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far end of the high wall looked solid enough from here in my room and I took comfort from the ninety-degree angle between the bricks and the ground, but occasionally I wondered how many more years it could brace itself against the wind that buffeted round the garden seeking out weak points and gouging honeycomb spots into the bricks. Hawthorn bushes filled the middle of my view. Dull and lanky, they had colonized a large area behind the house and any routes through were testimony to movements in the garden: a path of flattened weeds along the base of the high wall, a faint trail from the back door to Archie’s side of the garden and a groove along the back fence where animals came through during the night.
    Ground lay beneath the hawthorn bushes, but I rarely saw it. Only on the most blustery days would the wind tear back a branch and expose the soil below, bare and anemic and dry.
    The remainder of the garden was grass; it began the season pointed and green and ended it matted and yellow, empty of sap, empty of the smallest sign of life. Occasionally I questioned. From the safety of my head I sometimes wondered if we might drip oil between the joints of the lawnmower and cut the grass or even run a piece of sandpaper across the blades of shears and clear out the old hawthorn. But my father had no interest in the plants crowding round his back door. He only had interest in the wall.
    I opened the window and leaned out, trying to widen my view but as I did so a breeze leaned in, dragging up goose pimples, so I drew back into the room and closed the window. Creases lined the Snowshill garden when I sat down on my bed and pulled the photograph out of my pocket. I thought of my own garden as I rubbed my fist across the page, trying to make the hedges stand straight. I turned the photograph over and noticed a poem printed on the other side.
    Elysium is as far as to
The very nearest Room
    â€œElysium.” I said the word aloud; it felt warm on my tongue. I reached over, lifted a dictionary from my bedside table and flicked through. The E ’s arrived quickly.
    Elysium / I’liziem / noun & adjective.
A place of perfect happiness.
    New details jumped out as I looked back down at the photograph: a broken gate at the bottom of a hill, a cloud stuck in a tree. I could almost smell the apple blossom that peeped out from the top left corner, and in spite of the smear of butter running up the trunk of the pear tree, none of the beauty had been lost. As I fingered the edges of the photograph I became aware of a mixed feeling, a simmering resentment tied to an unspecified fear. How I’d love to find out what lay behind the apple tree in the bottom left hand corner. I looked down at the poem and down there, hidden inside the second stanza, I thought I saw something.

8
    It was the unmistakable thud of a spade hitting the ground that woke me the next day. For a moment I couldn’t recall where I was but when I saw light squeeze through a hole in my curtains I remembered — yet another day was about to begin.
    I peeled my ear from my pillow, got out of bed and stood to one side of the window. Only a sliver of garden was visible when I looked down at the hawthorn shrubs below but I could just about make out the shape of a person half way down the garden. Falling hair obscured his face, but his stance was unmistakable. My father was digging into a pile of sand that lay at his feet. A rhythm was going, elbow up, elbow down, followed by a bend in his body as he dug, lifted and stirred. His shirt had come loose from his trousers and the tongue of it flapped across his back with every stab at the ground. The urge to slip back into my bed — possibly still warm — was immense. I wished I could sleep longer, but today was the same as any other day, same pace, same texture, and same heavy weight.
    I let the curtain drop and hurried over to my wardrobe. Light rarely reached this corner of my room so my choice of garment