Rose said, ‘Oh dear,’ in the amused way of an onlooker when they really wanted to say, ‘Don’t you have any control over your children?’ The black rage, with which I was becoming familiar, swept over me. It was an ugly emotion and I manhandled the screaming Felix upright more roughly than I should have done. ‘Don’t you dare say anything, Rose.’
‘Why would I? It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘You know perfectly well why you would.’
She hauled a pair of gardening gloves out of her handbag. ‘Can I take a look in the shed?’
I bent over Felix. ‘Why don’t you show Mrs Lloyd the shed, and I’ll talk to Lucas?’ But Felix refused to co-operate and clung to my hand. As we passed the lilac tree, Rose paused and pulled a branch towards her for inspection. She exclaimed softly at its condition, then allowed it to snap back.
Weakened by neglect, the shed door shuddered when Rose opened it. The interior was festooned with spiders’ webs. A garden fork was propped against the wall, its tines caked with earth. There was a rusty trowel, a spade and a stack of flowerpots. A packet of fertilizer stood in a corner, so old that it had hardened into a lump. I prodded it with my foot. ‘Nathan always meant to take this to the council dump.’
While I cornered Lucas and ordered him to return Blanky, Rose ferreted around in the shed. She emerged with the fork and a trug with a splintered handle, into which she had teased a handful of the fertilizer. ‘Now’ She catalogued the wandering lines of the lawn, the tangle of weeds and grass, the unpruned clematis. She shaded her eyes with a hand, and I knew she was peering into the past. ‘If I’m truthful, I didn’t want you to be a gardener, Minty. Certainly not in my garden.’ Her eyes betrayed sudden amusement. ‘But I needn’t have worried.’ She picked up the package. ‘Where shall I plant this rose?’
‘I don’t want it.’
Her fingers curled round it protectively. ‘But Nathan sent it. He must have been thinking of us both. It belongs here, and it matters where it’s planted.’
‘What’s the point?’ I gestured at the garden. ‘It’s not likely to flourish.’
Rose hacked off the wrapping package with the secateurs. ‘I take it you’ll be living here for the time being?’
‘You know as well as I do that I have to be here. Anyway, the twins’ school is very close.’ I peered at her. ‘I assume you’ve talked to Theo about the will?’
‘Yes, I have.’ She wasn’t going to pursue the subject. ‘If you’re staying here you should think about the garden.’
Felix’s little fingers clenched mine. ‘Rose, I don’t think it’s your business.’
That silenced her. No doubt Rose was grateful for her little extra acquired immunity – she had had time to get used to being without Nathan. But I had not, and I was not under control. She did not challenge my rudeness but smiled at Felix, who had raised his head. His tears had ceased, and he was studying Rose with unabashed curiosity.
Rose crouched at his level. ‘We haven’t really said hello, Felix.’ She held out her hand. ‘I knew your daddy.’
Felix dropped my hand. ‘Daddy…’ he echoed, and favoured Rose with one of his devastating wide-eyed looks, which I knew could reduce its recipient to weak-kneed adoration. Rose’s eyebrows flew up and, in that instant, she had been ravished.
She swallowed. ‘He’s so beautiful, and innocent,’ she murmured. Her eyes filled. ‘And so like… him. But, then, what else would you expect?’
Felix moved closer to Rose. ‘Why are you crying? Mummy, why’s the lady crying?’
I gave him a little shove. ‘Go and find Lucas, Felix. I think he’s in your special camp.’
Felix required no further urging. He scampered round the shed and disappeared. Rose wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and sniffed.
‘They’re a little difficult at the moment. I’m feeling my way’
She didn’t answer. Hovering on the borderline between irritation and murderousness, I said, ‘Just shove the damn thing in, Rose, and go away.’
‘OK. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me.’ She began to pace up and down. ‘Here,’ she pronounced eventually. ‘If I plant it here you’ll be able to see it from the kitchen window.’
The fertilizer had leaked from the trug, and left a white trail over the lawn. Rose rubbed it in with her shoe and began to dig. Last night there had been drizzle, and the damp soil yielded easily to the fork.
I watched her. ‘When did Nathan ask for help with the garden?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Lots of little chats about it, then?’
‘A garden must have good bones,’ Rose would have said. Or something like it. And, no doubt, Nathan had hung on her words.
‘Nathan and I kept in touch. Obviously.’
Did the exchange of gardening notes constitute adultery? Yes, in a way – in a far more telling way than the slip-slap of flesh on flesh, and Elbow Talk in the panting aftermath. Nathan had wanted Rose’s opinion. He had wanted to help himself to her thinking and her creating He had asked to be put back on the distribution list of Rose’s intimacies. ‘I suggest an olive tree here. The lavender there.’
Rose sieved the stones that had worked their way to the surface and evened out the perimeter of the hole she had dug. Her body was toned, her waist defined. ‘This is crazy,’ I said, at last.
She continued to dig. ‘No, it’s not.’
‘I really don’t want it.’
Rose pulled herself upright and leant on the fork handle. ‘You. should want it.’
I closed my eyes. ‘Were you seeing a lot of Nathan?’
Her head whipped round. ‘I wasn’t seeing Nathan.’
‘Excuse me?’
The roots of the rose were dry and unpromising. Rose eased it into the hole, teased the roots apart and dribbled soil on to them. ‘It really should have soaked for a while, but no matter.’ She tamped down the soil with her foot. ‘Perhaps you should know, Minty, that it’s not possible to dismiss a marriage just like that. And, believe me, I wanted to.’ She looked up. ‘Hold this steady, will you?’
I obliged. Under my fingers the rose was thorny and unyielding. ‘How stupid did you want me to feel, Rose? Because I felt very stupid when I realized how often Nathan contacted you.’
‘Well, now you know what it’s like.’ Rose didn’t sound that interested. She slapped her gloved hands together, which made a dull, hollow sound. She began to say something, checked herself, and stepped back to survey her handiwork. ‘I wonder what he was thinking when he ordered this one. It’s a repeat flowerer.’
I swung round on my heel and walked back into the house. Behind me, I heard the rattle of the shed door, Rose’s footsteps on the patio, then her ‘Goodbye, twins. I hope to see you again.’ She is not having my children, I thought, bleak and unfair and sorrowing.
Rose came into the kitchen and placed the wrapping on the table. ‘I don’t know where you put the rubbish.’
‘Leave it.’
‘Fine.’ There was a short pause. ‘I must go because I have an article to write. Deadlines.’ The professional female was speaking to the professional female. You see and hear the exchange everywhere. Two women lunching: one or other taps her watch and murmurs, ‘The meeting’, or ‘You should see the house,’ or ‘I want to sleep for a decade.’ Rose and I used to talk to each other like that.
‘Go, then,’ I said.
She shook dirt from the gloves into the sink. ‘About the children, Minty…’
‘Don’t bring them into it. We’re doing fine. We’re coping.’ Felix’s little figure sitting at the foot of the stairs. ‘We’re doing our best. I don’t need help.’
Again, Rose glanced at her watch, and there was a degree of hesitancy. ‘Keep watering the rose for a few days.’