She saved her document, closing it with a sigh. Then she pushed her chair back and stood up, stretching her arms and circling her shoulders. She felt stiff, but that was normal.
Walking along the magnolia-coloured landing and on down the stairs to the white-painted kitchen, she filled the kettle with fresh water and reached into the cupboard for a very particular mug. A few moments later, she took the cup of tea into the living room and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, waiting for the second hand to reach five. When it did, she gave a little nod and walked towards the study on the ground floor. The door was closed; it was always closed. She raised a hand and knocked gently. He didn’t like it if she knocked too loudly.
‘Enter.’
She opened the door and came face-to-face with the familiar view of her husband’s back as he hunched over his desk. His computer was on, but he was handwriting something on an A4 pad, using a disposable blue ink pen. He got through dozens of them, filling bins around the house. Anne Marie hated the waste, even having nightmares about whole landfill sites dedicated to her husband’s used pens. She’d once bought him a beautiful silver fountain pen, hoping that he would convert to a more sustainable way of writing. He had kissed her sweetly and the pen had been placed in a drawer, never to be seen again.
Now, she placed his mug of tea on the coaster. It was his five o’clock mug. She’d once brought in his three o’clock mug and he’d looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
‘Is it five o’clock already?’ he asked now.
‘It is. The clock chimed,’ she told him in case he thought her careless with her timekeeping.
He leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his eyes. At fifty-two, his once dark hair was now streaked with silver. Anne Marie liked that. It gave him the distinguished English-gentleman look – the look she’d fallen for when she’d gone back to university as a mature student at the age of twenty-five. Grant had been her lecturer, and how dashing she’d thought him with his steel-rimmed glasses, his slate-grey eyes and his ability to quote reams of poetry. How in awe of him she’d been, and how bowled over when he’d started paying her attention. They’d married shortly after she’d graduated.
‘Are you making any progress?’ she asked him, daring to reach out and touch the papers on his desk.
‘Don’t!’ he cried. ‘Please.’
She withdrew her hand as if she’d been bitten. ‘Sorry.’
‘I need to keep these in order.’
‘Of course.’ She waited a moment before continuing. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He looked up at her briefly. ‘Have you had a good day?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She had learned to say no more than this because he never really heard her if she elaborated, and she knew that her own job must seem so dull and unimportant to him.
She looked at the piles of books on the desk. He was working on a book about an obscure nineteenth-century poet, but Anne Marie had doubts that anyone would really be interested in him. When she’d dared to mention this, Grant had snapped at her, saying that it was the very obscurity of this poet that made him fascinating, that he was going to uncover the mystery of this writer and reveal his story to the world for the first time. Anne Marie had backed down, acknowledging that her husband obviously knew best. And who knew? He might well have an award-winning book on his hands, though she secretly doubted it. Academic publications tended to have small print runs; at best, it might receive a handful of reviews that nobody would read before being shelved alongside so many other dusty tomes in universities across the country and periodically taken out to torture students with.
Meanwhile, the angst of research and writing, of impressing his peers and adding to his credentials in the hope of promotion was taking its toll, and she could see that his shoulders were hunched so much that they almost touched his ears, and his brow was furrowed, no doubt harbouring a headache. Anne Marie at once took pity on him.
‘Have you thought about what you’d like for dinner?’ she asked softly. ‘I could make lasagne. The girls like that.’
‘Lasagne it is then.’
She waited a moment longer in case he wanted to add anything, but he picked his glasses up and put them on again and his head bent down towards his notepad, and she no longer existed.
She looked around the room for a moment, noting his framed certificates: the degree, the MA, the doctorate. There were photos of him receiving each of them, a funny little statue he’d been awarded for one of his books, and shelf after shelf of the books themselves. A lifetime’s work.
She swallowed hard. What had she achieved? She’d always been part of somebody else’s life, and hadn’t really been very present in her own. She was nothing more than a bit player – a support actor. When she’d made the decision to go back to university to study literature, she’d been filled with excitement at the possibilities that might lie ahead. Perhaps she’d write a book of her own one day, she’d thought. Well, she’d got as far as editing other writers’ books at Oxford University Press, and had then gone freelance to enable her to work from home so she could take care of Grant and his daughters but, somewhere inside her, that dream still lived on.
It was as she remembered this that her eye caught sight of the photo of Lucinda, Grant’s first wife, which still had pride of place on one of the bookshelves. It was a picture of her in the garden at Garrard House, standing under one of the laburnum trees, her two young daughters beside her. Lucinda had been so beautiful, with her willowy frame and long blonde hair, and Anne Marie was quite sure that Grant still felt her loss. How could he not? She had been the perfect wife, and Anne Marie was just a poor substitute. A second-best second wife. It was a role she seemed destined to play, she thought as she left her husband’s study, closing the door quietly behind her so as not to disturb him. He hated it when she closed the door too loudly.
