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By the time summer properly arrived, River had a suntan and a vendetta against slugs.
It was, he thought, not the sort of development anyone would have predicted for him. But then again, nobody who’d known him a few years ago would have predicted any of this: a whole house in London. A front door that was theirs.
A scuffed little hallway full of shoes that were not all his. And a back garden that wasn’t paved over or shared or theoretical, but actual grass and soil and possibility.
“‘Garden’ is generous,” Annie had said the first time they’d unlocked the side gate and stepped out back. “It’s six metres of clay, three dandelions, and a fridge someone has fly-tipped over the fence.”
He’d looked at it — uneven lawn, tangled shrubs, a shed leaning at a worrying angle — and felt something he hadn’t expected.
Hope.
They’d done the numbers: his salary, hers, the battered savings account they’d been slowly feeding. Add the money from selling David’s London flat — the little place in Kilburn he’d moved into after uni and stayed in until Annie.
The solicitor had talked a lot about loan-to-value and stamp duty. River had just stared at the completion statement and thought: this was his grandad. On paper. Turning into bricks and plaster and a leaky roof and a garden with an upside-down fridge in it.
The Tunbridge Wells house — the one he’d actually grown up in — was still in limbo.
Half his, half his mum’s. His mother couldn’t decide whether she wanted to sell, rent, move back in, turn it into some kind of artists’ retreat, or do absolutely nothing other than very occasionally ring River to complain about the council tax — which he actually paid.
“Your mother’s latest idea,” Annie had said, stirring pasta one evening, “is to turn it into a ‘space for creatives to gather and be nourished’. Does she know that means showers, not just wine?”
He’d laughed, but the knot in his chest had stayed. Annie had offered, more than once, to deal with the solicitors, to be relentlessly polite at his mother until something actually happened. But she hadn’t pushed. She seemed to get — without him ever having to say it — that the house was more than an asset. It was his Gran’s handwriting on Christmas labels; the rosebush his Grandad had pruned into submission every spring; the vegetable patch that had produced more courgettes than any two humans reasonably needed.
Maybe that was why she’d walked into their new garden on the first weekend and said, decisively, “We need plants.”
She’d stood in the middle of the lawn with her hands on her hips, surveying the patchy grass like a general reviewing troops.
“Otherwise it’s just a rectangle of sadness.”
“You say that like we know what we’re doing,” he’d replied.
“You don’t need to know, you just need to lift,” she’d said serenely, and handed him a shovel.
“You do realise this wall might actually be holding the house up?” he’d asked now, eyeing the low brick divider that ran between the patio and the rest of the garden.
Annie, in her worst jeans and his oldest T-shirt, had flicked open the cement-mixer instructions with the air of someone reading a mildly interesting puzzle.
“It’s one single skin of brick, it’s not structural,” she’d said. “See? Look at the foundation depth.”
He’d looked, because she was pointing and because he’d learned that ignoring Annie when numbers were involved was a mistake.
She’d done approximate load calculations on a Post-it. With diagrams.
“Anyway,” she’d gone on, tapping the diagram with the end of a pencil, “we’re not putting anything on it. We’re knocking it down so you can have your veg patch and I can have my lavender border. Win-win.”
He’d thought of David’s garden then.
The row of beans at the back. The neat square for root veg. The marigolds “because the bastard insects hate them”.
Standing barefoot in wet soil as a kid, being handed a battered watering can and told, solemnly, “Don’t drown them. You’ve got to talk to them, quietly. Let them know you’re on their side.”
“Okay,” he’d said. His throat had felt weirdly tight. “Let’s do it.”
Annie had beamed at him like he’d just agreed to adopt a puppy. “Right. You break. I’ll build.”
That had turned out to be the natural division of labour. River did the smashing, the digging, the hauling of bags of topsoil like some kind of cheerful pack mule. Annie organised the deliveries, mixed cement with unnerving precision, and produced a perfectly levelled timber frame for the raised beds as if she’d been moonlighting as a landscape architect.
“Maths,” she’d said, when he’d asked how she’d done it. “Lengths, angles, volume. You just need to know your ratios.”
He’d watched her measure lengths of gravel membrane and thought there was probably a filthy joke in there somewhere about ratios, but he was too in love and too sweaty to make it.
The neighbours had watched from upstairs windows as two allegedly competent intelligence professionals spent an entire Saturday carrying rubble through the side passage and arguing about whether “chunky rustic steps” was just code for “trip hazard”.
