The World at My Feet Read online

  The dog yawns. I leave the tea and walk back to the living room. ‘Sit!’ I say.

  Gertie looks from one of us to the other, then back again. ‘Sit,’ I repeat. ‘Sit. Come on now. Sit. Please, Gertie. Sit.’

  ‘I thought you were training her?’ Lucy snorts. ‘She’s hopeless.’

  ‘She’s clearly just not in the mood to sit,’ I say defensively.

  ‘I think what you mean is: the dog is in charge,’ she replies. I decide to go back to making the tea.

  ‘So tell me: why are you hungover? What happened last night?’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite uninteresting,’ she replies dismissively, which is what she’d say if she’d spent the evening entertaining Russian diamond traders at the Folies-Bergère. The scene of her downfall was a gin tasting at the Donovan Bar in Mayfair, which she attended with her friend Trudi.

  ‘I’d been planning a quiet night, but you’ve got to get your money’s worth. Anyway, there was this awful guy there. An advertising exec, originally from New York. He was arrogant, obnoxious. Also, you know the way some men are good-looking in a certain light but if you focus on them for a second you realise they’re like a Picasso painting, with features that are in the wrong places and—’

  ‘I get the picture. He was your worst nightmare. What happened?’ I bring over the mugs and place one in front of her.

  ‘I slept with him.’

  ‘Oh Lucy.’ Her shoulders slump. ‘Well, at least you’ll never have to see him again.’

  ‘Apparently so. He hasn’t returned my calls.’

  ‘You… what?’

  ‘Also, he’s married,’ she sniffs.

  My jaw lowers.

  ‘I only found out when I looked on Facebook this morning. His wife looks like Reese Witherspoon and she knits novelty bobble hats for charity. What kind of tosser would you have to be to sleep with someone else when your wife makes woollens in the shape of baby owls to raise money for sick children?’ She shakes her head as a message lands on my phone. My heart compresses; I already know it’s going to be from @Firefly_Guy – or, as I now know him, just Guy.

  We’ve been texting each other non-stop for nearly two weeks now, though it feels as though it’s been longer. Somehow, we are never short of something to talk about. Because, though I can’t entirely match his knowledge of subtitled movies, Japanese poetry and Puerto Rican night clubs, we have also found plenty of common ground – in social media and favourite local beauty spots. I’m interested in his job too – teaching yoga at a trendy studio, which he’s clearly good at given the five-star reviews on their Facebook page.

  His messages are wonderful in the most destabilising way. He is completely unselfconscious about telling me that he’s been looking at my pictures, or that he likes the shape of my lips. My whole body prickles with warmth at this statement, made so matter-of-factly that you’d think we were discussing the weather.

  So tell me @EnglishCountryGardenista… do you think we might get to meet IRL one day? x

  My small intake of breath piques Lucy’s interest. ‘Oh, who’s sending you messages?’

  ‘A company selling wellies. They’re a potential sponsor.’

  ‘Oh right,’ she says, clearly underwhelmed. ‘So… anything else new with you?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Thought I’d jet off to Paris to catch the opera tonight.’

  She looks at me from under a pair of heavy lids. ‘Ellie, your situation is far too tragic to joke about.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me, Lucy. I’m getting along just fine. I know you find it impossible to believe, but I’m actually happy.’

  She responds with a muffled grunt, which could be derision or brie-induced indigestion. I suppress the temptation to point out that I enjoyed a thoroughly pleasant, sober evening last night and awoke feeling optimistic and energetic, rather than in bed with a married man who I then spent the morning stalking on Facebook.

  Lucy won’t accept the way I live my life. None of them will really, but she least of all. I think she hates the idea that I am fallible; it’s against the natural order of things and every assumption she made about me when we were growing up: that I’d be the one to hold her hand and steady her through life. The rock solid one. There is little chance of that these days.

