Page 55 of The Christmas Letter

She said nothing for a while, her lips pursed. He felt the prick of sweat on his palms, forced himself not to say anything into the silence. She wouldn’t have come with him, if she didn’t want to listen.

‘I’m sorry too,’ she said eventually. ‘I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.’ She shot him a look. She was good at those looks, he was learning – the ones that made you want to cringe or back away. ‘Though I did try to apologise then, too.’

‘Yeah. I know. I’m—’

‘Sorry?’ she asked sweetly, and he let out a short, dry laugh.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, there we are then.’ Was that the end of that, then? Done and dusted? His palms were still prickling, though, like there was tension in the air between them, even if neither of them wanted to admit it.

Holly hesitated at the end of the path, then struck off to the left. He wasn’t sure if she had somewhere in mind, or if she just didn’t want to stand still for too long. This path had another herbaceous border, full of various shades of purple, from lilac to deep blackcurrant. He could hear the sound of two kids laughing, a few other voices washing over them, but the silence between him and Holly was building.

‘This is what I used to want to do,’ he said into the quiet between them. She looked up at him in question. ‘For a job, I mean.’

She frowned. ‘Hang out in gardens?’

He laughed quietly. ‘Landscape gardening. I love being in gardens, always have. I love it on the micro level – you know, getting your hands in the soil, nurturing something, seeing it grow. Figuring out what works best for each individual plant and why. And I love looking at the big scale of it too.’ He gestured to their surroundings. ‘Designing something that can be enjoyed by other people, yes, but that also helps promote diversity of species.’ He sighed. ‘We are destructive by nature, us humans, and it’s a tiny thing, really, but a good landscape gardener can both help think about the design and help to regain some of what’s lost, too.’

Holly was watching him. ‘Emma said she used to garden with you,’ she said, her voice low and careful.

He’d been prepared for Emma to come up this time, but it still caused a spasm in his gut, hearing her name. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, she did.’

There were a lot of memories of his childhood that had grown hazy – something which, when he’d been forced to see a therapist after the crash, he’d been told was normal: after trauma, memories can fade. He regretted it – especially that he’d lost parts of his dad, when he had so little to cling on to in the first place. Only ten years, and of that, only around five he had any sort of recollection of. But he still had memories of Emma, like it or not. He could remember the two of them in the garden, both with their hands dirty, Emma sitting on her knees, leaning back, and Jack crouching over the plant they’d just planted.

‘I want it to grow now,’ he’d said, his voice demanding.

‘Well, that’s the thing about plants – they rarely do what we want just because we want them to. We have to learn how to give them what they need instead.’

Jack had scowled at that, just as his dad had come out into the garden. He hadn’t realised his dad had come over. He remembered it – the excitement of seeing him, after a few days of being asleep by the time he’d come home. They’d lived a few doors away from Emma, and his dad must have come to pick him up.

‘Richard,’ Emma had said, straightening up. ‘I thought you were working late today.’

‘Got off early,’ his dad said with a grin. ‘But don’t let me stop you.’

‘You could help,’ Emma said pointedly.

His dad headed for the patio, pulled out one of those wicker chairs Emma had let Jack choose from the garden centre, and slouched into it. ‘Nah, I’ll just watch. This way you can learn to do it, Jack, and I won’t ever have to bother.’

He’d never really got the interest in the garden, his dad, but he’d bought Jack a trowel for Christmas one year, then suggested he take it into school, next time one of the boys in his class called gardening ‘girly’.

Holly was still watching him. There was no point, he supposed, in trying to skirt around the subject – it was hanging over them, whether he liked it or not.

‘How is she?’ He could hear the grate of his voice as he spoke. ‘Emma?’

Holly hesitated. ‘She’s refusing chemo.’ Her face was tight as she said it – she clearly cared about Emma. He wanted to know how they’d met. Had she gone back to the café one day? The way he’d gone back there, before the service for his dad, wanting the reminder of childhood trips there for cake? He couldn’t ask that, not right now.

Instead he asked, ‘Why?’

‘Because she doesn’t like the side effects, and apparently it’s not one hundred per cent effective anyway.’

His frown deepened. ‘What type of cancer is it?’

She gave him one of those looks, and he knew why – he should have asked this the first time around. ‘Pancreatic cancer.’

He nodded, trying to digest the information. He couldn’t imagine it. The Emma he’d known had been healthy and active, and tough – in a way that made you think she’d always just be there. He wasn’t sure he could picture her as an old, ill woman – wasn’t sure he wanted to. But people survived cancer all the time, didn’t they? Ed’s uncle had had cancer last year, and while he hadn’t yet been given the all clear, Ed said he was past the worst of it and had a good prognosis. And if anyone could survive it, surely Emma – the Emma he remembered, anyway – could, because she was too damn stubborn not to. Though he didn’t think that refusing chemo would increase the chances of her survival.

‘They’ll kick us out of here soon,’ Holly said. He wasn’t sure if that was a way of her voicing disapproval, or of ending the conversation between them. She turned to walk away, but when he didn’t immediately follow because he was trying to think of something to say, something to keep her there, she glanced back at him. ‘Come on,’ she said, jerking her head to get him to come with her. ‘This isn’t the only cool bit to see.’