The summer passed quickly, with work that changed with the light. He harvested courgettes, beans and tomatoes to add to his salad greens. A thick mulch suppressed the weeds, courtesy of a trailer load of woodchip dropped off by a local arborist. Pleasant weather aided the mending of stone walls and terraces and the rehanging of the barn door and property gates. He stacked the cut wood from the orchard outside the barn, making a lean-to shelter for it so that it would dry, arranging it in order of burn from long-dead to green, this winter to next. He knew then that he was planning to stay a while.
Winter was still some way off, and autumn was a season he had always loved, despite the end of the school holidays and the return to work. He sat out in the last warmth of middays, eating his lunch at a bench he had made of roughhewn timber, looking out over the garden and thinking of Martha. He trusted she was at St Hibbert's, showing them what she could do and finding out how much more she was capable of.
YOU ARE READING
The Keeper
RomanceEvery schoolgirl has crushes, but could a schoolgirl crush last a lifetime? When 17-year old Martha starts at a new school, she carries a glimmer of hope that this time will be different. She doesn't seek popularity, but rather a quiet space where s...
