The Garden of Lost Memories

by Ruby Hummingbird

  Then Mother died and I had found the tin. And my entire existence came crashing down around my ears.

  She had lied to me: all this time she had lied.

  I had a sister. She had another daughter. She had loved a man who wasn’t my father. A married man. My head spun with the information, the image I had of her shattered into a thousand pieces. What else had been a lie? What else had she concealed? Did she think about this other daughter? Did she love her as much as me?

  The days were a blur of grief and anger, the house my prison with its flowered walls, staring figurines, every room a memory of her. I couldn’t enter her bedroom, couldn’t be reminded of the woman I had loved so deeply who had hurt me so badly.

  The grief over you threatened to overwhelm me. I needed to talk to you about the betrayal and I poured those words into the long letters to you. You would understand – you had always listened to me, always spoken in that hesitant way, so fair, so kind. Now it seemed I couldn’t bear the crushing weight of my feelings, the anger at what I had lost. I had almost had such a different life and now I was reduced to letters to you once a week when I dreamed of lazy walks, moving in, an engagement, a wedding… children.

  I sank into a black place.

  My world was reduced to tiny rituals. Wake early, watch from the window as the children set off for school. Leave for a trip into the village when the school run is over, the street empty of people wanting to talk, tea, biscuits, cards, cleaning, a jigsaw, television, tea, a walk to fetch supplies, the garden, tea. If I kept busy, if I filled the day, if I never really stopped and kept ticking my chalkboard list, I could get through it.

  And that was how it was for years. Until a little boy from London had appeared in the village in the early hours of the morning and forced me to live my life.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  BILLY

  I woke up in Elsie’s bedroom really late. Everything hurt, so I just lay there a little bit. Her curtains were thicker than the ones in our house and normally Mum had to shout for me to go to school.

  Elsie was in the kitchen toasting hot cross buns, still wearing the clothes she had been in the night before. Her normally neat grey hair was sticking up at the back and I frowned, wondering if she had slept at all.

  ‘You eat this,’ she said, scraping butter onto the hot surface so that it immediately melted into the centre. I suddenly felt starving, reaching for the plate, the table neatly laid for three people, three bowls, glasses and a jug of milk and some cereals in the centre. A small bunch of narcissi were sat in a vase, freshly picked from the garden, the scent filling the air as I bit into the hot dough.

  ‘Your mum’s upstairs,’ Elsie said, joining me at the table, ‘she needs the rest so I thought I’d leave her.’

  I nodded and swallowed.

  ‘It was fine. She’s in your room,’ Elsie said, her back to me again, wiping the crumbs from the kitchen counter.

  I swallowed. ‘Why do you do that?’

  Elsie seemed distracted, turning back to me as she asked, ‘Do what?’

  ‘Talk like that? You just said something out loud. But not to me.’

  ‘Did I?’

  I nodded, taking another bite of the hot cross bun. ‘This is really good,’ I said through a mouthful. I didn’t want her to think I thought her talking thing was weird – well, it was weird but not bad weird.

  Elsie looked at me for a long time and I felt worried she’d get upset and she’d made me breakfast and saved me last night. Her eyes were watery as she paused. ‘It’s a habit, I suppose. I’ve always done it. Since my mother died…’ Her voice was really quiet and I felt the dough stick in my throat a bit. ‘I didn’t used to,’ she continued, ‘but sometimes I would get through a whole day without a word to anyone so I just started talking to her as if she was still here.’

  I stared at the table, not really knowing what I could say. I knew what it was like to be lonely and suddenly I found myself getting up and moving across to her, reaching for her hand. Her eyes went all round when I took it. Her hand was soft, like she used hand cream like Mum used to use in London when she made jewellery, not washed up in a kitchen.

  ‘Bet she’s listening somewhere,’ I said.

  That sentence made her squeeze my hand and it was all getting really emotional and I hoped she wouldn’t start crying or anything.

  ‘I’ve been really lucky, Billy,’ she said, removing her hand and carrying on wiping the counter. I couldn’t see any more crumbs.