By the end of the weekend, though, they had it: a clean rectangle of dark soil at the back, edged with new timber. A herb bed forming along the left fence. A line of reclaimed brick where the useless wall had been. The upside-down fridge had been collected by the scrap metal man, and replaced by a ramshackle pile of garden clippings they were optimistically calling a compost heap.
Annie had stood in the middle of the lawn, hands on hips, ponytail coming loose.
“There,” she’d said, satisfied. “Raw potential.”
He had wiped sweat from his face with the hem of his T-shirt and turned just in time to see Annie looking at his stomach — openly, appreciatively — before she realised he’d caught her.
She had recovered fast, chin lifting in that breezy, nothing-to-see-here way she thought was subtle, and stepped in to take his hand like that had been her intention all along, turning her attention toward the veg patch.
River had let her have the pretence.
And let himself enjoy the fact she’d been looking.
“He’d have liked this, you know. Your grandad.”
He’d swallowed. That lump in his throat again. “Yeah,” he’d said, soft. “Yeah, I think he would.”
She’d squeezed his hand once, hard. She hadn’t said anything about the house, or his mum, or decisions. She’d just stood there with him in the middle of their wonky, half-finished garden, looking at the dark rectangle of earth at the back.
It had felt, in a small, quiet way, like they’d planted something already.
Somehow, in the space of six weeks, it had turned into this.
Obsession wasn’t the word River would have used, but he was fairly sure Annie would.
His phone history was now a terrifying mix of “how to stop slugs organically”, “what does blossom end rot look like”, and “is it normal to talk to tomatoes”.
He’d taken to going out “just to check on them” before bed, which was how Annie had first coined the term.
“Where are you?” she’d called from upstairs one night at 11.30, teeth brushed, book in hand, already in their new, slightly wonky bed.
“Just outside,” he’d shouted back. “Two minutes.”
“Veg patch widow,” she’d muttered into her pillow.
Two minutes had turned into twenty, because the tomatoes were sulking and the courgettes were plotting some sort of coup and the runner beans had somehow wrapped themselves around the fence and the watering can.
He’d come back in smelling of damp earth, hair ruffled, looking borderline euphoric.
“You realise you’re having an emotional relationship with your vegetables,” Annie had said, flicking a bookmark in.
He’d climbed into bed and pulled her close, cold T-shirt pressed to her warm back.
“Jealous?” he’d murmured into her neck.
“Yes,” she’d said without hesitation. “They get more compliments than I do.”
“They’re less argumentative,” he’d said, and she’d whacked him with a pillow.
Sometimes, when he looked up from the veg bed, he’d catch Annie at the kitchen window. Trying to look casual. Failing.
She’d be rinsing mugs, or rearranging the fruit bowl like it was a live operation — just happening to be there, not obviously watching him kneel in the dirt, elbows brown, hands steadier than they ever were on a job.
He’d lift a hand in a little wave. She’d jump, then wave back as if she absolutely had not been staring for five full minutes.
Something in his chest would tighten — warm, grateful, unbearably soft. She saw what he was doing even when he didn’t quite know how to explain it. She teased him about talking to the plants, but she also let him have it — this quiet, grubby way of feeling close to a man who’d been truly gone for a long time.
He suspected she understood more of that than he even did.
By mid-July, London remembered what summer was.
The city turned sticky and loud. Tube platforms became saunas. Slough House smelled even more aggressively of Lamb and stale takeaway. Annie’s office at the Park was too full of computers and not full enough of functioning air conditioning.
The one place that wasn’t horrible was their back garden.
On the Saturday the heatwave peaked, they surrendered early. Annie kicked him out of bed around nine, complaining the duvet was trying to kill her. He grumbled on principle but didn’t mind. The bedroom was heavy with warm air; the garden had shade and grass and the faint promise of a breeze.
“You go,” she mumbled, face in the pillow. “I need another ten minutes.”
He went downstairs, opened the back door, and stepped out into their tiny patch of summer.
The lawn was still in its scrappy tween stage — not quite lush, not quite patchy. The flowers were showing off. The veg bed was, frankly, smug.
River checked on everyone — as he thought of them now, against his will — and tried not to be too pleased by the baby courgettes swelling under the leaves.
He watered, gently. Checked for slugs.
Relocated one trying to scale the beans, with more mercy than it deserved.
He’d just filled a jug with water and ice when she padded into the kitchen.
He turned — and the jug sloshed over his hand.
Annie stood in the doorway, bare feet, towel over one shoulder, hair twisted up into something that would definitely fall down five minutes after she lay down.
And a bikini.
