Your Roots Are Showing (8 page)

“By the way, I was just mentioning you the other day to this chappie I know who does our garden. Bruno Ardis. He’s a bit of a dish, if you know what I mean — and single.”

Lizzie narrowed her eyes above the hand that was clutching her nose in a glare that she hoped spoke volumes.

“Don’t worry, he’s not just any old gardener, you know. He used to be something in the City — mergers and acquisitions, I think he said — but he got tired of the hustle and bustle, so he chucked it all in. I gather he could well have afforded to retire, but he decided to start up a little landscaping business to keep himself busy. Anyway, I happened to bump into him the
very
same day you had me over for tea. So I just gave him a heads-up that you’d moved into the cottage and might need some cheering up — you know, I filled him in about James and everything.”

Lizzie had a mental image of her Chardonnay-soaked neighbor accosting Bruno Ardis as he weeded her borders. Her eyes widened in horror. Thank goodness she’d been sparing with the details of the breakdown of her marriage when she’d had her heart-to-heart with Ingrid.

“So don’t be surprised if he comes knocking on your door one day. Nice looking chappie, as I said. Not a patch on your James, of course, but what a sense of humor. A bit of a flirt, too. If anyone can jolly you out of the doldrums, he can. There, that’s the last of those bags for the week.” She kicked casually at an empty can of smoked oysters that had somehow made its way onto the muddy lane. “By the way, if you ever need a babysitter, just give us a ring. My daughter, Sarah, has a bit of a way with the little ones, if I say so myself. And she’s saving up for a ski trip to France next year. Toodle-oo.”

How could you bear a grudge against a woman like that?

Later that same day, Sarah herself arrived at the cottage to present her babysitting credentials. An awkward looking teenager with a mouth full of braces, she blushed when Lizzie thanked her for coming over.

“I brought this,” she said, holding out a small rainbow-colored teddy bear. “For the kids.”

Lizzie took it, touched. She called for the twins, and Ellie appeared obediently in the empty hallway. “Look, darling,” Lizzie cried, aware that she was gushing. “This is Sarah. From the barn. She brought you and Alex a teddy bear. Isn’t it lovely? What do you say?”

Alex stampeded into the room at that moment. He snatched the new toy out of Lizzie’s hand and hugged it to his middle. “Ish mine,” he growled.

Ellie’s own hand shot out and closed over the teddy’s head. “Snot yours,” she quavered. “Iss for sharing. Mummy
said
.”

A vicious tug- of-war ensued without delay. Lizzie smiled brightly at her guest. “Twins,” she said. “They’re a teeny bit — competitive. Thanks so much for coming over. I’m not sure I’ll need a babysitter. I don’t go out very much. But if I ever do, I’ll be sure to give you a ring.”

She was about to close the door on the ugly scene when Sarah suddenly ducked into the hallway and knelt down beside the children.

“Help!” she cried in a gruff little voice. “You’re stretching my tummy! You’re squishing my head! You’re pulling my legs off!”

The twins stopped tugging at once and stared, round-eyed, at the stranger.

“Phew! That’s better!” the gruff voice declared. “I won’t stay with you lot if you hurt me again. I’ll go back to the barn. So, how are you going to handle this, do you think?”

Alex was staring at the bear, now in Sarah’s hand, with a deeply buckled brow. “Sowwy,” he muttered. “Dint mean to hurt you.”

“I’m awso sorry,” Ellie added. “We got to take turns, right?”

“Right,” said the rainbow-colored bear. “So who’s the eldest?”

“Me!” yelled Alex, slapping his chest.

“Okay, you get to take me first,” said the bear, and shuffled along the carpet in the boy’s direction.

“An’ I take you next,” said Ellie happily. She smiled up at Sarah. “Come see our room,” she invited.

Sarah glanced at Lizzie. “Go ahead,” Lizzie said with a shrug. As they walked off, she heard Ellie asking, “Why you got that shiny stuff in your mouf?”

Lizzie couldn’t help smiling. If she ever developed a social life, at least she’d have a capable babysitter lined up.

For someone who didn’t have a social life, Lizzie had a very busy doorbell. Moments after she’d come in from dropping the children off at nursery school the next morning, someone rang it long and loud.

In spite of herself, Lizzie’s spirits lifted slightly. She padded off in socks, torn old jeans, and an oversized gray sweatshirt to see who it was.

