Page 49 of The Twilight Garden

She began a tally in her head almost immediately, eyes seeking out each bird in turn, knowing instinctively now where each of them was likely to be. They all had their favourite places. A flicker of alarm stirred her stomach as she approached the door to the run. Four of the hens were still unaccounted for and she prayed that they were inside the henhouse. The alternative, which was inside the stomach of Mr Fox, didn’t bear thinking about. She hardly dared look, her imagination more than capable of conjuring up the image which might greet her, but she was quickly reassured that all was well. The dirt floor looked as it always had, a scattering of feathers as was the norm, but nothing worse. And, as she neared the house, Myrtle popped up from behind it, followed in quick succession by Henrietta, Floss and Daisy. Everyone was safe.

Despite the number of times she had closed up the hens for the night, she still lived in fear of failing to secure the door properly. Depending on the weather, the bolt was occasionally stiff and hard to pull across the closure, or, on the drier and warmer days of late, it slid easily and she worried that it would work its way open. She always made sure that the bolt was all the way home, and that the handle pointed downward providing even more security, so what could have happened the night before to allow the door to swing open? Had she just forgotten to double-check it? Had her mind been so occupied by other things that she’d forgotten to lock the door altogether?

She hurried to the nest boxes to see if the eggs had already been collected, but, as she suspected, several lay waiting for her. No one had been over to feed the hens as yet, and the thought of what might have greeted her this morning made her stomach churn. The impact of their loss would have been bad enough, but the thought of them meeting such a cruel and violent end was almost too much to bear. They had had a very lucky escape and she offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

It wasn’t until she was almost back at the house that she remembered it hadn’t been her who had shut the hens away the night before, it had been Leo. She’d been about to, but Willow had been in the middle of showing her how to turn the heel on a pair of socks she’d been knitting and he had offered to go in her place. Surely Leo wouldn’t have left the door improperly secured? He knew the importance of it just as well as she did. She pushed the kitchen door open, deep in thought.

To her surprise, Leo was sitting at the table and her greeting faltered in her throat. He was peering at what looked like a lump of blue plastic in his hands.

‘Is everything okay?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, you? You look a bit preoccupied.’

‘Sorry, I was miles away. I’ve got flowers on the brain.’ It wasn’t a complete lie.

He smiled. ‘I’ve got wires on mine.’

She crossed to the sink and ran a little water into the bowl to clean the eggs.

‘So what’s with the wires?’ she asked. ‘I probably won’t understand even if you explain it to me, but…’

‘I’m not sure I can explain it,’ answered Leo. ‘Not because you wouldn’t have a clue what I’m talking about, but because I don’t understand it myself.’ He held up the lump of plastic in his hand. ‘This little beauty is a charge controller which, as its name suggests, manages the power from the solar panels to the batteries. It’s a pretty vital piece of kit because, not only does it help prolong the life of the batteries, it keeps everything nice and safe, too. Nice and even, nice and regular.’ He scratched his head. ‘And, for some reason, despite wiring everything up, they’re not working properly. They’re not the only thing either, but I can’t work out what I’ve done wrong.’

‘Oh…’ Gemma turned around. ‘Probably not something I can help with then, sorry.’

Leo smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out. It’s just frustrating. How are your flowers doing?’

‘They’re coming along nicely,’ she said. ‘But, like always, I’m impatient with the speed at which things are progressing. I promised Willow I’d help her with the planting for a couple of hours this morning, so I won’t get back to the garden until later. It can’t be helped, it’s just…’

‘Frustrating?’ supplied Leo, echoing his own words. ‘You’ve got Ashley helping though, haven’t you? Can’t she work with Willow instead of you?’

‘I’m not sure that’s fair. I asked her to help me with the garden, not be at everyone else’s beck and call. It was partly down to her we found it in the first place.’

Leo tipped his head to one side. ‘True, but she always seems very interested in everything else going on here. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’

Gemma rinsed off the last of the eggs. ‘Maybe. I’ll see how it goes. I’d best get going anyway, or I won’t make it over to the garden at all.’

She took a pencil from beside a half-full tray of eggs already on the side and scribbled the day’s date on those she had collected. Now it was full she would need to pop them down to Vicky in the tearoom later – another little job to do. She chewed at the corner of her lip as she stared at them.

‘Have you been out to the hens this morning?’ she asked, keeping her tone as light as she could.

Leo looked up from the table. ‘No, why?’

‘The door to the run was already open, that’s all. No matter, I’ll check with Willow. I expect it was her. I hope you sort your wiring.’ And with that she moved quickly to the kitchen door, in case Leo wanted to quiz her any further.

She eventually found Willow in one of the two greenhouses at the far end of the kitchen garden, grovelling on the floor under a bench. The bench itself was covered with pieces of cardboard.

Gemma scuffed her feet on the floor so she wouldn’t make Willow jump when she spoke. ‘Having fun?’ she asked.

Willow backed out on her knees, taking care not to bump her head. She was dragging a stack of plastic seed trays with her.

‘Make do and mend,’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘But this is getting ridiculous.’ She dumped her spoils onto the bench where Gemma could see that they were all cracked in numerous places and scarcely usable, or so she thought.

‘They’re not worth salvaging, surely?’

‘We don’t exactly have a choice,’ Willow replied. ‘Most of the good ones got trampled during the break-in and I’ve already used those I could. I’ve been cutting up lengths of cardboard to make into small pots, but I’m running out of that too. This is all that’s left, and I’ve still got masses of seeds to sow.’ She sighed in frustration. ‘It takes forever – time I could use planting something else.’

‘Maybe it’s something we could do of an evening? It would save a lot of time.’