The Garden of Lost Memories

by Ruby Hummingbird

  ‘No,’ she snapped, barely back in the present, the same emotions surging in her as if she was still kneeling in the soil after her discovery, clawing desperately at the earth, mud clumped under nails, her world crashing down around her. ‘Leave it, it’s nothing,’ she said, her anger causing Billy to recoil.

  He looked down, only the top of his head visible as he stared at the rug, the day ruined. She couldn’t fix it, wasn’t able to. She simply watched as he got up silently and she just let him go.

  One of my favourite days was the day you borrowed the tandem bike. We’d pushed it off the pavement, wobbly and screeching, and wheeled it slowly down the high street. People stared as we passed, shouting and cackling when the pedals spun away from us as we lost the rhythm of it. June had glared at us, too much joy, too much show. We were making a spectacle of ourselves. And for a second I worried people were watching – I wasn’t used to people caring what I did – and then you twisted in your seat at the front and poked your tongue out at me.

  I hadn’t cared then, the whole world could go to hell in a handcart because I was happy, the two of us against the world.

  We’d got the hang of it, calling to each other, pointing out sights: a red kite diving, a flash of sunlight on the river, a pub sign…

  Stopping in, we had propped up the bike, ordered drinks, the cider sticky and sweet, and moved through to the terrace at the back. As we rested back in our chairs, we listened to the roar as the water tumbled over the weir below us, sipping cold drinks, droplets slipping down the outside of the glass, our legs aching from the earlier exertion. We had clinked glasses, our contented expressions mirroring each other.

  Would it always be like this, I had wondered as I watched you get up, stand next to the railing, arms folded on the top as you watched boats idling past. Your profile so familiar to me, your voice the one I always recalled. I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it. I didn’t want to live in that world.

  Chapter Eighteen

  BILLY

  She’d been pretty chilled recently and I started to like going round there. Big mistake. Our new house was boring because Mum was always tired or working and we still had no TV anyway and I hadn’t been able to bring my BMX from London, so I spent a lot of time kicking the football against the fence, which Mum said got on her nerves. Then she’d get stressed because I’d want to talk about Dad and ask if we were ever going to see him, even when I was an adult, and he’d said we could go to Florida when I was eleven and I didn’t understand why she was stopping me.

  Mrs Maple had started to do nice things, like she wouldn’t always make me wait while she did stuff like clean the oven or hoover the front room or polish all her weird figurines but when I appeared she’d have something for us to do. And she talked to the walls less and less.

  We worked in the garden a lot and she showed me loads of cool things. It was brilliant watching it all grow right in front of my eyes and she paid me money too. She got me my own jigsaw, which was way easier than her crazy blue-sky one; she’d said it was an old one but she’d left the price tag on again. Same with the paints she’d got that we spent an afternoon with. It was nice of her. She told me I could take them home with me: ‘What would I do with them?’ she fussed, shushing me out the door, which she always did when she was a bit embarrassed.

  She left me out this form on her table for the allotments with a ten-pound note to start me off and I knew she had gone to see that woman called June, who worked part-time in the chemist but also ran the allotments in the village, even though I knew she didn’t like June because she’d ‘stepped out with the butcher’, whatever that means, and she’d then left him and he’d been sad.

  ‘Something to save for,’ she’d written on a note stuck to it.

  My own allotment. I thought of that big patch and all the things I would need to do and a little part of me froze: I wasn’t good enough to do it.

  And then she ruined everything by getting all angry about things; sometimes you never knew what would set her off. Like one time I pointed out the crack in her teapot was getting bigger and she better buy a new one soon and she raised her voice at me that she wouldn’t and I didn’t even really care, and then the other day we were having a picnic and she was so rude when I asked her about seeing the house on the map. Loads of the places on the map are nice so I don’t know why she got so funny about it. She did apologise for being nasty, but only because Mum saw that she had let me walk back along the lane alone and had been a bit frosty about it with her.

