by Grace Lowrie
Leaving my spade in the ground, I straightened up and stretched with an audible groan, but she didn’t stir. Grabbing my water bottle I took a long drink, the plastic contracting noisily in my hand, but still she didn’t stir. Pointlessly I glanced at my empty wrist. Somehow I’d managed to misplace the watch my mother had given me – it was too big and grown-up for me at the time, but I’d matured into it over the years and now it was one of the few possessions I had with any real sentimental value. I was still hoping it would turn up somewhere and wasn’t lost for good. Reaching for the mobile in my back pocket I checked the time. It was almost midday and the sun was at its highest. Clearing my throat I took a few steps towards sleeping beauty, stopping once she was in full view.
Nestled in the grassy hollow she was curled on her side like a child, her book discarded, her elbow bent and her head resting in her tiny palm. Her left arm had been scrubbed clean of ink in recent days and her nail-polish had changed from blue to a quirky green. On the inside of her thigh, four inches above her knee was a pale brown birthmark about the size of a ten-pence piece. It was symmetrically shaped, like an ink blot or a butterfly, and I felt guilty for having seen such an intimate mark. She looked innocent and vulnerable; her lips parted, her fine red hair mussed up, and her torso rising and falling with each slow breath.
It occurred to me that it must be lonely living here, with Sinclair away so much of the time, perhaps that was why she sought my company. But why me? Why not go visit other people; other places? And why had she made no attempt to make conversation? Was she just shy? Could she be deaf? She had caught the sun on her cheek, her forearm and her lower legs, and although I didn’t want to wake her, I knew that I should.
Instinctively I sank down into a crouch, to make myself smaller and less intimidating, and pushed my cap further back on my head, before clearing my throat for a second time. This time she woke with a start, her eyes widening and locking onto me as she scrambled up into a seated position. Her hat lay flattened on the grass where she had rolled onto it.
‘I’m sorry to wake you,’ I said, my voice jarringly loud against the soft background buzz of insects. ‘I was concerned that you might be getting sunburnt.’
Her sharp eyes stared at me, slate-grey and wary. I gestured towards her arm and she risked a downwards glance at her reddened skin before returning her gaze to mine. Absently she rubbed at her arm with her other hand while I reached into my back pocket, pulled out a bottle of factor thirty, and offered it to her. She hesitated before accepting it, and even then made no attempt to thank me or actually open it.
‘I’m Liam by the way...’
She made no reply but her eyes dropped to my mouth as I spoke, making me self-conscious. Was she lip-reading? I thought she’d woken up because she’d heard me...
‘You live here?’ I said, gesturing back towards the house for emphasis.
Finally she nodded; it was the slightest of responses, but it was progress and I couldn’t help but smile. She blinked back at me, as if confused, and I decided not to push my luck by asking her more questions.
‘You have a lovely home,’ I said, standing up and retreating back to the crater-like hole I’d dug. By the time I’d picked up my spade and turned back to her, she was gone; fled back to the house, leaving only the bottle of sun-cream, abandoned and unopened, lying in the grass. She was a weird one. I wasn’t surprised by her vanishing act, but I was oddly disappointed that she had gone.
Chapter Ten
I woke late on Friday. I never usually slept past seven o’clock, but I’d been up half the night trying to get a dry market analysis report checked in time for the submission deadline. As a career, proofreading suited me; I’d always had a good eye for detail and the work didn’t require me to leave the house, but it was difficult checking for someone else’s typos and spelling errors when you were tired enough to create new mistakes of your own. In the end I’d resorted to re-reading the whole report backwards in order to catch them all.
The other half of the night I’d spent chasing off my bad dreams; the same old mysterious strangers, alien places and threatening voices; all the details blurred and just out of reach. How could the same dreamt-up scenario – one that I didn’t even understand – be so frightening? Maybe that was what made it so potent – the not knowing? Either way, I had no desire to dwell on it.
