“Do you think... he might sell it to another landlord? I could be a sitting tenant.” I like how it sounds, at least—enhanced rights, making demands on my landlord for once and not the other way around.
“Oh, no. He definitely wants you out. He needs to spruce the place up.”
“That’s good to know. Except I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Not on benefits, are you?”
“No, but—”
“Plenty of properties on at the moment. I’ll e-mail you.”
Nothing quite matches being evicted, I realize, for making you feel like a complete and colossal failure. “Way to start my weekend, Ian.” I wonder if he makes all of his eviction calls on Friday nights.
“Yeah? No worries.”
“No, I was being... Look,” I say desperately, “could you find me somewhere with a proper garden?” My flat’s on the top floor, so I don’t have access to the one here—but even if I did, it would be like hanging out in a scrap-metal yard. It’s covered almost completely with tarmac, and filled with various items of junk—rusty sun-loungers, a broken rotary laundry line, a decaying collection of kitchen chairs, and three out-of-service wheelbarrows. I don’t mind scruffy, a touch of mess—so much better than a sterile show-home garden—but this one’s an ongoing tetanus risk.
Ian chortles. “Budget still the same?”
“Less, if anything.”
“Funny. Oh, and, Callie—I take it you got those bees sorted?”
“Bees?” I say innocently.
Ian hesitates. I hear him tapping furiously. “Yeah, here it is. They were going in and out of the soffits, next to your living room window.”
They were indeed—the couple next door reported it, I think. I palmed Ian off when he called, told him I had a friend who could help. It comes as no surprise at all that he’s only thinking to follow up now, months later.
I was so desperate to protect it, the happy little home the bees were building. They were doing no harm—unlike their detractors, who had brick-woven their front garden and replaced all their grass with the fake stuff only days after moving in.
“Oh, yes,” I say cheerfully. “All sorted.”
“Nice one. Don’t want them hibernating over winter.”
I smile. The nest will be empty now, the bees long gone. “Actually, bees don’t—”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
Ending the call, I sling my head back against the sofa. Turfed out at the age of thirty-four. Well, there’s an excuse for a full pint of ice cream if ever I heard one.
•••
There was a hawthorn tree in the next-door garden, before the couple ripped it up to accommodate their makeshift car park. It was in full blossom at the time. The cloud of petals as they launched it into the skip they’d hired brought to my mind windy spring days from my childhood, and the sweet joy of a dash through nature’s confetti, cheered on by my dad.
It reminded me, too, of the hawthorn tree I could see from my desk at the paint-tin company where I used to work. I loved it, that solitary spur of life on the concrete boundary of the industrial estate. Perhaps it was planted by a bird, or someone as desperate as I felt back then. For years I watched it through the seasons, admired the buds of its blossom in spring, its rich commotion of greenery in summer, and autumn’s rusty splendor. I even loved it in winter, the geometry of its leafless branches as pleasing to me as a gallery sculpture.
I’d walk over to it each lunchtime, sometimes just to touch the bark or look up at its leaves. On warmer days I’d eat my sandwich beneath it, perched on the edge of the verge. By my third summer someone had clearly taken pity on me, dumping an aging wooden bench out there.
But at the start of my sixth summer, the tree was cut down to make room for a smoking shelter. It tugged at my gut in a way I couldn’t explain, to see a huddle of gray faces where leaves and branches had once stood, staring blankly into space from beneath that lifeless dome of Perspex.
•••
I look out of my window now, down at where the neighbors’ hawthorn used to be. I should probably get online, start searching for somewhere else to live. Funny how easy it is for one person to uproot another’s life, just when they least expect it.
6.
