“Down, Madge, down,” the stranger yelled for the umpteenth time. “Get over here
now
!”
With her master now in striking distance, the dog jumped one last time at the gloves, half knocking Lizzie over. A firm hand landed under her elbow and steadied her. Lizzie righted herself quickly and swooped down to pick up Ellie, who was still shrieking. With the bony but strangely powerful little girl clamped to her in a limpet-like grip, Lizzie turned to the stranger.
Her mind registered that he was probably thirty-something, rather heavily built without being overweight, and deeply tanned. He was dressed in a damp T-shirt and jeans, and steam seemed to rise from his curly dark hair. Not an unattractive man, she couldn’t help noticing. With her free hand, she found herself surreptitiously tucking away some strands of damp hair that had escaped from her ponytail. Not a good idea with dirty gloves on. She stopped at once.
Now that his dog had given up assaulting Lizzie, the stranger seemed to have lost all sense of urgency. By rights, he should have had the animal by the scruff and be dragging it toward the gate. Instead, he was standing with his arms folded, muscles bulging, smilingly watching the culprit.
“Excuse me, would you kindly get your dog out of my garden?” Lizzie said, not quite as severely as she would have liked. “Can’t you see he’s scaring my children?”
She gestured at the offending animal, who was now sitting in front of Alex, offering to shake paws.
The stranger had the gall to smile. “Of course,” he said quickly. “I’m awfully sorry. Madge used to play with the kid who lived in this place before you. On the way over here, I did explain to her that those people have moved to Hong Kong, but she couldn’t have been paying attention.”
Lizzie started to laugh but quickly turned it into a cough. She composed her face into a frown.
“Yeah, right,” she said with an ungracious shrug. “Just try to make sure she doesn’t jump over our fence again. Ellie here has a sort of phobia about dogs.”
Just at that moment, Ellie wriggled out of her mother’s grasp like a piece of wet spaghetti and sidled up to her brother.
“He likes tickles here,” said Alex, demonstrating a scratch behind the dog’s soft ears. Tentatively, Ellie put up a hand to touch the fur.
“Yup, and Madge is such a ferocious specimen of the breed,” the dog’s owner laughed. Actually, it was a rather appealing laugh, as if he were inviting her to share the joke. Her lips quivered slightly, but by now the man had turned to the twins and was hunkering down beside them.
“It’s a ‘she,’ not a ‘he,’ ” he told Alex. “Her name’s Madge and she’s five years old, which is about thirty-five in dog years.”
Alex attempted a knowing whistle. “Mummy iss firty two,” he said impressively. “Madge is vewy old.”
“Gosh,” said Madge’s owner, squinting up at Lizzie through the drizzle. “ Thirty-two. I would never have guessed. She doesn’t look a day over twenty-five — that’s three-and-a-bit in dog years.”
Lizzie held the man’s eyes a moment too long. She felt a tiny glow of pleasure but shook it off immediately. Honestly, who did he think he was, this complete stranger, to come leaping into her garden and start — well,
flirting
with her in front of her children? For all she knew, he could be an escaped lunatic or a confidence trickster.
“Look, could you just get your dog and go?” she asked. “I don’t know who you are or what makes you think our garden is a public footpath, but I’ve got quite a lot of weeding to get on with. The actual public footpath, if you’re interested, is over thataway,” and she pointed with her tiny garden fork.
The man stood up and shrugged. “Okay, but I’m not a crazy dog walker. I’m a landscape gardener. I do the Hatters’ garden every couple of weeks, once a week in the summer.”
Lizzie’s eyebrows rose. She had taken Ingrid Hatter for one of those master gardener types because the grounds around the barn were so fabulous. At the moment her lawn was awash with bluebells, like the floor of some ancient woodland.
“I thought Ingrid did her own garden.”
The man laughed and casually threw a stick for Madge, who dashed after it, panting. “You should have seen the barn a year ago,” he said. “The garden was pretty dismal — even worse than yours, as I remember. The bluebells were all but choked out by weeds.”
The twins began to scream with joy as Madge brought the stick back and laid it down at her master’s feet. He gave it a kick and the dog went bounding off again.