  I was meant to be round there today but Mum left for work already and I suddenly felt like doing something on my own. It was really hot and I didn’t want to work in the garden anyway. I wanted to check out that place on the map. I decided to get the train to Goring and I reckoned no one would even check my ticket as it’s like two seconds away.

  There was literally no one on the train when I got on and I sat with my feet up on the seat opposite feeling a bit nervous, as if Mum would appear and get all worried but really, it’s not like London, where there is loads of danger. Out here you hardly see anyone some days, not like Brixton, which was always rammed.

  When I got off the train Goring was pretty, terraced houses lining the road, small shops with bright flowerboxes and the widest stretch of river running under the bridge. I leant over, dropping a pebble into the water as it flowed underneath, seeing my wobbly reflection as I stared down into it. I remembered the day out on the rowing boat when Elsie had just jumped in, how we’d walked back to her house completely drenched. That thought gave me a bit of a lump in my throat. I hoped she wouldn’t be cross I’d come here. I just wanted to see what it was and then head back.

  I moved on, up the road, past a pub that was on the map so I knew I was close. A right-hand turn and the road forked. Taking the left, I moved slowly down, hearing a tinny clink – a brown sign pointing to a golf course on the other side. It was well posh: I saw four cars in someone’s drive and one of them was a Porsche! And I couldn’t see into other houses because they had electric gates that completely blocked the view, some with little black CCTV cameras at the top – to put off robbers maybe? Daniel would say I’d know.

  I hoped there wouldn’t be gates where I was headed. Remembering the small field on the map, a park in the corner, I felt excited when I saw some swings. I was definitely close. The house was set back from the road, down its own small lane, which was all dusty with big pebbles that were kicked in every direction as I walked. There were two stone pillars and a big circular drive around a small green circle of grass that had definitely been mowed recently and the house was painted white and had big windows in the front and creamy roses winding round them. I followed a low wall around the edge, peeking through the bushes to see more of the house, an entrance on the side, a garden at the back that sloped down, a hint of blue water beyond, the top of some wire fencing. It was massive. But it wasn’t like the National Trust place or a museum or anything like that – it looked like somebody’s actual house, just ten times as big as normal.

  There was no way I was walking up the gravel drive to knock on the door; there was an enormous brass knocker in the middle which gleamed even from this far away. They probably had a butler to answer it.

  I wondered why it was drawn on the map. Maybe it wasn’t this house at all, this looked like the home of a really, really rich family – what had that got to do with Mrs Maple? But there was no other house around. The wood to the right looked like it was connected to the house.

  It was so quiet, suddenly it seemed like I was in the middle of nowhere. I knew the river was somewhere off to the right, not far from where I was stood, but I couldn’t imagine living in a house far away from another human being – it was the opposite of our old block of flats, one of four in a space about as big as this place.

  I wondered if I’d imagined it but suddenly I heard a shout and saw a flash of bright pink through the trees, in the garden. I ducked down, worried someone had seen me and would appear
with a big gun and tell me to go away. But no one came and I popped my head back up through the bush.

  ‘Hello,’ said a girl standing the other side.

  I screamed in an embarrassing high-pitched way, one hand flying to my chest as she started giggling.

  ‘Sorry, I TOLD Rory I’d seen someone and he was too scared to come and look, and he’s gone inside to tell everyone that I might be being KIDNAPPED!’

  ‘I…’ My whole body was still too shocked that she’d just popped up and I couldn’t seem to form any words. Also, she spoke really quickly.

  ‘You’re not going to kidnap me, are you? You don’t look like a kidnapper. I imagine they are older and a lot more horrid but you look nice, well, scared, because I just frightened you, but you have kind eyes. My grandma says that about people…’

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered, backing away, ‘I didn’t mean to get seen… I was… I’ll go.’ I was at the wrong place, there was no way this big house, and this strange talking girl, had anything to do with Mrs Maple and her quiet, ordered life.

