Summer Season

by Julia Williams

‘No,’ said Edward firmly, ‘the sooner you cooperate the sooner you can see it.’

  He took her by the hand.

  ‘Watch out, there’s a step here,’ he said, as he led her down into the garden. He pushed open the wrought iron gate he’d had specially commissioned. ‘Now you can see,’ he pulled back her blindfold, which was the scarf that tied her summer hat on her head.

  ‘Oh, Edward!’ Lily clapped her hands over her mouth in delight as she gazed on the fruits of his labour, a garden set out in love and hope. A knot garden of hearts weaving rosemary, ivy, forget me nots, and gloxinia, with borders of the heartsease which gave their village its name.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Like it? I love it!’ She danced excitedly down the paths. ‘Did you do this for me?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘It’s a love knot garden, dedicated to my one true love.’

  ‘Edward, I don’t know what to say.’ Lily came back to him and threw her arms around his neck.

  ‘Just say you love me,’ said Edward, with feeling.

  ‘Always,’ said Lily, ‘always.’

  He held Lily fast, and kissed her on the top of her head. Then he led her to the far end of the garden, where they sat on the wrought iron bench he had had specially made, with their initials on. Never had he felt more happy and content. This would always be their special place. A garden to represent their married life, a life that he knew, with Lily by his side, would be well worth the living.

  Part One

  Summer’s Lease

  Chapter One

  ‘Come on, girls, time to get up! Important day today.’ Lauren came softly into her twin daughters’ bedroom, to watch two tousled heads sleepily awake and register their surroundings. Two brand new uniforms hung over the end of the identical pine beds, and her daughters slowly emerged from underneath their matching pink princess duvet covers. She drew the Cath Kidston inspired floral curtains, and looked out on the little garden that belonged to her rented cottage. It had a small patch of green for the lawn, and her pots of lobelia, geraniums, busy lizzies and alyssum were still flowering in a tumbledown fashion. It was homely and neat, pretty much the way she liked it. The warm, early morning sun belied the promise of the September day. It was going to be another hot one.

  Lauren turned back to look at the girls and her heart contracted with a deep spasm of love. Four years old already and starting school for the first time. Where had all that time gone? It seemed only minutes since they’d been born three weeks prematurely, on a baking hot August day. Had they been born on their due date, she’d have had a whole extra year with them. As it was they were going to be among the youngest in their class.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ she said again, then went to sit on Izzie’s bed and tickle her under the duvet. Izzie was usually the slower of the sisters (and being asthmatic, the one who gave Lauren most cause for concern) and sure enough her giggles brought Immie immediately over to join in the fun. The three of them romped about on the bed for a bit, laughing, before Lauren said, mock sternly, ‘Come on, time for school.’

  By the time she’d helped them on with their clothes, and got them downstairs to the cosy kitchen, with its wooden pine table and cheerful mugs on mug racks, Joel had arrived with Sam – on time for once.

  ‘Big day today, girls,’ he said, as Izzie and Immie came to show off their school uniforms. They looked so sweet in matching grey pinafores (a size too big for them, to allow for plenty of growing room), crisp white shirts, and green cardigans. Their bright white socks were pulled high above their knees, their black Mary Jane shoes positively sparkled and their fair hair was tied up in identical ponytails, which by the end of the day Lauren was fairly sure would be coming undone.

  They smiled shyly at Joel, as he popped Sam in the high chair, and watched them parade their brand new green book bags proudly in front of him.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind taking a photo of the three of us, would you?’ said Lauren. ‘Only, it would be nice to have a memento.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Joel, proceeding to snap away. ‘Are you excited, girls?’

  ‘Yes,’ they chorused.

  ‘I should say so,’ said Lauren, ‘I don’t think they slept a wink all night.’

