Amanda walked outside and pulled a weed from a bed by the front garden. She pulled another, and another, feeling pleasure when they came out whole, the roots hanging down, and throwing them into a small mound. She used her hands to scrape through the dirt, pulling and raking, not bothering with gloves or even a gardening form. She just needed to do something physical that would produce immediate results.
While she worked, she thought about Diana. Everything was clouded in misty half-truths and yet Amanda felt she couldn’t have asked Diana for the whole truth because what if she became angry and told her to leave? The uncertainty of her place at Moongate was always there. It still didn’t feel like hers, even though the deed was now in her name.
The weeds came out easily enough and soon the small garden bed was cleared. Amanda stood back and looked at her work.
‘It’s easy to lose yourself in the weeding, isn’t it?’ she heard Simon say from behind her.
Amanda wiped her hands on her jeans. ‘It is,’ she said, and wondered if that’s why Diana had become so obsessed with gardening. Here her only obstacles were caterpillars and weeds. Beyond the gates was the real world.
‘Let me put these weeds in the wheelbarrow and I’ll take them to the bin.’ Amanda went to the pile but Simon shooed her away.
‘I’m going there anyway,’ he said, scooping them up with the rake and putting them in the barrow.
He looked down at her hands. ‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You seemed to be gardening with some sort of murderous intent towards those weeds.’
Amanda sighed. ‘I’m just tired and everything is annoying me today.’
‘I get that feeling most days.’ He half laughed.
‘Have you heard from Anika or Charlie lately?’ Amanda asked.
Simon scoffed. ‘No and I don’t want to. There’s nothing they can say to change what happened. They’re living their lives and I’m living mine, here.’
Amanda was silent. Did that mean he was staying? she wondered. He sounded as though his choice to be here was punishing them in some way.
‘Okay, I’m off to dump this in the bin and then I’m posting the soil test.’ He picked up the barrow and went on his way.
Amanda knew what was troubling her but she couldn’t quite voice her worry.
Amanda went inside the house and washed her hands and scrubbed her fingernails with the nail brush that Janet had given her, and then she realised she knew what to do and who she needed to speak to.
Her mother used to say there was meaning in everything and there were no coincidences in life, and as Amanda dried her hands on the dish towel she realised she had been given the thread to follow through the mess of half-truths and vague facts from the beginning. She found her phone and dialled.
‘Hello? Can I speak to Maggie please?’ she asked.
31
Amanda
The woman who opened the door for Amanda looked older than Diana and she spoke with a rounded Northern accent, but she was smiling as Amanda came through the door.
‘When Maggie told me you wanted to meet me, I felt as though I was a celebrity.’ She laughed as she led Amanda down the narrow hallway of the small house in Newcastle. ‘Not many people from America want to come and visit me. Come sit and I’ll make a brew,’ she said, moving slowly about the kitchen.
Amanda sat down at the wooden table, looking at the initials carved into the corner and her fingers ran over the worn wood.
‘That’s my boys that done that,’ said Helen. ‘Always making their mark wherever they went.’ She laughed. ‘And you’re at Moongate now? Maggie told you I was friends with Diana back in the day. My dad was the gardener there for nigh on forty years, even worked his way up to head gardener, but in the end it was just him and Diana, so the title didn’t mean much – not to him anyway. Diana’s still there?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Diana’s still there, but in the gatehouse now,’ she said.
‘She all right?’ asked Helen, and Amanda could see the genuine concern on the old woman’s face.
‘She is. A little frail, but okay,’ said Amanda.
‘And you wanted to know about the house? She would know more than me,’ Helen said as she swirled hot water around in the teapot.
Amanda paused. ‘Actually I want to know about Diana.’
She saw Helen’s shoulders straighten.
