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you believe it?’
    Everyone heard, and everyone seemed very shocked.
    I couldn’t help feeling that it was almost as though she was going out of her way to embarrass me. It was all so weird. And I’m pretty sure I heard her tell a member of the group that she wasn’t remotely into gardening because she found it boring and, this is where I question my hearing, because I couldn’t believe she really would have said it, that she ‘always thought it was for people who didn’t have a life’.
    During lunch she appeared to be avoiding me by pointedly taking up the last seat on one of the dining tables so that I was left to find alternative company. I acted as if I didn’t mind a bit and just waved at her as I took my place at the other table and tried my best to enjoy the company of my fellow horticulturalists. It was fine, really it was, and I didn’t want to spoil the afternoon, and I really didn’t want to create an atmosphere between us. So during the next tour I carried on as if nothing had happened, chattering away inanely about planting schemes and the usefulness of specimen trees, but something had changed in her. On the way home I tried to engage her on the subject of her garden, asking her whether she’d seen anything to inspire her; what she’d particularly liked, or disliked, the usual sort of conversations you’d have on a garden tour.
    Even though she was pretty unresponsive, I carried on, regardless: ‘I thought the roses were heavenly. I fell in love with that beautiful orangey-red one, Vespers I think it was called. And I wish we’d got the space for some catalpas, the Indian bean trees. There’s a place where I could probably get you a really good deal on pots. I could take you there, if you like.’ I knew I was wittering on to cover up my embarrassment.
    ‘Would you? Thanks. That would be great.’ She sort of smiled, vaguely, but I could sense her eyes glaze over as if I was speaking Urdu, and then she looked at her watch and yawned.

    The garden tour. That was the first time I glimpsed some cracks in her marriage.
    I do feel bad about it, but I honestly went with the best of intentions. I was a bit silly on the coach, I suppose, making comments about the other people, but there’s something about people like that that just brings out the worst in me . . . Did I mention my mother? Gardening. God, I don’t know but there’s something about it that really gets to me. I can’t really explain why. I think it makes me a bit claustrophobic, which is odd, as you’d think with the fresh air and all that greenery and colour and open skies claustrophobia would be the last thing you’d feel. But I did find it claustrophobic in the sense that it was so totally her world; it enveloped her completely. There was always something that demanded her attention, her loving care, her patience and time. If I’m honest, I did feel that she loved those plants, that garden, more than she loved me. She looked truly happy when she was on her knees, her ancient tattered straw hat on her head, scrabbling about in the earth. Sometimes when I watched her closely from the window I could see her lips move as if she was having all the conversations out there with her plants that she never seemed to have with me. I’m not sure she was an especially demonstrative person, my mother. But she was very practical. You should have seen her larder shelves. Stuffed full of everything: pickles, jams, preserves, potted fruits. You could stand in front of those shelves and imagine you were viewing a little piece of my mother’s soul. She lined the jars up so that all the labels faced neatly in one way. The handwriting, so carefully penned, sloped to the right and was perfectly centred. She made sure that she put the date of bottling in the bottom right-hand corner. I could tick off the years of my life with that bottom right-hand corner. Then to show how much she cared, she would place a little circle of fabric over the top of the