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  For Mum, with love and gratitude.

  Prologue

  Ellie

  One of the most common dreams you can have involves flying. Imagine that. Feeling your heels rise and a lightness in your limbs, before registering a gap between the ground and your feet. Then you’d look down to see they are no longer touching and at first hover, drifting across your back garden in a gentle ascent. You’d reach the trees and rise high above the lawn and it’s then that you would begin to soar, over rooftops, hills and forests, with the chill of night air on your arms. You wouldn’t feel afraid, just elated.

  I’d love to dream like that, just once. To be Supergirl, or Wendy clutching Peter Pan’s hand, swooping in the dark as the faint light from a sleeping city twinkles below. But then, I’d happily take any of the themes that skip through other people’s minds: being naked in public, having my teeth fall out, sitting an exam on a subject I know nothing about – standard Freudian fare that supposedly says something deep about our fears or shortcomings. But when the arms of sleep fold over me each night, my subconscious leads me somewhere else entirely.

  My dreams begin with walls, though they’re not like those in my bedroom at home, which are smooth and matt with designer paint. Next, I register the noise, or lack of, a deadening, black hum that hurts my ears, despite the feeling that I am not alone.

  By now, I am already terrified, gripped by the overwhelming feeling of impending threat. It’s not just the fear of violence that smothers me though, it’s something else more abstract.

  Here, I have nothing. No possessions. No family. No identity. In this dream, I am no longer sure if I’m even human.

  Out of nowhere, the face of a girl appears by my bed. My heart clangs and I grip the edge of my mattress. I can feel her breath on my skin and see the outline of her hair in the dim light. I already know every detail of her sweet face. It is more familiar than my own, with almond-shaped eyes in a dark brown hue, high cheekbones and a defiant smile that reveals two new, uneven incisors.

  I push myself up in bed, briefly relieved that it’s her, but she raises a finger to her lips, silencing whatever she thinks I am about to say. She shakes her head. Blinks away the oily glint on her eyes. Before I can ask what’s going on, she reaches out and wraps her arms around me, hugging me tighter than seems possible for someone so small.

  A noise startles her and she looks up quickly, scrambling away from the bed. I can see the rapid rise and fall of her chest before she looks at me again, then turns and begins to tiptoe away. By the time she’s at the window, I already know what she is about to do, but I can only watch as she pushes it open. I want to scream now, so loud that it might tear my lungs. But I can’t.

  She climbs onto the sill and pauses, long enough for me to think she might change her mind. But she never does, no matter how many times I have this dream. Instead, she simply looks down and jumps into the abyss.

  Chapter 1

  ELLIE HEATHCOTE

  Ramblings and photographs from my English country garden. If you’re a lover of plants, vintage gardenalia and gardening inspiration, you’re in the right place.

  The sight of tulips on a spring day always makes me feel nostalgic. They were the first flowers I ever bought to give to someone else. I was nine and had counted up my meagre savings in one and two pence pieces, before I went to the florist with my dad to pick out a bouquet for Mother’s Day (it was amazing what you could get for 23p when he was around). Mum was brought to tears, though that might have been hay fever, and I insisted she keep them in a vase on our kitchen table until THE BITTER END, refusing to let her dump them, even after their stems started to ferment.

  The varieties in the picture – goblet-shaped ‘Ballerina’ and ‘Burgundy’ – will grace my garden with colour for a few more weeks yet. I planted the bulbs in November, keeping them close together in trenches before adding a mixture of compost and soil, plus a layer of sand, which helps with drainage. The ones at the front are ‘Montreux’, which begin as a light cream with a delicate blush of pink that deepens as the flower matures, like a

  My fingertips hover over the keyboard as I try and think of something poetic but, after a full day of digging, I’m running out of steam. What else would make a blush deepen? A medieval maiden beholding a handsome nobleman? Too long on a sunbed? I sigh, defeated, and delete the last sentence before adding some hashtags – #gardenersofinstagram #Englishcountrygarden #tulips #femalegardener #thisgirldigs #Englishgardenstyle – and scheduling the post.

  You can’t be poetic every day, though I do go to great efforts to ensure the quality and consistency of everything I put on here. I am also a social butterfly, engaging with as many people as possible; basically, I talk to anyone.

  Despite this, no Instagram influencer could tell you a guaranteed formula for success. If there was one, everyone would be at it. Certainly, when I started on here two years ago, I never in my wildest dreams thought that I’d end up with nearly 57,000 followers and earn actual hard cash from it. This has left me with raging imposter syndrome, which I’m trying to overcome on the basis that we all accept when we visit social media that what we’re seeing can’t possibly be as good in real life. We scroll through a polished version of reality, life through a filter, a world in which blemishes are Photoshopped and less than perfect images are dumped straight in the Trash.

  Visitors to my account wouldn’t want to see the stacks of rubbish that languish behind my shed, or photos of poorly drained patches of lawn. They don’t want to know about the stink under my arms after a day of hard toil, or the dirt that clings to my cuticles. They don’t want ugly or messy, and why should they?

  ‘We live in a nasty enough world as it is, don’t we, Gertie?’

