Before She Was Mine (2 page)

When I tell people I work in a nursery, I like to watch their faces. ‘Oh,’ they say doubtfully, ‘do you really?’ The expressions of relief when I
explain it’s the plant kind, not kids, because I know full well they’ve been trying to imagine me with my orange hair and black eyeliner looming over some bawling infant. Luckily no
seedling has ever been traumatised by my appearance.

So then it’s, ‘I see. You mean a garden centre.’ Because they’ve got me installed in one of those vast Percy Thrower emporiums, the ones that sell floral china mugs and
scented candles, fluffy toy owls and hamster mazes and Barbour jackets. Whereas our outfit’s not much bigger than a school playground, and our only non-garden sideline is ice cream in the
summer. Or, for the winter, Christmas decs. We shift a fair few of those around now, though Ray insists on a garden theme – spray-painted fir cones, silk poinsettias, resin berries. Fair
enough. It’s his shop. Bird food sells steadily, and pansies, violas, some of the bare-root hedging plants, but if it wasn’t for December 25th, we’d have a lean time of it this
quarter.

I was in Greenhouse One watering the indoor plants – an acceptable gift for every occasion, just ask and we’ll stick a ribbon round the pot – when the shop alarm buzzed. From
spring to autumn the counter’s staffed, but during winter when it’s quiet Ray has us on general maintenance. It makes sense. No point paying someone to gaze at a wall of seed packets
all day. I put down my can, wiped my hands, and went to serve.

My heart gave a little skip of pleasure when I rounded the corner and saw the frog-green Mazda parked by the gate. Christian was standing just inside the shop entrance, waiting.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I was hoping it would be you.’

I felt myself begin to glow. There are some people you meet in life who light a place up simply by being there. They smile and the sun comes out, they drop a compliment and you’re bathed
in warmth for hours afterwards. Christian’s not just young and fair and good-looking; he’s genuinely charming, a nice bloke, a man you want to be around. You can’t help
yourself.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ I said.

‘Day off. I’m not required this session.’

‘I thought you were indispensable.’

He grinned, and it was like sparkles on water.

‘What’s your current project?’ I asked.

‘We have to film a woman in Bradford who says she can’t diet because she eats in her sleep.’

‘Honestly?’

‘That’s what the lady claims. Sleepwalks to the fridge, sleep-makes-a-sandwich, sleep-roots-through-the-freezer-after-chocolate-brownie-ice-cream. Our job’s to hang around her
kitchen in the small hours and catch her at it. Only she’s had to be rushed into hospital with a septic finger, so some of us are kicking about for a day while the producer
re-schedules.’

‘I bet he’s pleased.’

‘He won’t be sending a get well card. But all’s not lost apparently. Tomorrow we can whizz over to Nottingham to film a narcoleptic.’

He stepped back while I slid myself behind the counter.

‘Sleep disorders, is it?’

‘Yup. All delivered in our usual sympathetic style. We’re hoping to sell to
Tru-World
’s freak slot.’

Made me laugh, the way he said ‘we’. In the tiny Manchester-based film company he works for, he’s third assistant to an assistant’s assistant, right down the bottom of
the food chain. Meanwhile, back in Oxford, his parents write out cheques to keep him in petrol and M&S ready meals. As far as they’re concerned, he’s a star in waiting.

‘So why are you kicking around here? Your flat doesn’t even have a garden.’

‘I have a window box.’

‘Which you use as an ashtray.’

‘Not me.’

‘Your meedja friends, then.’

He stood there, smiling at me. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll come clean. Can I trust you with a secret, Freya?’

Fizz fizz, my insides went. He does that to you, to everyone: makes you feel as though you’re the most fascinating person in the room. It’s hard not to be sucked in by it.

‘Go on,’ I said.

He brought his face closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. Behind him a bunch of silvered beech twigs twinkled with fake frost.

‘Tonight I’ve decided I’m going to go for it. I’m going to ask Nicky to marry me, and, well, I need your help.’ Fake snow on fake berries, fake robin lurching.
‘Will you help me, Frey?’

‘’Course I will. That’s great. No question. Fab!’

I don’t know why the news shook me so much. It’s not as if I’m in
love with him.