  ‘Ouch,’ grimaced Joel. He looked at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I’d really better dash.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Lauren clocked his sober grey suit, and kicked herself for forgetting what day it was. ‘Good luck, today. Hope it’s not too grim.’ She touched him awkwardly on the arm, not quite sure whether the gesture would be appreciated. After Claire had died, their mutual grief had brought them very close. Too close she felt at times. Sometimes it had felt a little too intense, and now she tended to stand back more.

  Joel gave her a tight, tense smile, his dark eyes brooding. His face was sombre and sad. ‘It has to be done,’ he said, before kissing Sam on the cheek. ‘Have a great day, girls.’

  Poor Joel. Thirty-five was far too young to be widowed. It was tough on him being alone with Sam, she knew that. That was why, in the main, Lauren cut him some slack when he took her for granted, which he invariably did. Lauren felt she owed it to Claire to look out for Joel; he needed support, and she was going to give it, even if he didn’t always make it that easy. She felt a familiar spasm of grief for Claire too. A year on, and part of her still expected to see Claire pitch up at the cottage as she had done every day with Sam before her sudden and shocking death.

  Lauren sent the twins up to brush their teeth, while she cleared up the breakfast things. She stacked the girls’ matching Belle plates in the dishwasher, next to her favourite Cath Kidston mugs and bowl set (a present from Mum, Lauren could never have afforded them). She loved her kitchen, which had been extended to make room for a dining table. It was cosy, and full of clutter. The children’s toys – a magnetic easel, a plastic car and a small table and chairs set – competed for space with her pine table, washing machine, dishwasher and fridge freezer. Though Lauren didn’t have quite as much work surface as she’d have liked, and what she had was crammed full of cookery books, this was her favourite room in the house – the real heart of her home.

  Lauren lifted Sam out of the high chair, and put him into the buggy she kept here for him. She felt stupidly nervous for the girls, even though they had been going to the nursery part of the village school for nearly a year. But still. Proper school. True, being the youngest in the year, they were only part time to begin with. But before she knew it, they’d be gone all day. No longer would she have them to herself in the afternoon. If she didn’t have Sam still to look after, the days could be long and lonely. Just like her nights …

  A sense of melancholy came over her as she walked down the front path, with its familiar white picket fence, and creaky iron gate. The twins were holding on to either side of the buggy, chatting away nineteen to the dozen about what was going to happen in their day. They didn’t seem nervous in the slightest. It was only Lauren who felt a vague sense of loss, with the realization that after today nothing would be quite the same again. She pushed the buggy down her road, waving hello to her neighbour Eileen, who was out walking her dog, and turned right onto the main road that led down the hill to the centre of Heartsease, where the girls were starting at the village school.

  The September sun was still warm, and the day was shaping up to be one of those last blasts of summer lazy days, which you had to cherish before autumn took hold. But there were small signs of the approaching autumn. The trees were beginning to turn, the first conkers were beginning to ripen, and a gentle breeze blew a few leaves softly to the ground. It was days like these she remembered most from the period after Troy left her, and this time of year had remained bitter-sweet to her ever since. Just as she was getting used to the shock of motherhood, she’d had the bigger shock that she was going to be doing it alone. And now more then ever, sending her beautiful daughters off to school for the first time, she wished that it wasn’t so.

  Joel got in
the car with a heavy heart, turned left out of Lauren’s road, and drove back up the hill past his house and out of Heartsease across the Downs, towards the neighbouring town of Chiverton. He drove down a windy country road, arched with trees, their leaves beginning to shimmer with an autumn hue. He loved the countryside here and it was one of the many reasons, when his mum had inherited Lovelace Cottage and suggested he bought it from her, that he had. Even Claire, who’d at first been reluctant to leave London, and ‘live in the sticks’ as she’d put it, had agreed that when you came to the brow of the hill and looked out on the Sussex countryside, the views were stunning.

  Claire. His heart contracted painfully. A year ago today. Could it only really be a year? A year and a day ago he had been so happy. So rich and fulfilled. With everything in life he needed. But he didn’t know it then, didn’t appreciate it at times, maybe didn’t even want it. It was only after he lost Claire, and his world came crashing down around him, that he belatedly realized how truly lucky he had been.

