Weyward(55)

But she has to do something … there is food to buy, and utility bills to pay – fat brown envelopes have begun to appear through Aunt Violet’s letterbox, the most recent marked ‘URGENT’ in angry red letters.

Later, a book in Aunt Violet’s collection catches her eye: The British Gardener.

Looking out of the kitchen window at the garden, she feels a twinge of doubt. It is so overgrown, and filled with the oddest of plants: great green trumpets reach skyward, vying for space with hairy stems, purple buds nodding on their leaves. She’s not sure she’s up to this. But a baby needs nutrients, vitamins. From vegetables, green things, like the ones that crowd Aunt Violet’s garden.

And so she has to try.

It is a hot day, almost midsummer. In the bedroom, she peels off her jeans and top – both of which are starting to become uncomfortably tight – in favour of a pair of canvas dungarees she finds in the wardrobe. She dons one of Aunt Violet’s hats – a straw behemoth with a tawny feather tucked into the band. In the cupboard under the sink there are gardening gloves, and leaning against the back of the house, a spade.

With The British Gardener tucked under her arm, she takes a deep breath and ventures outside.

She touches the smooth shape of the brooch in her pocket, reflecting that she’s breaking the only rule she’s ever set for herself. But it’s hard to feel threatened by the plants and flowers golden with the sun; the clean gurgle of the beck. She even enjoys listening to the birds – wishes she could identify each species from its song, the way she used to when she was a child.

A caw, throaty and almost human, sends a cold needle down her spine.

She looks up. Her heart beats a little faster when she sees the crow, observing her from the highest branch of the sycamore. For a moment she is still, fearing that sudden movements will bring a rain of claws and feathers. But the bird just shifts on the branch, the sun coating its wings with an oil-slick sheen.

Blinking away the memories, she resists the urge to touch the brooch in her pocket. Focus. She must focus on the task at hand.

Guided by the pictures in Aunt Violet’s gardening book, she learns that the green trumpets are rhubarb; the hairy-stemmed plant wild carrot. These, she digs from the ground, marvelling at the delicate stems of the rhubarb, the pale, gnarled carrots. She can make soups, salads. Hunger gnaws at her; the craving for food borne from the earth so intense she is almost giddy with it. She looks down at the carrot she grips in her hand. Part of her wants to eat it now – to suck the soil from it, feel the freshness burst into her mouth as she crunches down, hard. She needs this, she realises. The baby needs this.

She breathes deeply, places the carrot into her basket.

There are herbs, too, she sees: sage, rosemary, mint. These she also collects. She leaves behind other strange plants that don’t seem to feature in the book: under the sycamore tree she finds a long-stemmed bush with yellow buds, like clusters of tiny stars.

After a while, she has an urge to remove the gloves, to feel the soil against her skin. She pushes her fingers deep into the earth, relishing its softness. The smell of it is intoxicating: its mineral tang reminds her of the taste that still coats her tongue when she wakes every morning.

She feels something brush against the scar on her forearm. Turning, she sees it is a damselfly: the same insect she saw down by the beck, when she first arrived. It trembles there for a moment; then, as she watches, it flutters to her stomach.

There is a surge inside her – a fizzing warmth in her gut, her veins. Rising into her oesophagus.

For a moment she thinks it’s morning sickness; worries she might vomit, faint. She bends over, on her hands and knees in the dirt, lets the blood rush to her head.

She feels a tickling sensation against her hand, different to the silky touch of soil. Looking down, she sees the pink glimmer of a worm – and then another, and another. As she watches, spellbound, other insects emerge from the earth, glowing like jewels in the summer sun. The copper glint of a beetle’s shell. The pale, segmented bodies of larvae. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she’s not sure if it’s from the roar of her pulse or the bees that have begun to circle nearby.

They’re getting closer. It’s as if something – as if Kate – is drawing them. A beetle climbs her wrist, a worm brushes against the bare skin of her knee, a bee lands on her earlobe. She is gasping, now, overwhelmed by the heat that blooms in her chest, surges up her throat. Her vision blurs like snow, then goes dark.

When she wakes, the day is cooler, the sun hidden behind clouds. Her mouth tastes of earth, and her body, sprawled on the ground, feels heavy, wrung out. Hazily, she watches the crow take flight from the sycamore, wings blotting out the sun. Blades of grass itch against her skin, and she flinches, remembering the insects. She scrambles to her feet, brushing the dirt from her clothes, fingers searching for the creatures that surely crawl over her neck, in her hair.

But there is nothing.

Looking down, she sees that the earth is still: just an empty, velvet mound where she has dug up the soil. No worms, no beetles, no larvae. She can’t even hear any bees.

Did she imagine it? Hallucinate?

But something catches at the edge of her vision – a glitter of wings. The damselfly she saw earlier, before she blacked out. She watches as it flits towards the sycamore, dancing over the gnarled trunk, the little wooden cross, before disappearing from view.

Then she knows. She didn’t imagine it. It was real.