The nursery’s only five minutes’ drive from home, so I can go back and have my dinner with Liv if I want. I considered it all the rest of the morning, as I helped
Christian pick out half a dozen standard bay trees and four hundred outdoor fairy lights and organised the trailer and booked the delivery.

‘I have this idea of an illuminated avenue,’ he explained. ‘So when she comes home, her front path’s all magical. I’ve just been round to Joan and Derek’s,
squared it with them. They’re going to wait in the kitchen till I call them through. I’ll be behind the front door, with the ring. Derek’s sorting out some champagne.’

Of course he is, I thought. What dad wouldn’t be delighted to have you as his son-in-law? I could see it all in my mind’s eye: her astonishment as she came to the end of the street
and saw the trees, the slow walk of wonder to the front step, the door opening, Christian outlined in light like the Angel of the Annunciation.

‘What do your parents think?’

‘I haven’t told them yet. It’s going to be a surprise. Obviously I’ll give them a bell as soon as I have Nicky’s answer. Do you think she’ll say
yes?’

I just looked at him.

After he’d gone, I went back to Greenhouse One and carried on watering. Then I swept the front yard and the area round the pots, unpacked a load of bulbs, filed the invoices, had my tea
break, answered a phone enquiry about hedera screens, did some deadheading and sold a door wreath. By then it was coming up to midday and I knew for definite that the place I most wanted to be was
in Liv’s kitchen eating tomato soup to the sound of Radio 4.

I couldn’t find her in the house, but when I glanced down the garden I could see the garage door was open so I guessed she was working in there.

I hunted through the cupboard next to the fridge and located a tin of soup. While my dinner was heating, I wandered into the dining room and checked the morning’s post. It was all for Liv:
a flyer from Natural England, a form from North Shropshire Council’s planning department, a receipt from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. Nothing for me, as usual. To get letters,
you have to write them, as Melody says. She doesn’t get letters, though, just parcel after parcel of clothes off eBay.

The soup began to spit so I went back through, decanted it into a mug, stuck the pan in the sink and took myself up to the garage. I found Liv kneeling over a bucket of clay which she was mixing
with her bare hands. She greeted me with her usual mild distraction.

‘Ooh, is that a cup of tea?’

‘It’s soup.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t think. I can make you one.’

She wiped her forehead with her wrist. ‘No, it’s OK, I’ve nearly finished.’

I watched her fingers knead and squelch. With her long red-grey hair spread across her brown cotton shirt she had a look of some ancient tribeswoman. She could have been grinding corn or casting
runes.

‘Was it busy at the nursery?’

‘No.’ I was thinking that now would be the time to tell her about Nicky.

‘Pass me that trowel, will you?’

I did as I was told, and Liv began to scoop out the clay and drop it onto a small plastic tray packed with wet oasis, spreading the surface smooth with the action of a plasterer, or maybe an
enthusiastic cake decorator. It was calming to watch.

‘You after some animal tracks?’

She nodded. ‘We’ve had a sighting of something small and dark-coloured by the main drain at Fenn’s dyke. It’s most likely a polecat. But just in case it’s a mink, I
thought I’d stick a tracking cartridge down.’

Mink are Liv’s nemesis. They sneak into her nature reserve and eat up her water voles and her wading birds. So she’s eternally vigilant, though it’s a fine line between
watchfulness and obsession.

At last she got to her feet and stood, pushing her hair back behind her ears. ‘Can you see the cling film anywhere, Frey?’

‘Leaning against your display boards.’

She grabbed hold of the box, laid it on the workbench, and rolled out a length of film. Then she put the tracking cartridge in the middle and proceeded to wrap up the damp clay so it was
airtight.

‘Where’s Geraint?’ I made myself ask.

‘At a Wetlands Trust conference down in Shrewsbury.’

I pictured him: the big belly and the fluffy grey beard, the round glasses, the eternal stripy sweater, the irritating sing-song of his Rhyl accent. And always a pair of binoculars hanging round
his neck like an outsize talisman. Melody calls him Bin-man. I have other names for him.

‘He says he’s stopping the night there,’ Liv went on. ‘That way he can have a beer or two in the evening while he networks.’

‘He likes his beer.’

‘He does.’

She straightened up and dusted her palms together. ‘Could you—?’