  Today was going to be a painful and difficult day. Joel had promised to go with Claire’s parents to her grave, in the cemetery on the other side of Chiverton, and then for lunch. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get through another heartbreaking day with them. It wasn’t that Marion and Colin were unkind or unsupportive, far from it. Although they lived over an hour away, they would help out with Sam at the drop of a hat, and they had been an immense source of strength to him. They had shown him compassion even though they were grieving too. No, it wasn’t Marion and Colin who would make this day hard. It was Joel’s guilt about what he’d done, and how he’d let Claire down.

  Every day for the last year he had said sorry to her. Every day. And today, at the graveside, he would lay freesias, her favourite flowers (which he’d bought at great expense) and say sorry again. But it was never ever going to be enough.

  Joel blinked back tears as he arrived at the graveyard. It was a bright, warm September day, unlike the day of Claire’s funeral, which had been the bleakest, rainiest autumn day he could remember in his life. The church had been packed, and so many people had been so kind and thoughtful. But Joel had barely been able to acknowledge their kindness, responding like an automaton, feeling only a numbness that he now realized must have been deep jolt. The suddenness of Claire’s death still shocked him, even now, a year later. How could someone as beautiful and alive and vibrant as Claire be there one day, and not the next? He’d be trying to make sense of that till the day he died.

  Joel was pleased to see he had arrived earlier than Claire’s parents. Selfishly, he wanted a bit of time on his own, for his own private grief. He walked up to her grave and felt again the sudden shock of seeing her name there:

  Claire Harriet Lyle

  1975–2010

  Loving wife, mother and daughter

  Taken from us too soon

  He never got over the unreality of it. Nor, did he imagine, he would ever get used to it. Claire should be with him now, watching Sam learning to walk and talk, helping Joel restore the house and gardens as they had planned. She shouldn’t be here, on this Sussex hillside, buried six feet under. He felt a sudden sharp bolt of anguish, the pain of it almost taking his breath away. Claire was lost to him, and there was no saying sorry now.

  Kezzie sat in the middle of half-packed boxes, in her tiny lounge crying. She felt like she’d been sitting in the middle of boxes crying forever, ever since she’d made the decision that she had to leave. Only weeks ago, at the height of summer, she’d been excitedly packing up to move out of her small flat in Finsbury Park and move in with Richard. The gardening course she’d completed finished, the redundancy from her much hated job in web design accepted. A whole new life lay before them. She would design the gardens, Richard, the architecture. Together they would take Chelsea and Hampton Court by storm. And now that would never happen. The last month of her life had been the most painful, confusing and ridiculous time she’d ever known.

  Should she ring Richard again? Kezzie sat on her heels in the chaos of her lounge and thought about it. She was sorely tempted. It had been nearly a week since their last painfully awkward conversation. Somehow she clung to the hope that maybe he could find it in himself to forgive her for what she’d done. She flinched as she saw the cold contempt in his eyes at their last meeting, heard him say over and over: ‘You’ve let me down, Kezzie. I can’t trust you.’ That scene kept playing like it was on a hideous time loop, over and over in her brain. However much she tried to shut it out, there it was every time she closed her eyes. A reminder of what she had done, and what she had lost.

  But all that ringing and texting Richard in vain were making her feel slightly unhinged, and even Flick, the kindest and most supportive of best friends, had gently pointed out she was losing dignity in trying to win him back.

  ‘You have to give him time, Kez,’ she said. ‘You’re going to lose him for sure this way.’

  Kezzie knew she was right, but the temptation late at night to email him after a glass of red, or ring him, just to hear his voice, had proved too much for her time and time again. The last occasion had been so mortifiyingly cringe-making – Richard had answered saying, ‘Kezzie, I have my parents here, please don’t make a scene’ – that she’d hung up straight away. At that moment she decided she was losing the plot big time, and needed to escape, somewhere, anywhere, so she wouldn’t chance running into Richard, and where she wouldn’t be reminded of him, on every corner.

