The Skeleton Tree

drive ended, was protected from the neighbouring garden by a sturdy six-foot wooden fence, which appeared to be in better and more solid repair than almost anything else she had seen so far.
The outbuildings didn’t occupy her for long. The one nearest the drive still had most of its roof intact and contained a small amount of kindling in an old log basket and a part-used sack of coal. The second and third in the row had lost pretty much all of their roofs. The section of the building which stood beneath the servants’ bedrooms had a pair of arched double doors, wedged open but leaning dangerously. Peering beyond them, Wendy could make out a couple of wooden stalls. The little boy had been right about the existence of stabling.
The entrance to the back garden ought to have been as wide as the drive, but the contents of what had once been a border producing vegetables or flowers had rioted unchecked until, even in winter, only a narrow track of flattened grass was left between the miniature jungle and the wall of the outbuildings. Wendy worked her way along for a few yards, taking care to avoid the treacherous, slippery patches of mud, where multiple feet had already trodden that day. It reminded her of a fairy tale, where the traveller struggles through the wilderness until he or she can enter the hidden garden, which always turns out to be a magical, secret place, but when she reached the point where the garden should have opened out to the full width of the plot, she was disappointed to find that she could go no further. The garden at the front had merely been neglected. The area behind the outbuildings had obviously been allowed to run wild for years. It wasn’t even possible to see how far the garden extended – though it was clearly a large area. A confusion of trees and bushes, dead brown stalks, and mouldering, indistinguishable hummocks all struggled to catch a glimpse of the sky from beneath cloaks of ivy and convolvulus. A blackbird startled her, screeching as it flew from one branch to another. She had no alternative but to admit defeat and edge back the way she had come, only to find that the courtyard was becoming quite crowded.
‘I’m sure Marcus could never bring himself to live in such an ugly house,’ a woman in a duffel coat and boots laced to the knee was telling her companion.
‘Dreadful old place,’ declared a man in a check jacket. ‘The best thing they could do is demolish the whole thing. You’d get half-a-dozen starter-homes in this plot, if you planned them running sideways from the road.’
‘Decrepit is the word I would use, dear.’ A woman in pale green patent shoes had just emerged from the back door and was picking her way across the cobbles, her face a study in disgust.
It isn’t fair, Wendy thought. I’m the one who really loves it, but I can’t have it.
At teatime that day, the rest of the family took very little interest in Wendy’s account of her visit to The Ashes. Bruce uh-huhhed a couple of times, before Tara jumped in to change the subject. In spite of their lack of encouragement, Wendy couldn’t get the house out of her mind, and when she and Bruce climbed into bed that night, she said wistfully, ‘You should have seen the size of the biggest bedroom. We could have easily fitted a king-size bed in there.’
‘I know we need to look for somewhere with a bit more space,’ Bruce said, ‘but are you really that unhappy here?’ He sounded puzzled, even a little anxious.
‘No, no, of course not. It’s just a lovely house, that’s all. I’ve always felt like it was my special house. My dream house, I suppose.’
‘Well, OK … But you know we couldn’t ever afford to buy it?’
‘Of course I know that.’
‘Then … don’t you think it’s a bit weird to keep going on about it?’
‘I’m not going on about it. I was just interested to see inside, that’s all.’
There was a pause before he spoke again. ‘And you’re not … unhappy?’
‘I’m perfectly happy. I couldn’t be happier.’
‘You’re not bored? Being at home all day?’
‘I don’t have time to be bored. I’ve always got loads to do.’
‘Good. That’s OK then.’ He kissed her and she kissed him back. It was a familiar preamble to love-making, but that night Bruce turned over and went to sleep, leaving her wakefully pondering her weight gain, her approaching fortieth birthday, and the rather odd way Bruce had asked about her state of happiness.
Why would he think she was unhappy? She had known happiness and unhappiness. She knew the difference now, even if she had once been mistaken. She had been much younger then. It had been easy to believe that happiness lay just where she expected to find it. Robert had been her childhood sweetheart. She couldn’t even recall a time when she hadn’t known him. People liked Robert. Older people approved of him. Her parents used to say things like, ‘Robert is terribly clever,’ as if being clever was something she ought to have been a little bit afraid of – and perhaps it was. Robert had taken her to the school dance and then to the pictures, after which it had been generally understood that they were going out together. There had been one long, glorious school summer holiday, with more visits to the pictures, and days out to Whitby and Scarborough, both easily accessible on the train from Middlesbrough and all financed by Robert’s Saturday job at the local greengrocers, and they had engaged in endless sessions of snogging on the sofa in her parents’ front room. By the time Robert left for university they were already engaged … but it was going to be a long engagement. ‘We are going to wait,’ they would tell people virtuously, as if by waiting they would be getting something better at