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. " why would i ? it's nothing to do with me ."
" you know perfectly well why you would ."
she hauled a pair of gardening gloves out of her handlbag " may i take a look in the shed ?"
i bent over felix . " why don't you show mrs . i loyd the shed , and i'll talk to luvcas ." but felix refused to cooperate and clung to my hand . as we passed the lilac trees , rose paused and pulled a branch toward her for inspection . she exclaimed sofily at its condition  , then allowd it to snap back .
weakened by neglect , the shed door shuddered when rose opened it . the interior was festooned in spiders ' webs a garden fork was propped against the wall , its tines caked with earth . there was a rusty trowed , a spade , and a stack of flowerpots . a packet of fertilizer stood in a conner , so old that it had hardened into a  lump . i prodded it with my foot ." nathan always meant to take this to the council dump ."
while i cornered lucas and ordered him to return blanky . rose ferreted around in the shed . she emerged with the fork and a trug with a splintered handle , into which she had teased a handful of the fertilizer ." now ..." she catalogued the wandering lines of the lawn , the tangle of weed and grass , the unpruned clematis . she shaded her eyes with a hand , and i knew she was peering into the past ." if i'm truthful .i didn't want you to be a gardener , minty , certainly not in my garden ."
her eyes betrayed a sudden amusement ." but , i needn't have worried ." she picked up the package ." where shall i plant this rose ?"
"i don't want it ."
her fingers curled round it protectectively ." but nathan sent it .

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. "probably " i flappede a hand at a damaged section of the fence ." the boys ball games . it ought to be mened but i was naver interestd in  it . nathan isn't ...i mean nathan wasn't occasionally . he had a fit of conscience and did a bit of digging . when i moved in here . he said that it had been your thing , not his . i took the implication to be that it was not mine either ."
"poor minty ." said rose , ultra-dry ." what a lot you had to put up with ."
there are a about behind the shed and felix emerged   red faced and wailing .' mum . he lit me ." he flung himself against my knees .
"shush ." i said  ." he didn't mean it ."
felix wail;ed hander and shook him gently ." shush , felix . say hallo to mas lloyd ."
but felix decided that he wanted a scene and upped the decibes  . "dontn't show me up .' i whispered to him at which felix threw himself down on the lawn and kicked his legs in the air . he looked like an angry insect . out of conner  of my eye . i caught sight of a grining lucas waving a stick to which he had attached felix's blanky . i transferred my attention back to the insect ,  who was now roaring . i tapped his bottom ." stop it " i said  sternly , which had no effect .
rose said .' oh   dear , " in the amused way that onlookers have when they really wat to say ." don't you have any control over your children ?" the blach rage , with which i was becoming familiar , swept over me . it was an ugly emotion and i manhandled the screaming felix upright more roughly than i should have done ." don't you dare say anything . rose ".

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. " ah ." said rose . she bent down and tugged at an elderly lavender bush ." you didn't care for my garden . you never did . "
rough moss infested grass . shrubs that required pruning . overgrown flowerbeds , these were the casual outrages , the result of nathan's and my neglect . "no , i never did .""
she straightened up , a sprig of lavender  in her fingers . funny , that i imagined that every blade of grass  and leaf would be imprinted on my memory  . but once you leave a place , you leave . or rather , it leaves you ."
i had devoted not inconsiderable time to imagining rose's feeling on being banished from her garden  ." you mean you forgot about it ?"
" no , i would never forget about it  ." she rolled the lavender between her fingers . " it holds the early days ....of us ...of me . but it wa no longer central ...."
"height , route , and rest ?" i asked ." did you build those in ?"
"height ? route ..." puzzle , she frowned . then her brow cleared ." you 're talking about the plan i sent to nathan ? did you like them ? he asked me for some ideas , and it sort of took off ."
"actually . he never mentioned them . i fiound them in a notebook ."
"oh ."  rose flushed fiery red , and her lips tightened ." if you like , i can send you what i suggested . i have a copy ."
" no , " i said ." no "
after a moment , she added . " i don't think natan liked it that i didn't mind doing the plans . i had an ideas  that he wanted me to say that i'd have nothing to do with it . i think he was surprised that i didn't mind . anyway . tjhat was why he ordered the rose , on't you think ?"

