“What if I can’t make her happy?” I looked at him as he got up. “Grandpa… What if anything I can do for her isn’t enough?”
“You’ll never know unless you give it a bloody good go,” he replied, peering down at me. “One doesn’t wake up on a morning and fall into a pool of happiness. You have to look for happiness. You have to learn where to find it, and sometimes you have to make your own. The one thing all happy people have in common is that they take risks.”
I drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“Happy. People. Take. Risks.” He inclined his head in my direction and held my gaze for a moment. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Now I’m going for a nap because you’re exhausting.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Please tidy the tulips on your way out. They’re a mess. A bit like you.”
I smiled as Mars trotted off after him. “I’ll handle the tulips, Grandpa.”
“Thank you. I’m too old for this shit.”
***
I finished raking the leaves from one of the picnic areas and set the rake on top of them in the wheelbarrow, then carefully navigated my way through the people meandering along at a snail’s pace.
I hated being in the public areas when they were open. People walked too slow. They always stopped in the middle of a path for a chinwag with a friend they’d seen at the Post Office just four hours before, and because people never got out of the way, it took twenty minutes to walk a five-minute route.
Thank God I’d been listened to when I suggested a few extra gates.
I made it to the nearest gate and unlocked it, quickly closing it and locking it again behind me. The gardens were short-staffed today thanks to a viral twenty-four-hour bug at the local school, which was why I wasn’t doing my actual job and was cleaning up leaves.
Not my job.
I wheeled the leaves over to the back of the storage barns when the compost bins were and composted them. I had no idea where all the leaves were coming from—it wasn’t like it was autumn and they were ready to fall, so I could only put it down to the wind. But even then, there were a lot more than I would have thought there would be.
I checked in with a few other gardeners on the walkie-talkie that I hated carting around, and after I confirmed that everyone was fine, I headed in the direction of my greenhouse. There were hundreds of things to plant out now that the forecast showed all risk of frost had passed, and there were at least one-hundred and sixty tomato plants that needed to get into their final positions in the polytunnels over the next week.
Plus the peppers, the chillies, the sweet potatoes, the aubergines, the—
Never mind.
I unlocked the greenhouse and stepped inside. The sun was out, and the lack of clouds meant the sheltered greenhouse was blazingly hot, even with the windows open.
I propped the doors open at each end to let some air circulate or I’d pass out in a few minutes.
The breeze immediately helped, and I set to organising all the plants. There were endless trays of summer and autumn vegetables and flowers, if I didn’t know what I was doing, I would be completely overwhelmed right now.
Thank God I’d been organised earlier this year. Everything was grouped by season and by both plant and, for things like tomatoes, variety.
I picked up my radio and got through to one of the other guys who worked here part-time. “Are the polytunnels ready for these tomatoes?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Working the soil over on polytunnel five now, you can get started bringing them over.”
“Thanks. Can you ask someone to bring the quad bike and trailer to the back of the greenhouse?” I put the radio back down after he confirmed he would and surveyed the tomatoes. They were full of suckers that needing pinching out, and the lower leaves also needed removing so they could be buried deeper to throw out extra roots for stability and strength.
Tedious job.
But worth it when they fruited.
So much of gardening really was delayed gratification.
The quad bike was brought over to the dirt path at the back of the greenhouse, and I wheeled the tomato tray back there to start loading. I kept a plastic bin nearby to throw the suckers and lower leaves into as I went.
This way, I knew they’d be planted the way I wanted them to be.
“Knock knock?”
I looked up at the sound of Gabriella’s voice. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”
“I’m bored.” She leaned against the doorframe and looked longingly around the greenhouse. “Wow. That’s a lot of plants.”
“It’s a very big garden,” I joked. “Don’t you have one of your own to be working on?”
“No. The soil has been turned over and the patio is getting laid tomorrow. I have nothing to do now that I’ve cleared out all my emails and answered a ton of questions from random people.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Adelaide is writing, and Eva is at work, so I’m bored. I was hoping you might have something to amuse me.”
“Why are you hovering in the doorway?”
“I’m not allowed in the greenhouse.” She pouted. “So I’m not coming in.”
My lips twitched. “You can come in the greenhouse, princess.”
Her face lit up like a child’s, and the happiness that flashed across her eyes made my heart flip.
Fuck.
“Really? You’ll let me come in?”
“You can come in,” I repeated, grinning.
“Ooh!” She made a series of little squeaky, excited noises as she carefully stepped over the threshold. “Oh, wow. So many plants.”
“Don’t—” Ah. “Don’t touch anything. Please.”
“Oh.” She brought her hands back into her body. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s just that everything is organised in a system, and if stuff gets moved now it’s going to make my job a whole lot harder, that’s all.”
“I understand. What’s in here? It’s like Christmas.” She spoke with such glee that I couldn’t stop bloody smiling at her.
“It’s just a greenhouse, Gabriella.”
“Yes, but nobody is allowed in here. But I’m in here. Hee-hee.” She squealed the last noise.
“Yes, but there’s a difference between you and everyone else.”
“What’s that?”
“I like you.”
She looked up, lips parted, and blushed. She looked as though she was about to say something when something caught her eye and she gasped. “What’s that? It’s pretty!”
“That is a rogue dahlia,” I replied, looking at gorgeous bloom that was white with a wine-red centre. “It was supposed to be planted out already, but someone messed up my winter storage system and it ended up in here, and now there’s no room for it in the dahlia bed.”
“It’s beautiful. I haven’t seen that colour before.” She leaned down, still clasping her hands to her stomach.
She reminded me of a child in a toy store, desperately trying not to touch all the things they want.