The Twilight Garden Read online

  THE TWILIGHT GARDEN

  Sara Nisha Adams

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper,

  Dublin 1, D01 C9W8, Ireland

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2023

  Copyright © Sara Nisha Adams 2023

  Jacket design by Ellie Game/HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  Jacket illustrations © Jyotirmayee Patra/Illustration X

  Sara Nisha Adams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008391379

  Ebook Edition © June 2023 ISBN: 9780008391393

  Version: 2023-05-15

  Dedication

  For Will

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I: Autumn

  Chapter 1: Winston

  Chapter 2: Winston

  Chapter 3: Winston

  Chapter 4: Winston

  Chapter 5: Bernice

  Chapter 6: Winston

  Chapter 7: Maya

  Chapter 8: Maya

  Chapter 9: Winston

  Chapter 10: Bernice

  Chapter 11: Maya

  Chapter 12: Maya

  Chapter 13: Winston

  Chapter 14: Maya

  Chapter 15: Bernice

  Part II: Winter

  Chapter 16: Winston

  Chapter 17: Winston

  Chapter 18: Bernice

  Chapter 19: Maya

  Chapter 20: Maya

  Chapter 21: Winston

  Chapter 22: Maya

  Chapter 23: Bernice

  Chapter 24: Maya

  Chapter 25: Winston

  Part III: Spring

  Chapter 26: Bernice

  Chapter 27: Winston

  Chapter 28: Maya

  Chapter 29: Maya

  Chapter 30: Winston

  Chapter 31: Maya

  Chapter 32: Winston

  Part IV: Summer

  Chapter 33: Bernice

  Chapter 34: Maya

  Chapter 35: Winston

  Chapter 36: Maya

  Chapter 37: Winston

  Chapter 38: Maya

  Chapter 39: Maya

  Chapter 40: Maya

  Chapter 41: Bernice

  Chapter 42: Winston

  Epilogue

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Sara Nisha Adams

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  AUTUMN

  Friday, 21 September 2018

  You’ll be pleased to know the garden is already tucking itself up for the autumn. The hazel is losing its leaves and looks rather spindly: the shadows of its corkscrew branches sometimes catch the corner of my eye and for a second, I imagine it as something otherworldly. We’ve always adored that tree, haven’t we? Morris used to love curling up under there after a hard day’s work, chasing birds or falling leaves. Though, in his ripe old age, his mind was a little more ambitious than his legs allowed him to be.

  Our bed of dahlias is still going strong – café au lait, this year. The lad at the garden centre recommended them to me. I’m glad I followed his recommendation. They’re quite something! Very luscious. But with all the heavy rain we’ve had, their heads are heavy, and I can barely cut the stalk without the flower dropping off with a splat. And if I do manage to pop any into a vase, I’ll often spot a little snail who has snuck deep into the petals. One morning, I found three or four tiny snails creeping their way out of the cut flowers, sliding over my kitchen counters to the sink.

  I’m afraid I don’t have much gossip to share from Eastbourne Road. But do you remember me telling you about the red-trouser man who lives across the street from me? The one who is always pressing his belly up to his second-floor window whenever there’s a commotion outside? Well, he’s been at it again. Today, on a wander to Clissold Park, I spotted his bare stomach up against the glass, his phone sticking out of the top sash, taking photographs of a traffic jam. I passed those warring neighbours too … They’re still banging on each other’s doors, demanding they both ‘keep the noise down!’, but in the process, they manage to make more noise than there was in the first place!

  There must have been something in the air today, putting everyone on edge. September is still bright and fairly warm, so perhaps the leftover heat is frazzling our neighbours’ brains. You used to feel it at this time of year, too. Do you remember? Always snapping at those foxes, especially when it was hot.

  Anyway, this new neighbour – one of the warring ones – well, she looks ‘rather fancy’, as you’d say. She’s been here several months now, but she’s new in the sense that she hasn’t tried to get to know any of us. (But that’s more common these days, I suppose.) Ever since she moved in, she’s had the builders round – thankfully, they left the other day. For good. I breathed a sigh of relief when they packed up their skip. It was all so noisy. All that banter, the clattering of rubble. If Fraser had still been here, he’d have been yapping out the window at them every morning, trying to join in with their out-of-key singing, I reckon.

  The house itself is almost unrecognizable. It’s painted navy with a duck-egg blue door, which apparently is very ‘on-trend’ according to Jenny. In fact, I suppose the whole of Stoke Newington is starting to look more and more ‘trendy’. Everything is manicured, too. Front gardens are all ‘minimalist’, decorated with little olive trees and bay trees in pots. Polished tiles, painted doors, and bin stores – yes, little sheds for the bins! I know we kept it nice when it was our time, but it was different, wasn’t it? We were always sweeping, painting and tidying. We did what we could. And Prem loved making things, practical things. That chair! He was so proud of it. I imagine he’d have made a fantastic bin store if that was in vogue at the time.

