‘Morning, Dennie,’ said Angie. She wore a pleasant enough smile of greeting but something about the intensity of her eyes – a little too starey – came across as a warning. ‘This is a nice surprise,’ said her mouth, while her eyes said Shut up. Whatever you were about to say, just shut it. ‘Let me introduce you to your new neighbours. Mr Everett Clifton and Miss Ardwyn Hughes, Mrs Denise Keeling. They’ll be taking on Plot 27. Isn’t that nice?’
Plot 27. Not ‘the old Neary plot’ which was what everybody called it. Not ‘the plot where a terrified young woman had buried the remains of her brute of a husband after enduring years of beatings and abuse before finally snapping and killing him with a kitchen knife’. Not that place.
‘Since when?’
If Mr Everett Clifton found her curtness rude, he didn’t show it. He actually looked faintly embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘since yesterday, as a matter of fact. And it’s just Everett, please. None of that “mister” silliness.’ There was a hint of a Welsh accent in his voice. He put out his hand to shake hers, but that would have required her to step onto the Neary plot to reach him.
‘Everett and Ardwyn were telling me that they’ve recently just moved into Dodbury.’
‘Well, we’re renting a little place just outside town,’ said the young woman, whose accent was much more pronounced. ‘We were having a nice lazy Sunday afternoon stroll, looking around, and we spotted this place and I just fell in love with it at first sight, so we called to make an appointment to look at it.’
Everett stepped forward, hand outstretched, and Viggo began to growl.
‘Okay.’ He stepped back a pace. ‘He’s a protective chap, I see.’
Dennie shook his collar. ‘Be nice!’ and the dog subsided. ‘Sorry about that. He’s a rescue dog – doesn’t take to strange men too well. This is Viggo.’
‘As in the actor,’ put in Angie. In response to his blank look, she clarified: ‘Viggo Mortensen? The Lord of the Rings films?’
‘Yes, of course, I love those.’ The easy smile was back, and Dennie thought You’re lying. You’ve got no idea what she’s on about, have you? But why would he bother to lie about such a trivial thing? She put on a smile of her own and gestured at the wild growth of the Neary plot. ‘Well, you’ve certainly taken on a challenge. I’m surprised Angie didn’t suggest something a bit tamer.’ She turned to Angie. ‘There are one or two other vacant plots, aren’t there?’
Ardwyn shrugged. ‘I know, and I can’t explain it, but this one just seemed to call to me. Growing things – crops, I mean – it’s all about transformation, isn’t it? Seed to shoot, shoot to fruit, fruit to earth, earth to seed, round and round. Something about changing this barren plot into a garden feels more meaningful than taking on one which is all clear and ready to go, do you know what I mean?’
‘Well, if you can transform brambles into lentils or whatever it is you’re thinking of growing on this, power to you.’
‘Oh, I quite like the brambles,’ said the young woman, turning to gaze speculatively at the head-high tangles. ‘I bet they produce some incredible blackberries in the autumn.’
‘They do,’ said Dennie. ‘But we don’t eat them.’
‘What a waste! Why ever not?’
Dennie looked at her youth and enthusiasm, the energy she was apparently prepared to pour into the hopeless task of turning this haunted wreck of an allotment into some kind of Edenic garden-of-plenty, and found herself feeling desperately sorry for her. ‘Has Angie actually told you about this place?’ she asked.
‘I was just about to do that,’ Angie interrupted, and Dennie thought Like hell you were. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just going to pop back to the office and get all the paperwork. Dennie, could you come and help me please?’ To the young couple she said, ‘We won’t be long.’
Everett smiled. ‘That’s fine. We’ll just survey our new empire a bit more.’
Dennie plucked Angie’s elbow once they were out of earshot. ‘You haven’t told them, have you?’
‘Told them what? There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Angie—’
‘There is nothing. To. Tell.’ The other woman shook her arm free and walked on without looking at her.
‘They deserve to know.’
Now Angie stopped and faced her squarely, arms crossed. ‘Deserve to know what, Dennie? That something terrible happened there probably before either of them was born? What good would it do them? Or us, for that matter? We need new young people, Dennie. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the average age of our tenants is “geriatric old fart” years old and we need to do something about that before we’re all compost. So what if they’re a pair of starry-eyed millennials who’ll give up after six months when they find that they can’t grow avocados? It’s going to be hard enough for them as it is without you telling them bloody ghost stories. For once, will you just please leave it?’
‘What about the intruder I saw?’
‘You mean the one you think you saw after a broken night’s sleep in a draughty old shed?’
‘It’s not draughty! I’ve made sure that it’s perfectly well…’ She stopped. The word wouldn’t come. She wanted to refute the accusation about her shed and tell Angie that it was this other thing, she’d put this thing in the walls to keep her shed warm, this thing that she couldn’t say because it wasn’t that the word was stuck, it was actually gone, like a fish slipping between her fingers; it had fallen into the empty space in her mind where bits of time sometimes went, the place where the echoes came