These days she didn’t bother about niceties like mascara and lipstick. It was quite enough effort just to drag a brush through her hair after she’d cleaned her teeth. Today she was looking particularly disheveled because she’d literally grabbed her clothes from the puddle of unsorted laundry that lay on her bedroom floor. She was probably smelly too, since she hadn’t bothered to take a shower for a day or so.

“Oh. It’s you.”

Twinkling up at her from the bottom stair of her doorstep stood Bruno Ardis. Madge wagged her tail at his side. Under his left arm he carried a bristling assortment of garden tools, and he’d taken the liberty of laying out several trays of seedlings on the steps.

“You up for some gardening this morning?” he asked.

It was hard to stonewall a man who’d mowed your lawn for free. Perhaps that was his strategy — though why he bothered, Lizzie couldn’t imagine.

“What if I say no?”

“I’ll just go and plant these next door. I’m sure Ingrid would enjoy a spot of color in her front border.”

“I have to tell you, I hate people just turning up to see me out of the blue.”

“Then you’ll have to give me your phone number.”

To change the subject, Lizzie took a step outside and bent to examine the plants he’d brought. “What are they?”

“Violas. Aren’t they sweet? If we put them in now and look after them properly, you should get blooms all through the summer. They’re pretty low maintenance, really. Just keep the soil moist and make sure the weeds don’t choke them. Think you can manage that?”

“It’s a wonder nobody has got round to choking
you
,” she snapped. “Just because I didn’t know about nettle runners and ground elder doesn’t mean I’m brain dead at gardening. It’s just that I’ve never done it before.”

Bruno laughed and ran his fingers through his dark curls. “A virgin gardener! And I get to show you the ins and outs! Lucky old me.”

Lizzie stuck her finger into the moist potting soil around one tiny, fragile plant. It had a single, perfect, purple bloom. “Okay,” she sighed. “Let’s plant the ruddy things out, but please, no more of your wit. Let’s just assume I’m scintillated and leave it at that.” After a sleepless night replaying her entire life in her head, and especially all scenes involving James, she was in no mood for sexual innuendo masquerading as humor.

“Ouch. What’s the matter — bad night’s sleep?”

“Yup,” said Lizzie, taking a tray of plants and heading off toward the front of the house. “Nothing new there, though. I don’t think I’ve had a decent night’s sleep since my third trimester.”

He gazed at her with raised eyebrows. “Since — when?”

“Since the last months of my pregnancy, more than three flipping years ago,” she explained wearily. “I can tell you’ve never been married. You just don’t understand the language.”

“We can’t plant these over there,” he said evenly, gesturing at the border she’d begun to attack with a trowel. “No sun. I was thinking of the beds along the garden path, back here.”

He walked off to the shed — now cleared of toxins and crammed with outdoor toys — and came back with the rickety wheelbarrow. He loaded it with plants and tools and trundled off to the bed near the gate. Then he picked up a long-handled fork and began turning the soil over. Grudgingly, Lizzie came over to join him, clutching a trowel. Madge kept dropping a dirty old tennis ball in front of Bruno, and he kept kicking it away across the lawn. Lizzie didn’t feel like talking, so she just stayed quiet and contemplated the general earthiness of the dirt.

“As a matter of fact, I have been married,” Bruno said after a while. “I’m a gay divorcé, just like you. That’s sort of why I keep showing up on your doorstep. I know how it feels, those early days. Not a time to be alone in a new place. Ingrid’s been a bit worried about you too, to be honest. Said you were drinking wine at tea time, that sort of thing. So between the two of us, we’re keeping an eye. Anyway, my wife and I, we didn’t have kids, so I don’t know the pregnancy argot.”

For a moment, Lizzie was stumped. She simply sat back and looked at him, aware of a slight feeling of, yes, disappointment. Okay, she’d thought it a bit odd that Bruno seemed attracted to her, in her current state of disrepair. But it was still demoralizing to reflect that his flattering interest amounted to little more than a mercy mission.

He seemed a bit tense, talking about his divorce. Maybe he was still smarting. Maybe he too suffered from insomnia and, when he did manage to sleep, maybe he too always woke with a horrible jolt, sweaty and panic-stricken because the other side of the bed was empty. Lizzie could feel her eyes filling with tears. She blinked, took up her trowel, and began to dig furiously.

“I’m not divorced — yet — and you’re certainly not gay,” she said in a bit of a wobbly voice.

