You could just dig one or two up from somewhere around here and carry it back in your rucksack. But that’s down to you and your conscience. You bought a rhododendron last year from the Garden Salon and it cost more than you spent on food that week, and those things are rampant out in the wild here, so there is at least one argument there that it was not the most logical use of your finances. I also think the rhododendron is going to start blocking out your light in the kitchen soon. It’s already swamped the bellflowers and Welsh poppies that came from offcuts from Reka’s garden. Oh, you are going to take this fern out? No, you’re just feeling it, to see how easy it would be. OK. That thing you can feel buried in the soil next to the roots is a golf ball. This bit of land we are now walking across was a golf course. It closed sixteen years ago. The moor has reclaimed it.

I know. I grew up around here, remember? I love the way the purple on the rhododendrons looks, especially when it’s contrasted against the rocks and the river. She told me that there were three big ones in the garden of the house where she lived with Maureen, where my grandfather was conceived. So now whenever I look at them I think of what that garden must have looked like, and of Reka playing her guitar. They also make me think of that house in the book Rebecca.

Manderley. Author: Daphne du Maurier. Gollancz, 1938. First print run (August, 1938): 20,000. Second print run (August, 1938): 10,000. Third print run (August, 1938): 15,000. Fourth print run (August, 1938): 15,000. Do you sometimes think that maybe you try too hard to follow in her footsteps? Do you think it’s because you look quite a lot like her?