a biscuit or two. You stick your bare fingers under your armpits and press them tight against your chest. You pace back and forth, marking time with each misty puff of air.
When the hour strikes, your heart quickens. Three o’clock. You continue pacing. You hope no one is watching, no curious insomniacs behind twitching curtains or homeless people searching for a warm spot on a winter night. When at last the half hour strikes, you feel that shift in the air again and release a long puff of breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding. Recently, you’d been having doubts, worried you might have imagined the whole thing. Perhaps you’d been drunk or dreaming.
But now you know you weren’t wrong.
Your fingertips twitch with recognition. It’s the same. The moon. The air. The gate. It’s about to happen again. And, sure enough, at precisely 3:33 a.m. (you check your watch) the clouds part and moonlight illuminates the gate. You reach up to touch the same black rose; you push the gate open and step through.
Goldie
The thing I missed most of all was a garden. More than a real father, since by Ma’s account I wasn’t missing much there anyway—and if my stepfather was anything to go by. Anyway, I decided that a garden was better than a father, in a great many ways. A living, breathing thing that brought comfort but never hugged you too tight or interrogated you about your day. Instead it waited, steadfast and dependable, for you to come on your own terms. So, when I sat under a tree or in a patch of daisies, I felt alone and in company all at once.
I believed that gardens had their own gods, protective spirits imbuing each place with its own particular feeling. It was the same with inside places too, just different. When I was six Ma took me, on a rare foray into culture, to hear the carols in King’s College Chapel on Christmas Eve. It was the most spectacular place I’d ever been, and when I looked up at the soaring stained-glass windows reaching fifty feet to the delicate carved stone ceiling, I started to cry. But still, being in a garden has always felt more spiritual than being in a house, no matter how beautiful the house.
As soon as I stepped into any garden I felt calmer. I felt connected to it all, as if the soles of my feet were the earth, the branches of the trees my fingertips. I imagined that if I stood still long enough roots would grow from my toes and plant me in the soil. I felt strong, as immovable and immortal as an ancient oak.
I’d felt this way since I was a little girl. The earliest memory I had was of staring up into a jigsaw puzzle of leaves, pieces of white sky visible between the green. Perhaps that was why I felt so drawn to Everwhere, it being a place where nature seemed to have taken over entirely, not a brick in sight. I’d have loved to live in a place like that. I didn’t know how I’d survive, but I thought I’d be fine.
In our tiny flat I had only one thing of my own I truly loved: a bonsai, a miniature juniper tree. I found it abandoned on the street, branches bare, roots dry, spirit broken. It took months of care, but I brought it back to life, leafy and happy again. It sat on the coffee table, so it was the last thing I saw every night before I fell asleep. I loved that we shared the same air while I slept, that I inhaled Juniper’s oxygen and Juniper my carbon dioxide—out and in, in and out, in a perfect balance of breath.
One day my stepfather started moving Juniper, taking her from the table and leaving her in random spots for me to retrieve. I didn’t understand why, probably just another way he enjoyed tormenting me. Too often I found her in the bathroom or next to his side of the bed. I always moved her back without comment, refusing to play his silly games, whatever they were. My only fear was that one day I’d come home from school to find her missing, flushed down the toilet, or blitzed in the blender. I wouldn’t have put it past him. He had a history of similarly stupid things.
Before Juniper, I’d had a teddy bear called Teddy. I don’t know when Ma gave him to