‘Top of the garden?’

‘Once a temple, you know. To a deity. Where offerings were made. For wisdom. Protection. Fertility. Courage.’ The woman turns her face to the vicarage and her smile fades, her expression growing grave. Between her gloved fingers she twists a stick. ‘You know what happened here?’

‘Afraid I don’t know much history.’

‘With Flo?’

‘Not really. Her daughter . . . Flo thinks my nipper is her daughter.’

‘Little Lottie. Beautiful child. A terrible business. Florence never survived the loss of little Lottie. She merely functioned. Though we did what we could. As neighbours. Friends. Sisters, if you like.’ The woman bends to take up another stick and with her nimble hands begins to trim it of leaves and buds.

‘Terrible. I can’t imagine . . . I don’t let myself.’

The woman nods agreement. ‘You know, when Florence first became ill, she told me she considered dementia a blessing. So that she could forget. Her pain. It was the last thing she said to me.’ The woman sighs and casually returns to her work.

Though eager for more, Jess considers herself dismissed. She checks her watch and drifts back to the vicarage.

30

Flo in her chair, gazing out at the garden. No change there. But much of the glass and wood in the living room now shines from Jess’s deep clean.

Working near Flo on tasks she conducts with a little anger, Jess sprays and dusts the glass-fronted cabinet that hoards the ancient shards of pottery and the weathered artefacts. The final cabinet to be cleaned. Behind her shoulder, Flo watches intently, silently, before drawing an anticlockwise circle in the air before her chair.

As Jess wipes the glass clear, the withered black hand upon the shelf passes from murk to clarity, from shadow to light, and glimmers like old leather. Newly appalled by what might not be a glove after all, Jess turns away.

* * *

From the window of Flo’s bedroom, Jess peers out at the garden to check on her client.

Flo sits motionlessly on the lawn. An installation of a frail, barely living woman inside a wheelchair. She wears a red robe over a white nightdress. Her lumpy feet are concealed inside a pair of red slippers.

As ever, Flo gazes at the grove at the top of the garden. The shimmer of the pond’s black water is partially visible through the fringe of trees.

‘This can’t go on,’ Jess says and turns from the window.

She goes to the bureau, the antique article of furniture in which she found Flo’s family photographs, and pulls open the drawer below the one that contained the pictures. With a clunk, it slides out as far as it can go.

Jess raises a thick folder of paper correspondence from the drawer and leafs through the bundle of letter-headed documents inside. At a glance, they’re official records and statements. An administrative history.