Page 9 of We Live Here Now

8

Emily

The sun shines winter-morning bright, and even the heavy wallpapers and dark wood floor seem lighter as I leave Freddie rummaging for pliers to pull up the nail and wrap up against the cold to go and check out the garden.

I can’t believe how much outside space there is. The garden of our London flat was a tiny patio with space for a bench and a few plants, and now we’ve gone from one extreme to the other. At the bottom of what is technically the garden, maybe eighty feet of unkept lawn frozen by winter, there’s a pond hidden by overgrown reeds, and then to the right there’s a small orchard, branches skeleton bare, and beyond that what looks like a composting pile.

Down a few uneven steps to the left—which I take carefully, one at a time, my stick wedged firm on the stone—there’s an overgrown path that leads to two outbuildings. A shed that Freddie’s used to store our old attic boxes, and a tiny stone building that maybe once housed pigs or goats. The door is low and it’s pitch-black inside. I peek in but don’t venture farther, the air dank and cold and musty.

I can see another run-down structure with half a corrugated iron roof and what looks like an old septic tank that’s going to need removing or replacing. It’s shadier here, the cold cutting through me, and I turn back with a shiver, wanting the sunlight. It’s a lot of land, but that also means a lot of work. Work . I still can’t believe they let me go. From newly appointed director of marketing leading three major campaigns and a ? 90,000 salary to unemployed.

It’s a punch in the solar plexus every time I think about it. I’ve always loved working. It’s something of my own that I can rely on. Have self-worth over. I was good at my job. My parents never had very much, and while they were happy, I’ve never shaken that need to have my own income. To succeed. Freddie comes from a family of old-fashioned values—his mum stayed home and raised the children—and while I may have got caught up with thinking I wanted that too when we got together, babies and baking, it isn’t really me.

In the quiet of the garden, I feel entirely alone. I worked so hard for that job. Did something I don’t like to think about. Something with consequences that hurt me more than I thought possible.

Yet here I am, jobless, after draining the company’s health insurance with my very expensive long hospital stay and with a year’s more recovery to go, as if God is punishing me. Maybe the garden can be my project. Distract me from my guilt. Suddenly sad again, I turn away from the overgrown, forgotten wild and head down the side of the house.

The air is icy but so clean, and there’s no wind, the sun warm on my hair, and, as I come alongside a downstairs window, I see that the dead bird I put outside is already gone. I can pretend I never found it at all. It never died. It was never here. That thought makes me sad again.

It never died. It was never here.

My leg throbs with sudden sharp pain, momentarily draining all the color from the world. Leaning on my stick, I hobble toward the front, where the entrance to the house is level, and as my breath catches at the sudden desolate majesty of the frozen moors beyond the road and the rock wall, I hear a raven cry. I shield my eyes against the low sun and make my way down to the bottom of the drive, curious to see if it’s the same bird I freed last night.

“Ghastly grim and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.”

The voice startles me, and as I catch sight of black wings flapping skyward, my sunstruck eyes make out the outline of a woman standing in the road.

I’ve reached the bottom of the drive, and the woman comes forward into the shade where I can see her. “Edgar Allan Poe?” I ask.

“Yes.” She’s slim and blond, in her late forties maybe, her hair swept up in a messy but stylish chignon. Instead of a coat she has a long, thick cardigan wrapped around her, which surely isn’t enough to keep the bitter cold out, watery sunlight or not, and her jeans are tucked into UGG-style boots.

She’s looking not at me but up at the house, and I can’t quite figure out her expression. Wistful perhaps, but there’s a wariness, a darkness there. I notice she doesn’t come onto the drive just as I don’t step onto the road.

“I heard someone had bought the Lodge.” Her head tilts sideways, her eyes still not on me. “I had to come and see for myself if it was true.”

“Yes, we have. My husband, Freddie, is inside. We’ve…”

My sentence drifts to a stop. She’s not listening. She’s already walking back down the lane, hugging herself in the cardigan, as if she hadn’t really seen me at all. At least she spoke to me , I tell myself wryly. That’s more than you get early morning in central London.

I head back toward the house, prettier in daylight than it had been in the gray of yesterday, and while its facade is still maudlin, there’s nothing a fresh lick of bright paint won’t cure. As I take it all in, I get a surprising rush of joy that this big house is ours. Away from London. Away from it all.

Up above, in the floor I’ve yet to see, sunlight hits the beautiful arch window, and suddenly it looks like the house winks at me.