After Ever After Read online

  Chapter Eight

  As I sit over my untouched cup of coffee, I can feel the warmth of the May sun on my cheek, intensified by the glass of the kitchen window. I’m waiting for Gareth to arrive and this morning he’s a little late. I have had my boots on for the last half-hour and now I’m worried I look too keen. Maybe I should take them off again, and go and sit in the living room watching This Morning as if I’d forgotten he was coming. But Mr Crawley was already here when I laced them up and he might notice, and think I was acting like a bit of an idiot, and he’d be right.

  The thing is – and if you’d told me this a couple of years back I’d have said you were insane – that these last couple of weeks working on the garden with Gareth have been fantastic. It’s as if I just needed something outside my domestic life to think about and focus on to get back on track, and learning about the garden and seeing it come to fruition is really helping me feel like me again.

  Admittedly the first the couple of days were a bit awkward. The morning after I stayed up all night trying to finish my plan, I woke up with my head sticking to the marble effect kitchen worktop and my tongue glued to the top of my mouth.

  Fergus had gently shaken me awake and removing my crumpled and drool-marked piece of grid paper, glanced at it and said, ‘Is the grass meant to be pink?’

  I’d thrown it in the bin in disgust and spent the following half-hour trying to work out how to be with the gardener. Haughty yet benevolent, I decided, and then I thought friendly but distant. I cursed this stupid house that needed so many tradesmen traipsing through day in day out when the only experience I had of dealing with help was making the gas man a cup of tea. I tried to think of Nan’s allotment, of recreating the feeing of happiness I’d had there in the garden here. Then, I thought, I might just feel at home.

  ‘So, what about these famous plans then?’ Gareth had said to me the first morning he had arrived, the self-assured smile putting paid to all my plans to be aloof. I was still crumpled in my red pyjamas, my hair unbrushed and scraped off my face with an elastic band, and I was annoyed. It was all right for Mr Crawley to see me in all my morning glory, but for him, a person of more or less my own age and a bloke to boot, it wasn’t really on. It meant I’d have to get up earlier and make more of an effort even if Ella was still asleep. He’d ignored my state of undress completely and had sat down on a stool next to Ella and started spooning the cereal she refused to take from me into her mouth, which she opened in eager readiness like a little bird, making me feel annoyed and jealous, possibly the two most dangerous emotions that can ever be combined in a woman.

  ‘So, about my plans. The thing is …’ I’d glanced at the bin where the screwed-up ball of paper now resided … ‘that they are all sort of … up here, really …’ I’d tapped my sleep-waxed forehead. ‘So I thought we could discuss your plans and then see how they compare.’

  Gareth had glanced at the bin as if he knew exactly what had happened to my famous plans, and looked out of the window.

  ‘Oh yes, we could do wonders out there. Wonders.’ He’d turned to look at me, his face illuminated with spring sunshine. ‘How about down the bottom there we create an arbor, with roses all around it, and maybe a trailing Clematis along the back fence – like a real cottage garden feel, just right for an old house like this. We’ll put in a bench and then in the summer you’ll be able to go out there and relax, a special area for you, full of sensual smells and colours. A bit of living aromatherapy, like.’

  I’d briefly wondered how I’d ever be likely to enjoy this sanctuary with Ella permanently in tow, but I let myself be carried along. There was something in the melodious tone of his voice that made it seem so possible.

  ‘And then, for the little one here, a sand-pit, a nice bit of lawn to muck around in. A bed planted with non-toxic flowers she can eat, maybe down there in that left-hand corner. We could sort of fence it off with a low fence, maybe old railway sleepers, and you could put a slide in or a Wendy house?’ Again that smile. ‘I could build her one, special?’

  I’d nodded at him enthusiastically. ‘And then we could have a raised bed, like a herb garden or some veggies maybe. Organic for the little one and then, once this patio’s down, we can plant out some containers. I tell you what, Mrs Kelly, it’ll be fantastic!’ He laughed with pure joy at the prospect, and for one terrifyingly electric moment I thought he might have hugged me with delight. Instead, though, he stuffed his hand into his pocket and grinned a little sheepishly. ‘How does that match up with your plan?’

