The Unfinished Garden (11 page)

“She called in sick for me, which wasn’t a lie since I had the
mother of all hangovers, and then insisted I take the following day off and come
to the airport. It was like being put under a suicide watch.” He paused. “She
thought seeing you might help.”

“It didn’t, did it?”

“No.” He handed Tilly his glass then fished a squashed packet
of cigarettes from his back pocket and shook one loose.

“You never quit?” Tilly nodded at the cigarette.

“Actually, I did. But extreme circumstances demand extreme
measures. It was either take up smoking again or get my ear pierced.” He flipped
open his lighter, lit his cigarette and then reclaimed his glass.

“That would be a good look for you. Dead sexy.”

He almost smiled, and for a few seconds she continued to
believe that he would. “My clients don’t want sexy. Besides, an earring at my
age smacks of something.”

How did he get so old at thirty-nine? “Come on, Sebastian.” She
jostled him with her elbow, but he eased himself away from her and picked a
fragment of ash from his lips. “Everyone’s entitled to go wild on the eve of
forty.”

“You remembered?”

“Why so surprised?” Tilly said. “Sebastian Hugh Whitterton.
Turns forty on September 12. I don’t forget things about people who are
important to me.”

“
Were
important. You don’t know me
anymore. People change.”

“I don’t believe that they do.”

He stared at his cigarette, caught between two fingers of his
splayed hand, then raised it to his mouth and took a long, slow drag. “Tilly—”
He blew smoke away from her. “We’ve become irrelevant to each other.”

“That’s a pretty cynical view.”

“My world’s become a cynical place.”

“Hey, when it comes to woes, mine’s bigger than yours.” She
gave him a nudge.
C’mon, Sebastian, lighten up.
“You’re still in woe-kindergarten.”

He reached for a rosebud that lay discarded between them. Its
petals, never opened, had begun to shrivel. He tugged them off, one by one,
tossing them to the ground.

“That’s a Peace rose,” Tilly said. “Or rather, it was.”

He cracked a smile and suddenly looked so boyish and vulnerable
that Tilly felt a flush of anger at Fiona, a woman she had never met.

“How do you survive?” he said.

“I spend too much time with memories. And as a strategy, it’s
deeply flawed.”

The air swirled with dust motes and smells she associated with
the cemetery—dead flowers and rotting rose blooms.

“What do you remember most about me?” His question was so
unexpected that Tilly’s mind became clogged with answers: the devilish look that
said,
I’m horny?
Or the lingering stare that meant,
Don’t leave me?
Or the angry birthmark hidden by
hair at the nape of his neck?

“Everything,” she said, because it was the truth. “What do you
remember about me?”

“You’re a screamer.” He grinned, and she saw the scrawny
sixteen-year-old in stained cricket whites. “When you come.”

Tilly shook away the image of Sebastian’s smooth, hairless
chest. “Why didn’t you get in touch after David died?” Ugh, she didn’t mean to
ask that. Not yet.

“Christ, Tilly.” Sebastian swiveled around; his knees jabbed
hers. “Are you going to ease up for one minute?” He hesitated, clearly making a
decision between the cigarette and alcohol. He settled on the cigarette.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That slipped out, but I would like to
know.”

“Does it matter? Does it really fucking matter?”

Across the parkland, children squealed with laughter.

“I’m afraid it does. You and I are back in the same orbit,
Sebastian.” How could he have moved to the village and not thought this through?
“Our children seem to have bonded…you’ve become bosom pals with my best friend.
It’s only a matter of time before my mother reels you in. Trust me, this
matters. Because I need to forgive you and part of me can’t.”

“Fine.” He stood and squared his shoulders. “I had no choice,
Tilly.”

“Bollocks. There’s always a choice.”

“No, there wasn’t. Because I had made a pact with myself.” He
blew a smoke ring, then tipped his head back and watched it disintegrate. “To
forget you.”

She rose slowly, to hug him, but he stepped, equally slowly,
away from her.

