The Girls in the Garden Read online

  “No,” she said. “Proper gold top.”

  “Good,” he said. “Good.”

  He put the tea and the cake on a side table and twisted awkwardly to remove his linen blazer. The golden lining was torn in places and stained with old sweat. Adele took the jacket from him gingerly and retreated to the hallway to hang it up.

  “Put it on a hanger will you, Mrs. H.?” he boomed after her.

  Mrs. H. It was what he’d called Leo’s mother. And what he now called Affie. Adele sucked her breath in deep and hard. She found a hanger and slipped the ancient old jacket onto it. Please, she thought, please let this just be one night.

  In the living room she could hear Gordon regaling Leo and the girls with the details of the “subpar” service he’d experienced at the hands of the cabin crew on the way here: “Bloody fifteen-year-old poofs and dolly birds. Not a brain cell among them.”

  The dog sat by her feet and she patted his head. “I know, Scout, I know. Maybe we didn’t feed him enough cake last time, eh? Maybe we should have bought two.”

  Dusk was falling on the park as Clare came to her back gate and peered across the lawn. She saw the mixed-race boy on his bike, a blur on the path behind her. The girls had told her he was called Dylan. Tall for his age, tawny skin, green eyes, and a way about him. Grace was besotted and even Pip was in the throes of some kind of preteen crush, even if she didn’t yet know it. Dylan was the same age as Grace, apparently, and went to one of the many private boys’ schools in the area, the ones housed in converted Victorian mansions, which had little liveried buses to take them up the hill to the village and bring them back down again.

  Another whizz of rubber against gravel. This time it was the girl called Tyler. She was wearing cut-off dungarees over a cropped T-shirt, her fine blond hair in plaits, windows of pale flesh exposed on her narrow waist with every turn of the wheels. She stood against the pedals, wiry muscled legs pushing hard to catch up with Dylan at the top of the hill. Clare appraised them. They seemed worldly, for children their age. The way they patrolled the park for hours on end, often long after dark, never seeming to eat, never seeming to sleep, as if they inhabited a world without grown-ups.

  She remembered something her mother had said, when she’d come to see the flat for the first time: “You won’t be able to let the girls out here on their own, you know.” She’d thought it a ridiculous statement of paranoia at the time. But as she wound her way through the so-called Jungle, the Secret Garden, the Rose Garden, the playground, and the network of paths that ran around the demilune perimeter of the park, without any sight of her children, she began to wonder if her mother might have been right.

  She glanced at the time on her wristwatch. Six fifty-eight. She took the outer path again, this time peering into the back windows of her neighbors’ houses. She saw people laying tables for dinner, changing babies’ nappies, reading papers, staring into laptops, reaching to put things into tall cupboards. She saw a woman standing in a bath towel, eating a chicken drumstick while staring at the seven o’clock news. She saw a child scoop up a cat and kiss its neck. She saw two men side by side on a sofa with matching beards, eating their dinner off wooden trays.

  And then, as she passed one of the big flats in the center of the crescent, the ones with the twelve-foot windows and big south-facing terraces, she saw a golden dog lying stretched out on his stomach with his legs splayed out around him like a collapsed table. He got to his feet when he noticed Clare looking at him and came to greet her at the back gate. She crouched to his level and offered him her hand to smell. Through the open French windows, Clare could see into a huge rectangular living room patterned with yellow chinoiserie wallpaper, walls hung with unusual art, a seventies-style glass chandelier, a giant modular sofa upholstered in patchwork fabrics, and there, for all the world as if they lived there, she saw her daughters sitting on it.

  She rose to her feet and stared incredulously. She felt disarmed. Like unexpectedly encountering her reflection in a shop window. Her children. In a stranger’s house. As she looked she saw more children. It was the other sisters. The wild-looking ones who didn’t ever seem to go to school. The ones whom her own girls had declared “weird.” Yet here they were, ensconced in their living room, looking delighted to be there. Pip looked across and caught Clare’s eye. Her face opened up into a smile. She waved and came to the door.