At first I thought it was the sound of Mrs Daly vacuuming that had woken me, but the persistent whine was coming from outside and gradually turned into alarm bells ringing in my head. What was that man up to now?
There was no visible sign of him through the windows. My breath caught suddenly in my throat. Throwing on yesterday’s dress and only pausing on the landing long enough to glimpse my reflection and claw my fingers through my hair, I hurried from the house.
This was what happened when I let my guard drop and took my eye off the ball. Just because he hadn’t caused any damage so far – just because he offered me sandwiches and sun-cream and didn’t try to interrogate me like everybody else I’d ever met – didn’t mean I should trust him. He could be carrying out all kinds of destruction out there.
Once I’d spotted him I started running full pelt across the terrace, realising too late that I’d forgotten to bring my book or put shoes on. But there was no time to stop; the great brute was wearing bright orange ear-defenders and wielding a chainsaw – immediately making me think of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Heavens to Betsy, was he cutting down trees?
My heart banged like a drum in my chest as I ran, flailing, towards him; adrenalin coursing through my veins and grass whipping at my legs and toes. He was stood before a sprawling, medium-sized tree, set apart from the others in what was once a sweeping lawn. The tree might not look like much right now, but it was old and produced pretty flowers every year – I would not let him butcher it. Without slowing I dived into the space between Liam Hunt and the tree, flattening myself back against the trunk, my arms splayed wide.
‘Whoa, shit, careful!’ He swung the offending power tool away from me and switched it off. ‘I almost took your head off, what are you doing?’ The colour had drained from his face and he pressed a hand to his chest and closed his eyes behind a plastic pair of safety specs, as he blew out a heavy breath.
As the sudden silence pulsed in my ears I began to question the prudence of my actions – I was now trapped in close proximity to an angry man with a weapon.
‘I’m not going to cut the whole tree down, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ he said gently, opening his eyes and lowering the ear-defenders to around his neck. Reaching up he fondly patted a low branch of the tree as if petting a dog. ‘This magnolia’s a beauty; must be at least fifty years old; and I bet it produces masses of flowers in early spring, am I right?’
I nodded uneasily, unable to stop trembling. The large, jagged-toothed chainsaw still dangled from his other hand, as if it weighed nothing.
‘See this branch here?’ he said, redirecting my attention. ‘See how it’s growing in the wrong direction and crossing these other two branches here and here...?’
I nodded, intrigued, despite myself.
‘If it’s left to rub against them like that it will create wounds, which might get infected, and if that happens you could end up losing the whole tree. So, you see, I was only going to remove one or two branches that are causing harm and leave the rest alone.’
That made sense. I believed him. My face flamed hot with embarrassment as I lowered my arms to my sides and willed myself to stop shaking. Cautiously he smiled, his warm hazel eyes intent on mine and making me look away. For something to do I plucked a leathery green leaf from the magnolia, consciously committing the name to memory, and stroking the cool, smooth surface across my cheek. Maybe I should try to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Life wasn’t really a horror movie, no matter how thrilling that might be, and this man, regardless of how dangerous he looked, seemed to care about plants.
Standing well back I observed Lia
m as he surgically removed a few wayward branches without so much as nicking any of the others. Patiently he explained how he undercut each limb before removal to prevent tearing, and the importance of leaving an angled cut that would guide rainwater away from the trunk. His knowledge, skill and precision surprised me, and as he gradually worked his way across the grounds, expertly tending to each specimen tree and even climbing up into them, I found myself fascinated by arboriculture, where previously I’d had no interest at all.
As midday neared I returned to the house, slipped on my shoes, brushed my hair, and noticed, with dismay, that I was wearing my dress inside out. Idiot. Having made myself more presentable, I made my way back to the murky depths of the lime avenue, armed with a platter of cold meats and a flask full of iced tea. Liam’s eyebrows lifted in surprise as I set my offerings down near where he stood, but I wanted to thank him for his efforts in my garden, his patient generosity, and for everything he didn’t ask of me in return.