“I put my life on hold for you after your father died, even
took a leave of absence from work.” For a moment Tilly thought he might cry. But
how would she know? She had never seen him cry. Wasn’t that what she remembered
most about life with Sebastian—the struggle to interpret his feelings without
the guidance of words?

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I know. But you sucked up the family grief and no one was
there for you. Not even your husband.” He spat out the last word.

How dare he criticize David? “The decision for David to stay
home was mine, not his. Do you have any idea how much a last-minute
transatlantic ticket costs? We certainly couldn’t afford two.” Surely, the
banker in him understood.

“I was there for you, Tilly, up until the time you flew back to
America. And before you say anything, I know you gave me no reason to hope…but
still, I had this idiotic notion that you would come back to me. Once you’d
gone, I told Rowena that I was done, that I would forget you. And know what?” He
tossed the half-smoked cigarette onto the gravel and ground it out with his
foot. “I did. I fell in love with Fiona, accepted the position in Hong Kong and
Archie was born. Christ, I was the happiest I’ve ever been. Unfortunately, my
wife was not. When David died I couldn’t contact you. I couldn’t risk that you
would reel me back in. Fiona never shook off the doubt that I had loved you
more, and I could never convince her otherwise. She wanted absolutes, and I
failed to deliver. It destroyed my marriage.”

“She destroyed your marriage. When she left you for another
man.”

He raised the champagne to his lips, then hesitated and dumped
it out. “I have nothing left to give you, Tilly. Nothing.”

“Suppose I don’t want anything?”

“That terrifies me just as much.” He sounded beaten, as if they
had sparred physically as well as verbally, and he had lost. “Because then I
have less than nothing.”

“You could’ve said no.” She gestured to the empty glass hanging
from Sebastian’s hand. “If you didn’t want the champagne.”

“I can’t, Tilly. That’s just it. I’ve never been able to say no
to you.”

God, she understood how that felt. “Funny.” She drained her
glass. “Normally champagne goes straight to my head. But I don’t even feel
woozy. Why is that?”

“There are some things one should do sober.” Sebastian brushed
his lips over hers. “And don’t ask me why I did that.” He headed for the rear
gate. “Because I don’t know.”

They left the walled garden in silence, emerging on the edge of
a thicket, a forgotten place with dark smells of peat and decomposing timber.
Tentacles of dark green ivy carpeted the ground and slithered up the druid oaks
at the edge of The Chase. There was no scratching, no twittering, no snapping of
undergrowth, no hum of crickets. Even the wildlife had abandoned this corner of
the estate. But hanging from a huge oak bough, its rope gray with age, was a
marker from her past. Tilly brushed her hand over the smooth wooden seat. How
could she have forgotten about this swing?

“Hop on.” Sebastian took her glass and placed it on the ground
next to his.

She sat, almost tipping off when Sebastian grabbed the swing
from behind. The hairs of the rope bit into her palms as she clung on.

“How high do you want to go?” he asked.

She leaned her head back until it rested on his shoulder and
remembered the feel of his caress, the feel of him moving gently inside her. He
was always gentle, always concerned that he might hurt her. A surge of pleasure
long forgotten stirred in her groin.

“I want to go as high as I can,” she said.

Sebastian released her, and Tilly soared. She pumped her legs
and swung higher and higher, until all she could feel was the air rushing at
her. And below, Sebastian leaned against a beech tree, watching. He was still,
like a mannequin, and like a mannequin, his posture and expression revealed
nothing.

Chapter 11

With the afternoon sun blazing down on him, James
killed the ignition. He climbed out of the Alfa and patted the door twice before
easing it shut. Should he be concerned that his longest-standing relationship
these days was with his car? Other than his friendship with Sam, of course. Man,
they hadn’t seen each other in eighteen months. Time to prod Sam into
negotiating with his wife for another guys’ weekend.