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked, scooting back into my chair.

  She didn’t look at me, just circled the cloth. ‘To have you move next door to me. You’re like my second chance.’

  And then I was really worried that I’d be the one to start crying.

  ‘Hey!’

  I think we were both relieved to see Mum in the doorway, both fussing over her as she stepped inside.

  The bearded policeman came back a bit after that. Mum had only just finished a half of a hot cross bun, wincing as she tugged on a cardigan, as she lifted her arm to tie back her hair. I wanted to hug her but I didn’t want it to hurt. We were a strange pair, me in a sling, her with her bruised neck.

  She made a statement for the police. She had wanted to make it alone but I had asked to hear it – I needed to hear it.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ I’d said. And then I’d told my own story. ‘There’d been one time…’

  Liam would back me up, Liam had seen it too. Liam had got his stepdad to let me stay for a few nights last summer when it had been really bad but Mum didn’t want social services to know.

  Listening to her tell them everything made my tummy feel sore. It was so much worse, so ugly. Mum glanced across at me as she told them things, things I had sometimes suspected, other things she had hidden from me.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ she said halfway through, her hands shaking as she brought a cup of tea to her lips. Elsie moved quietly and slowly around the kitchen behind her, making the tea, topping up the pot, filling up the plate with biscuits.

  The policeman told us Dad would be given a restraining order and wouldn’t be allowed to come to the house again, or even near it. Mum had cried and nodded and Elsie had soothed her, circling her back again. I was glad Elsie was doing that because I didn’t really know what to do. The bearded policeman was nice and asked me what I was going to be when I grew up. I told him a landscape gardener. Elsie beamed over Mum’s head at that but I think the policeman was a bit gutted I hadn’t said ‘policeman’. He kept trying to make me try on his hat.

  We left Elsie’s house after that. Her and Mum had a big long hug in the porch and Mum cried again.

  Then we got home and I couldn’t believe it but Mum made me go to school.

  ‘I don’t want you to get behind,’ she’d said, handing me my white shirt and grey trousers.

  ‘Mum, seriously I won’t.’

  She wouldn’t hear of it, forcing me into the bathroom for a shower and to get dressed. ‘We’re leaving in ten minutes.’ A glimpse of old Mum was already back.

  ‘There was an email about that trip,’ she said as we walked down the road to school.

  After the night before I had forgotten about the trip but as soon as Mum mentioned it, the panic came back: ‘They were saying they’ve got rucksacks and spare walking boots, so that’s good. We’ll get you some thick socks and you’ll need to take your cagoule.’

  ‘What about my arm though?’ I said, hoping I could still get out of it. School was one thing but surely, she couldn’t expect me to go on a trip?

  ‘I asked and they said you won’t have to carry your rucksack so you can do the walk, and the teachers could give you a lift in the minibus if it’s too hard.’

  ‘But all the kids will think it’s weird I don’t have it.’

  ‘No, they won’t. They’ll think the boy with his arm in a sling shouldn’t be carrying a massive rucksack.’

  ‘But…’

  Why couldn’t I think o
f another excuse? Not that excuses ever really worked with Mum. Even in London she was hardcore. I fell silent as we got nearer the school gate. Swallowing, I kept my head down, knew that maybe Daniel would make it worse now. It was a small place, someone would have seen the police car, or he’d see where I was hurt and make a show of it. These thoughts made my stomach leap as if fishes were flipping in it.

  Daniel watched me as I walked late into the lesson. Mum must have said something to the school because Mrs Carter didn’t ask me any questions about why I was late. I sat, cheeks burning, wondering if everyone had seen the blue lights the night before, had realised they were outside my house. Daniel would be loving it if he knew my dad had been arrested. I tried to concentrate on the writing on the board but it seemed impossible.

  We were doing art, needed to paint part of a picture that would form an enormous class collage. I was paired up with Max at the table two rows up from Daniel and Javid.

