unable to get any more out of me. I’d spent two hours crying in bed with my head buried in my hands, during which time they served me tea and sympathy whilst whispering worriedly to each other. The phone had rung every two minutes and they’d taken turns to answer until they’d eventually taken it off the hook. When I’d calmed down a little, I’d picked up my phone and checked for messages but there was no reception in Loni’s house, so I put it in my bedside drawer. I realised I didn’t actually want to hear from Adam’s family or our wedding guests, anyway. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what terrible things they were saying about me.
I stare at the drawer and suddenly open it, grab my phone and, clutching it tightly like it’s a portal to another life, I try to get out of bed. I don’t want to stay in this room a moment longer than I have to. My cosy little childhood attic room should be a comfort, a blanket of warmth and security. But after the year I spent here, barely getting out of bed, it has become simply a painful reminder of a time I’d rather forget. Oh, it’s nice enough with its Velux windows looking down on the rambling garden below, my bed tucked cosily under the eaves, sloping walls painted primrose yellow and covered in a patchwork of Monet garden prints: Water Lilies , Nymphéas , Reflections of Weeping Willows , Roseway at Giverny . The prints – better than any sleeping tablets – had been Loni’s idea that year; most things that worked were. I would only have to stare at them, allow my vision to go hazy, and no matter how much I’d been crying, no matter how low, how desperate, how guilty and hurt, how confused, heartbroken and paralysed with regret I felt, those pictures would carry me to a calm and safe place where I could lose myself in sleep. Until I met Adam.
Adam.
I swallow back fresh tears, wriggle out of my dress and find a pair of newly laundered fuchsia-pink silk pyjamas of Loni’s that she has laid out for me. They are rather big, but I slip them on anyway, roll over the waistband several times and, wrapping my arms around my body, I shuffle towards the door. I run my fingers along my bookshelves as I pass. They are still groaning with the books of my childhood, as well as my garden diaries, the ones I started writing after Dad left, noting down every change, every growth and death, every bud and weed, so he could see how well I was following in his footsteps. The garden was our bond and I thought as long as I kept that I wouldn’t lose him. Not completely anyway. I pick up one of the diaries now and gaze at the cover with its flower doodles and my name and age scrawled in bright, bold bubble letters. I quickly flick through the pages. He’d only been gone two years and I clearly still harboured a belief that he would come back because there are so many references to him.
Four years later, in the notebook marked ‘Beatrice Bishop aged thirteen’, there is barely a reference to him. Just intricate diagrams and notes, tips ripped out of gardening magazines and paragraphs copied from my treasured Royal Horticultural Society books and encyclopedias. I continued writing the diaries until I met Kieran. And then I left them all here when I moved in with Milly – as well as the reference books bought for my degree course in Garden Design that I was in the middle of studying for at UEA. Books on small gardens, landscaping, garden colour palettes, planting, and designing roof terraces and urban spaces – the module I was studying just before I dropped out. I didn’t need any reminder of my past life.
Feeling I might suffocate if I stay in there much longer, I walk out of my bedroom and head downstairs.
The noise and chatter in the kitchen stops abruptly when I appear in the doorway. Loni, Cal, Lucy and the kids are momentarily frozen; quite a feat, particularly for Neve and Nico who seem unable to stay still – even when asleep. Loni moves first, her round,
I stare at the drawer and suddenly open it, grab my phone and, clutching it tightly like it’s a portal to another life, I try to get out of bed. I don’t want to stay in this room a moment longer than I have to. My cosy little childhood attic room should be a comfort, a blanket of warmth and security. But after the year I spent here, barely getting out of bed, it has become simply a painful reminder of a time I’d rather forget. Oh, it’s nice enough with its Velux windows looking down on the rambling garden below, my bed tucked cosily under the eaves, sloping walls painted primrose yellow and covered in a patchwork of Monet garden prints: Water Lilies , Nymphéas , Reflections of Weeping Willows , Roseway at Giverny . The prints – better than any sleeping tablets – had been Loni’s idea that year; most things that worked were. I would only have to stare at them, allow my vision to go hazy, and no matter how much I’d been crying, no matter how low, how desperate, how guilty and hurt, how confused, heartbroken and paralysed with regret I felt, those pictures would carry me to a calm and safe place where I could lose myself in sleep. Until I met Adam.
Adam.
I swallow back fresh tears, wriggle out of my dress and find a pair of newly laundered fuchsia-pink silk pyjamas of Loni’s that she has laid out for me. They are rather big, but I slip them on anyway, roll over the waistband several times and, wrapping my arms around my body, I shuffle towards the door. I run my fingers along my bookshelves as I pass. They are still groaning with the books of my childhood, as well as my garden diaries, the ones I started writing after Dad left, noting down every change, every growth and death, every bud and weed, so he could see how well I was following in his footsteps. The garden was our bond and I thought as long as I kept that I wouldn’t lose him. Not completely anyway. I pick up one of the diaries now and gaze at the cover with its flower doodles and my name and age scrawled in bright, bold bubble letters. I quickly flick through the pages. He’d only been gone two years and I clearly still harboured a belief that he would come back because there are so many references to him.
Four years later, in the notebook marked ‘Beatrice Bishop aged thirteen’, there is barely a reference to him. Just intricate diagrams and notes, tips ripped out of gardening magazines and paragraphs copied from my treasured Royal Horticultural Society books and encyclopedias. I continued writing the diaries until I met Kieran. And then I left them all here when I moved in with Milly – as well as the reference books bought for my degree course in Garden Design that I was in the middle of studying for at UEA. Books on small gardens, landscaping, garden colour palettes, planting, and designing roof terraces and urban spaces – the module I was studying just before I dropped out. I didn’t need any reminder of my past life.
Feeling I might suffocate if I stay in there much longer, I walk out of my bedroom and head downstairs.
The noise and chatter in the kitchen stops abruptly when I appear in the doorway. Loni, Cal, Lucy and the kids are momentarily frozen; quite a feat, particularly for Neve and Nico who seem unable to stay still – even when asleep. Loni moves first, her round,
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