That was a good distraction to cling to. He needed the tonic of
a well-worn friendship, even if Sam’s advice never varied:
Get your shit together, buddy. Stop hustling the smart women and chase
after the hot babes with big tits and no brains.
Breast size James
didn’t care about, IQ he did. Sam knew this, but now he was married with three
kids, he liked to imagine the life of a bachelor was all firm breasts and lacy
panties. But that had never been James’s fantasy, even when he had, briefly,
endured the bar scene. No, the one thing James dreamed of was the one thing he’d
proved himself incapable of sustaining—a family life. But with two kids,
obviously, not three.

James stared at the garden that blurred his anxiety better than
a tumbler of bourbon. He had come here to remind himself that his relationship
with Tilly was about fighting fear. For that he needed absolute focus. But…he
had driven down this very driveway and seen her for the first time. A tiny,
barefoot woman with freckles and hacked hair who had looked him in the eye and
said no. A woman whose love he wanted to earn, even though she deserved better,
so much better.

Tilly’s garden, baking in the Carolina heat, was a riot of
yellow, purple, red and orange. He couldn’t imagine Tilly doing anything in
pastels. His mother had loved bright garden colors, too. Not that she had been a
gardener of Tilly’s caliber, but she’d definitely had the gift.

He glanced down at his black watch, his black T-shirt, his
black pants, his black sneakers. How would it feel to live a life splashed with
color, with spontaneity and laissez-faire? Maybe he should go to University Mall
on his way back to the apartment and find a new watch. Splurge and buy something
with color. A red watch. Tilly liked red, didn’t she?
Fuck.
This was getting worse. He dragged his hands through his hair.
Already, he was making assumptions about her taste. Already, he was acting as if
he were her lover. James shivered at the possibility.

The day after tomorrow he could call her. He had lasted five
days without talking to her, without hearing her beautiful English accent
bastardized by the occasional American phrase. He missed her voice so much that
he had developed a new habit—as if he, obsessive-compulsive James, needed one—of
listening to the BBC World Service every morning. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing
was enough.

Not checking with her had been exhausting, but they had made a
deal, and he had forced himself to stick with it. Fear of cheating could be
convenient, even though the OCD twisted it, tried to con him into believing he
had lied when he hadn’t. As it was doing right now, telling him Tilly wouldn’t
speak with him tomorrow since he had lied to her. But he hadn’t, had he? When
had he lied to her about anything?

Boss back the thought, James, boss it
back.

He had used the last week wisely, creating a virtual tour of
his property to share with her after she agreed to take him on. Unfortunately,
that had placed him at his unfinished house more than usual. He was pushing the
contractor to the edge, driving him too hard on every detail. Poor bastard was
close to quitting, and who could blame him? Tomorrow James would give the guy a
break and stay away.

A hawk screeched, and James spotted the huge bird with the
rust-colored belly sitting guard in the ancient oak, the tree that made his
insides itch with its lack of symmetry. Were hawks territorial? Was this the
same bird he had seen the first time he came here? The hawk screeched again, and
its cry resonated in his gut.

James yanked off his sunglasses. “I know, my friend. I miss
her, too.”

Chapter 12

A strange westerly wind had picked up that morning,
heralding the new workweek with a rumbling in the treetops. It had battered the
garden since dawn, covering the lawn in rose petals and forcing the hollyhocks
to the ground. The rusted weathervane creaked as another gust roared through,
and Tilly tucked her hands into her armpits. At Creeping Cedars a summer wind
this strong swept in with a red flag warning and the threat of forest fires.

The pony in the field behind whinnied its distress. Poor
creature had been racing around all morning, trying to outrun itself. If only
she could do the same. Why did she feel so jittery? Was it the recent phone
conversation in which Sari had casually mentioned her five-year business plan?
Or was it the omnipresent specter of Sebastian?

