woman I’d never even heard about three minutes ago, she seems to be remarkably present in our conversation.
‘So, was it serious, you and Mary?’ I can’t help asking.
Dan nods. ‘It was, for a bit. But she was studying at Manchester, which is why we broke up eventually, I guess.’ He shrugs. ‘Long way from Exeter.’
They didn’t break up because they had a row or slept with other people, I register silently. It was logistics.
‘We had all kinds of dreams,’ Dan continues. ‘We were going to set up a smallholding together. Organic veg, that kind of thing. Change the world. Like I say, it was a different me.’ Dan looks around the garden and shakes his head with a wry smile. ‘Coming in here is strange. It’s taken me back to the person I was then.’
‘Were you so different?’ I say, feeling disconcerted again. He’s got a light in his eye I’ve never seen before. Distant and kind of wistful. Wistful for what, exactly? This was supposed to be a sublime and transcendental evening about us, not some long-ago relationship.
‘Oh, I was different, all right.’ He laughs. ‘Wait. There might be a picture …’
He searches for a while on his phone, then holds it out. ‘Here.’ I take it and find myself looking at a website headed The St Philip’s Garden: How We Started.
‘See?’ Dan points to a dated-looking photo of young people in jeans, clutching muddy spades and forks. ‘That’s Mary … and that’s me.’
I’ve seen pictures of Dan in his youth before. But never from this era. He looks so skinny. He’s wearing a checked shirt and some weird bandana round his head and his arm is firmly squeezing Mary. I zoom in and survey her critically. Apart from the frizzy hair, she’s pretty. Really pretty. In a wholesome, organic, dimpled way. Very long, lean legs, I notice. Her smile is radiant and her cheeks are flushed and her jeans are filthy. I can’t imagine her doing a boudoir shoot. But then, I can’t imagine Dan the gardener either.
‘I wonder what she’s doing now?’ Dan muses. ‘It’s crazy to think I just forgot about her. I mean, for a while we were—’ He breaks off as though realizing where this is taking him. ‘Anyway.’
‘Crazy!’ I say, with a shrill little laugh. ‘Well, here you are. Are you getting cold?’
I hold his phone out to him, but he doesn’t take it. He’s staring, transfixed, at the arbour. He seems lost in … what? Thought? Memories? Memories of him and Mary, aged nineteen, all lithe and idealistic, building their reclaimed arbour?
Shagging in the arbour? When everyone else had gone home?
No. Do not have that thought.
‘What are you thinking about?’ I say, trying to sound light and carefree, thinking, If he says ‘Mary’, I will …
‘Oh.’ Dan comes to and darts an evasive look at me. ‘Nothing. Really. Nothing.’
TEN
It woke something up in me.
I keep recalling Dan’s words, and every time it’s with a sense of foreboding. I can’t stop picturing his transported face. Transported away from me, to some other, golden, halcyon time of scented flowers and honest earthy work and nineteen-year-old girls with radiant smiles and dimples.
Whatever that secret garden ‘woke up in him’, I would be quite keen on it going back to sleep now, thank you very much. I would be quite keen on him forgetting all about the garden, and Mary and whatever ‘different person’ he was back then. Because, newsflash, this isn’t then, it’s now. He’s not nineteen any more. He’s married and a father. Has he forgotten all that?
I know I shouldn’t leap to conclusions without evidence. But there is evidence. I know for a fact that in the five days since we visited the garden, Dan has been utterly preoccupied by Mary. Secretly preoccupied with her, I should clarify. On his own. Away from me.
I’m not a suspicious woman. I’m not. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to glance at my husband’s browsing history. It’s part of the intimate ebb and flow of married life. He sees my used tissues, thrown in the bin – I see the workings of his mind, all there for me to find on his laptop with no attempt at concealment.
Honestly. You’d think he’d have been more discreet.
I can’t decide if I’m pleased or not pleased that he didn’t clear his history. On the one hand it could mean he doesn’t have anything to hide. On the other hand it could mean he doesn’t have any sense of women, or