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out an out-of-focus close-up of a mealybug-infested lemon tree belonging to a Mrs Pilkington.
    The public assumed that, as a botanist, he enjoyed pottering around the garden as they did, sensible shoes and windbreakers properly adorned. They insisted on producing cuttings of roses dripping with aphids and scale for his remedial assessment. It was akin to asking your cardiac-surgeon friend to look at the wart on your toe. Botany and gardening are not the same thing. They aren’t even first cousins, he thought crossly. When he and Jane had first moved into Clifton, the gentrified old quarter at the top of the hill, he had been mildly interested in the diverse and unusual flora that covered the crags of the Avon River gorge. Bristol whitebeam, yellow rock roses and the unfortunately named Bristol onion were all endemic to the cliffs that rose from the muddy riverbanks below. It was assumed that he would be a passionate supporter of their preservation against the invading holm oaks that had spread even onto the steep slopes. In truth, Gabriel felt a twinge of loss on seeing the cut stumps and piled shavings that marked the passing of these grand trees, the ground bare around their bases. The oaks were ‘alien’ only in a historical sense. And, in any event, what could truly be declared original? Or whom? Certainly not the asphalt running paths or the Havana Coffee franchises that now littered Clifton Village, replete with foreigners.
    Jane had started jogging recently, and this was her route, up Observatory Hill from Clifton and along the edge of the gorge, through the village and back home. Gabriel had joined her on only one occasion when she had first started, about six months earlier, gasping as she strode out in front. He was sure that she had deliberately chosen a lengthier route for his debut, first crossing the suspension bridge over the gorge before doubling back and then dropping down the zigzag path. Gabriel had needed a rest near the toll booms on the bridge, resting his head up against the sign for Samaritans Care, the hotline for potential jumpers who found the combination of the cliff edge and the pain of life irresistible. Jane waited for him impatiently, hopping from one leg to the other.
    ‘Come on, slow coach,’ she teased, though she did not let a smile crease her tight lips.
    Her recriminations only made him feel more sluggish as she set off down the path towards Hotwells without him. Gabriel elected rather to sit on a bench and wait for her return, steeling himself against her scorn at his lack of fitness. A few dog-walkers and cyclists passed, nodding a good morning to him, before she came back up into view, sweating freely and puffing at the exertion of the uphill. They set off again along the cobbled sidewalks of Clifton Village, the delis and bakeries still closed, but the smells of ovens and dough already filling the air. The village shops were twee and overpriced, but the collective sense they created was one of splendid isolation from the rest of the city – that together with the daunting steepness of the streets that snaked up to the exclusive hilltop suburb.
    They lived off Percival Road in Clifton, in an elderly but supposedly ‘charming’ two-storey semi with slate roofs and a gravelled area in front for the Vauxhall sedan – a reminder of unrealised plans that might once have included a dog, or perhaps even offspring. It was not as grand as the freestanding homes – the roofs arrayed with chimney pots as a statement of the number of fireplaces within – but there was more than enough space for the two of them. The pre-war plumbing was atrocious and the pipes shook when the hot water was turned on upstairs, but Gabriel was contented with their home. He realised that perhaps he lacked the vision of how their domestic situation might be improved; Jane insisted that there was a huge difference between this and mere ‘complaining’, but Gabriel felt a burden descend upon him whenever she