  ‘Oh, well, call me Kitty, please,’ I’d said, feeling the unfamiliar jar of my married name. ‘And yes, that is more or less what I had in mind all along.’

  So the next couple of weeks we worked together in precarious and precocious May weather, me harassed, grumpy, overtired and angry in turn, and Gareth bearing my mood swings with unfailing good humour and a visible belief that I would come to accept him eventually. We hacked, pruned, rooted out and dug up about two skips full of garden waste, fertilised, rotovated and fertilised again until, to be perfectly honest, it looked exactly as bad as it did in the first place. In fact, it looked worse. Whereas before it had had a kind of secret garden charm to it, now it looked like it had been napalmed, leaving only the burnt remains of the ancient lawn spread in ragged tatters.

  Then one morning, when Mr Crawley and Tim were laying laminate flooring in the loft conversion and Gareth had got me picking rubble out of the mud, he’d dug his spade into the soil and leant on it, looking around him.

  ‘I’ve got to say, Kitty, when I first came here I thought you were going to be a right stuck-up madam like most of the bored housewives round here, but you’ve really got stuck in. You’re all right, you are.’ He’d smiled at me then, me squatting up to my elbows in mud as if I were wearing silk and diamonds, and I can’t pretend that it didn’t feel nice. Gareth the gardener is actually kind of intense and really quite clever. At first glance you could have thought he was a bit of a cowboy maybe, a bit fly-by-night. You could have said that anybody who looks that heroic in combats couldn’t seriously be interested in herbs, but he is, he really his.

  He’s focused and serious in a way that seems to evaporate the moment he comes in for coffee or a sandwich, which is twice a day usually, when Mr Crawley and Tim have gone off on some errand. He’ll venture into the kitchen and I’ll make him a coffee and we’ll have a chat. I’d like to say that during these interludes his flashy good looks fade into the background and he is always Gareth the impassioned gardener, but I’d be lying. He flirts pathologically with the kind of relentless determination you imagine exists in the kind of people who climb Everest or walk across the Arctic, but instead with him it’s not mountains he wants to conquer, it’s pretty much every female that crosses his path.

  I try not to take it personally; I’ve met his type before, dated most of them. They work very hard at making you feel special as they reel you in, then the moment you’re hooked they chuck you back into the proverbial sea looking for the proverbial plenty of other fish swimming in it. He tells bad jokes and pulls faces at Ella and sometimes he brings out these books and shows me the pictures and names of the plants he has in mind for this border or that tub and listens to my half-baked ideas. But if you put all his attention into perspective, it’s quite a laugh, really, a bit of a distraction.

  So the last two weeks have gone quickly, when I thought that time was forever going to flow like treacle. I feel better and I’m fairly sure I look better. I think the sun and the air on my face have blown away some of the waxy pallor of my indoor skin, and I can feel the muscles in my thighs and arms aching at night as they get used to working again. I still look like a marshmallow man when I’m naked, but you know, every little helps.

  Fergus has been home later and later, not until after ten for the last few days, so it’s been good for me to have the garden to think about while he’s got this rush on at work. It stops me from feeling all gloomy and abandoned, and each day I’ve
made a mental list of things to tell him when he gets home. Except that for the last few days I’ve been asleep when he gets in, sometimes with Ella in my arms, and he always leaves so early, so our relationship has seemed almost like a dream – snatched kisses and words in those muddled moments just before or after heavy sleep. It’s almost as if I’ve imagined it.

  The front door slams and I tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear and gaze with careful abstraction out of the window.

  ‘All right, Kitty?’ Gareth brings a breeze of warm air in with him, sharply scented with some kind of cheap aftershave.

  I turn to him. ‘Oh, hi, I was miles away,’ I say vaguely, catching Ella’s eye and winking at her.

  Gareth sits across from me, leaning his bare forearms on to the table top, dipping his chin and levelling his eyes at me, the way he does when he thinks he’s being charming.

  ‘You’re looking very ready and willing.’ He smiles as he speaks, his eyes straying momentarily downward from my face.

  I return his smile with a grin and push my freshly washed hair back off my shoulders with a flick.

  ‘You should know by now that I’m always ready,’ I laugh, playing his game. ‘Do you want a coffee or shall we get on with it?’