  It was then that Aunt Jo had stepped in. Arriving on an unexpected flying visit to London, and seeing the state of her beloved niece, Jo had declared that Kezzie needed a bolt hole. ‘And as luck would have it, hon, I can offer you my place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kezzie had asked.

  ‘I’m off round the world for a year with Mickey,’ said Jo, referring to her latest toy boy. ‘You remember him, don’t you? We’re going to find ourselves, and maybe get married in Thailand.’ She giggled excitedly. ‘You can stay at my cottage for as long as you want – stay all year if you need to, babe.’

  ‘Really?’ Kezzie gulped through her tears. It sounded like the best solution she could think of. She had to get away from London, from the car crash that had been the end of her relationship, and the mess she’d made of everything. She needed time and space to regroup, and sort herself out. Staying here moping after Richard was doing her no good whatsoever. He was never coming back to her, and all she was doing was prolonging the agony.

  So here she was shoving things in boxes. Every little thing reminded her of the last two brilliant years with Richard, from the framed certificate stating she’d passed the Landscape Gardening Course she’d taken at his suggestion, to the picture of the two of them walking in the Lakes earlier in the year, when he’d asked her to move in with him. And then there were the gardening gloves he’d given her at Christmas, and the silver earrings, which had been a birthday present. In London, all she could think about was Richard. Escaping was the only chance she stood of getting over him.

  She picked up her phone and rang Richard’s number. This was the last time she’d do this. The very very last time.

  His answer phone kicked in. ‘Hi there, Richard isn’t here right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you later.’ She kept doing this, just to hear his voice. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew it didn’t do any good. It was time she stopped and moved on.

  Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the telltale wobble in her voice, she said, ‘Hi, Richard. This is Kezzie. I’m leaving town. You won’t hear from me again.’

  She put the phone down, trembling, tears spilling over her cheeks. But it was done. Kezzie surveyed the mess of the room she was in, and slowly started to rationalize the boxes. There wasn’t any other option. The summer was over, and autumn had begun.

  Chapter Two

  Different sounds. That was the most unusual thing about living in the country, Kezzie decided. It wasn’t dead silent, as she’d al
ways imagined. The previous evening, the birds had been making a right racket in the hedgerow at dusk, and she’d heard bats squeaking in the dark. This morning she’d been woken by a very early morning dawn chorus. It was still relatively light in the mornings, though approaching mid September, and having left London’s gloomy weather, it had cheered her up no end to get up and watch a very pink sunrise give way to a bright and sunny September morning.

  It had taken her all day to pack up her stuff in the van she’d hired, drive down to Jo’s house in the pretty village of Heartsease on the Surrey/Sussex border which she’d fallen in love with on previous visits, and unpack it all. Kezzie knew she could have asked Flick and the others to help but she was too proud. She’d told Flick about the split, of course she had, but she still felt sore and embarrassed about the reasons for it. She couldn’t face actually telling anyone, let alone her best friend, what had really happened. And part of her need for escape was a need to re-evaluate every aspect of her life: her drinking and drug taking, and slight feeling of always living on the edge. Until she had met Richard that had been all she’d wanted, and she’d revelled in shocking him, and teasing him about being so straight-laced. But since their break-up, she’d become uncertain about her lifestyle and wondered whether she was right to always be so frenetic and spontaneous. It used to feel fun. Now she wasn’t sure. And sadly, Flick and her friends were part of all that. Maybe if she was away she could unpick what and who she was, and work out where her life went from here. Maybe.

  First things first though. Kezzie realized last night, before she fell into bed, that she’d forgotten to buy milk and teabags. Jo, a caring and thoughtful individual in many ways, hadn’t thought to leave any groceries in the fridge. Mind you, as Jo appeared to have taken off on her voyage of self-discovery with one very small backpack, a few necessities, and had yet to email, perhaps that wasn’t all that surprising.