Chapter 22: The Garden House

He brought the shoebox to the garden house at dusk, as she had asked.

It stood at the bottom of Edith's lawn, a glass room with a tiled floor and a wicker daybed.

Through the glass wall lay the mud bed where he had once knelt.

The old gardener had already dug the bed over.

Black earth lay turned in neat rows, and the first roses had been staked.

Imogen waited inside with the lamp lit.

Percy set the box on the table and took the lid off.

"Ninety-nine," he said. "Every single one."

She lifted out the top envelope and looked at her own pencil.

"You read them," she said.

"All of them. More than once."

"What did you think?"

"That I was a bastard." He sat on the arm of the wicker chair. "And that you were the kindest woman I had ever been cruel to."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

She put the letter down.

"Tell me what you remember," Imogen said. "Of the fourteen months."

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

"A fog. A feeling I can't name when I smell wet earth." His eyes found hers. "I remember none of it."

"Percy."

"I know every bit of it, because I read it. Those are different things."

"I know they are."

"The man who wrote that list is a stranger. I'd like to meet him, and I never will."

"You are him."

"No." He said it gently. "He had you for fourteen months. I have you for a few weeks, and I don't deserve one day of it."

She got up and crossed the tiles.

She stood in front of him with the lamp behind her.

"That was the whole of what I wanted to hear," she said.

She took his face in both hands and kissed him.

This time she did not make a rule of it.

He sat very still for the first moment, with his hands flat on his knees.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Not a Love for Faint Hearts from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.