‘Thank you,’ I said, and I knew from the way her smile reached her eyes that she was genuine.
‘Look, tell me to do one if you think I’m being rude,’ Sophia said. ‘As you still have a few days to go until your course starts, I wondered if you fancied a little project to keep you busy?’
We stood next to one another outside the large green wooden summerhouse. It ran about ten feet along the back edge of the garden in front of the fence and hedge that divided the gardens. All along the side facing us were large floor-to-ceiling windows. The rest of the garden was square. A few small slabs of concrete passed for a patio just outside the back door, then it was mostly grass with modest borders of small, easy-to-manage plants with the summerhouse perched right at the top end.
‘It’s such a great little unit, it seems a shame to let it go to waste just sitting there filled with junk. I thought, maybe if you were not too busy and you fancied the challenge, you might enjoy emptying it out and giving it a spruce? We could all chip in for some new furniture or accessories. It could be a really nice spot to come and sit now it’s getting warmer.’ Sophia turned to me with a grimace. ‘What do you think? I don’t want to overload you.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I said with a small smile. Inside, I felt a wave of relief. Much like the kitchen, I’d had my eye on the summerhouse since I had arrived, but I hadn’t wished to sound impertinent by offering to give it a once over.
‘Oh wow, that’s amazing. Really, the others will be so pleased. I’d love to do it myself, but my workload is fierce at the moment – I barely have enough time to eat and sleep.’
‘It’s fine – it will keep me busy for a few days. Plus, the weather is picking up – I’ll enjoy being outside.’
‘Great! Just chuck all the stuff we don’t want on the lawn and I’ll send a photo of it to Mini’s uncle and see what he wants to do with it.’
‘Well, no time like the present,’ I said as I headed back to the house to fetch Marigolds, bin bags and spray guns, feeling for the first time in a long time a flurry of enthusiasm and a sense of purpose.
Once I was alone and inside the summerhouse, I felt the relaxation come in waves, but each time I acknowledged it, it dispersed, and the aggressive butterflies crept back into my gut. Cleaning was a welcome distraction and brought back a swell of relief. I looked around at the dusty interior of the summerhouse, with its stacked boxes and stuffy furniture. Sophia was right; this would make a nice place to hang out. I could imagine myself sat here on a warm day, reading or sketching some ideas.
I began dragging the furniture outside. It was all old stuff that probably once belonged in the main house. It was just about good enough for a charity shop. Once I had dragged the last chair outside, I collapsed into it. It was a brown velour lounger with a chrome base and looked like it had come straight out of the seventies. I imagined once it would have been fashionable, but it had seen better days. I squinted up at the spring-afternoon sun, and I allowed myself a moment to close my eyes. As I did, I felt a surge of tiredness engulf me.
I opened my eyes and gulped in a breath. I looked around and tried to establish where I was. Looking up at the sky, the clouds had enveloped the sun. I felt a chill and grasped around for my cardigan, but it was still inside the summerhouse. I stood slowly, trying to shift the fog in my head and reconnect with my surroundings. I turned back towards the summerhouse when I heard a tiny voice, saying something I couldn’t quite make out. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the fence. It was the sort of sound that would skim past the eardrums of others, but the sound of a small child’s voice was so familiar that it would never pass me by. The butter-like velvet tone carried by the slight breeze had me floored. It was as though I knew the voice. Mama, the word floated across the fence.
Suddenly I was no longer in a garden in Richmond, but miles away, in another time, in another place where I was reciting from a favourite book. The words come back at me, muddled and broken through a tiny mouth. I laughed because of the unadulterated joy as their words skipped along like a song. It was music to my ears, but a sonnet that was so painfully nostalgic I wanted to crawl into a ball.
The gut-wrenching reality hit me as I was snapped out of the daydream; that voice had gone and would never return. And the voice from across the fence, only a vivid reminder of the colossal mistake I was still repenting for.
Up until now I had not seen or heard anything come from next door, and my bedroom window looked straight into their garden, but I felt that I needed to get a look at the neighbours. I wondered if they had been away somewhere or perhaps had just moved in.
I looked towards the end of the garden and I could see the shrubbery parted as it curved to the right. Could there be a way into the neighbour’s garden from ours? I wasn’t ready to start crawling about on
