously thought she was.
She wondered whether he treated everyone with the same degree of disdain, but as they continued looking at each other she wondered if she could see something else in his expression.
Relief? She realised she was being uncharacteristically direct in her manner and tried to soften her voice.
‘Can I ask, what is your surname?’
Connor looked at her warily.
‘It’s only for payment purposes.’
‘Forbes. But cash is fine.’
‘So, do you think we should establish a few ground rules? For instance, are there any times when you won’t want me to be around? And do let me know where your parking space is so I don’t accidentally pinch it.’ Rosie grinned, making it clear this was meant to be humorous.
‘Look, don’t take this personally, but I don’t care when you want to visit. I don’t have a car at the moment so you can use my parking space if that’s easier. It’s at the back.’ He pointed past the garden. ‘There are marked spaces and the access is from Langley Close.’
‘Great. That’ll make things easier. And can I assume from the state of the garden that you don’t mind what I do with it?’
‘Do what you like,’ he replied making a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘I’m only renting this place and whatever you do to the garden can’t make it any worse.’
Rosie raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, thanks for that vote of confidence.’
‘Look, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. Things are just…’ Connor shrugged but didn’t finish the sentence, and Rosie wondered what he was alluding to.
Since losing James so suddenly and having to deal with the shock, distress, anger and all the other emotions encompassing the inevitable grieving process, she had come to realise that people employed different strategies for covering up their feelings.
Her mother’s, as she knew all too well, was to keep busy.
Hers was to retreat from the world and shut everything else out, which was more or less what she’d done over the last year.
She still visited her mum, she went to work, but it was all on a superficial level and she found it difficult to explain how the loss of James had carved out such a hole in her world.
Maybe Connor also had problems of his own.
As she drove home, her thoughts gravitated back to James.
Sure, he’d had his faults; he was very particular about mealtimes and he could be pedantic about silly little things sometimes, but since his death she’d thought more and more about the good times they’d shared together.
Maybe that was nature’s way of preserving the good memories and erasing the painful ones.
Rosie felt today’s decision had been something of a milestone though.
For the first time in a while, she had done something for herself, by herself, without consulting James or anyone else, and it felt liberating.
A small fizz of excitement tingled inside her and as soon as she arrived home, she quickly texted Emma with a brief update on her new project.
She would wait until work on Monday to tell Simon – it would liven up a dull Monday morning.
*
Rosie spent all of Sunday planning what to do with her garden.
Her garden. She liked the sound of that, even though as she’d said herself it was more of a wilderness at the moment.
She’d kept some of James’ books and now she dug out a volume entitled Gardening for Beginners.
James had probably bought it for when they could afford a house with a garden, and from a brief skim of the contents it was obviously based on the premise that the purchaser of said volume was starting with a nicely tilled patch, but so what?
She could dig out a few weeds and brambles.