“He did always drive that motorbike too fast…”
As the woman shuffled away, leaving Ellie standing alone, she looked down at her plate of untouched food. A familiar urge to flee washed over her. She hadn’t been there to see Luke crash his motorbike, but she heard the screech of the rubber piercing her eardrums all the same as the ghostly sound bellowed around the kitchen.
Ellie slipped out into the back garden, seeking refuge from the stifling atmosphere inside. The garden was a small walled-in yard with a patch of grass and very much a work in progress, halfway between wild and tamed. At the far end, she spotted the old glass greenhouse, its panes smeared and the interior cluttered. Perfect.
She made her way to the greenhouse, carefully navigating the uneven path. Once inside, she closed the door behind her and took a deep breath, relishing the quiet. The air was thick with damp earth and the rot of decaying plants. If she hadn’t needed to eat, she’d have gone back to her gran’s, but she was too tired to cook for herself, and she wasn’t sure if her gran had frozen meals for one buried at the back of the freezer. Hiding food was one of the many things she wouldn't miss about house-sharing in the flat about Club Tropix back in Cardiff.
As Ellie nibbled on a cocktail sausage, a throat cleared nearby, startling her. She looked up to see a man leaning out from behind a mound of shrivelled ivy, seated in much the same way she was. He smiled, and Ellie recognised him as the gardener she’d seen earlier. Daniel.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said, embarrassed. “I didn’t realise the greenhouse was occupied. I’ll go—”
“Don’t be sorry,” Daniel interrupted, his voice steady and kind. “Too much for you in there, too?”
Ellie hesitated, then nodded. “It’s been a tough day. I found a dead body... a bit strange, really.” She paused, her brows scrunching into a heavy droop. “Very strange, actually. People are talking about a missing manuscript, and now there’s a broken hip and a dead body, and here I am, at a party at my mother’s house, picking at finger food like I’m thirteen and nothing has changed.” She held out her plate, offering some to Daniel. “Pickled onion?”
He accepted a cocktail stick with a small smile, and for a moment, they ate in comfortable silence. She hadn’t got a proper look at him earlier, but she knew which of the Daniels he was: Daniel Clark, the boy who’d had the stutter that had left him pretty much mute. She’d always thought he was sweet, and he looked how she remembered, only bigger and older. He had a tuft of brown hair styled into an unruly quiff, and an open face with wide cheekbones. A sheet of stubble framed a smile that looked small now, but she could remember it filling his face in her memories. Ellie hadn’t thought about Daniel Clark in years, but his presence brought a sense of familiarity that grounded her in the storm.
He smiled warmly at Ellie. “You’re exactly how I remember you, by the way. Nice to see you again, Ellie.”
“Right,” Ellie said, accepting his handshake. “It’s good to see you too.”
“Good to be back?” Daniel asked.
Ellie hesitated, feeling the weight of the day’s events pressing down on her. “Ask me again in a week,” she replied, attempting a weak smile.
Daniel nodded, understanding in his eyes. After a moment, he asked, “Do you remember us being the front end and the back end of the donkey in the nativity when we were in Year Three?” His eyes twinkled with amusement. “And can you believe that’s the year I now teach?”
“You teach Year Three?” Ellie asked, surprised to find herself smiling at the memory. “We’re not old enough. At the old school?”
“I think that sometimes too, and yes, Meadowfield Primary. Same classroom. Not much—”
“Much changes around here,” Ellie said, and his growing smile let her know she’d taken the words right out of his mouth. “Who was the middle of the donkey?”
“Chris Marks,” Daniel replied, his tone sobering. “I heard the fella died last year. Heart trouble.”
Ellie nodded, a strange feeling settling in her stomach. She was at the age where her former primary school classmates could be teachers... and dead. And yet, here she was, still hiding in the greenhouse during her mother’s awful schmoozing parties, with no plan of how she was going to get out—just like the old days.
“She would always throw these parties,” Ellie found herself saying. “All through the ‘90s when they were showing reruns of Heatherwood Haven on that late-night channel after the VHS rerelease. Do you remember?”
“The village was a little tourist trap when we were kids,” he said, nodding at the fond memories. “I used to think all those people coming to see the ‘set’ lived here just like us. It was a shock when the new millennium rolled around and interest died down and the village emptied back to the locals.”
