Page 72 of Love and Loathing

“A shift in strategy, perhaps.”

She paused for a moment, remembering whose strategy it had been in the first place. Aubrey tensed, calmly adjusting his trouser leg where he sat, apparently perfectly at ease, one ankle on his knee, looking at the mud on his shoe with a frown, heart hammering so hard he was surprised he didn’t shake.

But Evie just said, “I guess so.”

He glanced up, and she was looking around the room, still dazed. She picked up a random piece of paper, started absently to fold it into squares. “But who bought it, Aubrey? That’s what I can’t understand. And why gift it to me? The solicitor couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me anything, just that it had been done in the name of a company called EP. But what’s EP? I couldn’t find anything helpful online. There was quite a lot of publicity when the place got shut down. Zig and Fi managed to kick up quite a lot of noise, in the local press anyway. Maybe it was some eccentric, philanthropic millionaire—it’d have to be. A site like this in London is worth two million, easily. I thought maybe one of my brothers… But Roscoe’s money is all tied up in his business and Hugo’s never been good at saving. Everything he has now gets ploughed back into the estate. Besides… They’re fairly decent as far as brothers go, but they’d never do something like this.”

“Mm,” Aubrey said. “A mystery.”

Evie stood up again, tossing the folded square back onto the desk. She gave a sharp sigh of frustration. “I wish I could thank them! It’s just… It’s beyond anything.”

“I suspect they’re just pleased that you’re pleased.”

“I can’t let them down,” Evie said firmly. “I have to make this place even more wonderful than before. We’re already going back to our funders, contacting everyone who helped us before. Zig and Fi are— Oh, speak of the devils.” She grinned as a young man rapped on the open door and poked his head through.

“Evie, we need—”

“Zig, Fi. Come in. You should meet Aubrey Ford.”

Aubrey got to his feet, not missing the quelling look Evie gave her friends: the fierce instruction to be on best behaviour.

“Zig, and his girlfriend Fiona,” she introduced them. The fair-haired man held out his hand reluctantly, and Aubrey was delighted to shake the thin, work-grimed fingers, all his nightmare visions of Zig as a flaxen-haired wood-elf of Viking stature deflating. And the man was already taken. It was perfect.

“Wonderful to meet you,” Aubrey said, almost entirely honestly.

“Are you here to help, then?” Zig asked, belligerent despite Evie’s best efforts.

“We’re clearing the site,” Fiona explained in a more reasonable tone, though still very cool. “There’s a skip arriving tomorrow. We’ll keep what we think we can use.”

“To rebuild the garden,” Zig added unnecessarily. “The way it used to be. Before you—”

“Right,” Evie said briskly, clapping her hands and making shooing motions towards the door. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

THIRTY

Evie watched Zig andFi leave the portacabin with relief, her pulse still racing. It was so strange, so risky, having these two parts of her world collide, Zig and Fi both knowing why she had been sent to Conyers, what she had intended to do to Aubrey. She’d pleaded with them not to say anything, explained how things were now, but Zig had been scornful, and Fiona quietly disappointed.

“You don’t really have to help,” she said to Aubrey, not quite meeting his eyes. “Think of your poor shoes.”

She heard the laugh in his voice. “My shoes will survive.” But she didn’t feel she could meet his eyes fully yet, couldn’t quite act natural, not with the memory of his laptop on her knee suddenly fresh in her mind. But she hadn’t done it, she reminded herself fiercely. Surely that was what mattered? She hadn’t done it. And he would never know.

“Come on, then,” she said, leading the way back outside.

It was cold, drizzling again, the afternoon rapidly fading to the dull, brown murk of a late autumn evening. Winter was inthe air, in the sharpness of the breeze. But it had been like this last year. Doing what they could in the brief daylight hours, no money for spotlights. Fingers red and stinging with cold, noses running, huddling round a camp stove and drinking scalding tea from chipped, steaming mugs. She’d loved every second. And this time would be better still, because despite the pressure of responsibility that squeezed her chest at the thought, this place was now hers. Forever. There would be a garden here for generations—she would set up a trust, something that protected the space after her death. And the people living in the crowded streets, the children in the gardenless tower blocks, they’d all have somewhere green and alive that was their very own, safe, a little gem of green saved from the relentless spreading concrete.

Maybe it wasn’t wise bringing Aubrey here, letting him talk to Zig and Fi, but she hadn’t even hesitated. She’d wanted him here, needed to share this with him. It wasn’t like she could keep this a secret anyway. It was too big. One of the biggest, most wonderful things that had ever happened to her. And her first thought had been to tell him.

She looked around the site now, wondering if this could be it—the thing she focused on. Urban gardens, urban greenspaces, something that connected the two things she cared most about: people and nature. A wave of excitement ran through her.

“Where do you want me, then?” Aubrey asked, surveying the muddy, grubby scene. She laughed at his expression.

“It’ll be beautiful one day, I promise.” She gestured ahead of her. “There’ll be apple trees there, and pears, and blackcurrant bushes. And beds of strawberries, and potatoes growing in old tyres, and peas trailing all over the place. There’ll be butterflies, Aubrey, and bees. Birds singing.”

He rolled his eyes, though he was smiling. “Children laughing and rainbows everywhere?”

“Yes!” She tapped him lightly on the chest. “You’ll see.”

“I believe you,” he said, then he kissed her, hands either side of her face, searingly sweet and all too quick. He pulled back, smiling, eyes warm, and she felt a bizarre sting of something like tears. Ridiculous Evie. Crying over pigeons. Crying because she was happy.

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