  Chapter 8

  ELLIE HEATHCOTE

  My British followers will know that there are only three things May bank holidays usually bring: rain, more rain and people grumbling about the rain, as they trudge round IKEA having abandoned plans to be outdoors. But, for the first time since the Magna Carta, we’ve got a long weekend in Britain and the sky is clear. I have a few chores to catch up on, but it feels wrong using that word about the garden somehow. It’s hardly like cleaning the loo, is it? My first job is to take some softwood cuttings then get back into the lawn-mowing regime. My grass is growing strongly already so it’ll be once a week from now on. How are you spending this May Day? Whatever you’re doing, have a gorgeous weekend! #gardening #gardentherapy #girlsthatgarden #girlgardener #wildandrustic #Maydaygardening #englishcountrygarden

  My room this morning is not filled with the glorious sunlight the forecast promised, but there are just enough glimmers to post what I’d planned. Afterwards, I head outside to find the air cold and bright, as dew drops hang from the frills of my David Austin roses like little tears. I spot a weed in a container and bend down to pluck it out but as soon as I’ve done so I notice another. There’s something magnetic about being in a garden: one tiny thing catches your attention then, as soon as you’ve addressed it, you’re drawn to something else. Before you know it you’re brandishing a hedge cutter and going at the evergreens without having even brushed your hair.

  I never feel frustrated by weeds though. To be a gardener is to accept that flawlessness is neither achievable nor desirable. As Gertrude Jekyll said: ‘It is not the attainment of but the pursuit of perfection from which I gain the most enjoyment.’

  Jekyll was a horticultural trailblazer and one of two women to whom I attribute my love of gardening. The other is my Grandma Hazel, Dad’s mum and the previous occupant of my annexe. She’d learnt basic gardening skills from her father and as a young woman during World War Two maintained a flourishing vegetable patch in her childhood home in Lancaster. She moved to Chalk View three years into her unhappy marriage with my dad’s father before, six months later, he died in a boating accident somewhere near Wallingford. She never remarried, nor gave the impression that she wished otherwise.

  I recall slipping downstairs one morning when I was about nine and I’d had one of what my parents would call my ‘difficult nights’. I left Mum and Dad asleep in bed and found Grandma outside in the cold sunshine, pinching out the side shoots of her tomato plants. She had a thick frame with a sturdy bosom and proudly declared herself to be ‘built like an ox’. Yet her features were soft: a wide nose, plump lips, eyes the colour of bluebells. She looked up and smiled. ‘Hello, petal. I’m glad to see someone’s up early. Where’s everyone else?’

  ‘They’re still tired, I think.’

  She straightened up. ‘Did you have them up in the night again?’

  I lifted my shoulders and nodded guiltily.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘Come over here. I think you need a hug.’ She pulled off her gloves and enveloped me into her cardigan. I pressed my cheek into its thick weave and closed my eyes. She smelled of soil and Coty talc. A lovely smell. When she pulled away, she examined the bruises beneath my eyes. ‘Gosh you look exhausted. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to bed?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, as it happens I was looking for a helper. Grab a trowel.’

  We planted out some of her greenhouse veg that day – French beans and brussels sprouts – before she showed me how to thin out the beetroot and lettuce rows. I got muck on the hem of my nightie and my knees were pockmarked with stones as I knelt to help her. And though I was dirty and tired, it was the happiest of mornings.

  I of
ten helped her after that and still maintain that little vegetable patch to this day. I’d give anything to spend another morning with her, filling trenches with compost and planting onion sets as Radio 2 crackled out of the window.

  The cancer swept through her like a bush fire, though perhaps I just wasn’t told about it until there was no hope. She died when I was twelve and the garden faded fast. It had never been a passion for either of my parents; they were both too busy. So it became just a patch of grass they could never keep in check, whose only purpose was to accommodate a climbing frame and a patio on which they could enjoy a G&T with friends.

  It never occurred to me that I could do anything about it myself until I discovered Jekyll. I was in my mid-teens and had volunteered to man the book stall at the school fete and found myself on duty with Neil, one of the students Dad tutored. He was in the year above me and, judging by the ferocious knit of his eyebrows, was there under duress.