“My mother would say she was responsible for the econmoy of the village being the only local they scouted for the show,” Ellie said. “Cardiff was full of tourists, day in, day out. There’s been so much filmed there over the years. Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sherlock, Gavin & Stacey... I got used to tourists again, though in a city, everyone sort of feels like a tourist when you don’t know anyone.”
“You didn’t know anyone?” He frowned. “But you lived there for ten years.”
“I still do,” Ellie said without meaning to. “I mean, I did know people. Obviously. People from work, and… around.” She heard how pathetic she sounded, and added, “I was just always so busy with work.”
“I know that feeling,” he said. “I’m cherising these summer holidays away from the school. And we do still get the Americans coming for the WWII Meadow Company stuff, but even those coaches seem to be passing through less and less. But I haven’t heard anyone asking around about Heatherwood in a while.”
“But for a minute, during the hype of it all, it was like The Great Gatsby here. I felt like I was going up in Absolutely Fabulous.”
Daniel chuckled, jerking his head towards the cement blocks separating the gardens, and Ellie wondered where the old wooden fence had gone. “Meanwhile, I think my nan was suffering through a Twilight Zone episode. She hated those years,” he confessed in a whisper. “And she dreaded Heatherwood Haven being released on DVD, but it never happened and now Blu-Ray is already on the way out. And still dreads it.”
“Something to do with rights why the owners never could,” Ellie explained, recalling her mother’s frequent laments. “If only they would release it for the times!” she mimicked, then added, “If anyone aside from my mother cares anymore, though it seems even Carolyn Swan still has influence if she has an employed teacher tending to her garden for free. You must be busy enough as it is?”
“Summer holidays.”
“Right,” she said. “Explained why I saw so many kids in Happy Bean.”
“They’re opened a Happy Bean around here?” His nose wrinkled at the thought of a chain opening in Meadowfield, a place that seemed to have entirely independantly run shops operated by the locals. “And I’m doing it because I enjoy gardening,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t get to do it much. I’m living with my gran at the moment and she’s paved over her grass. What do you do? I heard you work in TV?”
“Oh, I did... I...” Ellie stumbled, exposed. She stopped talking, unsure how to explain her current situation. Instead, she pulled a pickled onion off a cocktail stick with her teeth, buying herself time to think.
Daniel broke the silence, his voice quiet and hesitant. “I’m only doing the garden because my nan complained about the bushes growing over. Your mother wasn’t doing anything about it, so…”
“Of course she wasn’t. Too busy auditioning.” Ellie felt a warmth spread through her chest. “That’s sweet of you, Daniel. I’ll thank you on her behalf if she hasn’t.”
Daniel’s eyes met hers, a soft smile playing on his lips. “You’re sweet, Ellie. That’s how I remember you.” He leaned back, his gaze distant as if looking into the past. “Being in the front of that donkey making all those silly noises was the only time I didn’t stutter. It was one of the most freeing experiences of my life until then, but the second I took that mask off...” He motioned to his mouth as though dismissing it. “You know what I was like. I could barely get a word out for years, and those nativity rehearsals were no different, and you’d sit next to me. You’d chatter away about books you were reading and why the characters in them were better than any real people you knew, and you’d share your crisps. Always prawn cocktail.”
“They’d turn my fingers pink,” she said, laughing. “I haven’t had any in a while. And I think you reminded me of my dad. He’s quiet. He’d listen to me whenever I couldn’t get a word in with my mum. I don’t think I was meaning to be kind.”
“I’ve seen many times in my job that the children who are kindest aren’t the ones meaning to be, they just are.” She offered him another onion, and he accepted, toasting it to her. “So, you’re not in TV anymore? Ever thought of teaching? The job could always use more—”
“Your stutter went,” Ellie pointed out.
“Oh, yes. Intensive speech therapy. Quite impressive, isn’t it?” Despite blushing, he leaned in and his smile turned cheeky. “I shouldn’t get too cocky, though. It does still rear its head when I’m feeling nervous, or maybe even tired, but, for the most part, consider the dragon slain. And thanks to all that speech therapy I went to, I picked up a trick or two, and I’ve been able to help so many kids with their—”
Ellie’s moment of quiet reflection with Daniel was abruptly shattered as Penny burst into the greenhouse.
