“I’m good! Where are you? This must be costing you a fortune.”

“It is. I’m in a commune in India. Mate, it’s amazing here. And sooo cheap! You should totally resign and come and join me.”

“I—I did resign,” I said, with a slightly awkward laugh. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What?”

I held the phone away from my ear again. It had been so long since we’d had an actual phone conversation, I’d forgotten how loud she could be.

“Yup,” I said, still holding the phone a few inches from my ear. “Handed my notice in at Little Nippers. I left a few days ago. The look on Janine’s face when I told her she could stick her stupid job was almost worth all the hours there.”

“I bet. God, she was such a cow. I still can’t believe Val didn’t give you that job when I left.”

“Me too. Listen, I meant to call you, I wanted to tell you—I’ve moved out of the flat.”

“What?” The line was crackly, her voice echoing across the long miles from India. “I didn’t hear you. I thought you said you’d left the flat.”

“Yeah, I did. The post I’ve taken up, it’s a residential one. But listen, don’t worry, I’m still paying the rent, the pay here is really good. So your stuff is still there, and you’ll have a place to come back to when you finish traveling.”

“You can afford that?” Her tinny faraway voice was impressed. “Wow! This post must pay really well. How did you swing that?”

I skated round that one.

“They really needed someone,” I said. It was the truth, at least. “But anyway, how are you? Any plans to come back?”

I tried to keep my voice casual, not letting on how important her answer was to me.

“Yeah, of course.” Her laugh echoed. “But not yet. I’ve still got seven months left on my ticket. But oh, mate, it’s good to hear your voice. I miss you!”

“I miss you too.”

Ellie and Maddie had got down off the swing and were walking away from me now, down a winding brick path between overgrown heathers. I tucked the phone under my ear and began pushing the buggy across the rough ground, following.

“Listen, I’m working right now actually, so . . . I should probably . . .”

“Yeah, sure. And I should go too, before this bankrupts me. But you’re okay, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Well, bye, Rowan.”

“Bye, Rach.”

And then she hung up.

“Who was that?” said a little voice at my elbow, and I jumped and looked down to see Maddie scowling up at me.

“Oh . . . just a friend I used to work with. We were flatmates, back in London, but then she went traveling.”

“Did you like her?”

It was such a funny question I laughed.

“What? Yes, yes, of course I liked her.”

“You sounded like you didn’t want to talk to her.”

“I don’t know where you got that idea.” We walked a bit farther, the buggy bumping over a loose brick in the path, while I considered her remark. Was there a grain of truth in it? “She was calling from abroad,” I said at last. “It’s very expensive. I just didn’t want to cost her too much money.”

Maddie looked up at me for a moment, and I had the strangest feeling of her black button eyes boring into mine, and then she turned and scampered after Ellie, crying out, “Follow me! Follow me!”

The path led down and down, away from the house, growing more uneven by the second. Once it had been herringbone brick, but now the bricks had cracked in the frost and grown loose, some of them missing altogether. In the distance I could see a brick wall, about six feet high, with a wrought iron metal gate, which seemed to be where the children were heading.

“Is that the edge of the grounds?” I called after them. “Hold up, I don’t want you going out onto the moors.”

They stopped and waited for me; Ellie had her hands on her hips and was panting, her little face flushed.

“It’s a garden,” she said. “It’s got a wall around it, like a room but no roof.”

“That sounds exciting,” I said. “Like the Secret Garden. Have you ever read that?”

“Of course she hasn’t, she’s not old enough to read chapter books,” Maddie said, repressively. “But we watched it on TV.”

We had drawn level with the wall now, and I could see what Ellie meant. It was a crumbling redbrick wall, slightly taller than I was, that seemed to be enclosing one corner of the grounds, forming a rectangular section quite separate from the rest of the landscaping. It was the kind of structure that might easily have enclosed a kitchen garden—protecting delicate herbs and fruit trees from frost—but the trees and creepers I could see emerging above the high walls didn’t look at all edible.

I tried the handle of the gate.

“It’s locked.” Through the twining metalwork I could see a wild, overgrown mass of bushes and creepers, some kind of statue partly obscured by greenery. “What a shame, it looks very exciting in there.”

“It looks locked,” Ellie said eagerly, “but Maddie and I know a secret way of getting inside.”

“I’m not sure—” I began, but before I could finish, she wound her little hand through the intricate metal fretwork, through a space far too narrow to admit even a fine-boned adult’s hand, and did something I could not see to the far side of the lock. The gate sprang open.

“Wow!” I said, genuinely impressed. “How did you do that?”

“It’s not very hard.” Ellie was flushed with pride. “There’s a catch on the inside.”

Gently I pushed the gate open, listening to the hinges squeal, and pushed Petra inside, thrusting aside the trailing fronds of some creeper that was hanging overhead. The leaves brushed my face, tickling my skin with an almost nettlish sensation. Maddie ducked in behind me, trying not to let the leaves trail in her face, and Ellie came in too. There was something mischievous about her expression, and I wondered why Bill and Sandra kept this place locked.

Inside, the walls protected the plants from the exposed position of the rest of the grounds, and the contrast to the muted heathers and trees outside, and the austerity of the moors beyond, was startling. There were lush evergreen bushes studded with berries of all types, overgrown tangled creepers, and a few flowers struggling to survive beneath the onslaught. I recognized a few—hellebores and snowberries springing up from between dark-leaved laurels, and what I thought might be a laburnum up ahead. As we turned a corner, we passed underneath an ancient-looking yew so old it formed a tunnel over the path, its strange, tubular berries crunching underfoot. Its leaves had poisoned the ground, and nothing grew underneath its spread. There were more greenhouses in here, I saw, though they were smaller, still with enough glass in their broken frames to have built up an impressive amount of condensation. The inside of the glass was blotched with green lichen and mold, so thickly that I could barely see the remains of the plants inside, though some struggled up through the broken panes of the roof.

Four brick paths quartered the garden, meeting in a small circle in the center, where the statue stood. It was so covered in ivy and other creepers that it was hard to make out, but as I drew nearer, brushing aside some of the foliage, I saw that it was a woman, thin and emaciated and broken down, her clothes ragged, her face skull-like, her blank stone eyes fixing mine with an accusing stare. Her cheeks were scored with what looked like scratches, and when I peered closer I saw that the nails on her skeletal hands were long and pointed.