  ‘I’m really bad at drawing,’ he’d said, giving me a nervous smile.

  It had surprised me because Max was always next to Daniel, ready to laugh at whatever Daniel threw at me.

  ‘Last week you did that windmill. I saw it, it was good, so you do the drawing bit and tell me what to paint.’

  ‘Alright.’ I shrugged, liking this tiny opportunity to get on and do something.

  Without Daniel, Max was quieter and followed my instructions and was super careful with the paintbrush, trying to stay within the lines I’d drawn. ‘It looks just like the picture,’ he said, an amazed face and then a quick glance over his shoulder to see if Daniel was watching. He seemed jittery and it made me feel a bit more confident. Maybe he was sort of frightened of Daniel too and not actually his mate?

  ‘You do the bit of that fence and just keep it straight,’ I told him, watching him nod and bend over, tongue out as he worked.

  When the lesson ended we stepped back. Max couldn’t stop the wide grin. ‘That’s so cool, I have literally never done anything good in art,’ he said, his voice different, almost like he was being friendly. I shook my head, sure I was imagining it.

  Mrs Carter was at her desk in the corner, typing something into the computer as we moved around the classroom returning our overalls, pots of paint and water. Daniel and Javid were bent over their table talking in low voices, the clink of glass and glug of liquid, a small sound that made me turn my head. With the lesson over I bristled, sensing Daniel moving across to our table, the smell of stale clothes wafting as he passed me. He lingered, giving a strange look at Max, a lift of the eyebrows that seemed to make Max look alarmed. I frowned as I heard the bell for the end of the lesson.

  It was only when I moved out of the classroom for lunchbreak, lifting my rucksack onto my back, that I felt the dampness through my shirt, smelt something strong: paint.

  Turning, I heard sniggers in the corridor. Mrs Carter was already a way off. Javid and Daniel pointed and laughed, Max stood quietly to their side, a quick arm punch from Daniel as his cheeks reddened. Something was dripping onto the floor beneath me and I looked down in horror to see what looked like spots of blood between my legs. For a moment I wondered if I was bleeding, then I realised it was coming from my bag: watery paint.

  Shrugging off my rucksack I noticed the zip was only half-closed and looked inside to see a split paint bottle leaking all over my things – my textbooks, my notepad, the fabric of the inside streaked with the stuff. All ruined.

  I heard my mobile vibrate in my pocket. Removed the phone. A WhatsApp notification. Daniel invites you to Year 6 chat. There was a new message in the group. Hi Billy. Luckily Becky had your number! Saw this and thought of you . It was the first frame of the video. Of him. A pink thigh. On the phone. Sent to the whole class. At the moment it was just a blurry still but what if Daniel sent the whole clip? How much would they all see?

  Becky was walking towards me. ‘Billy…’

  I couldn’t stop and talk to her, my thoughts going too fast, my body hot with embarrassment. Her friend called her back and I watched her bite her lip and move away. Then I saw him – Daniel, about to walk past. I didn’t think as I launched myself at him. I wanted to push him to the ground and smash his stupid, smug face in. The mobile was gripped in my fist and I didn’t even think about what I was doing. Just wanted to hurt him. I reached my good arm back, closed my fist and swung forward. But my feet were scrabbling. I had slipped on the red stuff and the punch missed Daniel by inches, sending me crashing to the floor.

  He looked surprised as I lay there, my arm killing me. I felt more stupid than ever before and just picked up my rucksack, knowing the red stuff was still leaking out of the bottom as I moved into the boys’ bathroom, a trail of red dots on the floor behind me. The cubicles were empty and I placed the bag in the sink, staring at my sad face in the mirror above it.

  God, I hated him, I hated school, I hated feeling so helpless. I was shaking from when I had almost hit him. I didn’t want to hit people. I knew someone else who hit and I didn’t want to be him. Was I turning into him?