  But Grace glanced at her furiously and shook her head. It was code for keep away. It meant she was having a good time and did not want it to end.

  “Pip,” Clare said, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  As she said this the living room door opened and the girls’ mother walked into the room. She wore a clingy black T-shirt dress with a scooped neck and lots of ethnic jewelry. She looked cross and anxious. She said something to her daughters and then she noticed Clare and smiled. “You must be psychic!” she sang, coming to the door. “I was just coming in to tell them they should probably head home because you’d be getting worried.” She tossed her head back and laughed. She had those teeth, those big white teeth that looked as though they could withstand anything, and one of those full mouths that was naturally red. She was an attractive woman, sexy and earthy, maybe even a bit dirty. A man walked into the room then and stood behind her. He was attractive in the same way as her: his body was strong and rangy, his face open and honest, his mouth full, his teeth white, his hair thick and tousled. He wore a sludge-green linen shirt with the sleeves pushed up and a pair of stone-colored shorts. He had a tan and bare feet.

  They introduced themselves. She was Adele. He was Leo. They’d love to invite her in for wine but they’d just found out they had an unexpected houseguest on the way and it was such a shame because they’d been about to suggest the girls could stay for dinner and they could all watch a movie together. But never mind, maybe next time, they’ve all been having such a nice time together, and where is it you live? On the terrace, lovely.

  They were distracted but friendly and a minute later Clare and the girls were heading back to the flat.

  “Seriously, you two, you can’t do that. You can’t just disappear. Or if you do, at least take your phones with you.”

  “But we weren’t expecting it,” said Pip. “We didn’t know they were going to ask us to come inside. We didn’t know we were going to stay for so long.”

  “Oh God, their flat is so cool,” said Grace. “It’s, like, massive and they’ve all got huge bedrooms and, get this, they’re homeschooled.”

  “Yeah, their mum teaches them. And the younger two have never been to school in their lives!”

  “Yeah, and they go on spontaneous trips to museums or, say, if they’re learning about World War Two, their mum takes them to, like, Normandy for the night to look at the soldiers’ graves . . .”

  “Yeah, or once she took them to Berlin to look at where the wall was, for a project they were doing.”

  “And they can go on holiday whenever they want. Like, literally. You know, like they can wake up in the morning and go: Oh, it’s a nice day, why don’t we drive down to the seaside.”

  “Or go to Thorpe Park.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, they’re not so weird after all?”

  “Yeah, well, they are quite weird,” said Pip.

  “Yes,” agreed Grace. “They are a bit.”

  “In what way?” Clare opened the back gate and let the girls go ahead of her.

  “I don’t know,” said Grace. “They just are.”

  “But nice?”

  “Yes.” Grace shrugged. “They’re nice.”

  “Friends?”

  Pip nodded and Grace shrugged again.

  “Maybe,” said Pip.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Grace.

  “And what about their mum and dad? What did you think of them?”

  “Nice,” said Pip.

  “Yes,” Grace agreed. “I really like them. They’re really good with kids.”

  “Good with kids.”
Clare laughed drily. She’d never been good with kids. Not in that playing-at-their-level way. She was good at looking after kids. And good at talking to kids. And good at loving kids. And good at putting her kids’ needs before hers. But she’d never been good at playing or mucking about, chucking about, running about, role play, imaginative play. That was why she’d had her babies so close together. Company for each other.

  “Yeah,” said Grace. “It’s like they’re both really in touch with their inner child.”

  She thought of Chris, when they’d first met. She’d had children with him young because he’d had that air about him: that air of innocence and naivety. She’d pictured him in her mind’s eye leaving her to sleep on Saturday mornings, disappearing for hours with their brood of grubby, wild-haired children to have unplanned adventures, returning home later than intended, muddy, pink cheeked, and full of secrets. She’d thought he’d be their playmate.

  How wrong she’d been.

  “What’s the dad like?” she asked, thinking of the smooth-skinned man with the dazzling smile.

  “He’s really, really, really nice,” said Grace, with surprising enthusiasm.

  Clare arched an eyebrow. “Really, really, really nice?”