  Gareth leans back in his chair and tips his head to one side. ‘We’d better get on with it,’ he says slowly. ‘Before I get distracted.’

  I hold his gaze for a split second before jumping to my feet, sweeping Ella off her play mat and finding her sun hat.

  ‘Come on, baby, time to make more mud cakes!’ I tuck Ella under my arm and follow Gareth out into the garden. For a second I see Mr Crawley’s face at an upstairs window, but then he’s gone. He and Tim have been so thoroughly ensconced in the conversion that I’ve hardly seen him recently.

  ‘So, what are we doing today, then?’ I set Ella down on her rug and watch her as she reaches for a lump of earth, breaking it between her fingers with studied concentration.

  ‘Today,’ Gareth crouches gracefully and produces some orange string and metal spikes from his kit bag, ‘I’m going to teach you about laying out beds, borders and pathways, so I expect your full attention and no slacking.’

  I gaze round at the garden, bare except for the odd plant here and there, and wonder how he can possibly see anything existing here but this wasteland.

  ‘You know, I’m sure I’m supposed to order you around,’ I say casually, with a small smile. ‘After all, it is me who pays your wages.’

  Gareth straightens, metal stake in his hand, and narrows his eyes as he smiles.

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s your better half that pays my wages, and anyhow,’ he strides over to my side, dropping his voice a little as he steps just millimetres over the line into my personal space, ‘I never let a woman tell me what to do. Usually I find they like to be told. A firm hand, that’s what you ladies like.’

  If I let it, this could be a moment when I could let a stupid, old-school Kitty crush win over my sensibly married recognition that Gareth is a rather vain and sometimes sexist kind of bloke, and I’d feel my knees buckle and bow under those wolfish eyes and that firm mouth that must make many a lesser woman crumble in his hands.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I say instead, with considerable force of will. ‘Has anyone told you this is the twenty-first century? Now what exactly do you want me to do?’ I recognise the irony in my comment a second too late, and Gareth is already laughing when I catch up with him. ‘Yeah, all right, all right. This is different. This is gardening.’

  Gareth chucks me a ball of twine and starts heading off up the garden.

  ‘Oh, that’s all it is, is it?’ he says over his shoulder.

  I close the door on a mud-encrusted Ella and creep down the stairs to find Mr Crawley at the bottom. I raise my eyebrows at him by way of a greeting and enquiry.

  ‘Mrs Kelly, I just wanted to check you were still on for the auditions next week?’

  He speaks in a half-whisper. It must be the fresh air or maybe the ache in my legs and my back or perhaps the two cans of strong lager I had with Gareth over lunch, but whatever it is, all the half-baked excuses I’ve been toying with for the last couple of weeks have disappeared. I smile and nod.

  ‘Yep, yep. Why not?’ I glance at myself in the hall mirror. My face has caught the sun and my cheeks are flushed. Mr Crawley glances down the hallway towards the kitchen, where Gareth is washing up, and back at me.

  ‘Well, time for me to be getting off,’ he says, but for a moment he doesn’t move. ‘Everything going okay out there in the garden?’ he says finally. ‘Don’t see many plants yet.’

  ‘Oh, that’s because preparation is everything,’ I assure him breezily.

  ‘Mrs Kelly, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but, well, are you sure it’s not that he’s trying to drag out the work and charge you more?’

  I open my mouth slightly and close it again.

  ‘No, Mr Crawley, I am certain that isn’t the case. Gareth is serious about his gardening, he wouldn’t do that.’

  Mr Crawley presses his lips together and then smiles.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow and perhaps we might have tea in the afternoon? I’ve rather missed our little chats.’

  I close the door on him, feeling guilty and disjointed. How have I got myself into a position where I feel bad about not paying the builder enough attention? I know what Fergus would say, he’d say I try too hard to be friends with everyone.

  As I return to the kitchen I glance at the microwave. It’s just after five. Ella will be out now for at least an hour until I wake her for tea and a bath. Fergus won’t be home until God knows when – ten at the earliest going by recent times. That’s five long hours watching TV, drinking tea or wine or both, waiting.

  Gareth shuts the kitchen door behind him and stuffs his muddy overalls into a plastic bag, his wet hair plastered to his face.