Red. Little white flowers. Straps that tied in bows. Considerably less fabric than his cardiovascular system was prepared for at 9:30 a.m.
She blinked at his expression. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, voice half an octave lower than normal. “Just… you look…”
He trailed off. Like I’ve forgotten my name didn’t feel especially helpful.
He swallowed. “It’s… red.”
Her mouth curved. “You’ve gone a bit pink.”
“It’s hot,” he lied.
“Mmm,” she said, clearly unconvinced but choosing not to push it. “I’m going to sit outside and pretend I’m on holiday. What are you going to do?”
Sit beside you and never move, his brain supplied.
“I should probably shade the lettuce,” he heard himself say instead.
She blinked. “Of course you should.”
“Just for a bit,” he added quickly. “Then I’ll come and—”
“Talk to my thighs the way you talk to your tomatoes?” she suggested.
His brain short-circuited. He set the jug down on the side and then forgot about its existence entirely.
“I— that’s not—”
She laughed, bright and delighted. “Relax, Cartwright. Go and shade the lettuce. I’ll be out there. Not going anywhere.”
He lasted eleven minutes.
From the veg patch, he could see her in the corner of his eye — the line of her back, the long stretch of her legs, the curve where her waist met her hips. Sunglasses on.
Headphones in. Completely at ease.
He tried to focus on tying in a stem.
Missed twice.
On the third attempt he managed to fasten the soft twine and stepped back, sucking in a breath and tipping his head up at the sky like it might have answers.
He turned slightly, ostensibly to check the border, and ended up just… looking.
She’d rolled onto her back now, one arm over her head, book resting open on her stomach. The bikini top gaped half a fraction when she breathed in. Sun glanced off the small gold hoop in her ear.
She looked golden. Content. Utterly at ease in a way he didn’t see nearly often enough, even in sleep.
Something in his chest did a soft, painful, ridiculous swoop — that tangle of lust and love and something so deep and steady it scared him if he looked right at it.
Then she pushed her sunglasses down her nose.
“Stop pretending you’re not staring,” she called lazily.
He jumped. “I’m checking for aphids.”
“You’re checking out my legs.”
“Can’t it be both?”
She smiled — slow, pleased. “Any aphids?”
“None,” he said. “Everything’s… perfect.”
“Hmm.” She slid the sunglasses back up. “I’m thirsty.”
He nodded, a little too fast. “I’ll get you a drink.”
“No, I’m thirsty,” she said, and that second word had… a tone. She looked at him again over the rim of her glasses, and a very clear picture arrived in his brain of her, him, far less clothing and the veg patch minding its own business.
Right.
Something in his chest wiped like a hard drive.
He set down the trowel very carefully.
“Water first,” he said, because his brain was clinging to the one functional instruction it had left. “Then we can… address your other needs.”
He went inside, filled two glasses, added ice, and put the jug on a tray because his hands were shaking just enough to annoy him.
When he came back out, she’d sat up, legs stretched in front of her, hair starting to fall from its clip exactly like he knew it would.
But the rest—
Jesus.
That bikini...that woman…
Sunlight hit the curve of her waist, the warm line of her thigh, the bow tied at her hip, and something low in his stomach just… dropped.
Completely involuntary.
Like his body had made a decision long before his brain caught up.
If Annie had felt she needed to put this on to compete with his veg patch, then he was an idiot.
A distracted, soil-obsessed moron of a man.
Because the tomatoes had never looked at him like this—head tipped back, sunglasses low on her nose, lips parted slightly from the heat.
There wasn’t a vegetable in the world that could compete with that.
Or with her.
Or with the kind of want that punched straight through him at the sight of her.
His wife.
His impossibly gorgeous, smugly-relaxed, devastatingly confident wife.
“You remembered ice,” she said, approving, utterly unaware she’d just knocked ten coherent thoughts out of his head.
“I like living,” he managed, handing her the glass before he accidentally dropped it.
She took a sip, watching him over the rim, and he felt that look like a thumb pressed to the back of his neck.
“So,” she said. “Serious question.”
“Mm?”
“Where do I rank on your watering schedule?”
He blinked. “What?”
“The veg patch,” she said, gesturing lazily. “The flower border. The lawn. Me. What’s the order?”
“Annie.”
“I think it’s important to be honest in a marriage—”
“You’re first,” he said instantly.
“Am I in the top three?”
“You are literally first.”
“Before the courgettes?”
“Yes.”
She considered that, lips pursed. “What if they’re wilting?”
“Are you wilting?”