  The more popular books had already been snapped up: Lace by Shirley Conran and a complete set of Carrier’s Kitchen part works. I was the only one who opened the crumbling edition of Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll – even then only because, when I’d asked Neil if he felt 10p was appropriate for Microwave Cooking for One, he’d replied: ‘Who gives a shit?’

  That book, I now know, was a 1900 edition and, though it was a little tatty, had originally been finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery, with wine-coloured endpapers and gilt edges. Its black and white pictures had been taken by Jekyll herself and, though grainy and monochrome by today’s standards, hinted at the lavish displays at her home in Munstead Wood. One picture drew my attention: of an area tucked into a triangle of ground between a flower border and a kitchen garden. There were ribbons of tulips, amorphous patches of Arabis and wisps of wallflowers. A thought occurred to me. Could our garden look like this?

  I bought the book for £1.50, about a decade before I spotted a similar first edition – in pristine condition – fetching £1,250 on eBay.

  I’d been flicking through it for weeks by the time I had the row with Mum. Our dreary little domestic came at a time when war was raging in Afghanistan and she’d had the call telling her to fly to Kabul the following day. By this point in her career, her role as foreign correspondent was largely behind her. After Lucy was born, we’d had several years of her being based in the newsroom in London and all assumed that she’d never head to the front line again. But now she was needed. A one-off, apparently, something to do with their existing man being shot, though that little nugget of information was something I only knew because I’d overheard it.

  Panic screamed through me like an alarm and I said things that would later make me burn with shame. I accused her of being selfish, stupid, putting her job before us, her family. I told her she was going to leave us motherless – because I knew with absolute certainty that if she carried on like she was, she’d end up with a knife in her throat or a bullet in her back. One of the super-powers possessed by every teenager of course is the ability to predict the future with unstinting accuracy. She’d tried at first to reason with me as I vented my rage. But eventually she held my gaze silently, unbreathing, with a glimmer behind her eyes caught directly between deep-seated defiance and aching regret.

  ‘Ellie, you mustn’t say those things to your mum,’ Dad told me after she’d left.

  ‘I can’t help it. All my friends think what she does is cool, but they have no idea what it’s like. I’m scared for her.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said gently. ‘You’re not the only one who worries about her, but I’ve seen her at work. She doesn’t make silly mistakes. She’s careful, smart and tough, which is why we love her, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ I said bluntly. ‘That isn’t why I love her at all.’

  As I headed outside, I was so wound up that I kicked over a terracotta container that had languished on the patio for years, being gradually smothered with moss and weeds. I gasped, unsure of whether I’d meant to do it or not.

  ‘I think you should clean that up,’ Dad said, crossing his arms at the patio door. I felt my blood chill at this new and unfamiliar tone.

  I cleaned up the mess of course, simmering with anger and hormones. After I’d done it, I carried on. I had to. I don’t know where the compulsion came from but perhaps it was the only thing I could think of to say sorry, even if I didn’t mean it. So I weeded the flower beds, trimmed the fruit trees, strimmed the edges of the lawn that had become the bane of their precious weekends. On the way home from school the following day, I diverted to the garden centre, where I bought my first pack of seeds, a blue meadow mix, and a tray of marigolds. Then I got home and started digging.

  Chapter 9

  Ged has been in touch, but it’s not good news. As well as his job switch, the arm of his corporate enterprise that deals in knock-off cigarettes has suffered an indelible blow: his sister has decided to retrain as a midwife. It’s an admirable move of course, but will personally cost me a fortune now I’ve got to order my tobacco with the supermarket shop. I’d been certain that I had an unopened pack tucked somewhere on the top shelf of my wardrobe, but when I stand on my dressing-table chair to look for it, I can’t find anything other than the plastic crate I keep up there containing old school certificates and photos.

  I’ve a vague recollection of having had a ‘sort out’ of the shelf at some point in the past, even though my efficiency drives usually result in me losing a load of stuff, rather than achieving any great streamlining. I pull the crate down and start taking items out, when I come across a photograph that causes my stomach to lurch, like I’ve missed a step in the dark.