‘Thank you, this is delicious,’ he said with grease on his chin and a half-eaten chicken leg in hand. The simple pleasure on his face made me smile – really smile – for the first time in a long time. He did a double take when he caught my expression before grinning in return. But this sort of interaction was unfamiliar territory, so I focused on pouring tea into a plastic cup and setting it down in the grass where he would be able to reach it without having to make any physical contact with me.
I maintained a wary eye on him as we ate, ready to spring away the moment he made a wrong move. But he never did. Not only that, but he didn’t even attempt conversation of any kind, as if he knew I wouldn’t welcome it. We ate our lunch listening to the birds singing and the insects buzzing in the undergrowth, while the dappled sunlight and shadows shifted and danced across the path beneath the trees. And then we parted ways without a single word between us, and I marvelled once again at his otherworldliness. Here was someone I could share a long silence with, without feeling awkward or alone, and that was rare indeed.
Chapter Eleven
We were in the walled garden when Gregory Sinclair appeared out of the blue. The air was cooler than it had been for a while; the sky hazy with cloud that diffused the intense heat and light of the July sun. I was taking the opportunity to clear the vegetable beds and weed the fruit-cages while the high-sided, sun-trap of a garden was not churning out the stifling heat of an oven.
I had discovered a hoard of summer-fruiting raspberries and the lady of the house was picking and eating them with nimble fingers, her skin and lips staining with the juice, her eyes alight with glee. It was hard to take my eyes off her. She was a conundrum with the sharp gaze of a wise old woman and the seeming naivety of a young girl. And she had a guilelessness about her – her every emotion, good and bad, played out across her face without restraint or censorship. It was disconcerting at first, but made her refreshingly easy to read. Which was helpful since she’d still not uttered a word and I still didn’t even know her name.
Despite her silence, or maybe because of it, I found myself voluntarily talking far more than I normally would. And not out of an urge to fill the silence – things didn’t feel awkward between us – but because she hung on my every word. I waxed lyrical about nature; about the trees and plants, the changing seasons, everything right down to the leaf-cutter bees who made holes in the rose leaves; all the stuff my friends would have found dull, but which she seemed keen to hear.
Today I’d introduced her to a variety of different herbs as I came across them; mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, fennel... There was something sensual in the way she touched everything – lifting them to her nose to smell them; caressing them with her cheek and brushing them across her lips – as if exploring them with all five senses. Maybe hers were all the more acute due to her solitude and silence, or maybe she was simply tactile by nature.
When she abruptly bolted out of the fruit cage and disappeared behind the ramshackle tool shed, I stared after her bewildered at first. It wasn’t until several seconds later that I picked up the sound of footsteps heading my way.
‘Ah, Liam, here you are.’
‘Mr Sinclair, you’re back,’ I said, carefully disentangling myself from a vicious gooseberry bush, straightening up to my full height and wiping my hands on my jeans.
‘Gregory, please,’ he said, slipping his own hands safely into his suit pockets and gazing around at the tangled foliage strewn about. A thistle had snagged the edge of one neatly-hemmed trouser leg, but he hadn’t noticed yet. ‘Just a fleeting visit I’m afraid, I fly out to Japan on Tuesday morning, but I wanted to touch base.’
‘Right. I’m still clearing this area, as you can see...’
‘Yes. The area around the house is looking much better,’ he said without looking at me. ‘When do you think you’ll cut the rest of the grass – it’s still very long.’
‘I was aiming to cut it at the end of the summer – the ride-on mower you have in the stables won’t start, so I’ll have to fix it before I can use it.’
He nodded. ‘And the lake?’
Sinclair was the sort of client who preferred to focus on all the things you hadn’t done yet, rather than thank you for those you had. He was probably like that with all his staff; perhaps he liked to feel masterly and in control.
‘I should be able to start dredging next week.’