A burst of magpie cackle fired, and Tilly jumped. How
ridiculous to let a stiff breeze and a bossy bird startle her. Monty whimpered
as he shoved his snout through the bars of the garden gate, but Tilly ignored
him. Isaac was down in the paddock, practicing his bowling—with a tennis
ball—away from windows and away from the dog. Sebastian had promised more
cricket at the weekend, and Isaac was thrilled. Tilly jammed her hands deeper
into her armpits. Should she discourage this? Was Sebastian merely seeking a
substitute for his childless weekends? Suppose he did reunite with Fiona?
Unlikely, given the pregnancy, but then he had returned without question each
time Tilly had invited him back into her life. If he reconciled with his wife,
would he dump Isaac the way he’d dumped Tilly after David died?

Sebastian. For the past twenty-four hours Tilly had reminded
herself that he was single only in living arrangements. But there he was again,
prowling around her thoughts, looking gorgeous in a dark, well-cut suit. What
was he doing right now? Excelling at efficiency while directing a loyal
assistant from behind an uncluttered desk? Mahogany, of course, with a
watercolor centered on the wall opposite, a landscape of an inhospitable stretch
of Yorkshire coastline, a view Sebastian could escape to.

Tilly scratched under her arms. Damn chigger bites had yet to
heal. When she moved to North Carolina, people warned her about the obvious
threats—stepping on a copperhead, flipping up the lid of the composter and
exposing a black widow spider, grabbing poison ivy with a handful of weeds. But
the things she had come to dread most were almost invisible: disease-carrying
ticks and minuscule red chiggers whose bites stung like burns. Tilly scratched
harder.

And stopped when her fingers rested on a small, smooth lump
moving deep beneath her skin.

* * *

The next morning Tilly sat in the driveway, unable to do
more than listen to the car engine idle and the turn signal blink. She must have
sounded desperate for Dr. Fulton to squeeze her in before his first appointment.
Or, with his knowledge of the cancer that had claimed both her father and her
grandmother, was he more concerned than she was? Except—she held her right hand
level and watched it shake—she wasn’t
concerned.
She
was tear-at-her-skin, scream-at-the-world, grab-at-her-son-and-never-let-go
terrified. If only David were here to hold her and say, “It’s okay, babe. We’ll
handle this together.”

“And where are you?” she yelled at the sky. “Dead, which is
so
not helping.”

In ten years of marriage, she had never raised her voice to her
husband and never criticized him, although she did argue with him once, over the
behemoth of a stereo he wanted to blow a month’s salary on—she won. And there
were a few times she’d locked herself in the bathroom and mouthed “asshole” at
the door. But now that he was less than air, she was gunning for a fight.
Empirical evidence that, in the past twenty-four hours, she had become a
fruitloop.

Her mother’s Matchbox car chugged, the vibrations keeping time
with the tremors of her heart.
Get a grip, Tilly. Women
have lumps in their breasts all the time, most of them benign. Think about
that, not the genetic soup sloshing through your veins, heading for your
lymph nodes.

Before her father was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer, he
had taught Tilly to be wary of monsters masquerading as men. But what if the
monster wasn’t nameless and faceless? What if the monster existed within
you?

Tilly flopped onto the steering wheel and stayed there. Life
tripped her up every day. Sort of like fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube, which she’d
never had the patience for. You struggled to line up all those silly little
colored boxes and with one click, they tumbled out of whack. Of course, with a
Rubik’s Cube you could always reshuffle and start over. Defeat didn’t have to be
an option. Tilly raised her head. She was a gardener; she didn’t know how to
quit, let alone wave a white flag. And while gardening gave her staying power,
widowhood showed her, every day, the futility of melodrama.

With a flourish, Tilly canceled the indicator. Who the hell
could see her signal, anyway? Time to pull onto the road and slam into her
future. She chopped at the air with her right hand. Aha! A woman in control of
her destiny. Then she sighed:
As if.