In time-honoured fashion, I ducked out of the garage and turned on the outside tap for her to rinse her hands. The trouble with clay is it gets everywhere. It dries light on dark clothing, and
dark on light. If Liv ever thinks to take in washing off the line, you can end up with a basket of clothes that need to go straight back in the machine.

‘So it’ll be just you and me tonight?’ Cloudy water spattered down onto the soil between us.

‘Uh-huh.’

Excellent.
‘Shall I do a stew for tea? It’s not too late to stick something in the crock-pot if I put it on high.’

‘Oh, would you?’ Liv was wiping her wet hands on her shirt.

‘We could have it round the fire, in bowls.’

‘I must clean out the grate, actually . . .’

‘Come in now and help me chop some veg.’

I walked ahead of her down the path, kicking aside crusts of bread, gearing myself up to tell her about Nicky.

‘We’ve definitely got onions. Well, I think we have . . .’ said Liv as we reached the back door.

Only because they last for bloody ever, I thought. But it was OK, I knew we’d had a meat delivery two days before, and there were sliced carrots in the freezer. She switched the radio on,
You and Yours
, and I dropped some tea bags into a couple of mugs to sit while I dug out a tin of tomatoes. Liv wiped down the chopping board. I said, ‘I had a bit of news
today.’

She squatted by the base unit next to the sink, opened the door and peered in.

‘Christian’s asking Nicky to marry him.’

Liv made a small noise of surprise at the back of her throat, but carried on rooting in the cupboard.
Pensions
, said the man on the radio.
Successive governments
,
tax
credit
.

‘He’s asking her tonight,’ I said.

I’d have thought she hadn’t heard, except she turned her head and raised her eyebrows at me. Then she pulled herself up, onion in hand. She placed the onion on the chopping board and
regarded it.

‘A nice bit of news, them getting married,’ I said.

‘Mmm. If it’s what she wants.’ Liv picked at the onion skin. Fragments of crackly brown came away and fluttered to the floor.

I could have hugged her for that flat remark. I so needed her not to be impressed or excited, and she wasn’t. Where ordinary mothers would have clucked and fussed, for Liv an engagement
like this barely registered in her consciousness. She wasn’t stirred to ask about place settings or dress designs or reception venues; they didn’t interest her. Fripperies, they were,
examples of needless consumption. Now if I’d told her Nicky would be releasing helium balloons at the reception, that would have grabbed her (
‘Do you know how many turtles are choked
each year by balloons landing in our coastal waters?’
).

The blade sliced wetly into onion flesh, and at the far corner of the kitchen, the kettle clicked off. I poured the tomatoes into the pot. At the back of the fridge was a bag of cubed stewing
steak. I drew it out, wrinkling my nose at the blood smell, and tore open the thin plastic with my nails. In days gone by, I thought, Liv would probably have cooed over weddings: when she was with
my dad and they were young and in love. And look at how fate paid her for it. In that sense, and that sense only, I could see the attraction of settling for an old gimmer like Geraint. He was never
going to break anyone’s heart.

Once the stew was stirred, I brewed the tea and sloshed in some milk. I wondered what Nicky was doing at this moment, in these last hours of being unengaged.

‘It is nice, she’s a nice girl,’ said Liv. ‘Tell her congratulations from me. Oh, and do you think she’d consider guests throwing bird seed instead of
confetti?’

‘She might but I bet her mum won’t.’

‘No, I bet she won’t. Ask anyway. It does no harm to ask.’

It was dark when I finished at the nursery and drove back home. The red curtains in the lounge were still open – Liv was busy on the computer in the front room – so I dragged them
closed across their ancient metal rails. I remembered her getting those curtains through
Loot
, driving down to collect them off a woman in Stoke, and the struggle we had afterwards to hang
them. I was too young to be much help and they weighed a ton, being floor-length lined velvet. So sometimes, when I’m at this big window, I get this mental flash of Liv collapsed on the sofa,
her head in her hands and a mound of red cloth at her feet.

The fire wasn’t laid either so I started on that, pushing the cold cinders through the grate, removing the tray and sweeping up the escaped ash. And as I carried the tray outside, that
reminded me of another of Liv’s domestic crises, a pan loaded like this accidentally dropped in the middle of the dining-room carpet. Everything around it grey, like a bomb had gone off.
It’s awful when you’re little and your mother cries and there’s nothing you can do about it.