  ‘Could have done without that rain shower,’ he says, a wry smile on his face. It had come down out of nowhere. No spitting or darkened clouds to warn us. One moment the sky was bright with a few scattered white fluffy clouds and the ground was dry under our feet. The next moment it seemed as if someone had upturned a bucket on the garden and the mud had squelched and sucked under my feet as I ran inside with Ella. I’d expected Gareth to follow me, but instead he’d stood in the heavy rain, illuminated by the afternoon light, letting it drench him. Eventually I’d stopped looking at him and taken the now sleeping Ella to her cot.

  ‘Won’t get finished until tomorrow now, and look at the state of me!’ he says now, pausing and looking up at the dark sky. ‘Supposed to meet a lass later, too.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I say, with half a smile. ‘What poor victim have you got lined up tonight then? Anyone I know?’

  Gareth shakes his head and begins to fill the kettle. The fact that he doesn’t ask permission to do so gives me some kind of pleasure.

  ‘You don’t know anyone, do you?’ he says mildly, and I have to reflect that it’s almost true, except for Clare from the One o’Clock Club, who I’ve now seen at two meetings and promised coffee to sometime soon.

  ‘So, is it serious?’ I enquire, taking my steaming cup of instant coffee. He’s even remembered my one sugar.

  Gareth sits astride a stool, his hand wrapped right around the mug, the tips of his fingers still red from the sudden drop in temperature.

  ‘There’s no need to get jealous, love.’ He laughs.

  ‘You wish,’ I tell him, shaking my head in mock despair.

  ‘Yeah, I do!’ He smiles at me over the top of his coffee cup. ‘No, it’s not serious, she’s nothing special. But what can I do? Women love me. It seems only fair that I give them all a chance to sample some of this good stuff!’ He has a self-deprecating smile as he says it, but every other line of his posture shows that he believes every word he says.

  ‘It must be hard,’ I say breezily. ‘All these women after you. Don’t you ever get tired?’r />
  Gareth grins and lowers his eyes and seems to look inwards as if remembering something or someone, some recent memory.

  ‘Nope,’ he says simply. ‘Some things feel too good to get tired of.’

  He stands suddenly and presses the palm of his hand into the small of his back, emptying his coffee cup and putting it the sink. ‘I’d better be off.’

  I look at the clock. It’s still only five-thirty.

  ‘Why don’t you stay?’ I say impulsively. ‘For tea. There’s this huge steak and red wine pie that’s going to be past its sell-by date if I don’t eat it tonight, and Fergus will probably eat in the office.’ I assume that he will; he hasn’t actually called me today at all, but for the last three nights that is exactly what he’s done.

  Gareth pauses, his bag on his shoulder.

  ‘What about my date? Do you want me to stand her up?’ he asks bluntly.

  I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. I’d forgotten all about his date in the space of a few short seconds.

  ‘Oh yeah, oh well, not to worry. I’ll see you then.’ I smile at him and get up, making myself look busy in the hope that it’ll hide the fact that I feel foolish. Gareth drops his bag with a clatter and sits back down.

  ‘All right then, you’re on. Got any booze?’ I hide my look of relief as I look into the fridge and reach for a bottle of wine. I wonder briefly about his nameless date – if she’ll be waiting for him somewhere, wondering where he is – and then I open the wine.

  I can’t seem to catch my breath for laughing, and I pick up one of Fergus’s brocade cushions and shove it into my mouth.

  ‘Stop it!’ I gasp. ‘You’ll make me wake up Ella!’ And although it’s just after seven and Ella should have had her bath and tea by now, I’m not ready just yet to start being a grown-up again. Gareth is sitting on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head resting on the seat of Fergus’s chair.

  ‘So I said to him, no matter which way you look at it, it’s your pig in your bed, what do you expect me to do about it?’ He grins and polishes off his glass of wine. ‘I got fired, of course, but it’s a good story.’ At that point his mobile chirrups into life. He briefly scrutinises the display and rejects the call, slipping it back into his pocket and pulling himself into a kneeling position. He grabs the remnants of our second bottle of wine off Fergus’s coffee table and begins to walk on his knees towards me.