16.

Aoife gazed into her palm. She was holding a handful of possibilities. Myriad microcosms of worlds. Worlds she could so easily let slip through her fingers. Tomato seeds. Dozens of them. Each one capable of great things. But not one capable of becoming anything other than a tomato plant. Not a carrot or a courgette or a cauliflower. Just as she was incapable of growing into anything other than Aoife Madigan.

It was early in the morning. Ridiculously so. Not even half past seven. She'd come to the garden because Liam was on a sleepover his first with a little boy he'd got to know at the creche. The other child's mother had offered to take them both there this morning. Such a sensible idea. Now it took every ounce of will-power Aoife had to stop herself going over to their house right now and hugging the breath out of her son. She hadn't been able to sleep without his knees sticking into the small of her back, and with no lecture to give until eleven and no little boy to prepare for the day, she felt utterly redundant. Which was why she had come to the garden. At least here she could do something useful. She could plant things that would grow into food.

She knelt on the earth that spring morning and slowly, painstakingly, following to the letter the instructions on the back of the seed packet, sowed her tomatoes in cute little seed trays. It was too early in the year to trust them to the soil. Then she sowed lettuce. She imagined the rows and rows of succulent green plants they were to become, like something out of Peter Rabbit.

She wasn't alone. A robin was perched in the uppermost branches of the tallest, oldest, most gnarled apple tree, singing his beautiful song. Aoife felt blessed, as if the song was for her ears alone. A private recital.

'Won't you promise to eat any slugs that come near my lettuces?' she said to him. He continued to trill. She smiled and returned to her task.

She must have spent a full hour sifting the soil with a giant sieve, discarding stones and roots, hair dusted with misty rain, overcoming her fear of spiders, when a thought came unbidden: all she needed was a man to steal up behind her and kiss the nape of her neck, where the soft downiness of her hair met the cool creaminess of her skin. The thought startled her and she shivered. She swung around. 'Michael?'

But no one was there. Nothing, in fact, but the brute force of her loneliness.

Uri arrived at nine o'clock, as expected. He was semi-retired and dedicated most of his mornings to the garden. But today he wasn't alone. He had with him a younger man, in his mid-to late-thirties, judging by the web of lines around his eyes. 'This is Seth, my son. Seth, this is Aoife.'

'Hi.'

'h.e.l.lo.'

'Seth is a gardener. He'd like to help.'

'Really?' A gardener! Uri had never said. He'd mentioned his sons he had two but a gardener...

'That's if it's okay with you.'

'Of course it is,' Aoife said quickly. 'Absolutely. I mean, when can you start?'

He smiled and held out his hands. 'Right now?'

She never would have pegged him as Uri's son. He must favour his mother, she thought. He was taller than his father but by no means gigantic. His hair was brown, greying at the temples, and she couldn't tell what colour his eyes were because they were screwed up against the sun. His skin had the weatherbeaten texture of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors and his arms were freckled, like speckled birds' eggs.

'You do know that the future of the garden is very grim, don't you?'

'I know. But I don't see any fat ladies singing just yet.'

'No.' She laughed. Funny.

'So, Aoife, what can I do for you?'

The answers crowded inside her head. 'Well, no one's gone near the pond yet. You could give that a go.'

'Right you are.'

She watched him walk away, his jaunty steps, as though he had a spring in him. 'Why didn't you tell me your son was a gardener?' she asked Uri.

'He's had a rough time of it lately. I wanted to wait. I didn't want to put him under any pressure.'

They watched Seth work, straight into it already, his movements fluid, very unlike how Aoife imagined her own movements to be awkward and stuttering. Amateurish. He'd be such a help. And he might even have a few spare plants knocking around.

Later that night, after Liam had gone to bed and before she climbed into a well-deserved bath, Aoife did something she hadn't done for a while. She looked at herself in the mirror. Really looked. Peered. Examined. Things had certainly changed since the last time she'd studied herself and she got quite a shock. Her hair, with its silver roots and faded, coloured ends, resembled an Ice Pop with part of the juice sucked out of it. G.o.d, she'd really let herself go. She'd never thought that her appearance mattered that much to her, but now, staring at her haggard reflection, at this woman old beyond her thirty-five years, she cared. What had happened to the laid-back, smiling girl Michael had fallen in love with and married? She could remember a time when the only thing that ever got her down was gravity. Now look at her! All dragged down and dishevelled. It was time to drag herself back up again. She owed it to Liam and she owed it to herself.

