The Watcher by Charlotte Link Read Free Book Online Page B

led into the woods. At the weekend, especially in the summer, there was a certain amount of activity there, but in the winter, and particularly once it was dark, almost no one went there. Maybe just a couple looking for a quiet spot. But a couple wouldn’t go further into the woods and force their car down the narrow track that ended at Anne’s garden gate.
    She stood up, went to the window and tried to look out, but all she saw was her own face reflected in the glass. She switched off the little lamp in the corner, and the television. The room was now in complete darkness. She strained to see outside. It was hard to make anything out. It was more that she could sense the garden with its many bushes, high grass and now bare fruit trees. In the summer she had harvested baskets and baskets of cherries, apples and pears. She had spent weeks making jams and jellies that she poured into big jars, sealing them with elastic bands before adding stickers and neatly labelling each one.
    Making jam, she always thought of Sean. Of how he had been excited about the fruit trees and their own jam. She knew that she had only harvested and boiled up the fruit for his sake. She wasn’t a big jam-eater. In her lifetime she wouldn’t manage to eat all the jam stockpiled in the cellar. One day she would die, and then, along with everything else, tons of jars and their contents would have to be disposed of.
    She and Sean had discovered the house eight years earlier when they were out on a walk. They had gone on an outing to Tunbridge Wells, a pretty town that nestled among fields, meadows, hills and woods on the western edge of Kent. The area was famous for its fruit trees and its endless fields of hops. The summers were warm and every spring the sweet, heavy scent of the fruit trees’ blossom hung in the air. Sean and Anne had wandered through a wood full of bluebells and anemones, and suddenly the house had appeared before them. It was an old gamekeeper’s house or hunter’s lodge, by the look of it. It was pretty dilapidated, obviously uninhabited and not particularly inviting. But that hadn’t put Sean off. He had fallen in love with the garden and could not stop talking about it.
    ‘It’s so big! All those fruit trees. The lilac bushes. Laburnum, jasmine . . . everything you could wish for. And surrounded by the woods. It’s what I’ve been looking for. What I’ve been waiting for!’
    She hadn’t needed any of that. They had both been sixty years old, and Anne had thought it would be more sensible not to burden themselves with a large garden that would mean hard physical work. Sean had of course argued the exact opposite. ‘We can allow ourselves the garden just because we will retire in a few years. Then we’ll have lots of time and needn’t rush the work. We’re not the kind of people to sit in a flat all day and stare out of the window. Come on, let’s give it a go! Let’s try something new one more time!’
    They had managed to buy the house. In fact, it hadn’t been hard. No one else had wanted it.
    And from then on all their free time, every weekend and all their holidays, had been spent there in the woods, renovating the house bit by bit. It was a laborious task, but to Anne’s surprise they had found it very satisfying. They had sanded down old parquet flooring, laid tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms, painted walls, had new windows put in, broken through walls and created larger rooms where previously there had been many small ones. They had put down a large area of decking for a south-facing terrace. It had a wooden railing around the edge and steps leading down to the garden. They had cut down a few trees, to let in more light. And Anne had made herself a studio up under the roof. She had discovered painting a few years earlier and it had become a passion of hers.
    She wondered if she should go out to see if a car was parked outside, but the cold outside put her off. And no doubt she wouldn’t see anything