  My dog tilts her head, a gesture that gives the appearance that she finds everything I say riveting. It’s a nice quality in any pet, especially when they are the only other living thing her owner has to talk to on some days. ‘I think we need to book you into the beauty parlour,’ I add. I’ve been fighting a losing battle with her tufts of black and white fur ever since she first ran into this garden, dived in a puddle and bathed in it like it was Cleopatra’s milk. I’d intended to get a big dog. I didn’t mind what breed, as long as it was either a large, lolloping creature straight off the cover of Country Life, or the kind of marauding beast that would deter burglars and carpet salesmen.

  ‘But we never get burglars or carpet salesmen around here,’ my dad had argued.

  ‘A Labrador then. Or a German shepherd,’ I’d suggested.

  So he brought home a shih-tzu. Or, rather, a half-shih-tzu – the other half, according to the woman in the dog’s home, being ‘God knows what’. Gertie had apparently been found pregnant as a stray, aged approximately two years old. Nobody knew where she’d come from, only that she was un-chipped, malnourished and had been keeping the wrong kind of company. While the four puppies she had a few weeks later were snapped up by eager buyers, Gertie was a less attractive prospect. She’d been there for nearly seven months, until Dad arrived and rescued her. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’s felt the urge to do this sort of thing. He is an unlikely-looking hero, between his thinning hair and a wardrobe dominated by corduroy and old concert T-shirts, which give him the air of a school librarian who got lost on his way home from a gig in the late 1970s. But he refus
es to sit by and watch anything in trouble without stepping in: Pigeons with broken wings. Caravanners on the A40. Small, stray dogs.

  Of course, at two and a half years old, Gertie was completely untrainable, hence the fact that I still regularly have to defuse her homicidal tendencies towards the postman and have never succeeded in persuading her to stay off the sofa when her paws are muddy. Also, despite being surrounded by countryside, she is not allowed off the lead after previous, unfortunate examples of antisocial behaviour. None of this information is shared on Instagram of course. I prefer her to remain a star in her own right and Gertie is still responsible for my most successful posts to date. One picture – of her head poking out from behind a stack of plant pots – unleashed a deluge of likes and new followers. So in that sense, I consider Gertie and me to be like some of those old silver screen double acts. She is the Marilyn Monroe to my Jane Russell. The public didn’t need to know about the grubby reality of their lives either. No matter what might have happened behind the scenes, those ladies would paint on their smiles and step on set. The show must go on.

  My life as a social media gardener has been rich and fulfilling – that bit is authentic. I get a buzz out of doing what I do. Plus, there’s the bonus of not having to work in an office, exposing myself to #MeToo incidents with a boss called Brendon and listening to Julia in Compliance drone on about her daughter’s achievements on the French oboe. Instead, I spend every day creating something beautiful right outside my doorstep. I get to nurture life, feel the soil between my fingers and the crunch of grass underfoot.

  If I was still seeing her, my therapist Colette would definitely agree that being outside contributes positively to my mental health. It’s also more cost effective for the NHS than all the Citalopram, Prozac or Seroxat I’ve been on and off over the years.

  I try not to think about Colette too much though. I hate being a disappointment to anyone and I’m fairly certain she hasn’t filed away my notes in a folder marked ‘Success Stories’. I don’t think it would keep her awake at night, but at the very least she must walk into her office on some days and think: How in God’s name did that one get away?

  It was a nice office. The kind a psychiatrist would have in a mid-1980s Harrison Ford movie, with tan leather chairs, ethnic rugs and shelves full of books with snappy names like Desensitisation and Therapy for Advanced Practitioners and Attachment Disturbances in Adults. The room added to the general feeling when I first met her – more than fifteen years ago – that our relationship would be a success. She had that rare quality that inspires admiration without making someone unapproachable; she was well read, wore a lot of cashmere and had warm brown eyes that, alongside a mildly husky voice, made me hope for her sake she was not treating any men for sex addiction.

  The thing I liked most about her though was her optimism. She had an unshakeable conviction that everything was going to be all right. I like that in a person. And things absolutely are all right, even if her definition of the term almost certainly diverges from the situation in which I find myself today.

  I’m sure she thought I’d be easy to treat. I should have been. I couldn’t have asked for a more stable upbringing than the one my parents gave me – a nice, normal childhood, full of birthday parties and sleepovers, lifts to Brownies and weekends away to Center Parcs. I have no right to any hang-ups really, though I comfort myself with the thought that, compared with all the other juicy problems and weird quirks Colette must have had trailing in from that waiting room all I had, really, was one issue.

  Everyone’s got at least one, haven’t they?

  I close down my laptop and head to the kitchen units directly opposite the living room. I love open-plan living, though the size of my annexe means I couldn’t really have it any other way. My Grandma Hazel lived here when she was still alive and there’s only enough space to separate off a single bedroom and small bathroom.

