The Gardener

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Charlotte Warren, one-time architect and would-be horticulturalist and
plantswoman, glanced at her watch as she approached the Maddon Park
entrance. She was early. She drove slowly through the great stone pillars and
pulled up at the start of the drive, out of sight of the house. It was twenty years
since she’d presented herself to a prospective boss and she was as nervous now
as she’d been then. More perhaps. She had to get this job.

She flapped the sun-visor down to check her face in the mirror. I’ll do, she
thought. No spinach on the teeth anyway. She ran her comb through her short
brown hair and took off her sun-glasses. Gardeners, she thought, don’t wear
shades.

She looked down the drive, marvelling at its dereliction. It was almost bare of
gravel and badly pot-holed, with grass and weeds growing in a patchy line down
the middle. Either side of the drive, dead tree stumps three or four feet across
testified to a once magnificent avenue of elms.

Some stumps were jagged, some sawn off like picnic tables, some now just
weedy hummocks at ground level.

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