  That thought stopped me raging. Suddenly everything didn’t make me mad but made me depressed: a never-ending stream of things I was never ready for and no end in sight. I thought of Dad in the street shouting at Mum, twisting her arm and forcing her into our house. The times he had got in from work in one of his moods, the way we would creep around him, not wanting to set him off. The marks in the skirting board where he’d kicked them, the broken plates, the sound of a closed fist on the wooden table where I worked.

  Dad was a Daniel, I realised. He had probably put gross things in bags of kids he didn’t like, called out nasty things, had little mates to make him feel bigger. And I had tried to hit him – so was I like Daniel too, was I like Dad? That thought made me want to cry, big, horrible sobs, right there in the boys’ bathroom that smelt of wee.

  I raised the phone, stared at the small triangle in the middle of the screen, the blurred shot a horrible reminder that he had the video ready to play.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ELSIE

  ‘Billy, does your mum know you’re here?’ Elsie gasped as she opened her door to find Billy dressed in his school uniform, his face grey, mouth turned down, miserable.

  He paused, sizing up whether to lie, before shaking his head slowly, tears in his eyes as she ushered him inside.

  ‘Come in, come in.’

  She hadn’t seen him like this before, assuming that all the events of the previous night had caught up with him. It was only natural. Perhaps it had been too soon to go back to school.

  ‘Do you want a biscuit?’

  Another slow shake of the head.

  ‘Have a seat,’ she said, pulling out a kitchen chair with a scrape on the tiles.

  He sunk into the seat, his head sagging, hands in his lap.

  ‘What’s that?’ Elsie asked, noticing red marks on his hands and white Aertex shirt.

  Billy shrugged, ‘Nothing. Science stuff.’

  He didn’t seem to want to talk and Elsie fussed around the kitchen as much as she could, glancing out to the garden, trying to talk to him about the scarifying she needed to do, explaining the posh word for raking, then worrying he might try to help. His arm was still in the sling and she didn’t want him to do more damage, it was her job to look after him now, so instead she suggested a game of cards.

  They were halfway through a lacklustre game of rummy when his mobile beeped. School must have ended by now, the sound of children walking past the house, high-spirited and noisy, forcing her to look up. Billy glanced towards the open window, shrinking back a little in his chair. What had happened?

  His mobile beeped again, over and over, and he kept glancing at the screen, his body sagging further every time.

  After the twentieth or so beep, with Billy practically slipping onto the floor, Elsie placed her cards face down on the table and trained her eyes on him.

  ‘What’s going on, Billy?’

  He squirmed in his seat,
eyes darting from her face to the table, to the oven, to the window and back again.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘If it’s nothing, show me your phone,’ Elsie said in her most stern voice, holding out a hand for the mobile.

  Billy looked up at her, worry streaking his features.

  ‘Come on,’ Elsie said in a softer voice, her expression shifting to concern.

  He paused, clearly torn, biting his lower lip as he gripped the phone. ‘You have to PROMISE me you won’t say anything.’

  ‘Not even to your mum?’

  ‘Not even to Mum.’

  Elsie didn’t like the idea of keeping secrets. She thought of her own life, of the secrets she had kept inside, the secrets her mother hid. ‘She’d want to know, Billy,’ she said gently. ‘Is it something to do with your dad? School?’

  Billy’s chin dropped onto his chest, another two beeps filling the silence.

  ‘Billy?’

  When he started to speak his voice was barely a whisper. ‘It’s Daniel again… that boy at school who doesn’t like me…’

  Elsie wanted to leap in, wanted to comfort, but she sat watching him as he talked.

  ‘It’s sort of…’ Billy fiddled with the bottom of the tablecloth. ‘Well, it’s sort of got worse. He’s sort of saying he might send round this thing to the other kids…’

  Elsie’s eyes narrowed. ‘What thing?’

  ‘A video,’ Billy said, so quietly Elsie had to strain to hear him. He wouldn’t look up at her.

  ‘What is the video of?’ she asked him, leaning right forward.

  ‘It’s, well, it’s…’ He was fidgeting again in the chair. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, taken in the changing rooms at school, you know…’