The sun is warm, warm enough for me to shed my jumper once I start digging. This time of year the plot is full of produce, and after I’ve knocked the bulk of the dirt off the potatoes and cleared up any tubers I can find, I collect some leeks and runner beans, carrots and salad stuff: lettuce and radishes and some tomatoes from the greenhouse. There are other allotment-holders working their plots, and we stop to chat in between our efforts.
After a couple of hours my back is protesting. I do some watering, then clean the tools and lock them in the shed. My little harvest will feed me through the week, and I pick some bunches of sweet peas and chrysanthemums to brighten up the house.
Milky goes crazy as I grill the mackerel, and he gets the fish skin for his pains. A soak in the bath with my book marks the start of my evening; a habit left over from the early years of bathing Lizzie when she was little, then topping up the water for myself.
As I’m sitting down to watch television, Lizzie texts me asking if I can babysit Florence the following Saturday; she’ll let me know what time when she’s checked with Jack, who’s out at the gym. Glad to be asked, I agree immediately.
I’m brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, looking forward to fresh sheets, when the phone rings.
I almost don’t answer. Some childish part of me likes to imagine that things might have been different if I’d ignored the ringing. But they wouldn’t. Even with another half-hour of blissful ignorance.
I had no premonition, no sudden goose bumps, no telepathic sensation that things were wrong during the evening. Shouldn’t I have sensed that Lizzie was in danger, that she was fighting for her life? That she was losing. People talk of knowing, of pain in the heart or sudden waves of dread, of dreams and waking nightmares, of a sudden overpowering urge to talk to someone or get home. Animal instincts.
Nothing for me, no alarm bells, no early-warning system. When I answer the phone, I’m calm, relaxed, sleepy.
‘Hello?’ I say, and it’s Jack, my son-in-law, his voice almost unrecognizable.
‘Ruth. Oh God, Ruth.’ Then comes the first rush of fear, pepper-shot on my skin, a twist to my guts. But it is little Florence, my granddaughter, I fear for. An accident, a sudden death, blue-lipped in her small bed.
‘Jack?’ It’s a question. An invitation. Tell me is what I’m saying.
And he does. ‘It’s Lizzie. Oh Ruth, someone’s hurt Lizzie. Oh God.’