  She saw her daughter’s face flush pink. But Grace didn’t say a word.

  5

  It was a sunny afternoon, almost warm. Pip had put on a dress, a short one from New Look with a skater skirt. Grace was wearing a loose T-shirt and high-waisted leggings. They both had ponytails. And Grace, Pip had not been able to help but notice, was wearing mascara. There was an unspoken but concentrated effort from both of them to look nonchalant as they headed across the lawn toward the group of children sitting on the benches at the top of the hill. This was all still new. Although they’d hung out at the sisters’ flat on Friday night that didn’t mean they were automatically accepted into the gang. There was still a long way to go.

  Tyler noticed them first. Pip went to put her hand up in greeting but Grace held it firmly down by her side.

  Nobody said hello as they approached the group, but Willow inched across the bench she was sitting on so that Pip could sit down, and Catkin turned and smiled. Pip glanced curiously at the other person. He was standing next to Dylan, wearing earphones attached to an iPod. He was very tall, at least six foot, if not more, and he was sort of funny looking. He seemed too old to be one of the gang, probably about twenty-five, but also too young to be an adult. No one introduced him or explained him and he didn’t seem to be at all interested in either of them.

  They were discussing the sisters’ grandfather, the one who’d been about to arrive when they were there on Friday night.

  “Our granddad has to have one of his feet amputated,” Willow whispered in her ear.

  Pip recoiled. “Ooh.”

  “Yeah. It’s all swollen up and bleeding and his little toe’s gone black and they told him in Africa they’d have to amputate it and he said no way, you’re not cutting my bloody foot off, and he came to London because he thought they’d say they didn’t need to cut his foot off, but they do.”

  “Yeah, and he is so pissed off,” said Catkin.

  “And it means he has to stay here for, like, a whole week.”

  “Maybe more,” added Fern.

  “And Mum’s in a really bad mood.”

  “We’re all in a really bad mood,” said Catkin, with a roll of her eyes.

  The tall man with the iPod made a strange noise just then and moved jerkily from foot to foot. Pip saw Dylan put a gentle hand on his arm and say, “You all right, Rob?”

  The man called Rob nodded, overemphatically, and adjusted the plugs in his ears.

  Another boy appeared then, a boy Pip had seen around, red haired, younger than the rest of them, probably about eight or nine. He was holding a football. “Wanna kick a ball?” he said to Dylan, flicking his ginger fringe out of his eyes. Dylan said, “Yeah, okay.” The boy turned to Tyler. “You?”

  Tyler nodded. Then Willow was on her feet and then Catkin. Soon it was just Fern and the tall man with the iPod left at the benches with Pip and Grace. Fern was the middle of the three sisters. She was the quietest and the strangest. Her hair was shaved above her ears and she had a whole row of tiny sleepers arced along one of her ears that looked quite painful. She always had weird stuff written on her hands and picked the skin around her fingernails until her nail beds bled. Her eyes were really big, almost too big for her face, and slightly red rimmed, as though she was constantly on the verge of tears. And she carried a piece of cream silk with her all the time that she ran across her top lip, obsessively. She sat now with her knees pulled up to her chest, watching the others as they scuffed the football around, pick-pick-picking at her fingernails, rub-rub-rubbing the piece of silk. Then suddenly Dylan turned to them and called out, “Grace. Pip. You playing?”

  Pip felt her heart fill with blood and throb beneath her ribs. She turned to Grace. They nodded at one another and then at Dylan. Pip couldn’t play football. She didn’t even like football. But she didn’t care. Dylan knew their names. He knew their names and he’d asked them to play. She could feel the nervous energy coming off her big sister in waves. It was coming off her too, coming off her so strong she was scared someone else might be able to see it.

  She saw Tyler steal a look at her and then give the same look to Grace. Then she saw Tyler and Fern exchange a strange look. She ignored the smoke signals, beamed at Dylan, and ran toward the ball. She didn’t even know where the goal was, she just knew this was sink or swim and if she wanted to be part of this gang she needed to get her feet wet.