Lizzie watched the animal scrambling over her molehills and rabbit holes. Pointless to be offended by his aspersions. He was only stating the obvious, after all. “It is pretty dismal, isn’t it? But I have big plans for it. Look, I’ve already made a start, pulling up all those nettles.” She gestured proudly at the sodden pile, which was about as tall as Ellie.
“I see,” he said and wandered over to kick at the weeds with his boot. “Thing is, you’ll be pulling these up all summer because the runners are still under the ground. Look, I’ll show you.” He bent down and poked around in the dirt until he found what he was looking for, then gave a great tug and yanked out a long tough strand of root, ripping up a line of soil and lawn as he did so.
“Come and see, there are hundreds more of them.”
Lizzie hunkered down beside him and looked at the network of runners he had uncovered just beneath the surface of the flower bed that ran around the house. Her heart sank into her wellies. Why did things always have to be so much more complicated than they looked? Why couldn’t it be enough just to pull the nettles out and cart them off in a wheelbarrow? She’d felt so competent only minutes ago, amassing her enormous pile of weeds at record speed.
The stranger laughed. “Don’t look so down in the dumps about it. It’s not a train smash. You just need to spray with a weed killer that will get down to the runners. Oh, and by the way, you have ground elder.” He cupped a pretty looking leaf in his hands.
“And that’s . . . what — good?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. That’s definitely bad. It will swarm all over your borders and smother whatever you have in there. You need to get rid of it too. Pulling it up will do no good at all. It’ll just keep coming back. The best solution is to dig this stuff up with a fork, roots and all.”
He turned aside to throw the stick for the dog again.
Lizzie sighed and threw down her garden tools. She didn’t have the energy to pull things up by the roots. Maybe she wasn’t up to gardening, after all. “On that cheerful note, I’m going to pack it in for the day — possibly forever. Do you realize you’ve just turned my molehill of a garden into a complete and utter bloody mountain?”
“Yup, making mountains out of molehills is part of my sales patter,” he grinned. “If you like, I’ll come and help you with it some afternoon. We could get it done in a few hours between the two of us.”
Lizzie gave her best attempt at a knowing sneer. “And how much do you charge, twenty quid an hour?”
He hooted with laughter. “Where on earth have you been living, woman? Around here, we gentleman gardeners don’t leave the house for at least forty-five an hour. But I wasn’t trying to sell my services. I was genuinely offering to help you out, just to get you started.”
Lizzie gaped. “Why on earth would you do that?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Easier than asking you on a date, I suppose.”
“But . . . but,” Lizzie gestured helplessly toward her children, currently dabbling in the mud created by the visitor’s excavations among the nettle runners. Madge had taken this as a sign to go down on her belly and get digging too. “Why would you think I’d go on a date, anyway? Have you not noticed? I’m a married woman. I have two children, for crying out loud.”
The man folded his arms again and frowned. “That’s not what the grapevine says,” he complained. “You were advertised as newly single, you know. Has someone been spreading misinformation?”
All of a sudden, Lizzie felt chilled to the bone and slightly sick. She should never have confided in Ingrid Hatter. Clearly, the woman was already gossiping about her, and it was only hours since they’d spoken.
“Children!” she yelled at the top of her voice, too agitated to be amused that her visitor nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden bellow. “I’m giving you
three
to get back inside.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Look, I’m not interested in dating you or anybody else. If I want a gardener, I’ll look in the local paper.” Then, at the top of her decibel range, she called, “Right, Ellie, right, Alex, that’s
one
, that’s
two
. . .”
With the usual shrieks of delicious terror, the twins threw down their muddy sticks and scuttled toward the open door. Lizzie flicked the wet hair out of her eyes and stomped in squelching wellies after them.
“By the way,” a voice called just before she was able to slam the door, “my name is Bruno.”
W
hen Lizzie finally reached the head of the queue at Boots, the pharmacist was looking down, making a note to herself on a yellow Post-it pad. Lizzie cleared her throat. “Tessa,” she said very softly, and the woman’s head shot up.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then the pharmacist threw down her pen and clapped her hand to her mouth.
“My God! Lizzie,” she hissed, and then a huge grin banished every trace of her professional mien. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Lizzie was grinning from ear to ear too now. She handed over a tube of toothpaste and some children’s pain and fever syrup. “Hi, Tessa. How
are
you?”
