Oh, yes- the garden centre. Well, I had begun to think seriously again about a tree for Miranda’s grave. In fact that was another thing. It became easier to talk of Miranda. We all learned how, even Steph, we helped each other, persevering even when it was difficult. Not that we can ever speak of her casually or without longing, even to this day. Still when her name is mentioned, more often than not one or another of us weeps. But there is a certain sweetness in that. We learned to speak of her often, always fondly and sadly, and one day I told them about my idea of a tree. They both said very firmly that I should have it. There was a rather florid Edwardian dinner service that we none of us cared for and agreed we could spare. We never used it, preferring the very thin, plain white porcelain. So I got my tree. I sent Michael off to the garden centre with careful instructions and he brought back a very large magnolia that we planted all together.
Michael had been amazed by the garden centre. It turned out he had never been to one before (well, why would he, with no garden?) and it was a revelation, all those tender shoots, just waiting to be put in the ground and allowed to thrive. He thought he would like to plant a proper vegetable garden. Everything he needed was there, he would only have to buy the seedlings and put them in. I can see it now, how his face was shining. He was already taking a pride in this garden, which existed at that point only in his mind. It was yet to be planted, but just the idea of keeping us supplied with fruit and vegetables for the summer made him proud. I at once encouraged it, so he picked out some more things we could do without (I left it to him this time to choose what- I knew he would be sensible). I believe it was more furniture from the bedrooms. He filled the walled garden with row upon row of fresh, bright little plants, and he tended them every day. There was no end to the care he took with them, and he kept the lawns cut and the flowerbeds tidy, too. We were all in a kind of heaven- not sitting about on clouds, you understand, but busy doing things that made us happy.
I do not think we were ever afraid that it might not last, but perhaps we were half-expecting that somebody would come and try to spoil it. I do know that we acted extremely quickly to stop Shelley.
The weather grew warmer. One morning Sally told Steph, unnecessarily, to be sure to put on Charlie’s sunblock, which Steph took as approval in principle that she might take Charlie out and about in the pushchair. That evening Steph told Sally that she had taken Charlie up to the manor to ‘meet my aunt’, omitting to mention that Charlie had, in fact, spent every single day there so far. The following day, Steph made a point of saying that she had taken Charlie there again and that he had enjoyed the walk up the drive, and she brought back a lemon cake for Sally ‘with best wishes from my aunt. She’s great at cakes’. After that Steph filled a vase with buttercups that, she explained, Charlie had been charmed to see growing in one of the manor paddocks. The next day she reported how ‘my aunt’ had been reading his baby books with him. Then Steph had a brainwave.
The following day, instead of taking Charlie up to the manor, she got Michael to come down to the house after Sally had left. Together they blitzed the place, resisting the temptation to throw most of Sally’s junk away, instead cleaning round it and tidying it into more rational arrangements. That evening Sally arrived home not just to the silent, smiling Steph and a bathed, fed and sweet-tempered Charlie, but also to a pine-scented and gleaming house. It was still cluttered, but there were at least enough clean surfaces to allow her to walk in and put her things down without having to move other things first, and then find places (by shifting other things) for those things she had picked up in order to make room for the things she had come home with. She seemed slightly confused by the tidiness, but grateful. She even offered Steph a glass of wine but Steph, anxious to get home and feeling fairly sure that she was unlikely to enjoy the Cфtes du Rhфne that Sally was uncorking, declined, and slipped off.
‘Sally,’ Steph said the next morning, ‘you don’t mind me taking Charlie up to the manor, do you? I thought it’d be nice to have him up there and save messing up the house. Now it’s all nice, shame to get it all, you know.’
‘No, I don’t mind, you take him, it’s fine,’ Sally said, slightly absently, looking round the kitchen. The wine bottle she had emptied the night before stood on the draining board. ‘But he does live here. I mean I’m really grateful, but we don’t want things so perfect we can’t touch them, do we? I’m not bringing him up in a bloody sterile environment, after all. Am I?’ She began picking through a basket of onions to find her car keys. ‘Maybe I should pop up there one day, you know, just to see he’s settled. I’d like to meet your aunt, anyway.’
Steph had been expecting this. I’m going to check up on where he is all day and who he’s with is what you really mean, she thought. Jean had suggested that any half-normal mother would want to do that.
‘Oh, yeah, right,’ she said. ‘My aunt was saying she’d like to meet you, meet Charlie’s mum. She said suppose you take us up there in the car one morning and drop us off, on your way to work?’
‘Well, we could do. It’s in the other direction. We’d have to be out of here half an hour earlier,’ Sally said, her interest waning.
‘OK. I’ll tell her you’ll be up tomorrow then, OK?’
‘What? Oh fine, yes, tell her that’s fine.’
‘Glad you like the spring-clean, anyway. Nice to have it a bit clearer, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes, but I mean in a way, now it is a bit better, it seems a shame not to be here a bit more.’
‘Oh no, of course, I didn’t mean-’ Was it all going to backfire? Steph thought fast, and delivered her masterstroke. ‘It’s just- well, I think Charlie likes to see new faces. You know. He likes my auntie. He gets tons of attention up there, you see.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Oh, where are my keys? Steph, have you seen my fucking keys?’
‘Here they are. Anyway, I think the stimulation’s really good for him. You know, especially when he doesn’t see very much of you. You know, when he doesn’t see you all day. And with him being an only.’
The next day Sally drove them up to the manor, cursing at the early start. Jean came out to meet them in the drive, shook hands with Sally and invited her in. Sally refused coffee, spent all of five minutes in the kitchen where one end had already been transformed into Charlie’s play area, smiled and said she must be off. Jean saw her back to her car, chatting amiably. When she returned, she and Steph exchanged a look. Jean put plates to warm and made a pot of coffee while Steph, with Charlie on her hip, laid the table. After another minute or two, just to be cautious in case Sally came roaring back up the drive for any reason, they called to Michael, who had been waiting upstairs, and then they sat down to the breakfast that Jean had ready in the oven. That was all it took.