They didn’t get their sustenance from the ground, so they didn’t have normal roots, but something more like tentacles that allowed them to move around, if they had a mind to. Growing up alone at Half Moon House, the black apple trees had often seemed like the only friends Beatrice had; but, even more importantly, they were constant proof that she had not imagined the garden. If it weren’t for the apple trees, then she might have thought she’d dreamed it all.

They could be hostile to people who irritated or threatened them, but they had always been affectionate towards Beatrice, as if they recognised that she was the one who had planted and nurtured them. Once, when she’d been particularly low, they had even joined together to make her a magnificent treehouse that took up the entire orchard, forming a castle of rooms with their branches, and turreted roofs with their leaves, scenting every part with garlands of their strange blossom.

There was something in the scent that was quite irresistible to small animals and, sure enough, a tendril soon whipped out into the long grass faster than the eye could follow. There was a scuffle and it returned with a dead rabbit, which it drew to the base of its trunk. The craggy bark peeled back just far enough to push the rabbit inside. Beatrice caught the briefest glimpse of glistening teeth and a wet black tongue before the trunk closed over it again. The only sign of what had happened was the small trail of blood seeping slowly into the dirt.

The trees gathered close around her, and soon she had leaves and branches and tendrils curled around her shoulders and waist and arms. They squeezed her just a little tighter than she would have liked, and she knew they didn’t want her to go. She saw their sorrow in the sticky sap that trailed like tears down to their crooked roots and in the way their thin leaves shivered in the still summer evening.

‘Don’t worry,’ Beatrice said quietly, knowing that she would not stammer in front of her strange, spindly friends. ‘And don’t be sad. I might be gone for a while, but I won’t be gone forever.’

How could she explain to the trees that, whilst she loved Half Moon House fiercely, sometimes she also wanted to be as far away from it as possible?

‘I’ll come back to you, I promise,’ she said. ‘And I’ll bring the rest of the garden with me if I can.’

CHAPTER FOUR