if he might overlook her presence. Forget she was there.
Impossible. If she’d been some quiet, mousy female he would have had no problem with her, but she wasn’t either of those things. Even when she wasn’t around she still managed to fill the house with her presence. She was there in every gleaming surface, every plumped-up cushion, in a lingering scent that he couldn’t put a name to, one that didn’t come out of any bottle.
She disturbed the very air, and he’d wanted her out of his house, out of his life, and the sooner the better.
His mistake had been talking to Kitty. Maybe he’d been looking for some salve for his conscience-justification, confirmation of the lack of any formal agreement or contract. It was clear that there was neither, which should have made things easier. Too late, he discovered that it didn’t.
With a formal agreement there would have been a measure of equity, protection on both side. It would have given him a get-out clause, a period of notice to be given in writing. She would have had rights and, having acknowledged them, he would have been able to rest easy.
Somehow, this gentlemen’s agreement his sister had thought sufficient-and he was quite sure that the lease for her own apartment hadn’t been anywhere near as casual-had left him with no choice but to behave like a gentleman.
He might have to live with it, with her. But he didn’t have to like it.
As he sat there, work neglected, he gradually became aware of the small sounds of the garden filtering in through the open window. A blackbird in the lilac tree, singing its heart out. Small insects, bees mobbing the wisteria. The softly repeated chink, chink, chink of someone working in the garden with a hoe or a small hand tool.
He closed the window. Returned to his desk. But even when he’d blotted out the sound he could still hear it in his head and, furious at the disturbance, he walked out of the front door, around the house, determined to tell her to stop whatever she was doing, give him some peace.
When, finally, he came across her, bent over the old stone trough by the kitchen door, it was too late to regret the impulse, to wish he’d stayed put. To late to back away. It was a re-run of that moment in the library.
A re-run of his life.
And yet everything was different. The woman was a mess. Her hair tugged back in an elastic band, her temple streaked with dirt. She was wearing cut-offs that displayed practically every inch of her shapely legs, the nearest sporting a bruise that mirrored the one on his thigh-a physical reminder, should he need one, of their first encounter. She had battered blue pumps with bright red laces on her feet, and to top it all a blindingly bright pink crop top clung to her untidily generous curves.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.
Ellie, having made a note of the Latin names of the ferns-handily printed on plastic labels stuck into the pots- and despatched them by e-mail to Jennifer Cochrane, along with a proposal for a feature on the imaginative fabric playhouses designed and made by one of the ladies she cleaned for, had felt the tug of conscience.
Laura Morrison had been kind enough to give her the ferns. The least she could do was plant them.
It hadn’t occurred to her to clear the idea with Ben Faulkner first. Why would it?
‘A neighbour gave me these,’ she said, gesturing at the waiting pots with the trowel. ‘Apparently they like damp shade. Unlike these pansies which, it has to be faced, are on their last legs.’
When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder.
‘They were never happy there,’ he agreed. ‘Never thrived.’
His initial irritation had faded into something else, something that tugged at her heartstrings. The haunted note she’d caught in his voice was in his eyes, too. But it wasn’t her he was looking at, but the sad, elongated plants, all stalk and tiny leaves where they’d hunted for the light. Belatedly, she wondered who had planted them.
Not him-he wouldn’t have overreacted that way if it had been him. Someone he’d cared for, then, she decided, remembering how she’d kept a potted plant Sean had bought her, some ghastly purple chrysanthemum, long after it had shrivelled up and died.
‘I’m sorry, Ben,’ she said, picking them up very carefully, tucking their roots back into the damp soil so that they wouldn’t just lie there and die, then easing herself to her feet. ‘I’ll put them somewhere where they’ll be happier,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask Laura. Laura Morrison. She’ll know.’
For a moment she thought he was going to tell her to forget it. To turn and walk away.
He didn’t.
‘You’ll need some fresh compost if they’re going to survive,’ he said, after a moment or two.
‘The pansies?’
‘The ferns. Possibly something ericaceous. I believe woodland plants prefer an acid environment.’
‘Sorry, you lost me right after “compost”.’
‘I’m just guessing. Someone at the garden centre will know.’ Then, ‘Do you want to go and fetch some?’
‘Compost?’ Ellie used the seat of her pants to brush the dirt from her hands. Then, ‘Are you offering to take me to the garden centre to pick some up?’
‘It comes in sacks. I may be wrong, but I suspect you’d find it difficult to manage on your bike.’
‘I wouldn’t even try.’ Then, ‘Maybe we should take Adele’s car? It would be a shame to mess up yours. And it’ll have more room in the back.’
‘How much compost do you imagine you’ll need?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not a gardener.’
‘That makes two of us.’He shrugged. ‘You may have a point. To be honest, I’m surprised Adele didn’t offer you the use of her car as a perk of the job. Or maybe she’s not as free with her own possessions as she is with mine.’
‘Oh, no! She did offer. I can’t drive.’
‘Can’t?’
‘I’ve tried. Sean tried everything. But I have a problem with making my left hand do one thing while my left leg is doing something else and still looking at the road. He told me there’s a word for it.’
‘I’m sure he did,’ he said, with a fleeting suspicion of something that might have been amusement momentarily transforming his face, offering her a glimpse of a very different Ben Faulkner.
Ellie, who rarely got to out-of-town places such as garden centres, left Ben to get all technical on the subject of compost with one of the staff while she wandered off to marvel over the colours and varieties of the endless trays of bedding plants, wonderful pots, bright new tools.
Ben found her looking at a stainless steel trowel with something approaching lust.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Mmm,’ she said, replacing it on the display. ‘You know, I could really
‘If you didn’t have the world’s most romantic novel to finish.’
‘Oh, it’s finished. I had rejection number eleven today.’
‘Eleven? Is that all? You’ve got a long way to go to catch up with some of the great writers.’
‘I make no claims to greatness,’ she said. ‘Even so, I don’t suppose anyone ever told them they were “cliched”.’ She couldn’t believe she was telling him that.
‘Maybe you should stop trying to imitate Emily Bronte and try writing about your own life?’ he suggested. ‘That would be different.’
That was why, she thought She could rely on him not to be sensitive, not to save her feelings by suggesting that agents knew nothing, publishers were blind-a frequent moan at the Writers’ Circle.
‘Are you all done here?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Then, ‘No. Can you spare another minute or two?’
‘I’m in no hurry.’
She led the way to a corner of the store, where glass-sided pens held baby rabbits and guinea pigs. The warm, musky scent of animals and sawdust took her straight back to her childhood.
‘I wondered if they still sold them. My dad used to bring me here when I was little,’ she said, bending down to pick up a sleek-coated jet-black baby bunny. ‘I wanted a rabbit so much. One just like this,’ she said, gently stroking it.
‘Why? They don’t do anything.’
‘They’re soft and furry.’