  ‘Oh God, don’t go! I am soooo bored. It’s so hot and I wanted to play tennis but Rory keeps wanting to play with his stupid Star Wars stuff and you can’t play on your own. Well, not really, you can practise serving and stuff, but it gets really dull, really quickly…’

  ‘I play tennis,’ I said, wondering why I opened my stupid mouth. I thought then of the terrible practices at school, Mr Williams shouting instructions at me as I scuttled back and forward. I’d got a little better but I wasn’t exactly any good.

  The girl clapped her hands together once. ‘Oh my God, do you? Are you any good? I’m rubbish but I really like it and I’ve invented a new way of playing where you can hit the ball after two bounces, which is so much better although Rory moans that it’s not the proper rules like at Wimbledon but I don’t want to be Serena Williams, I just want to play tennis, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, I…’ I scuffed a toe along the ground, awkward in front of this confident girl who was probably my age, maybe a tiny bit older. She was the same height, that was for sure.

  ‘I’m Ottilie, by the way, Tilly for short.’ She stopped and looked at me funny.

  ‘Oh, I’m Billy,’ I said, realising she might have been waiting for me to introduce myself. ‘Well, William, but no one ever calls me that.’

  ‘Yes, you don’t want to be Willy either, do you? I like Billy,’ she said and I didn’t know what to do with myself because she’d just talked about willies.

  ‘So, do you want to play tennis? We’ve got rackets and stuff.’

  ‘Well, I’m, I’m not sure. I…’

  ‘Follow me round here and we can talk, it’s odd talking to you through a bush.’ She disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, a streak of pink through the gaps in the bush.

  I found myself following, round the wall, towards the bottom of the driveway, palms slippery with this strange new situation. I should’ve said I needed to go, needed to get back, but it felt so nice to meet someone my age, someone who didn’t want to trip me up or make fun of my accent: someone nice.

  ‘That’s what you look like then,’ she said when I appeared in the gap between the pillars. ‘I could only see your head and shoulders. I like your trainers. I have some kind of like that, but I’m not wearing them today. So, do you really want to play tennis?’

  Feeling awkward and embarrassed, I bit my lip. ‘Well, no, I just…’ Did I want to play tennis? Actually, I did. I wanted to run around and play and not have to head over to Mrs Maple’s or home to a silent house and a sad microwaved pizza.

  ‘Rory will be sooooo cross I’ve found a friend and don’t need him!’ Tilly said, spinning on her heel, brown ponytail snapping round as she moved.

  The sudden mention of the word ‘friend’ did something to me, a small glow in my stomach. It had been so long since anyone had thought of me as a friend that I so desperately wanted to follow this girl onto the drive and out to the tennis courts.

  She spun back around, hands up, ‘Rory’s my brother, by the way. Not my boyfriend or anything.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, feeling my cheeks flame.

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. Mum says I am waaaayyy too young but loads of my friends have them. How old are you? I’m eleven – well, eleven and a half.’

  ‘I’m ten,’ I muttered.

  ‘Definitely too young then.’

  ‘I…’ Why couldn’t I be like her? I wasn’t normally so tongue-tied and slow-sounding but this all felt so strange.

  Up ahead, a boy maybe a year or two younger than me burst out of a side door of the house and pointed in our direction.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Ottilie shouted over her shoulder, ponytail whipping round again, ‘he’s not going to kidnap me.’

  The boy, Rory, raced straight back inside.

  ‘Ha ha! Come on, let’s go and say hi or Mummy will worry I really have been kidnapped, not that anything that exciting could happen at Grandma’s.’

  And just like that she raced off, spitting up gravel stones as she did, past a double garage, a cluster of pots filled with lavender – I remembered Mrs Maple telling me about them – along the side of the enormous house before she disappeared round the corner.