It was now ten past five. Everything was by the clock at Garrard House and all the important things were usually on the hour. Just as Grant’s cup of tea was at five o’clock, so dinner was at seven. Six was too early and eight was too late, she’d been told when they’d married. She remembered making him dinner one evening shortly after the wedding. She’d been so excited to cook in his kitchen – their kitchen – and had called him through when the meal was ready.
‘What is it?’ he’d said, looking completely baffled as he’d entered the kitchen.
‘I’ve made you dinner.’
He’d stretched his arm out to look at his watch. ‘It’s only quarter past six.’ And he’d left the room, returning to his study where he’d very firmly closed the door.
She’d chased after him that time. That one time.
‘Grant? Aren’t you going to have your dinner?’ she’d asked after charging into the room without knocking.
‘I’ll have it at seven,’ he’d told her. ‘Close the door on the way out.’
She’d done her best to keep his dinner warm, but it had spoiled and he’d pulled an agonised face as he’d worked his way through it.
‘Things are so much easier if you work to a timetable,’ he’d told her.
So, between five and six, she tidied the house, did the ironing, folded clothes away, picked other clothes up, vacuumed in the rooms where she wouldn’t disturb Grant, and dusted in those closer to his study. At six o’clock, she stopped and began pottering around in the kitchen, gathering ingredients for dinner. They ate at the kitchen table during the week and in the dining room at weekends or if there were guests.
At five to seven, Anne Marie set the table with the white plates she’d heated up in the oven. She’d once tried to persuade Grant to use something with a little colour, but he’d merely shaken his head.
‘White is classic,’ he’d told her.
So the beautiful blue-and-terracotta dinner set she’d brought with her into the marriage remained at the back of a cupboard. Occasionally, if Gra
nt was away on a training day, she’d serve dinner on her own plates. His daughters would look at her in alarm, but they allowed her that little rebellion without making a fuss.
There were many changes she’d tried to make that had been squashed, although she had had success with the bed linen and the bedroom curtains, but only because they’d been so horribly faded. Grant really had expected his new wife to sleep in the same bed linen as Lucinda.
Tossing the salad in a big white bowl, Anne Marie glanced at the clock. Two minutes to seven. Close enough. Grant surely wouldn’t bellow at her for that. She left the kitchen in search of everyone and ran straight into Irma in the hallway. She was putting her coat on.
‘Irma? Dinner’s ready.’
‘I’m going out,’ Irma told her as she wrapped a scarf around her neck.
‘Where are you going?’
‘None of your business. You’re not my mother.’
If Anne Marie had been given a pound for the number of times that comment had been flung her way, she could have afforded to send her two ungrateful step-daughters to boarding school where they might learn some manners. At least the words no longer hurt her, she thought. They had at first and she hadn’t worn the wounds well. Now, they merely left her numb.
‘Does your father know?’ she asked instead.
Irma sighed. ‘Yes!’
‘And when will you be back?’
‘Ask Dad.’
‘I will,’ Anne Marie promised and watched as the fifteen-year-old walked right out of the door without a backwards glance.
One daughter down, one to go, Anne Marie thought to herself.
‘Rebecca – dinner’s ready!’ she called up the stairs, unsurprised when there was no answer. ‘Rebecca?’
Anne Marie sighed. She could hear music playing from the girls’ bedrooms and knew that she couldn’t avoid a confrontation of some sort. Rebecca (never Becky – Anne Marie had once tried to call her that and had been frozen out for a whole week) was thirteen and was just as tall as her older sister, but still had a lot of emotional growing up to do. She made the most of her position as the baby of the family and had her father wrapped around her little finger, and Grant always took her side over Anne Marie’s.
Reaching Rebecca’s bedroom, Anne Marie paused before knocking on the door, lightly at first and then with more force.
‘Rebecca?’ She opened the door and the scowling face of Rebecca greeted her.
‘What?’ she snarled.
‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘It’s lasagne. You like lasagne.’
For a brief second, Anne Marie believed she saw Rebecca’s resolve waver, and she thought about approaching her, sitting on the bed next to her to see if she could make some sort of connection. It might be easier without Irma around. Anne Marie had often observed how Rebecca was always quick to follow her older sister’s lead, but Irma wasn’t here now, was she?
‘Rebecca – listen—’
‘I said, I’m not hungry.’
Anne Marie stood there for a moment. As an adult, she could insist that her step-daughter turn off her music and come downstairs and eat, but what would be the point of that? It would just mean more unnecessary fighting and she really didn’t have the heart for it.
‘If you change your mind—’
‘I won’t,’ the girl said.
Anne Marie looked at her, wondering how a human being could live in the same house for four years and be treated with nothing but love and respect and yet show absolutely no reciprocal emotions whatsoever. When she’d first taken on the role of step-mother, the girls had seemed docile enough, but she’d mistaken their innate shock at her presence for acceptance. They’d simply been sizing her up and biding their time before they’d rebelled. Well, Anne Marie was sick and tired of their games now. She just wasn’t going to play them anymore.
She went downstairs, returning to her husband’s study, knocking on the door gently.
‘Enter.’
‘Dinner’s ready, darling,’ she told the side of his head.