Okay, break this down into manageable
chunks. First things first, turn left.
But into which lane, on which
side of the road? Tilly hated driving in England. She approached roundabouts she
had zipped over as a teenager like a terrified tourist, her American driver
intuition telling her to treat them as four-way stop signs. Which, of course,
ticked off every car stacked up behind her. And as for the narrow country lanes
she had whizzed along at eighteen, how could anyone drive that fast on roads
designed for single file?

Tilly edged out of the driveway, and the wipers scraped across
the windscreen. So much for the sun. The English summer had reverted to form,
the sky filled with lumpy clouds the color of Isaac’s white sports socks after
she washed them with his jeans. Actually, the sky had the consistency of
two-week-old white bread, which suited her mood; she felt pretty moldy
herself.

“Driver must be in the middle,” she muttered. “Stay in the
middle of the road, Tilly. Stay in the middle of the road.”

A supermarket run had provided the perfect cover, especially
since Isaac was happy to stay at Woodend perfecting his bowling technique. Guilt
poked at her, prodded her with a big, sharp stick. She had stood in her mother’s
kitchen ten minutes earlier and spouted a juicy, fat lie, which, like
Pinocchio’s nose, had continued to grow. Tilly was a pitiful liar; Isaac was
bound to see through her. But wasn’t it easier to bury the truth in words, to
keep heaping them on until even the speaker was lost in their meaning? After
all, one simple sentence—
Daddy is dead,
or
Mommy has cancer—
could rip out a child’s heart.

Isaac mustn’t suspect anything, not until she could bounce up
to him with a game plan, not until his summer had stretched out marked only by
the thrill of learning cricket. Rowena was right: some truths weren’t for
sharing.

But some things demanded a map. And dammit, she’d forgotten to
dig out a street map of Northampton. She always went astray in the town’s
one-way system, which seemed to mutate every year during her absence. If she got
lost in North Carolina, she opened her mouth, let her English accent pour out,
and garnered more help than she needed. Maybe she’d just drive around until she
recognized a landmark or two from her teenage playground. Anyway, it hadn’t been
that long since she’d visited the tall, thin doctor’s office, squished like an
afterthought between a hair salon and a podiatrist. Was it as a college student
with mono? No, Dr. Fulton had come to her that time. House calls—her American
friends would never believe it.

Of course, the Dr. Fulton who had nursed her through mono and
measles had retired years ago. She hoped the younger Dr. Fulton, junior if he
were an American, had warm hands. She hated male doctors probing her.

Armfuls of yellow hawkweed flowers and pink rosebay willow
swayed as the car brushed past, and a yellowhammer flitted from the
old-man’s-beard in the hedgerow. Her summer memories of Bramwell Chase were
chock-full with birds, and yet she had seen so few since coming home. Except for
pigeons, which evidently outbred rabbits these days. What had happened to the
turquoise-breasted kingfisher, the chaffinches and goldfinches, the trotty
wagtail? Even the dawn chorus of her childhood had dwindled to a lone thrush.
That was the problem with memories: you could protect them like fragile
knickknacks on a shelf, but they still gathered dust and irrelevance.

Tilly’s thoughts slipped to the array of birds that lit up her
woods every day with color and music. She missed the cardinals on the birdfeeder
and the hawk that seemed to watch her when she gardened. And she missed her
gynecologist, the person who had shared every moment of Tilly’s twenty-two hours
of trench-labor—David had been stranded in St. Petersburg and he’d missed the
whole thing. But she didn’t need a pain partner this time. Other people might
confuse her, distract her from following her gut. No, it was simple, like
turning onto a road. She must find her position and stay there.

If the lump were malignant, the breast had to go. But that
might not be enough. If the doctors found cancer, she would opt for a double
mastectomy, whip them both off! She slapped the dashboard. What did she need
breasts for anyway? Her nursing days were over and her boobs had never been her
best feature. They were miserable little nodes and now lumpy, too. Wasn’t that
the kicker? She’d always wanted voluptuous breasts like Rowena’s perfect 36C.
Breasts that strained against lace and gauze and cupped into tantalizing
cleavage. Instead she was stuck with the figure of a thirteen-year-old boy. But
what the hell. According to her husband, she was damn sexy. So why did she need
breasts? She’d had enough regrets in her life. For Isaac’s sake there would be
no more. Goodbye, breasts! And if the cancer stood its ground—what then? What
would be best for Isaac? A clean break from the past or a husk of it to cling
to? Should she consider a living will?