‘Good, good,’ his words were distant as he continued to avoiding my eye. ‘You haven’t seen anyone else in the grounds have you?’
I hesitated. ‘No, like who?’ The blatant lie, and the instinctive ease with which I told it, surprised me – I rarely told fibs, and when I did I was unconvincing at best. But the girl and I had sort of become friends; I felt strangely protective of her, and if she was hiding from Sinclair I figured there must be a good reason. Luckily he made no attempt to scrutinise my expression and seemed to take me at my word.
‘Oh, no-one. It’s nothing, forget it. We’ll talk again when you’ve finished all the clearance work.’ As he turned to leave, the rogue thistle pulled at his leg and he kicked it away with irritation before marching off, his back ramrod-straight and his shoes ringing out on the brick path.
Once his footsteps had faded into the distance, my silent friend climbed out from behind the tool shed looking sheepish.
‘I’m never going to find out your name, am I?’ I said ruefully.
She raised her delicate little shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and I smiled at her, resigned. As I clambered back into the fruit cage she left the walled garden by the gate opposite the one in which Gregory had departed from, and I spent the rest of the day alone, speculating once again on the life of others.
Chapter Twelve
Gregory had buggered off again – hallelujah – he’d been in a strange mood all weekend. On Friday evening he insisted we sit and eat a formal dinner together in the dining room, like Lord and Lady of the manor – an excess of silver tableware and four tediously long courses interspersed with at least three different wines. He got a caterer to come in and cook our dinner on the weekends when he was home. Yvette was a retired French chef who lived nearby with her long-term partner, Jade, and cooked everything to Gregory’s exacting standards without complaint. The Eiffel Tower keyring was hers before I pinched it. She was usually kept too busy in the kitchen to acknowledge me, but was considerate enough to make and freeze extra portions of the dishes she made, so that I would have something nutritious to eat during the week. It certainly made a nice change from microwave pizzas and spaghetti hoops on toast. I’d never learned how to cook.
Why Gregory had requested such an elaborate meal for that particular evening, I couldn’t be sure – the date held no particular significance as far as I was aware, and he mentioned no cause for celebration. I suspect he hoped I would get tipsy and foolish, but I was careful to only take a few sips from each wine glass, while he progressively pickled himself.
Gregory quizzed me repeatedly on my work, the manuscripts still requiring my atten
tion and the books I was reading; eager to know every detail of how I spent my time. Twice he remarked that I seemed to have caught the sun on my skin – but he was either too drunk or too cowardly to pursue the matter with any conviction.
As I tried to escape to bed afterwards, he hugged me; grabbing me too tight and jamming my face against his shoulder. Once upon a time I’d longed for Gregory to hold me, but back then he was reluctant and behaved as if it were a chore. I went to all sorts of desperate lengths to get his attention: sliding down the bannisters of the main staircase, deliberately overfilling the bath, and even cutting all my hair off – but it only made him keener to stay away.
Now that I was older, he seemed to want the closeness that he’d denied me in the past, but it was too late. The feel of his clammy hands on my back, his hot breath against my ear and the sharp sting of his aftershave in my nostrils only made my stomach turn. I thought he might be weeping as I pushed away from him, but any sympathy I might have for him was diluted by having to wash my hair three times to purge it of cigar smoke. The rest of the weekend we spent carefully avoiding each other.
This morning I’d waited for Gregory to depart for the airport before taking the back stairs up to the second floor and rifling through the heavy wooden chests and leather suitcases filled with clothes. It was stiflingly hot and stuffy up in the old servants’ quarters, tucked under the eaves. The rooms had long been stripped and relegated to storage space; a jumble of spare furniture draped in plastic sheeting and the air thick with dust, cobwebs, and that distinct but indescribable mothball odour. I had the house to myself on Tuesdays and Thursdays (Mrs Daly’s days off) so I was free to rummage about without being nagged about making a mess. Gathering armfuls of garments, I carried them back down to the nursery and proceeded to try them on.