‘Oh, Annie, I haven’t time to eat,’ he said, briefly looking up from his papers. ‘I’ve got to crack on with this.’
She opened her mouth, but then shut it, leaving the study and returning to the kitchen. She walked towards the oven, put on the oven gloves and took out the dish of lasagne. Grabbing a serving spoon from the worktop, she walked over to the pedal bin and opened it, giving the cheesy-topped dish a little nudge with the spoon, and watching it slide into the dark depths.
She then walked through to the hallway where she grabbed her coat from a hook by the door and swapped her slippers for a pair of ankle boots. It would still be light for a little while yet which would give her time.
Garrard House was on the outskirts of Parvington in the south of Oxfordshire, a pretty village which sat in the heart of the Chiltern Hills. It was a paradise of open fields, secluded woods and the beautiful chalky Ridgeway footpath. She would often take herself off on summer evenings or crisp winter mornings and just walk, inhaling the clear air and observing the small changes that each season brought. But there was one place that drew her more than any other – more than the lush fields and the verdant woods – and it was to this place she went now.
Nobody knew that she came here because she hadn’t told them. Who would care? Grant wouldn’t be interested and his daughters would be even less so. The place was her wonderful secret.
She passed the large houses and the sweet brick-and-flint cottages lining the main street of Parvington and then she turned right into the churchyard of St Peter’s. It was a modest church with a squat tower upon which perched a golden cock weathervane that glinted in the last rays of the sun. But Anne Marie wasn’t visiting the church. She was going somewhere quite different.
Passing the lichen-covered eighteenth-century graves whose angels and skulls were still perceptible and seemed to watch her every move, she walked towards a dark hedge, stopping at a little wrought-iron gate which was partially hidden by a cascade of ivy. She wasn’t sure what had made her walk towards it on that summer’s evening, two years ago, but she was so glad she had when she discovered what was at the end of the narrow path on the other side: a garden – a beautiful, neglected garden. At first, she’d been mesmerised and had walked with very little thought as to where the overgrown path might lead her. She’d been so caught up by the romance and the adventure of it.
When she’d come upon the large Victorian red-bricked house with its tower, its battlements and arched windows, she’d been truly terrified that she’d be caught. Though there was nobody around, it was clear that the house was lived in: several windows were open and neat curtains fluttered in the breeze. Anne Marie had hastily retreated, but the pull of the garden proved too much for her and she made frequent visits because it was clear that nobody ventured into the greater part of it and that was such a shame.
After some research online, she’d discovered that the place was called Morton Hall. It had been built and owned, she’d read, by the Morton family with Emilia Morton, spinster, still in residence, but there was very little information about her. She’d asked Grant about it one evening.
‘The old Morton place? Ghastly piece of Victorian Gothic,’ he’d said, which seemed rather harsh, Anne Marie thought, even though the architecture had inspired a certain amount of fear in her. ‘Why do you want to know about it?’
‘Just curious,’ she’d told him.
‘Not a lot to know really. Owner keeps herself to herself. Doesn’t have anything to do with the village, but I hear she has quite the collection.’
‘Oh?’
‘Artworks, furniture – mostly from the Arts and Crafts period. I’ve heard it’s rather spectacular.’
Now, as her light footsteps took her along the path once again, she thought of the house with its single occupant, wondering what she was like and if she was happy to live alone even if she was surrounded by great beauty. And why
hadn’t Anne Marie ever seen her in the garden? She could understand why she didn’t frequent the overgrown part, but there was a section of the garden that was beautifully maintained.
As far as Anne Marie was aware, there was only one gardener who worked at Morton Hall. She’d seen him from afar. He was tall with broad shoulders. He looked no more than thirty-five and had fair hair which was normally hidden under a peaked cap. She usually managed to avoid him because he always seemed to be working around the maze and the topiary hedges.
Why didn’t he garden anywhere else? She wanted to shout out to him – Hey! Over here. Are you going to do nothing about this walled garden? But, of course, she never did.
It was puzzling how it was only part of the garden that was maintained. But it meant that she had a whole world to escape into – a place that seemed to truly welcome her – and she would spend hours walking along the overgrown paths, spying the statues of forgotten gods and broken mythical creatures, fountains that no longer sang with water and a long lean-to greenhouse that no longer groaned with produce. It was beautiful and melancholy all at once, possessing the wild beauty of something unloved and untouched.
Anne Marie walked around it now, her legs brushing through the long grasses. She liked this special time at dusk when the shadows were lengthening and the last robin of the day was singing in a tree.
She found an old stone bench to sit on. It was in a secluded corner of the walled garden and her frequent presence there had flattened the grasses around it so that it looked almost habitable now.
As she made herself comfortable, her stomach gave a rebellious rumble, making her regret the decision to bin the lasagne, but she’d been so mad. How much of her time was spent looking after Grant and his daughters? And yet she was made to feel invisible. Her role was simply to serve them. Other than the hours she spent at her computer, she didn’t feel like she had any sort of life and that was rather sad, wasn’t it? To live in a house that didn’t feel like your home.
The Heart of the Garden Page 3