  The main difference between now and then, however, is the fact that I barely know a soul who lives behind those perfectly painted doors. I should start to chat more, invite people into the garden, I guess. It’s what I promised. Things are different these days though, no one is quite as friendly as they used to be. Stepping out the door or saying hello to a stranger feels harder than ever. While this place will always be home, nothing is quite as familiar any more. All the old faces are making their way out of the city, or out of the world entirely.

  Still, at least there’s the garden. Every year it changes, but it always feels as magical as ever.

  Love always,

  Your friend,

  Maya x

  Chapter 1

  WINSTON

  September 2018

  ‘EXCUSE ME!’ A VOICE, pinched and painful, pierced through the music flooding his headphones. ‘Mr Winston, isn’t it?’

  He kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying to keep the calm of the morning going. The air still held the warmth of summer, but the breeze was all autumn. Winston was already missing the long, languorous days of August and early September, even if his usual sunbathing plans had been ruined by his charming new neighbour, who had turned every waking moment of this summer into a headache.

  Since she’d moved into the house next door, which had been empty ever since Winston had lived here, everything had been chaos.

  The two neighbouring houses had an unusual feature: a shared back garden. It had once been Winston’s silent, scrubby smoking spot – his place for a moment of peace. But now it was their battleground.

  For weeks, Winston and the Queen of Sheba (as his mother would call her, though he gathered from the builders that she was called Bernice) had been storming over to each other’s houses to complain about something or other. First, it was because her builders began every working day at 8 a.m., sticking on an obnoxiously loud radio station, before drilling away, causing Winston’s walls to vibrate ominously. They were friendly guys, and Winston would always stop to have a chat with them when he walked past, but when he learned that the Queen of Sheba had requested they work as many Sundays as they could manage, Winston couldn’t bear it any more. Sundays were the only day he had off work. Without that day to lounge about and do nothing, he was a zombie all week long.

  ‘What am I supposed to do? Live in a building site for the rest of my life?’ she’d said to him one day, when he’d hammered on her door to ask if the builders could start at a more respectable time. ‘I honestly don’t care what you do with your life,’ he’d muttered under his
breath, ‘As long as you don’t keep ruining mine!’

  Just a few days ago, he’d had to pound his fists against the adjoining wall between their terraced houses because when the builders weren’t making a commotion, her young son was. Winston couldn’t fathom how one small child could make so much noise, especially one who publicly appeared so angelic and polite. The kid had taken to charging up and down the stairs. But it sounded like a whole herd of rhinos. After six years living at Number 79, at the end of the terrace, with an empty house on the other side, Winston was used to peace and tranquillity. Bernice was a shock to the system.

  In order to block out the noise of her child, he’d begun to play his music at a ridiculously loud volume (sometimes it was drum and bass, sometimes old school R&B, sometimes Kate Bush – he had eclectic taste). Naturally, the cacophony caused the Queen of Sheebz to come hammering on his door in return.

  ‘Turn that blasted racket down!’

  He could tell she wanted to use something stronger than ‘blasted racket’, but the peachy face of her son was poking out from behind her.

  ‘Sebastian is trying to do his homework,’ she said, more softly, and the Sebastian in question nodded his head in confirmation, no sign of the charging rhino that lived within.

  And now here she was once again, disturbing Winston’s repose in the garden. His heartbeat picked up a notch in frustration as her shadow loomed over him.

  ‘Mr Winston?’ she repeated loudly, clearing her throat.

  He removed his headphones fiercely. ‘I’ve told you, it’s just Winston,’ he said, sharp. What on earth was he doing wrong this time? He was sitting on the old wooden chair that had lived in this garden long before Winston arrived. His feet were resting on the ugly, grey cladding of the raised beds, with its decades-old paint peeling off. He hated these raised beds, overgrown with brambles and bindweed, the tangled mess accentuated only by the spicy tang of fox poo.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she said again, as though he hadn’t spoken at all.

  He opened his eyes. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Please don’t smoke around my son,’ she said to him plainly.

  Of course. He should have known. Whenever he was smoking in the garden, Queen of Sheba would bang on her kitchen window, miming the action of stubbing out a cigarette, her face scrunched up in a grimace.

  ‘I don’t want him inhaling second-hand smoke.’

  He sat up at that, his eyes searched for her son.

  ‘He’s not even out here!’ Winston said. But as soon as the words left his mouth, he caught a glimpse of the boy, his face pushed up against the glass from a first-floor window, hands covering his mouth, doing his best to hold back the giggles threatening to burst out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

  Winston’s cigarette fizzed away at his fingertips. He leaned back to take one last long drag, blowing the smoke upwards in the direction of her glaring gaze. If his mother could see him right now, she’d be both appalled and delighted at his attitude.