  I stopped for a second. Should I be here? I knew perhaps I shouldn’t, that Mum and Mrs Maple might not like it, but in that moment, I felt a surge of relief to have met Tilly. Something about her dimpled smile and her easy way of talking filled me with confidence. This place couldn’t be bad if it had been on Mrs Maple’s map, only good things were on the map. And with that thought, I chased after her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ELSIE

  Billy appeared, panting on her doorstep, his cheeks flushed pink, his dark brown hair sticking up, in need of another cut soon, the hair damp at the temples.

  ‘Thank goodness, I was worried sick,’ she said, ushering him inside. ‘Your mother had told me you’d be here hours ago. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to disturb her at work, make her worry and of course I didn’t know how to get hold of you and what if…?’

  Elsie had worked herself into a panic, her skin prickling with worry as the allotted arrival time had come and gone. The teapot had grown cold, the plates of custard creams abandoned as she had walked out of her house to next door, giving a tentative knock followed by silence, a deep breath and then a louder knock, two pushes on the doorbell.

  ‘Billy,’ she’d called out to an upstairs window.

  The last time she had seen him hadn’t ended well, the bluebell walk a complete disaster after she’d barked at him. What if he was angry, punishing her? She’d pushed the doorbell for a third time long and hard, cupping her face and pressing it against the window, shocked as ever by the sparse front room. There was a new rug in dark grey that hadn’t been there before: she must offer some things to Samantha to make the place more of a home.

  ‘Billy,’ she’d repeated, her breath clouding the glass.

  She’d returned to her own house, her heart tight with panic, pacing the living room. If she interrupted Samantha at work, she would frighten the woman. She couldn’t very well call the police, he was only an hour late.

  She had sat down and then stood up again, biting her lip. Moving to the table with the telephone, she had lifted the receiver, the sound of the dial tone foreign, months since she had made a call. The last time had been renewing her house insurance. Who would she phone? she had thought as she dithered over the buttons before replacing it.

  ‘I forgot, I’m sorry,’ Billy said, racing past her through the house towards the kitchen. ‘Do you want me to put the kettle on, get the teapot?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject, young man,’ Elsie said in her most stern voice as she followed him into the room, watched him reach to fill the kettle.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Billy said, approaching her, suddenly leaning in to place one arm around her waist, a quick one-armed hug of apology. The movement so surprised Elsie she froze, unable to remember
anyone wanting to hold her like that, touch her to reassure.

  ‘I…’ How could she stay angry after that?

  ‘We can have tea,’ Billy called, moving across to the dresser to fetch the polka-dot teapot as if he owned the place.

  ‘Billy Greenwood,’ Elsie said, following him into her kitchen, watching this energetic boy fly around the room, fetching the familiar items. What had come over him? He had a smile on his face, a spring in his step. Her fears had melted away and now she was curious. She realised then how serious and quiet he could often be, wondered what had brought on this change.

  ‘I met this cool girl, right?’ Billy said, filling the kettle from the sink, ‘Tilly. Well, it is something like Ottamilly or something, but Tilly for short…’

  ‘You let me do that, I don’t want you setting fire to yourself.’ Elsie took the kettle from him, lighting the hob with a match. ‘So, a girl…?’ She gave him a raised eyebrow.

  ‘No,’ he flushed, ‘not like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ Elsie frowned, genuinely baffled.

  ‘She was just cool and she let me play tennis with her and she was pretty bad too but we both got better, and then she showed me this treehouse that was, like, bigger than my bedroom and it had furniture in it and stuff and a lookout point over a wood, and her brother Rory was nice too and we ate lemon drizzle cake…’

  Elsie couldn’t believe that Billy had finally made a friend, delighted that he was sharing these stories. She had felt so helpless hearing his problems from school, wanting to march into that playground herself and have it out with this Daniel.

  She noticed Billy looking at something, plunging the item back in his pocket as she moved past him to fetch the plate for the custard creams.

  ‘All OK?’ she asked, wondering if he would share what he was hiding.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll get the rest,’ he said quickly.