‘Since Simon is the only appreciative audience member here, we’re going to find cake and other people who think we’re funny. You coming?’ she asked Simon and when he nodded they walked towards the table where Shelley and Frank had set up morning tea.
‘I think Diana and Janet are becoming friends,’ she said to Simon as they walked away. ‘We should encourage that.’
Absolutely,’ Simon agreed.
*
Diana watched Simon and Amanda walk away and looked at Janet.
‘I think there could be a spark there,’ she said. ‘We should encourage that.’
Janet nodded in agreement. ‘Absolutely,’ she said, turning to Diana. ‘Shall we get some cake and observe?’
Diana looked at the woman beside her. She had to be twenty years younger than her, and presumably, by the badges on her jacket, they had nothing in common, but she could feel a stirring she hadn’t felt in years.
Friendship.
‘I couldn’t think of anything I would like more,’ she answered.
17
Simon
The stench of lavender was heavy in the air as Simon tugged on the last clump of roots from the shrubs that Frank had pulled out on the weekend.
Clearing the garden wasn’t as easy as Simon had thought it would be and they had filled two skip bins with the rubbish and dead plants from Moongate.
The last two weekends had been filled with clearing with the gardening club and Amanda and Simon doing more of it during the week but, with this last push, it would finally be clear.
Carole and Janet had tip-pruned the roses and Shelley and Dennis tied back the climbing roses and the wisteria, but Carole said they were not to prune the wisteria until it had finished flowering, which would be in a week to ten days.
Simon was amazed at the collective knowledge of the club members, although they did disagree sometimes, mainly about the arrangement of the gardening beds; but Simon thought it was funny listening to them all bicker about plantings and if dahlias were worth all the glory they were given.
It was Diana that he learned the most about the garden and the planting from. She was almost Buddhist in her view that everything in the garden was connected, from the flower to the insect that needed it for food, that would then pollinate the fruits and vegetables in other nearby gardens. She wanted to feed the birds and give the wildlife a place to shelter. There were deer and shews and squirrels, and even stoats.
Simon realised how little he saw wildlife in London, other than the foxes rummaging through rubbish late at night.
The days were hard work but Simon enjoyed feeling the gentle heat of the mid-summer sunshine and the ache of his body as he grew stronger and fitter. He ate with Amanda more and more and found he was actually hungry for the first time in a long while.
But what he liked most was seeing the order and structure come back to the garden. Diana had told him the beds were orderly so the plants could be wild within them.
‘The magic is in what you can’t see,’ Diana explained to him. ‘The worms in the soil, aerating it, and the organic matter – the minerals, the gases and liquids that give us life. That’s the magic, underneath it all. The rest is just tricks to get you to look,’ she had said.
It was close to five in the afternoon now and the sun was still high in the sky, with plenty of warmth left in the air.
‘Simon?’ he heard Amanda call from the window overlooking the front garden and he walked up towards her.
‘Do you like fish?’ she called.
‘I do, why?’ he asked.
‘I’m making fish and salads for dinner. I’ve invited Diana as well, but she said she’s not sure, as she is seeing Janet today and it might be too much to have two events in one day.’
Amanda had decided that they would eat together more often than not, as she said being alone at night was weird. She had never lived alone, she admitted to Simon, except for after her mother had died.
‘What can I bring?’ he called.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
