Viggo lay panting in the sun nearby, watching his mistress carefully. His bandages were gone and he was as mobile as ever: too much of a handful for Dennie these days, so it was her daughter who took him for his walks. He bounded up with a hruff! of welcome and licked David’s hand. Dennie straightened up, saw him, and beamed.
‘David!’
‘Hello, trouble.’ He smiled. He tried not to notice the lopsidedness of her own grin, or the way her left hand was curled as she hugged him.
‘What brings you up this way?’
‘Oh, there are a few things with the house that need doing. Solicitors, estate agents, stuff like that.’
‘So, you’re really selling up, then?’
‘Yeah. It’s for the best. Me and Becky will split the proceeds and there should be enough left over for me to get a flat or something nearby so that I can visit Alice.’
‘How is she after… after everything?’
He sighed. ‘Well, the leukaemia’s returned and she’s back on chemo so that whole bloody circus has started up again.’
‘Oh, David, I’m so sorry.’
‘No, don’t be. Given the alternative, it really is for the best.’ He almost asked Dennie how she was, but it was quite obvious and he didn’t want to upset her. ‘Are things… quiet for you?’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do you mean have I had any more visits from Sabrina?’
‘Subtle, huh?’
‘As a brick.’ Dennie swatted him, then sighed. ‘She’s gone. Or at least, she’s back deep now, deep inside where she belongs, and I’m at peace with that. Though I sometimes think—’ she started to add, but then stopped.
‘Think what?’
‘About what would have happened if I’d taken what the Farrow were offering.’
‘More people would have died, that’s what. Anyway!’ he added brightly, since horror and disease and his foundering marriage were the last things he wanted to talk about. ‘What you got going in here, Mother Nature?’
She took him by the hand and showed him. ‘Spring onions over here, spinach over there, the odd turnip or two if I’m feeling adventurous.’ She looked around as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Maybe even something medicinal for the old, you know,’ and she made a whirling screw-loose sign with her finger beside her head.
David laughed. ‘You’ll get arrested!’
Dennie’s expression was all wounded innocence. ‘Me? A harmless old bat going gaga in her own back garden? Nobody would be so cruel.’ Then her face clouded. ‘Nobody would… would…’ Her eyes wandered up to his. ‘What was I saying?’
He glanced back to the house, where Lizzie was watching through the kitchen window. She saw his look, and her shoulders slumped in a sigh. It had only been with great reluctance that she’d let him see Dennie in the first place; she still blamed him for what had happened. Get in line, he thought. ‘You were telling me what you had planted out,’ he said as cheerfully as he could manage. ‘Spring onions and spinach?’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Brian,’ she scowled, turning away. ‘It’s entirely the wrong season for spring onions and spinach. Now what did I do with…’ She drifted away, hands fluttering, looking for something that probably wasn’t even there. ‘What did I do with…’
Then Lizzie was there with her arms around her mother. ‘Come on, Mum,’ she said. ‘Let’s go have a cup of tea, hey?’ As she guided Dennie carefully away, she turned to David over her shoulder and mouthed Sorry.
‘I should go,’ he said.
Lizzie nodded and led the echo of her mother back towards the house.
He went back to Briar Hill to have a last look at his old allotment. The Farrow plot was still surrounded by fluttering police tape, and while a handful of his neighbours’ allotments were still being tended, many more had been abandoned and were overgrown by weeds. It didn’t seem likely that the Association would be able to lease his out to new tenants. This place was poisoned.
The earth hid horrors, he knew that well now. It soaked up blood and pain, fear and hatred, and it didn’t take very much effort to dig that all back up again. But as he walked down to his shed and back, scuffing at the soil with his shoes, he thought about all the memories he and Becky and Alice had made here – the time when they had wrestled those old railway sleepers into place to make the raised beds, the time when Alice had chased butterflies, the picnics and Easter egg hunts, the frosty mornings and the long slow summer evenings – and he hoped that maybe the soil soaked up love too, and friendship, and family.
So he found an old plastic flower pot, and he scooped up a handful of earth and filled it. Whether his daughter ended up with a garden of her own or just a window box, he would sprinkle this soil in it and pray that whatever she planted there would grow strong and true.
EPILOGUE
‘THIS IS WHERE IT HAPPENED,’ SAID THE MAN, STEPPING into the clearing. His small entourage of four followed, bundled in thick coats and gloves against the snow. Two were women and two men, but all were young, in their twenties or late teens while their leader was older, in his forties. They all carried backpacks and snow shovels over their shoulders.
‘There were remarkably few casualties,’ he added, ‘but only if you
