Page 45 of The Twilight Garden

Gemma rounded on him, a sudden flare of anger rising up from the store which she still tended in the quiet, dark recesses of her mind. ‘Don’t you dare bring my dad into this. He had nothing to do with our situation.’

‘No?’ Leo stared at her. ‘How can you even say that? He had everything to do with it, not least because he was the only one – despite your platitudes – who really did believe in what I was doing. He was the only one I could ever talk to about any of it, and that’s where the real problem lay, Gemma. You hated that, didn’t you? The fact that he took my side, always telling you to try to see the situation from my point of view. One of these days you might even admit to that, but I’m not going to hold my breath. All I know is that it made me so much easier to blame for what happened.’

Gemma opened her mouth to retaliate but before she could do so, Leo turned on his heel and stalked off across the grass, leaving her standing in the mess they had created. It wasn’t a garden full of hope and ambition for the future; it was the long-forgotten ruin of what had once existed, now sad and neglected. The day had been torn in two and nothing would put it back together again.

16

MAY

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

​— ​HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The days were much longer now, every hour of them filled with a never-ending round of things to do. All the seedlings Willow had nursed over the winter months needed to be coaxed from their trays and into the gently warming soil of the kitchen garden – peas, cabbages, carrots, leeks: the list seemed endless. It was backbreaking work, but Gemma was glad of it. She’d hardly seen Leo since their argument, and the days had rolled onward without him. Today, however, Willow had declared that she needed a break from the endless planting, and had suggested they spend the day in Gemma’s garden instead.

No one had known what to say when it had become clear that she and Leo were no longer talking – or at least the forced politeness-on-the-surface conversation which passed for it. He was still sleeping in the old farmhouse, taking all his meals with them and staying with them throughout the evening, and although Gemma tried to keep out of his way, that wasn’t particularly easy in a house which wasn’t overly big in the first place. She was also very conscious that Leo had been around long before she came on the scene. Willow and Rowan never took sides, but the last thing Gemma wanted was to make their friendship with Leo feel awkward in any way. She’d offer to leave but…

Gemma apologised, not for the first time.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she watched Willow unearth another clump of nettles. ‘This whole thing with Leo is making things really difficult for you.’

‘Is it?’ countered Willow. ‘I’d say it was making things really difficult for you, and I would imagine his presence here was the last thing you expected.’

Gemma smiled. ‘It was, but we’re letting our past grievances with each other get the better of us, and that’s no way to repay you for all your kindness. We’re both adults; we ought to be able to behave with a little more maturity.’ She screwed up her face. ‘It’s just that he… argh…’ She groaned. ‘Correction, we… really know how to push each other’s buttons.’

Willow regarded her for a moment, head tipped to one side.

‘So where did you guys meet anyway?’

Gemma lifted her head, shielding her eyes from the low sun. ‘In a little tearoom, on a day just like today,’ she said. ‘We’d had weeks of rain, and then out of the blue there was this stunning spring day.’ Gemma could still remember how the hills had been alive with colour, the sky a perfect contrast to their vivid hues. ‘I’d gone walking with two friends of mine and just as we reached the last half mile we got caught in a sudden deluge – one of those romantic-sounding April showers which come from nowhere and are not in the least romantic or enjoyable when they arrive. Except that, on that day, when we tumbled into the tearoom which marked the end of our walk, a fire had been lit and it was heaven inside. We pulled up some chairs beside it and I fell over trying to take my boots off, crashing into the chair of a guy sitting behind me.’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘Ah…’ said Willow. ‘Don’t tell me, it was love at first sight.’

Gemma was caught by the warmth of her memory, the feeling of that day, how alive she had felt, how vibrant. She remembered Leo’s laugh and the way she’d known within minutes that— She quashed the thought. ‘Not exactly. But I went into the same tearoom every weekend for a month to make sure I “bumped” into him again, and I did, eventually. The rest, as they say, is history.’

Willow shook the earth from a clump of nettles she had dug up. ‘Okay, good start, but what happened next?’

‘We went walking mostly. He lived nearly an hour and a half away from me, which made meeting up of an evening difficult, so we saw each other at weekends, walking miles, and talking like we were the last two people left on earth.’ She paused, feeling her way back to her younger self. ‘It’s stupid because I was only twenty, so what did I know? But I honestly thought there was no one else alive on the planet like him.’

Willow smiled, a wistful look on her face. ‘Sounds familiar,’ she said. ‘I thought exactly the same about Rowan.’

‘Was he your first love, too?’

‘No… the first is too awful to contemplate now. I didn’t meet Rowan until quite late in my life, and although there weren’t many relationships before him, there was one in particular which… well, let’s just say he came close to being the love of my life. But it ended, and not long after, I met Rowan. I kept telling myself I was on the rebound, and not to take our relationship so seriously, but he made the other guy look like he would have been the biggest mistake of my life, and all I felt was relief – that I had found Rowan and wouldn’t have to keep looking.’

‘So how long have you been together?’

‘Eleven years, all told. So not long at all.’

‘But you seem so solid, so in tune with one another. You do this thing where you⁠—’

‘Finish each other’s sentences?’ She laughed, raising an eyebrow.

‘But you do… and you’re both so committed to what you’re doing here. Even when we first met, Leo had this dream for his eco houses. He was going to change the world and I was going to help him do it, but I’m not sure I was ever that committed to it, not really. I couldn’t have been. Look what happened.’

‘But you must have really believed in what he was trying to do at some point, if that was the spark which brought you together?’

Gemma paused, looking down at the freshly turned earth, yet seeing only the past. ‘The difference was that when times got tough, I couldn’t weather it. I started looking for ways out of it.’