you,’ he says, and I frown, because that seems to be hardly at all, these days.
‘Will you come in?’ I call, as he walks away. ‘For a cup of tea?’
‘Not today.’ He doesn’t even turn; he’s through his gate and gone before I can clock that he’s turned me down.
This is irritating. As much as Arnold and I have always been at each other’s throats, I’ve always thought … I’ve always had the impression … Well, I never invited him for tea, but I knew that if I did, he’d come. Let’s put it that way.
Only now it seems something’s changed.
I narrow my eyes at his house. It’s clear that whatever is wrong, Arnold’s not going to talk to me about it any time soon.
Sometimes, with obstinate people like Arnold, you have no choice but to force their hand.
*
‘What have you done?’ Arnold roars through the kitchen window.
I put my book down, carefully popping my bookmark in the right place.
‘Eileen Cotton! Get in here now!’
‘In where?’ I ask innocently, stepping into the kitchen. ‘For you to ask me in anywhere, Arnold, you’d have to be in there too, and you seem to be outside, to my eye.’
Arnold’s cheeks are flushed with rage. His glasses are a little askew; I have a strange desire to open the window, reach through, and straighten them up again.
‘The hedge. Is gone.’
‘Oh, the hedge between your garden and mine?’ I say airily, reaching for the cloth by the sink and giving the sideboard a wipe. ‘Yes. I had Basil’s nephew chop it down.’
‘When?’ Arnold asks. ‘It was there yesterday!’
‘Overnight,’ I say. ‘He says he works best by torchlight.’
‘He says no such thing,’ Arnold says, nose almost pressed to the glass. ‘You got him to do it at night-time so I wouldn’t know! What were you thinking, Eileen? There’s no boundary! There’s just … one big garden!’
‘Isn’t it nice?’ I say. I’m being terribly nonchalant and wiping down all the surfaces, but I can’t help sneaking little glances at his ruby-red face. ‘So much more light.’
‘What on earth did you do it for?’ Arnold asks, exasperated. ‘You fought tooth and nail to keep that hedge back when I wanted it replaced with a fence.’
‘Yes, well, times change,’ I say, rinsing out the cloth and smiling out at Arnold. ‘I decided, since you were so reluctant to come around, I’d make it easier for you.’
Arnold stares at me through the glass. We’re only a couple of feet apart; I can see how wide the pupils are in his hazel eyes.
‘My God,’ he says, stepping backwards. ‘My God, you did this just to brass me off, didn’t you?’ He starts to laugh. ‘You know, Eileen Cotton, you are no better than a teenage boy with a crush. What next? Pulling my hair?’
I bristle. ‘I beg your pardon!’ Then, because I can’t resist: ‘And I wouldn’t like to risk what’s left of it by giving it a tug.’
‘You are a ridiculous woman!’
‘And you are a ridiculous man. Coming in here, telling me you missed me, then marching off and not talking to me for days on end? What’s the matter with you?’
‘What’s the matter with me?’ His breath is misting the glass. ‘I’m not the one who just hacked down a perfectly serviceable hedge in the middle of the night!’
‘Do you really want to know why I did it, Arnold?’
‘Yes. I really do.’
I chuck the wet cloth down. ‘I thought it would be funny.’
He narrows his eyes. ‘Funny?’
‘Yes. You and me, we’ve spent decades fighting over who owns what, whose trees are shading whose flowerbeds, who’s responsible for pruning which bush. You’ve got grumpier and grumpier and I’ve got snarkier and snarkier. And do you know what we’ve really been talking about all that time, Arnold? We’ve been talking about what happened the very first time we met.’
Arnold opens and closes his mouth.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. I know you haven’t.’
His mouth closes, a firm line. ‘I’ve not forgotten.’
Arnold was married to Regina, Jackson’s mother. A strange woman, blocky-shouldered like she was most at home in the eighties, her hair tightly curled and her fists usually clenched. And I was married to Wade.
‘Nothing happened,’ Arnold reminds me.
My hands are spread, leaning on the worktop on either side of the sink. Arnold is framed in a pane of glass, cut off at the shoulder like a portrait.
‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’ve always told myself, too. No point dwelling on it. Certainly no use talking about it. Since nothing happened.’
‘Quite