17.

The for-sale sign was up now. They tried their hardest to ignore it, but it still cast its long shadow over the garden. March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. The gales blew the sign down. They all cheered. The onset of April's showers cooled them, enchanted them, soaked them to the skin.

Liam had his own patch now sunflowers. He watered them diligently every day with his Winnie-the-Pooh watering-can. He was in a state of high excitement over the introduction of fish into the pond. Seth had brought along some tiddlers one Sat.u.r.day morning, allowed them to rest for a while, their plastic bags floating as they became acclimatized to their new home, then released them. This morning he had brought another tiddler with him his four-year-old daughter, Kathy. She was two months younger than Liam and a head taller. And, Aoife discovered as she lifted the little girl up into the arms of the apple tree, at least a tonne heavier.

'I thought they could play together,' said Seth. 'Keep each other out of trouble. You don't mind, do you?'

'Why should I?'

'You just seem surprised.'

'Only because I didn't know you had a daughter.'

'Well, I do.'

'So I see.' She smiled at him and he averted his eyes.

'Are you using those loppers, Aoife?'

'No. Work away.'

He had this way of saying her name. Other Irish people had it too. In England, once people had come to terms with its strangeness, they p.r.o.nounced it 'Eefa'. Flat. But here, the p.r.o.nunciation was softer. As if every vowel mattered.

Coming across other Aoifes had been a novelty. As a child, she had despised her name. n.o.body could spell it, n.o.body could p.r.o.nounce it and it marked her out as different. But as she became older, it made her special. Unique. Until she had come to Ireland where she was one of many. She had felt quite put out at all those other women stealing her name.

'I like your hair,' said Emily, wandering by with a wheelbarrow.

'Thanks.'

They smiled at each other. They'd been having the odd conversation of late, mainly about books, and Aoife felt she was making progress. Emily still wore her sadness like a cloak, but sometimes you could find an opening. She watched her trundle the wheelbarrow along the path. Then her heart caught. 'Liam!' She began to run. 'Liam!' she screamed. 'Get down!'

The others stopped what they were doing and stared, first at her and then at Liam hanging upside down by his knees from a branch of the apple tree. She reached him. 'Jesus Christ, come here!' She dragged him off the branch, turned him the right way up and hugged him. 'You're all right, you're all right,' she muttered over and over again, kissing the top of his head repeatedly.

'Ow. You're hurting me.' Liam squirmed.

She released him reluctantly.

'What's wrong? What happened?'

'We were only pretending to be bats, Daddy,' said Kathy, giving Aoife a resentful look.

They were all gathered around now, staring at her. She realized, with embarra.s.sment, that she'd overreacted. 'Sorry, everyone, it was nothing. I just got a fright, that's all. I thought he was going to fall.'

They murmured and returned to their tasks. Mentally Aoife kicked herself. Just when she'd thought she was getting back to normal something like this happened to remind her that she was still mad, after all.

That Sat.u.r.day afternoon was magical. The sun shone magnificently. It was the first day they'd been able to wear T-shirts apart from Mrs Prendergast who wore a white broderie-anglaise short-sleeved blouse. The robin had found a mate and they'd decided to build a nest. When they didn't have twigs in their beaks, they sang their heads off. Seth had introduced some frogsp.a.w.n into the pond earlier that spring and the water was alive with tadpoles. Liam and Kathy were forever capturing them in jam jars and peering at them, willing their little froggy legs to appear. Harriet, the fat, old retriever, snuffled around, wagging her geriatric tail, eventually flopping down in a panting heap on the newly planted herbs.

Some days they drew quite a crowd, pa.s.sers-by staring in at the gate pausing in their rush-hour rush. Occasionally somebody would call one of them over and ask what they were doing.

Defying logic?

They had a definite plan now and the planting was gathering momentum. Each gardener had his or her own tasks and they had divided the garden into four quadrants: the kitchen garden, the rose garden, the orchard and what they called the secret garden, because Emily wouldn't tell them what she was doing in it. At first Aoife thought it was a cottage garden, but there seemed to be more to it than that. Seth cared for the pond and was, as he said, a general dogsbody. He was also in charge of wheelbarrow rides. Liam and Kathy would get in and he would zoom up and down the paths, making racing-car noises, swerving just in time to avoid trees and pretending to tip them into the pond. The children would giggle wildly. It made Aoife's heart ache to see how much her son loved the male attention.

