Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope Read Free Book Online Page B

from Westerham. It was the substantial garden
     of an impressive mock-medieval house whose new owners had asked David to design the basic layout of the garden as well as
     get it into shape. David was pleased about this. It was the best creative commission he had yet had and he was enjoying it.
     He wanted Nathalie to see it in its worst state, at the very raw beginning, before he started to impose pattern and order
     on it; he could show it to her while she said to him whatever it was that she wanted to say.
    In the drive of the house stood a little Mercedes town car, a big four-wheel drive and two dark-green pickup trucks with "David
     Dexter—Gardens" painted on the doors in cream. Nathalie pulled up beside one of them, reached into the back seat to retrieve
     the Minnie Mouse umbrella, complete with big black ears, which Lynne had given Polly, and got out into the rain. It had slowed
     to a drizzle. Nathalie squinted up at the sky and put up the umbrella. Then she made her way around the house to the gardens
     beyond, where David had said she would find him.
    The whole area seemed to be nothing but a sea of mud with islands of heaped building materials here and there. A small digger
     was chugging purposefully up and down and in one corner, huddled together as if for mutual comfort, stood a sad collection
     of spindly trees, their roots bundled up in sacking. In the middle of this discouraging scene, David was standing, holding
     a plan sheathed in plastic. Nathalie called out to him.
    "Dave!"
    He turned and waved. Then he shouted something to the boy on the digger, and came stamping through the mud towards her.
    "Very sorry," Nathalie said, gesturing at the muddy desolation, "but I cannot begin to see what will emerge from this—"
    David bent to kiss her cheek. Then he straightened and waved his right arm.
    "Long terrace there, raised grass terrace all down that side, curved stone steps, lawn, grove, space for swimming pool, formal
     garden, brick paths."
    "If you say so," Nathalie said.
    David glanced at her umbrella.
    "Like the ears—"
    "It's Polly's," Nathalie said unnecessarily.
    "There's a sort of pavilion over there," David said. "A summerhouse thing. We could go there for five minutes. Are you OK?"
    He put a hand under Nathalie's bent elbow.
    She said, "I don't usually ring you if I'm OK, do I?"
    He put his garden plan in his pocket and began to guide her round the edge of the mud.
    "I like to think I have a sense if you're not OK—"
    Nathalie thought briefly how oppressive she would have found such a remark if Steve had made it.
    She said, "Well, you did. You wouldn't have rung back if you hadn't. You'd have texted me, saying, 'What's up?' "
    "Yes," he said. "What is up?"
    Nathalie said nothing. She concentrated on putting her feet down carefully to divert herself from thinking of how she was
     going to say what she was going to say. She let David lead her up a short flight of crumbling stone steps to a little grass
     platform on which sat a greenish wooden building shaped like a pagoda. She looked at it.
    "Is this staying?"
    "Certainly not. Fake, pretentious and out of keeping."
    "But dry—"
    "Certainly dry," David agreed, pushing open a half-glazed door.
    She stepped inside. The interior was raw and untreated, and contained nothing but a broken plastic chair and a drift of dead
     leaves.
    "Charming—"
    "I'm replacing it with stone. Circular, like a little dovecote."
    "Dave," Nathalie said abruptly, "you know how we've always been—"
    "How?"
    "Not looking back, not saying 'if only . . . ,' not wishing we had what we haven't got—"
    He closed the door behind them and stood looking out into the faint rain.
    "Yes?"
    Nathalie glanced at his back.
    "Well, something's happened."
    There was a pause, and then he said, "Tell me."
    She looked at his back again. He was wearing a waxed jacket over overalls, and the wax had worn thin here and there and she
     could see dark patches where the damp had seeped through to