  Dear Daddy,

  Today we played with the gang! At last! It all started on Friday. We were out in the park after school and the sisters were out there and then it started to rain a bit so they went inside and then the youngest one, who’s also the friendliest one, Willow, said why don’t you come in? They have the best apartment on the park. Totally. It’s massive and all the rooms are huge. And we were there for the whole afternoon, until seven o’clock. They’ve got a really nice dog called Scout, and Willow’s got a chinchilla in her room called Chester, and her sister Fern’s got two rats called Kurt and Courtney. And they are homeschooled! They’re about the luckiest kids in the whole world!

  Anyway, Willow is really nice, except she never ever stops talking or moving. But the middle sister, Fern, is kind of strange. I think she might be depressed. Or maybe even a bit autistic. And their oldest sister, Catkin, she’s okay, a bit full of herself, thinks because she’s the oldest of the gang that she knows everything and that we should all kind of worship her. So, it’s not like they’re the greatest girls ever in the world or anything. But it’s good to have got in with them because they know all the other children who live around the park. So this morning me and Grace went outside and they were all there and this boy called Dylan—who I think Grace is in love with, but don’t tell her I said that, she’d kill me!—asked us to play football and it was so much fun. I even scored a goal and all the kids rushed over and picked me up. Well, all of them except Tyler. I think she hates us. She’s Dylan’s best friend. They’ve been best friends since they were babies apparently. Willow told me that Tyler used to walk around the park when she was a toddler screaming Dylan’s name for hours, didn’t stop until Dylan’s mum brought him out. Everyone thought it was really cute and funny. And they went to the same nursery together and were in the same class at primary school for a while too. But Dylan got a bursary to a private school in year three because he’s so clever. I think Tyler’s a bit neglected—that’s what Willow says anyway; her mum doesn’t look after her properly. That’s why she’s always outside, because there’s nothing for her at home.

  Oh. And there was this other boy in the gang today. Except he’s not a boy. He’s twenty-six. And guess what? He’s Dylan’s big brother! He’s called Robbie and he’s learning disabled and special needs and he lives in a residential care home most of the time, but he comes home for ho
lidays and stuff. He’s kind of weird, but not scary-weird. Just like he’s in his own little world. Dylan really loves him. Dylan really looks out for him. You know, I think Dylan is about the nicest boy I’ve ever met. Apart from you, of course!

  Love you, Dad. When are you coming home?

  Your Pipsqueak

  “Mrs. H.!”

  Adele paused, midthought, and raised her face to the air like a squirrel hearing an acorn fall. Except this was no acorn. It was her enormous, soon-to-be-one-footed father-in-law. The girls were still on half-term and Adele had been planning to spend the week editing a neighbor’s memoirs. Rhea, from the second-floor flat in the block in the corner. Eighty-four years old, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary. Rhea remembered Leo and his brothers as babies. Her own babies were already grandparents and she shared her flat with her nineteen-year-old grandson, whom she referred to as her roomie.

  Adele had been greedily awaiting this break from teaching the girls, but instead of spending her days sitting out on the terrace with a mug of tea and Rhea’s manuscript, she was spending it tending to the needs of an old man with a very painful foot. The foot itself—well, she didn’t want to dwell too long on the physical reality of the thing. How he could have got from Bangui via Casablanca on a combined thirteen-hour flight with a foot that was virtually rotten to the core and with at least one gangrenous toe, she had no idea. His wife, a former nurse, had been tending to his foot at home. But his wife’s mother was having cancer treatment and as much as Gordon had probably tried to bully and cajole Affie into traveling with him, she hadn’t been able to. Adele had already said there was no way she was even going to look at the foot again, let alone touch it. So they’d arranged for a private hospital to send a nurse twice a day to dress it and medicate him. But in between times and while they awaited confirmation for the operation date, Adele was playing nurse.

  She put down her mug and turned to look through the patio doors. Gordon was stretched out on the sofa, covered with a blanket, one hand in a packet of Cadbury Eclairs, the other on the remote control. He was peering out of the window and as Adele walked into the room he said, “Ah, Mrs. H. You came! Thank God!”