  There are two little girls in the picture. We aren’t smiling for the camera, just holding hands, a team of two. I realise that it’s been a while since I looked at this. There was a time when it sat next to my bedside and I’d obsess over it. I was a different person back then.

  I tuck it away and return the box, before heading into the kitchen to check my phone. I’m drawn again to the question Guy asked while I was with Lucy last week: Do you think we might get to meet IRL one day?

  He probably thinks it’s a reasonable suggestion. It probably is. But it’s also one to which I can’t give a straight answer, at least not without sounding like a lunatic. He has laughably interpreted my squirming rebuttals and attempts to change the subject as playing hard to get. Yet, as impossible as it is to say yes, I am also tingling with the sheer, blissful idea of it. Seeing him, touching him, looking into those eyes directly, without the vacant filter of a phone screen.

  I step outside into the garden with my camera and tripod as the first notification of the day lands on my phone. I feel a delicious pulse in the pit of my belly.

  What are you up to this morning? I had to get up at 5.30 for a power yoga session with a private client. Think I’m going to have to schedule an afternoon nap in at some point! x

  5.30? That’s virtually the middle of the night.

  Worth it to see the sun come up though. Hey, I’ve realised who it is you remind me of. It’s been bugging me since the moment I first saw your picture.

  I frown.

  Oh dear. Go on…

  There’s a Spanish actress in a movie I used to love when I was a teenager. I don’t mind admitting that I had quite the crush on her

  Er, okay. But if you tell me it’s Penelope Cruz, I won’t believe you…

  As I attempt to conduct today’s photo shoot, Gertie circles the garden at high speed, for the sheer hell of it. With Mum and Dad out until this afternoon, she hasn’t yet had a walk and the result is a bundle of looping, yapping energy that jumps up to lick my ears every time I bend to straighten a foxglove.

  ‘I love you, dog – but please stay out of my way,’ I plead, ruffling her fur as I set up the tripod in front of my summer hanging baskets. I’ve planted a strawberry and mint display that will stay in the greenhouse until they’re established, or until Christmas if Gertie gets her way. She deposits a tennis ball at my feet and
barks. I pick up the ball and throw it to the other end of the garden, watching as she scampers off after it.

  No, you’re far better than Penelope Cruz!

  Yeah sure. Anyway stop. I’m blushing.

  Ha ha! All right. I would still love to see that in person though…

  Over the course of the next hour, I achieve very little in terms of the photo shoot. This is partly my fault for pausing every time my phone pings, but what am I supposed to do in the face of such a rare and lovely distraction? However, in between trying to think of something luminous and clever to write, Gertie’s desire to play is completely unquenchable, leading me to the conclusion that I’m not quite as good at multi-tasking as I thought. Even when there’s a lull between messages, each shot has to be taken in a narrow window of opportunity – basically while the ball is airborne and the dog is sprinting after it. I throw it further and further away, in the hope of buying myself more time – but even then it’s hopeless and eventually my frustration gets the better of me.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake Gertie!’ I say, grabbing the ball and flinging it as hard as I can, before darting to my camera to set the timer.

  ‘Hey, wait!’

  My head snaps up and I see the delivery guy from the other day. He’s at the gate, with a box of plants at his feet, shouting at the field beyond. ‘Hey, come back!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask, as he turns to me.

  ‘Your dog ran out.’

  I gasp. ‘You let Gertie out?’

  I race to the gate, pushing him out of the way before coming to an abrupt halt. ‘Gertie? Hey, Gertie!’ I call out.

  ‘She zipped past my legs when I opened the latch. She was chasing after a ball then spotted a bird and hurtled after it.’

  Saliva sticks in the back of my throat as realisation seeps through me. I knew I’d thrown that ball hard, but had no idea there was enough force to propel it over the gate. ‘Where the hell is she?’ I ask frantically, gripping the gatepost.