“I have been.” She fanned herself.
“Right. Sorry.” He swallowed hard. “Then you get priority,” he said.
She smiled, satisfied. “Good answer.”
She let her head tip back toward the sun.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not going to complain when you tell me you’re going out to water the plants for ten minutes and I fall asleep upstairs alone.”
River winced. Fair.
“Right,” he murmured. “No more late-night watering.”
“Good,” she said. “Because honestly? Your vegetables are getting more attention than I am.”
He turned his head, mouth tugging slow.
“My vegetables,” he said, voice dropping just enough, “don’t keep me up nearly as long as you do.”
Her sunglasses slid down her nose. “River.”
He shrugged, looking unbearably pleased with himself.
“Just saying. If something needs… tending…”
His eyes flicked deliberately to the bow on her bikini strap. His hand slid up her outer thigh, slow and unmistakable, stopping just shy of the strap’s knot like he was already imagining undoing it.
“I know where my priorities are.”
She laughed, warm and low, a flush blooming down her throat.
“That’s better,” she said. “Much better.”
Later — much later — they lay on the grass on the big blanket, bare shoulders touching, the sun lower and softer now.
Annie’s hand rested on his stomach, fingers tracing idle circles.
“It’s very sweet, you know,” she said. “How you talk to the plants.”
He stared at the sky. His throat tightened.
“My grandad used to,” he said quietly. “He’d wander around the garden for ages. My mum hated it. Said he cared more about runner beans than people.”
“And did he?”
River shook his head. “No. I think he just liked things that stayed put.”
She slid her hand into his. Warm. Sure.
He let out a slow breath.
“He’d like this,” he said. “Us. This house. This… garden.”
She squeezed his hand. Once. Firm.
“You don’t have to decide anything about the Tunbridge Wells house yet,” she said. “No pressure. No timeline. Whatever you decide — sell it, keep it, set it on fire — I’m with you.”
He laughed despite himself. She always did that — took the weight and tilted it just enough that he could breathe again.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m happy here. Settled,” he admitted. “You know… in between panicking about blight.”
“I knew you’d be a nightmare about blight,” she said, but she was smiling.
He reached out, tugged gently on a strand of her hair. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “For making me a veg patch guy.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You did that yourself.”
“No,” he said. “You saw a patch of mud and decided we deserved something better. That’s… sort of your thing.”
Her expression went soft, unguarded and bright.
“You’re getting soppy,” she warned.
“It’s the heat,” he said.
“Or the bikini,” she added.
“That too.”
She smiled, radiant and dangerous. “Well, if it keeps you from running away with the cucumbers…”
“I’m not running away with the cucumbers.”
“You say that now.”
He rolled, pinning her lightly with his weight, hands braced either side of her on the blanket.
“Dr Stuart—”
“That’s Mrs Cartwright to you, actually.”
“Mrs Cartwright,” he corrected, tucking her hair behind her ear. He was serious now, eyes locked on hers. “Listen carefully.”
“I’m listening,” she whispered.
“You,” he said, like it was the simplest, most obvious fact in the world, “will always outrank the veg patch.”
She blinked, then smiled, slow and sure.
“Well,” she said, looping her arms around his neck, “thank God for that.”
He kissed her again, and the veg patch minded itself for a while.
When the sun had dipped behind the rooftops and the heat finally eased, River went out alone with the hose.
The soil around the courgettes was dry, cracked at the surface. He watered slowly, letting the moisture sink in, the smell of damp earth rising up around him. The tomatoes looked smug. The beans looked deranged. A fox had clearly done something unspeakable to the compost.
He checked each plant in turn, fingers careful on stems and leaves.
“You’re fine,” he murmured to a tomato that had sulked earlier in the week. “You’re doing all right.”
From inside came the faint, domestic clatter of pans, Annie moving around the kitchen, humming under her breath. The open windows glowed warm in the gathering dusk.
This, he thought, was enough.
He thought of his Grandad’s house: the creaking stairs, the overgrown roses, the paperwork in a folder on top of their fridge with his mother’s half-finished thoughts all over it.
He’d deal with it. Soon. Maybe he’d call the solicitor on Monday. Maybe he’d ask Annie to come with him, if only so she could stop threatening arson.
But for now, he had wet soil under his nails, a garden that was slowly becoming theirs, and a wife who’d decided to wage psychological warfare on him with a red bikini.
River turned off the hose, gave the tomatoes one last approving look, and headed back inside.
The veg patch, he decided, could cope without him for one evening.
He had more important things to tend.