Strangers in a Garden

by Deanna Maclaren

  What she did want to do, most urgently, was kiss the breath out of this man she loved. They fell back amongst the silken cushions, making up for all the lost hours, the lost nights, the loving they’d both yearned for and thought they’d never have again.

  So they didn’t hear Lol come in. They didn’t see her sit at the grand piano. But they heard her singing, in that distinctively haunting lilting voice, the song she’d made famous:

  ‘We were strangers in a garden,

  Talking, as strangers do,

  Of life and love and heartbreak,

  Betrayals you know too.

  Now they’ve locked the door to the garden.

  But I can see over the wall

  To the long lush grass and the flowers

  And I think I hear you call.’