“Not such a deep hole,” he replied, gesturing at her feverish trowel. “We want to plant it, not bury it.”

“Okay, okay, I was just being thorough.” She was glad he didn’t offer any sympathy. Sympathy always undid her.

“That’s about right,” he said as she tipped earth back into the hole. “Now, could you possibly fill up this watering can?”

Lizzie trailed into the house with the large metal watering can, glad of the chance to blow her nose in private, but wondering why on earth there wasn’t an outside tap. It was so awkward angling the can into the kitchen sink. Walking back out with the full can, slopping on the sludge-colored carpet as she went, she felt as if her right arm were being stretched several inches longer than her left.

“Why do men have muscles if they never do the grunt work?” she complained loudly. “Why is it that with their massive biceps and triceps and forceps and whatnot, they’re generally the ones sitting behind an office desk pushing a pen while weedy women cart ten-ton toddlers and trolley-loads of groceries around?”

As she reached the doorstep, she saw that Bruno had company. Someone in sporty stretch pants and a trendy quilted vest was leaning casually against the garden gate, chatting to him. It took her a tenth of a second to realize it was Tessa.

Two unexpected visitors on the same morning. Really, it was too much.

“Tessa, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you working?” She had to admit it, she was a little stung to see Bruno grinning so appreciatively at Tessa’s legs.

“Yes, I’m delighted to see you too,” Tessa quipped back. “Can you spare me a minute, or should I come back later?”

Lizzie glanced at Bruno busily planting violas. “What do you reckon?” she asked.

“Oh, go ahead, have a cup of tea with your mate,” he said. “I’m nearly finished here, anyway. Just hand over the watering can. You’ll have to douse them some more later.”

“Can I at least bring you out a cup of tea?” Lizzie asked.

“Nah, thanks anyway, but I have to get on,” Bruno grinned. “I’ll take you up on it next time, okay? When you’re alone.” And with a huge wink and nudging motion of his left elbow, he turned his back on them and set to work again.

Tessa looked from Lizzie to Bruno and back again, a broad grin breaking out on her face. Ignoring this grin, Lizzie led the way inside and to the kitchen, where she turned on the electric kettle and opened a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.

“So that’s Bruno, is it?” Tessa asked quite unnecessarily as she took a biscuit and began to lick the top off it. She only ever allowed herself one and she liked to make it last.

“So he tells me,” said Lizzie.

“Not bad,” Tessa pronounced. “Why didn’t you say he was so yummy? The way you described him, I thought he was some pot-bellied, middle-aged loser with no mates.”

Lizzie shrugged. “Is he yummy? I wouldn’t know. I’ve pretty much lost interest in that sort of thing.”

Tessa snorted with derision. “Yes, he’s yummy. You
must
have noticed.”

Lizzie sighed as she put tea bags in mismatched mugs. “Okay, so he’s not bad looking. I didn’t think that was so important. Why would you want to know? You’re happily married. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m happily married. But I’ve still got eyes in my head.”

“All right, all right. So what’s going on? Why’d you take the time off? It’s not —? You didn’t come to tell me —?” She didn’t dare put the question into words — and surely Tessa wouldn’t be wearing quite such tight pants if she’d just found out she was pregnant.

Tessa popped the last morsel of biscuit into her mouth and licked her fingers daintily. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “I won’t know for a bit, will I? The thing is, Lizzie, I thought it was time we developed a bit of a campaign.”

“A campaign?” Lizzie poured boiling water onto the tea bags and set the mugs on a tray with a bottle of milk and a recycled yogurt carton full of sugar. No milk jugs and sugar basins in this fine establishment. Tessa drank her tea black, of course, but Lizzie liked all the extras. “Come on, let’s go and sit down. Grab the biscuits, will you? What sort of a campaign are we talking about?”

As they settled themselves on the sofa in the lounge, Tessa said, “We’re talking about a campaign for
you
, of course. To get things back to normal with James. Look, I just can’t stand by and watch you give up on him like this! The two of you are meant to be together! You know what, Lizzie? You’ve got to pull yourself together again. I mean, you really have to get to grips with this whole no-sex-drive problem. If you can just get back to being your old self, I’m sure things will sort themselves out on the marriage front.”

Lizzie felt her color rising. “Tessa, really, I don’t want to talk about it . . .”

“Lizzie, do you want him back or don’t you?”