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not paying good money for a pot of earth.’
    ‘They’re not pots of earth, they’re perennials.’
    ‘Still. I want something that looks nice. And something that doesn’t need looking after. Something neat.’
    Bartholomew sighs. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the skimmias.’
    He leaves the woman at the till with Leonard and walks back down the main path, eyeing up the troughs on either side which are filled with bedraggled stems and desiccated leaves or bare earth. Joe wouldn’t reckon much on the place, not if he saw it now, he thinks, taking out a pair of secateurs from his back pocket. He climbs to the back of a bed, towards a tangle of rose stems whipped about by a rampant honeysuckle. He’s allowed himself these pockets of planting around the garden centre – his artistic eye at work.
    He squeezes the secateurs in his right hand, pulling at the tangle with his left. Perhaps Joe’ll visit next summer, and by then he can have it looking better. If he’s still in business. He’d known about Maguires of course – had seen the articles in Leonard’s Chronicle about planning rows and the campaign against out-of-town giants by pensioners in socks and sandals. ‘We’ll support you,’ his regular customers said, like it was terminal. It was only a matter of time before some local hack called him ‘plucky’.
    He is pulling at vast canopies of growth, when his phone vibrates in his pocket. Three texts from Ruby.
    Oi, grumpy trousers. How you?
    The second says:
    Taken out rage on petunias yet?
    What’s the bloody obsession with petunias?
    Fancy quiz at Crown 2nite? Starts 6pm.
    He hurriedly texts back:
    Can’t get off that early. Pint at Three Kings instead?
    He puts his phone back in his pocket and goes at the stems again with the secateurs. He is standing awkwardly, one leg in the midst of the plant, pulling and clipping, when his phone vibrates. He curses and climbs out of the bed.
    R: Right u r. Shame. Would hve thrashed you on sport.
    B: Yeah right
    R: Ask me anything
    Wearily, he sets his thumbs working.
    B: OK. Here is classic. Swedish boxer, world heavyweight champion. 1959?
    R: Gawd. Ingemar Johansson?
    B: r u on Wikipedia?
    R: Nope, I say Ingemar Johannson to anything Swedish
    B: Good work
    He puts his phone back in his pocket and looks at the pile of stems he has thrown onto the path. His pocket vibrates. Bloody hell Ruby, he thinks. Two texts.
    Man at table 5 eating bogies behind FT. NICE.
    Then the second one says:
    I love texting
    He smiles to himself and begins to text back, just as Leonard walks up the path towards him carrying a mug of tea.
    I know you do
    ‘Ooof,’ Leonard says, taking a sip. ‘What’s that rose ever done to you?’
    *
    A ham is boiling, sending steam into the yellowish light of Max and Primrose’s kitchen.
    ‘How was the beet?’ she asks, as he walks in from his wet day.
    ‘Like wading through treacle.’
    He takes off his Barbour and hangs it on the back of a chair where it drips onto the lino. She wonders if he’ll do what he usually does – reserve the gloom for her. But the room is warm and filled with the sweet and smoky smell of the ham and she is happy, standing at the stove, stirring the pan. She wants things to stay nice, knows better than to ask why Joe took the beet job off him. Things’ll change now, anyway.
    ‘Dad hired a right hunk o’rust for the job,’ says Max. ‘You should’ve seen it. Bloody miracle we lifted it.’
    ‘Well that’s good then, that you lifted it in a day. That’s one less pressure for the month.’
    He has sat down on a chair, his legs spread wide and one forearm resting on the table top. If he’d walked into a bank that day, and shot all the people inside it, she’d have the fewest theories as to his state of mind in the run-up to the incident. They functioned on the practicalities, she and Max: things that needed fixing or buying; a family lunch to go to; starting a family because they were two years into marriage and the