Mrs Prendergast was less impressed with the great wheelbarrow races. 'Must you make that infernal racket?'

'Why don't you hop in yourself, Mrs P, give it a lash?'

Seth tilted the barrow towards her. She gave him a withering look she didn't have much time for him. Aoife imagined she thought him uncouth.

Aoife was mainly in charge of the kitchen garden, although 'in charge' wasn't the right way to put it. The arrangement was more relaxed than that. But she spent more time there than anyone else did. There was something about growing food that appealed to the practical side of her nature. What could be more fundamental to life? She liked to feel she wasn't squandering her time. Of course she made mistakes constantly, not having done it before. Take the tomatoes. She was only transplanting them from the seed trays to their little pots now. She knew she'd left it too late and that they'd be lagging behind, as she pressed down the compost with her bare fingers and sprayed the roots. 'Grow, little ones, grow,' she whispered, then looked around furtively to make sure that no one had heard her. She had made a start on the green beans too, erecting cane pyramids, antic.i.p.ating their little orange flowers. Kneeling in the mud, she felt a ridiculous level of contentment. She didn't hear Emily come up behind her.

'I'm ready now.'

Aoife jumped. 'Emily, I didn't see you there.' Had she heard her talking to the plants?

'I'm ready to tell you now.'

'What. You mean...?'

'To tell you what I've been planning for my part of the garden.'

'Oh.' Aoife scrambled to her feet. 'Let's go.'

'I didn't want to say anything before because I wasn't sure how it was going to work out.'

'That's okay.' She searched the girl's face. She'd never seen her so animated.

'Anyway, what I was hoping to make was a sensory garden.' She seemed to be seeking Aoife's approval.

'Go on.'

'Imagine a garden that was a total feast for the senses. You enter here, honeysuckle on one side, jasmine on the other. I was going to ask Seth to help me put up a pergola.'

She looked at Aoife, who nodded at her to continue.

'We could put a little swing seat underneath. A person could sit there and just absorb the fragrance. Then I want to put a pebble path here. You walk along barefoot first thing in the morning. It's a reflexology thing. At the end of the path there's a bubble fountain the soothing sound of water. I'm going to hang wind chimes from the branch of that tree and I'll plant some tall, ornamental gra.s.ses to the right. The breeze will rustle them. And colour. I want lots of colour.'

Aoife said nothing as she watched Emily's hand movements become more expansive.

'A green area like the green room in a theatre. Lots of lovely, relaxing foliage. Then pink to relieve tension a blossoming cherry, I think. Crimsons and golds and coppers to raise energy levels. Think daffodils and tulips in the spring. Wallflowers! Maybe Liam could plant me a row of sunflowers. And then we have to have some herbs.' She was gabbling now. 'Lavender lining that path French lavender. It has a better fragrance than English. No offence.'

'None taken.'

'And I want to place troughs of herbs on either side of a bench right there.' She looked at Aoife expectantly.

'Is that it?'

'Oh, and fairy-lights around the pergola beams. I'll hang coloured lanterns from the bushes and plant a camomile lawn. That's it. For now. What do you think?'

'What do I think?'

'Yes.'

'I think you're either a madwoman or a genius.'

She saw doubt cloud the girl's features and amended her words quickly. 'What I really mean is I think you're inspired. A true artist.'

'Really?' Her cheeks bloomed.

'Yes, really. Only, Emily, you know as well as I do that the garden probably isn't '

'Don't say it!' Emily held up a hand as if warding off a curse, startling Aoife with the ferocity of her emotion. 'I can't bear to think about it. The garden deserves...' she searched for the right words '... one last hurrah. And we're the ones who have to give it to her.'

Aoife liked that. A 'last hurrah'. Yes, why not? Why the h.e.l.l not? 'Okay, Emily. Do your worst.'

Seth was putting up an archway for Mrs Prendergast's roses. She was supervising, with much derision. 'Not like that. Look at it, for G.o.d's sake. It's all lopsided.'

'Do you want to have a go?'

'Don't be ridiculous. Not with my arthritis.'

'Well, would you mind letting me get on with it, then?'

'What? And let you mess it up?'

'Hi there.' Aoife joined them.

'Great. Another woman to tell me what to do.' But when he looked at her, his eyes were smiling. She couldn't get a handle on his eyes. The colour, that was. They seemed to change in accordance with the landscape. Today they mirrored the sky in their blueness.

Mrs Prendergast sighed theatrically. 'I could murder a cup of tea.'

'Would you like me to '