Nope. Not going there.

The car revved under her, and Tilly squeezed the gas pedal. She
was going to fly down those country lanes just like she used to. And hope she
remembered the location of the speed cameras as she got closer to town.

* * *

James slammed down the phone and before he could
consider the action, punched a hole through the drywall.
Fuck!
He shook his throbbing knuckle.
Fuck!
Physical pain didn’t bother him, but Tilly not waiting for his
prearranged call felt like emotional disembowelment. How could she not be there?
She knew how important this was to him; she knew.

He stared at the powdered debris on the polished wood floor, at
the mess he had created. After he’d cleaned up, he would have to get someone out
to fix the hole, and then call his landlord and explain what had happened. He
raked his hands into his hair and found his breath.
Inhale—one, two, three, four, hold to the count of two, exhale—one, two,
three, four.

He never released anger, not anymore. He had spent thousands on
therapy so this kind of shit didn’t happen ever again. What was wrong with him?
And what was wrong with Tilly? Why had she instructed her mother to pawn him off
with a feeble excuse? Tilly wasn’t intimidated by him, would have no qualms
about saying no. The day they met, she turned him down with nothing more than a
smile. Curiosity was the only reason she hadn’t enforced that rejection. What
had happened? Was she injured, sick, in the middle of a family crisis? Did she
need help?

His mind buzzed, trying to decide where to settle—on worry for
Tilly, or on this non-answer, this unexpected delay. His heart raced and fear
pounced, too strong to resist. Delays; he couldn’t handle delays.

James paced in circles. Faster, tighter. Round and round, round
and round, round and round. He rubbed his arms, up and down, up and down, up and
down. A fog of panic closed in. Thicker, darker panic dragged him into the
abyss. He couldn’t resist, couldn’t stop this.

Helpless, he spiraled.

* * *

Tilly rustled two half-filled shopping bags, hoping a
few sound effects might lend plausibility to a three-hour supermarket trip that
had yielded three four-packs of Cadbury’s chocolate mousses, a packet of
chocolate-covered HobNobs, a box of Roses chocolates and ten bars of Cadbury’s
Fruit and Nut. And one bruised Granny Smith apple. It was reassuring to know she
hadn’t given up on her health, although slightly disturbing to realize that she
had no memory of buying the apple. Or the chocolate.

Thanks to the heat thrown out by the Aga, the kitchen was
unbelievably stuffy. Cramped, too. Woodend used to seem vast, but now the rooms
felt pokey after her open-plan house on Creeping Cedars. Damn, it was hot. Tilly
tugged at the neck of her T-shirt.

“Darling?” her mother called from the drawing room.

Tilly didn’t reply. Why bother? If Mrs. Haddington wanted an
answer, she got one.

Dr. Fulton, who did, indeed, have cold hands, had confirmed the
obvious. Definitely a lump, he had said. Nine out of ten lumps are benign, he
had said. It could just be a fibroadenoma, he had said, but since she didn’t
check her breasts regularly—he had paused at that point to emphasize her
failure—there was no way of knowing. Then he railed on the National Health
Service while slashing his blotter with a shiny, silver letter opener. And asked
what the job opportunities were for a GP in North Carolina. Finally, he referred
her to Northampton General.

Tilly had assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that she would get
an appointment the next day. After all, if a time bomb were ticking in your
armpit, didn’t every second count? But the breast clinic took a minimum of two
weeks to notify patients about appointments. Two weeks! In two weeks she might
just gnaw off every finger. She needed to take charge of this horror, to be
halfway through chemo, bald and sporting a natty Joan Collins turban.