  But even if I lived in a huge town house with a husband, lots of children and friends who’d pop over for prosecco-fuelled book club sessions, I’d still like the idea of blending living areas. Perfect for entertaining. That’s what the articles on Pinterest say. I’ve had to wean myself off Pinterest though; it’s lethal. The intention was to decorate this place on a budget – with reclaimed this and repurposed that – but after a couple of evenings browsing, only Farrow and Ball would do. Still, I had oak beams, stone windowsills and an arts and crafts front door to complement, so it would’ve been a travesty to slap on any old magnolia. So I got six tins of paint and some tile grout for the birthday after I moved in here, both of which I put to excellent use. You can learn to do anything from the internet these days. I laid bathroom tiles, plumbed in the toilet, wallpapered the bedroom. I’m sure I could perform open heart surgery with the right YouTube video.

  I peek out of the front window to check the coast is clear, then stand on my tiptoes and reach on top of the kitchen cabinet (Card Room Green, F&B #79) to take down my stash of cigarettes.

  Smoking is an unbelievably expensive pastime these days. I could never afford it if I didn’t have a special arrangement that allows me to purchase them in boxes of two hundred at a knockdown price. I get them from Ged, who works at the local branch of Green Fingers garden centre, as a warehouse assistant, horticultural delivery man and supplier of bootlegged fags – though the latter is an unofficial role, of which his managers have no knowledge. I consider him a godsend, in the same way that busy new mums and self-employed freelancers rely on Ocado. I sent him a text three days ago, requesting my usual, and he told me it would be here today when he delivers my legitimate order.

  He doesn’t just deal in cigarettes – the main focus of his business activities is marijuana, for which there is a surprising amount of demand around here. But personally, I stick to the Marlboro Lights, which he gets from his sister, an air hostess based out of Heathrow, and smoke them out of my bedroom window, when the wind is blowing in the right direction – away from the main house.

  It’s not that my parents are especially puritanical but they definitely wouldn’t approve of this and I couldn’t bear giving them one more thing to try to understand or, worse, help me overcome. They are health-conscious in the way the middle classes are when they reach their sixties these days: pilates-practising, Evening Primrose oil-taking, pelvic floor-exercising, red meat-limiting moderates. Furthermore, I might recognise this as a filthy habit, but it happens to be one I don’t want to overcome. I need to keep some things private from my parents, even if I do live next door to them.

  There are precisely eleven steps between Chalk View, where they live, and my annexe. These eleven steps are significant as they mean that I don’t quite still live with my mum and dad at an age when most people are thinking about having children of their own. A lot of self-respect is riding on those eleven steps.

  Besides, who wouldn’t want to live here? I’ve long considered this spot, high on the grassy hills of the Chilterns, as my own piece of heaven. I can’t think of anywhere on earth that could make me feel happier. Which is why I haven’t set foot beyond my garden gate for more than two years.

  Chapter 2

  My mother doesn’t merely park her ancient pea green Volvo on the driveway, she reverses it in at high speed, screeching to such an abrupt halt that if there were passengers they’d be nursing whiplash injuries.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I ask, expecting her to be setting the table for Sunday dinner.

  She slams the car door and clicks the lock. ‘I popped into the village for some double cream for your dad. He’s having trouble with the dessert so thought dousing it in this might help.’

  ‘What is it he’s made?’

  ‘Citrus and stem ginger pudding or something. I’m sure it’ll taste wonderful, but it looks like it’s been vomited up by a bilious cat.’

  I follow her into the house and we find Dad in the kitchen, swearing as he frantically tries to plaster a large, glutinous mass together with the back of a spoon. ‘Well, of all the
rotten bloody things,’ he mutters.

  Mum peers in, frowns and gives a brisk shrug. ‘Oh, it looks all right to me, Col,’ she says, patting him on the back. ‘Deconstructed desserts are all the rage at the moment.’

  I head to the fridge and take out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, pouring a large glass.

  ‘Here, have this,’ I say, handing it to him. ‘It’ll make it all better.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ he sighs despondently. He does a double take, picks up the glass and knocks back a mouthful. ‘Actually, that is a bit better, now you mention it…’

  Despite living next door, I don’t eat with my parents every night – only on Sundays, when they take it in turns to cook. It’s the one time of the week we’re guaranteed to get together, not because of my own packed diary, obviously – but theirs. Both my parents have busy lives, especially my mum. She’s semi-retired but never puts her feet up, instead filling every day with something new and interesting. She still loves work too, though it’s been many years since she was employed full time in a newsroom and even longer since her decade-long stint as a foreign correspondent, covering some of the biggest news events of the late 1980s and early 1990s, from the first Gulf War to the siege of Sarajevo.

  Though the days of her flying off to a war zone are behind her, her byline remains a regular fixture in newspapers: she writes freelance analysis and feature pieces and every so often appears on Newsnight or BBC Breakfast as an ‘expert’. She comes across as knowledgeable and serious on television, rather different from the woman friends and family know as being the first to agree to a game of Twister at a party.

  Over dinner, the conversation is the usual mix of village gossip and politics – they consider a good debate to be a family sport. After we’ve covered the GMB, MPs’ expenses and the situation in Syria, the talk moves closer to home: my mum’s friend Lizzie has been having an affair.