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. " even so ." i said bitterly . ' i don't want you involved with them ."
"for goodness ' sake ! " she flashed at me . " do you think i want to be ?she checked herself ." sorry ."
" i've realezed i didn't know nathan at all ."
rose sighed and said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world . " that 's what i thiought when he left . it astonished me how little . i knew about someone . i had lived with for so long . it happens all the time , and it's probably better that you can't pry into every nook and cranny of someone 's mind ."
" sometimes , i wonder  if nathan was so bored that he dreamed up the guardian scheme because it gave him something to think about  . " i knew perfectly well that i was traducing him .
rose evidently agree ." if you think nathan would have been so selfish .... " she sent me a glances that suggested that no bridge would ever span far or wide enough to connect us ." he was only thinking about much enthusiasm  . ' shall we get on with this ?"
smarting . i led he into the garden . but if i had been wrong to accuse nathan of self-gratification . it did not mean that his motives had been enirely pure .
the twins had burrowed out of sight behind the shed . on our reture from cornwall , their heads filled with tales of pirates and rock fortresses , they had set up a camp , which , they had informed me , was ver , very private .
" where are they ?" asked rose .
i pointed to the shed ." in their headquartes . i think it's the jedi battle command ."

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.but nice ." her eyes flicked toward the door ." how are you boys ?
are they in ?"
again i bristled . " they are in the garden .'
her eyes drifted past  my left shoulder to the back door  ." i didn't catched more than a glimpse of them at the funeral . it .... gave me quite a shock to see how like nathan they are , is felix the one with the slightly fairer hair ?"
"no . that 's lucas ."
' they seemed big for five-year-olds .
" they're six ." i said . they were six in march ."
"" sam was nothing like nathan until he was eighteen or so , then he turned into nathan's clone . iwionder if they're going to be tall like nathan ?"
"i have no idea ."
if rose imagined that she could spread her soft maternal wings over my childrren , she was wrong , wrong . i could never fault her as a mother , natan said never .
i gestured toward the kettele  ." can i make you some coffee ?"
"no, thank you ."
the shadows of four children fell ove the ensuing hard , cold silence .
i broke it . " the twins are not your business , rose i don't know what nathan was doin when he made that extraordinary ....."- i dropped my voice - " that senseless request . was he having a huge joke at our expense ? if i die or end up paraplegic or mad , my children will be with you . what was he thinking of ?"
she moved restlessly . " don't make too big a deal of it . minty . it's optional and not likely to happen ."

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.              chapter seventeen
. rose walked into the hall and waited . her gaze traveled over the unopened post on the table , to the moraine of shoes and jackets at the foot of stairs and the pile of ironing on the chair .
"don't look at untidy it is , " i said , "it's been difficult ."
"of course ." of course , you won't have been able to cpoe ." she fixed on nathan's coat , still on the peg ." when nathan left , it was the samre , stuff everywhere . no sense to the day . no shape ."
i bristle ." do we need to rake over old ground ?"
" there isn't any point in preending that what happened didn't ." rose 's shrug had changed . it was no longer weary and burdened , as it had been years ago , but a light and sophisticated an almost gallic ,  gesture .
i led her into the kitchen . she placed the package on the kitchen table ." you're made it nice ." she said ' different but

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. i thrust the package back at her ." go away . don't come back ."
rose should have obeyed . any reasonable person would have done so . a reasonable person would have seen where the line had been drawn , and that the old loyalties were finally dead .
but she was not prepared to give up ." it's a plant for the garden . he must have ordered it months ago ."
" a plant ? what on earth for ? he rarely went into the garden ."
" you know he was thinking of redoing it . in fact , he was quite excited at the idea ." she pointed to the package ." it deserves a chance , don't you think ?"
" why ?"
" lots of reasons , not least that nathan obviously wanted a rose ."
"it's a rose ?"
" a while one ."
the urge to throw back my head and laugh hysterically at this extra twist of the knife was strong ." i don't know anything about olants ,"
" but i do ,"
it was ridiculous . nathan shoul have been more careful , but then , in conflating his tow wives , he was making a point . or perhaps hew reached a fork in the road where he had been too tired to consult the map ." you want to come in and plant this thing ?"
"well , yes , i don't feel we can waste it , under the circumstrances .'
i thought of all the reasons why i would not want rose to come inside the house , bearing this muddle gilf from nathan .
" i haven't much time ." she shifted the package to her other hand and checked her watch , a plain square cartier that rested on a tanned wrist ." so?"
across the road , mrs . austen was entranced by this dramma on the doorstep . she put down her fork and wiped her hands on her blue and white apron. any minute now , and she would cross the road and push herself onto rose and me .
i stepped aside ." you'd better come in ."