With a bemused look on her face, Tessa Martin began ringing up Lizzie’s meager purchases.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, glancing at the line of customers behind Lizzie. “Why on earth didn’t you pick up the phone and let me know you were coming? By the way, you do know you can’t give this syrup if you’re dosing with any other form of paracetamol, right?”
“Course I know, my best friend’s a pharmacist; I helped her swot for her ruddy exams! Remember?”
“Just doing my job.”
“Look, can you maybe take an early lunch and come for a chat? I only have until twelve, then I have to get the twins.”
Tessa glanced at her watch. “You want me to take lunch at ten thirty in the morning? Hang on, let me see what I can do.”
She handed Lizzie her receipt and change, then disappeared behind the scenes of the dispensary. The people behind Lizzie were beginning to clear their throats and shuffle their feet. Luckily, Tessa soon reappeared shrugging on a coat, handbag over her arm, followed by a resigned-looking male colleague resplendent in a white coat and thin blonde ponytail.
Lizzie hurried after Tessa as she jaywalked her way across the High Street into a prosperous looking coffee shop that was packed to the rafters with women. Animated groups of trendy thirty-somethings, presumably stay-at-home mums, chatted loudly over lattes. The smaller tables were occupied by harried looking lone mums watching over babies and/or toddlers. One table was heaving with disgruntled preschoolers scrapping over a box of crayons.
“Too crowded,” Lizzie said at once.
“You should see it on a Saturday morning,” said Tessa. “It’s the only decent place in town. And look, there’s someone leaving now, at the back — the sofa. Quick, let’s nab it.”
She darted off, fighting her way efficiently around tables toward the fat and comfortable looking sofa, which had barely been vacated before Tessa slid neatly across the seat. Lizzie followed with a grudging smile. Tessa had always been the trailblazer at pubs and clubs, she remembered, clearing a path through wall-to-wall bodies with a mixture of charm and sheer physical force.
The moment Lizzie arrived, slightly pink from the heat and bustle, Tessa stood up. “Sit with your legs across the cushions,” she hissed. “I’ll get the coffee.”
Lizzie had time to study her from afar while she stood in line.
Tessa Martin, dark-haired, athletic, and good-looking, had been Lizzie’s best friend since their high school days together at a small, nurturing, but rather shabby girls’ boarding school in Surrey. The two had shared a tiny flat in Ealing Broadway as students and during their early working years.
For years they’d owned one used Vera Wang dress and one Prada handbag between them, which meant they could never attend the same black-tie event simultaneously. There were times when Tessa had first dibs on the dress even if it wasn’t strictly her turn because Lizzie wasn’t always able to squeeze into it. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) they couldn’t share shoes because Tessa’s feet were too wide and flat, a fact that had always given Lizzie a secret little kick.
Tessa had been bridesmaid at Lizzie’s wedding (not wearing the Vera Wang) and pregnant Lizzie had been matron of honor for Tessa three years later. In all the years they’d known each other, they’d had only one serious falling-out. The tiff had been over a dark and brooding Scot named Angus. Angus’s pressing phone calls to Lizzie had been mysteriously intercepted by Tessa, who, through a combination of low cunning, shameless flirting, and a campaign of ruthless misinformation about Lizzie, had managed to deflect his attention from Lizzie — and toward herself.
Tessa’s only defense afterwards was that she’d been of unsound mind due to a massive riptide of hormones unlike anything she’d ever dealt with before. Apparently she’d never been so attracted to a man in her life. Luckily for the friendship, Angus had turned out to be a bit of a windbag and bore. Tessa had been thoroughly ashamed of her wanton behavior after the fact, and since then had considered herself under a moral obligation to be on Lizzie’s side no matter what.
Lizzie, who’d never been that interested in Angus anyway, had been secretly amused to see Tessa making a bit of a fool of herself. After all, Tessa was always the sensible one, the practical one, the one who dispensed advice from her unassailable position of strength as someone who had it all together and absolutely never messed up.
Lizzie had no idea where Tessa got her confidence from. Okay, so she was good at sports, especially tennis and running; she was good at chemistry and biology; she was good at making small talk with strangers; she was good at choosing clothes; she was good at walking into a room and somehow causing everyone to notice her; she was good at decorating tiny flats with bits of flea market junk and making them look like something out of the pages of a home decor magazine.