  ‘Of course, honey, you should have said,’ he replied, ice in his voice. The Queen of Sheba winced at the word ‘honey’, as he’d hoped, but her reflex, the drop in her eyes … it made him wonder if it hit deeper. If someone else she despised had called her that, once upon a time.

  Within seconds, that look on her face, the darkness and distance in her stare, was gone. Her disdain was back. ‘That’s disgusting,’ she muttered. Then she turned round and headed into her kitchen, the door swinging shut behind her. Their two terraced houses looked back at Winston. The structures were mirror images of each other – Victorian brickwork, pitched roofs, tall chimneys. But her house was modernized; the large crittal kitchen windows were brand new and spotless, fitted by the builder who thought he was the next James Blunt. Winston’s sash windows, however, were clearly years old, the glass water-stained and grubby from the rain, sitting within ancient, rotting frames.

  Winston allowed himself a deep breath to soak in the peace. Finally. Until—

  ‘Hey!’ Sal’s voice called over the garden wall from the street running alongside the garden. First, all Winston could see was Sal’s bobble hat, which, he assumed, belonged to Sal’s wife, Angela. He hated to stereotype, but pink and white stripes and a rainbow bobble weren’t really Sal’s vibe.

  ‘All right, Sal?’ Winston said, as Sal’s thick eyebrows and green eyes made their way over the top of the wall. He was instantly cheered by the sight of his boss and friend.

  ‘Winston, my son, would you be able to cover the shop for me? I know you’re on your day off but it’s only for a few hours. I’ve got to pick Angela up from Pilates.’

  ‘Of course.’ Winston tried to hide his immediate disappointment. He’d been looking forward to a day off work, pissing off the neighbour, lazing about on the sofa listening to old CDs that reminded him of his family, and batch-cooking food he’d always forget to eat. He’d planned a whole day of activities to forget the fact that he was spending his and Lewis’s five-year anniversary alone. Lewis was at the office, again, for the tenth day in a row. He’d barely been home at all in that time, and the anniversary present Winston had wrapped up earlier in the week was now sitting on the kitchen counter, untouched. He’d managed to find an original Little Eva vinyl – a record Lewis’s dad had always played for him as a kid but had long since lost. The envelope on top was adorned with a decorative ‘L’ and five stars, one for each year they’d been together. Winston felt silly now, paying that much attention to the detail.

  Maybe working in the shop would be a more fitting way to celebrate their anniversary anyway. He spent more time with the customers than he did with Lewis these days.

  He glanced down at his phone. Lewis hadn’t even sent a ‘Happy Anniversary’ message yet. There was just one text from Winston’s elder sister Ruth, who lived in Canada with her family: Little Winston, missing you. FaceTime soon?

  She sent the same message every week or so, sending photos of her two children, who had grown so much since he’d last seen them: they were eight and nine now. He’d last seen them when they were toddlers.

  No matter how regularly she messaged or tried to call, Winston never seemed to find the right time to ring her back.

  As Sal’s bobble hat bobbed off along the wall, Winston headed through to the hallway to put his proper shoes on. ‘Shit!’ he cursed, slipping on a batch of junk mail littering the doormat. He bent over to pick up another envelope full of pamphlets about some local gardening scheme; photos of frilly flowers adorned the pages.

  ‘Who on earth thinks I have the energy for gardening?’ he muttered, shoving it onto the telephone stand along with all the other post. Handyman business cards. Palm reader leaflets. Takeaway menus. And envelopes addressed to ‘The Occupants of Number 79’ with scrawled comp slips from estate agents asking, ‘Have you thought about selling your house?’

  He slammed the door loudly behind him, in honour of the Queen of Sheba.

  ‘Funny to see you here on a Sunday,’ said Jenny, one of the most memorable and long-standing locals at Sal’s shop. Winston instinctively reached up to get her two packs of twenty Marlboro reds, complete with a rather unappetizing photograph of someone’s blackened lungs. Jenny must be over eighty now, though Winston had never asked her age, and rumour had it that she’d bought forty Marlboros from Sal’s shop three times a week since records began.

  ‘Come on, Vincent, hand them over,’ Jenny chuckled. Winston admired her loyalty and consistency, and her dress sense. Today she was sporting a vintage-looking fur coat, and some wet-look leggings. He wasn’t such a fan of her getting his name wrong. Though at least she was consistent there too.

  He always heard his mother’s voice in these moments: ‘I gave you an English name so no one could get it wrong.’ Winston had tried correcting Jenny about his name, but every time he did, she simply said: ‘I know. Like the painter. Lovely name.’ The only thing that stopped him from correcting her further was the thought of having to say: ‘No, Winston like Churchill.’

  Sal, however, got the roughest deal. Jenny still called him ‘chubby cheeks’, the nickname his father lovingly used when Sal was a boy, spending all his time reading picture books behind the counter. The shop had been in Sal’s family for decades – it was something of an institution on Stoke Newington Road.