of the year. It held all the promise without any of the disappointment. She had tried to get Betty to walk to school before, but the little girl had complained so ferociously about wet shoes and a cold nose and the wrong gloves that she’d given up. Now though she made it a fun adventure, through the park and along fairytale streets. Betty was not a hard child to figure out; she needed positive reinforcement, a term Agatha had learnt from one of the numerous child-care books she’d hidden under her bed. You had to pre-empt Betty. You had to watch her and that bottom lip and when you saw it begin to tremble you had to say something like, Don’t you hate that little girl’s boots, they are completely the wrong shade of pink? or, Did I ever tell you that Cinderella thought that eating two ice creams in one go was really greedy? or, Washing your hair makes it grow faster.
But nothing was going to be properly achieved until the girl was allowed to sleep. Agatha had lain awake most nights since her arrival at the Donaldsons’, listening to the pointless drama occurring on the floor beneath her. Betty woke at midnight every night, almost to the second, and yet her cries obviously pulled Ruth from a deep sleep as Agatha heard her bumping and banging on her way to her daughter’s bedroom. She’d start the night relatively tolerantly, but by the third or fourth wake-up she’d be shouting, saying ridiculous things to the child like she was going to die if she didn’t sleep soon and then expecting Betty to fall into a peaceful state. Sometimes she’d take her to the loo, turning on all the lights and making Betty wash her hands. It was proper madness and Agatha itched to be allowed to intervene; she reckoned she could have Betty sleeping through in a week.
The morning was warm; the air felt like a kiss on your skin and when Agatha opened the kitchen window she could smell the sap.
‘Would you like to plant a vegetable garden?’ she asked Betty and Hal, out of nowhere. She hadn’t planned on speaking those words, which scared her as Agatha believed she’d given up spontaneous speech a long time ago. She mustn’t let herself get too comfortable.
‘What’s a vegetable garden?’ asked Betty. ‘Well, it’s like an ordinary garden, but instead of growing flowers you grow vegetables.’
‘Why?’
‘To eat, silly.’ Agatha was starting to sweat, she’d only been there a month and re-planning the Donaldsons’ garden was too much.
But Betty was already brimming over with excitement. ‘Can we grow tomatoes? And carrots? And chips?’
Agatha laughed. ‘We’d have to grow potatoes and make them into chips. I tell you what, I’ll call your mum and ask if it’s okay and if it is we’ll do it.’
‘Can I call? Can I call?’ shouted Betty, already reaching for the phone.
The message Ruth listened to when she left the caverns of the tube was garbled and she couldn’t make out what Betty was saying. Something about growing carrots on the patio. Shit, not another school project she’d forgotten. She remembered how last year she had pinned the list of what Betty needed for the school nativity play to the fridge and then forgotten all about it. Gail had called on the morning of the play to say that Betty was hysterical because she needed a brown T-shirt and brown trousers by twelve o’clock that day. So instead of being able to make the editorial meeting she’d spent a frantic hour in H&M, crying when the shop assistant couldn’t find Betty’s size.
She dialled home now and Betty picked up, immediately pleading with her. ‘Can we do it, Mum? Please say yes.’
‘Say yes to what? I couldn’t hear you properly.’
‘Aggie is going to make our garden grow vegetables. That we can eat. But only if you say yes.’
Ruth had an image of Aggie digging up their whole garden, turning it into some sort of allotment. ‘Where in the garden, darling?’
Betty started to whine. ‘I don’t know. Please don’t say no, Mummy. You’re no fun.’
Ruth felt a strong surge of annoyance with Aggie. ‘Can you put Aggie on, sweetheart. I just want to find out where she wants to do it.’
‘I’m sorry, Ruth,’ Aggie said as soon as she got on. ‘I know I should have spoken to you first. It’s just that I opened the window this morning and everything smelt so fresh and I’ve been reading about how if you get children to grow their own food they’re more likely to eat it and so obviously that made me think of Hal and I’ve been meaning to mention it to you.’
Aggie’s enthusiasm rubbed off on Ruth and she immediately lost her annoyance. Besides, the appointment with the nutritionist that she’d had to re-schedule because of the advertisers’ lunch she’d forgotten about was only a few days away and wouldn’t that be a good thing to say. ‘It sounds like a great idea,’ Ruth said as she approached her office. ‘Get what you need and I’ll pay you back.’
Ruth thought she probably should call Christian and check that he liked the idea as well, but the day rushed at her as soon as she was by her desk. She tried to tell herself to remember to call him later.
Agatha felt pleased with herself. Her improvisation about getting children to grow their own food to make them eat wasn’t something she’d read, but it was something which should have been written down and, as such, it had been a good thing to say. Finding a garden centre in West London was hard, but not impossible. Agatha got the children to think about what they wanted to grow and then she wrote a list: tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beet-root and celery. It seemed like a good, clean start. She got a cookery book down from a large white wooden shelf unit that looked like it should have gone on top of a dresser, but Ruth had fixed to the wall. The paint was flaking off it and Agatha had already mentally re-painted it. She showed Hal the pictures of the vegetables and explained to him that he would have to try whatever he grew because it was a miracle that you put a seed in the ground and it turned into a plant you could eat. He was interested enough to take the bottle out of his mouth.
Betty was impossibly good on the bus and in the garden centre. She behaved like a proper little lady all the way around and was so good that Agatha allowed her to choose an organic chocolate bar at the till.
‘It’s so fun, hanging out with you,’ she said, making the little girl beam with pride.
All the way home they talked about the best way to plant. Agatha had bought a cheap manual in the book section of the garden centre and she read to the children from it on the bus. It sounded like a fairytale anyway. You had to dig a patch of ground and mix in some compost. Then make rows and plant your seeds just under the surface and not too close together. You had to protect them from marauding insects and take good care of them with lots of water and even a bit of food. And then they would reward you with lots of juicy goodness that would run down your chin when you bit into them and make you glad to be alive. ‘All the best things are worth waiting for,’ Agatha repeated from somewhere when Betty asked her how long it would all take.
The spot they chose was in the bottom right-hand corner, because you could see it from the kitchen window and it wasn’t going to interfere with any precious plants. Agatha started by marking out the area and then digging a trench. It was much harder work than she’d anticipated, but now she’d started she was definitely going to finish. The children were so excited that they didn’t once ask if they could go in and watch TV. Hal brought his trucks into the garden and ran them through the disturbed soil so that Agatha could see how they were traversing mountains and building new futures. Betty took her little shovel from the shed and begun turning over the soil in the middle of their patch. It took two long hours, but by lunchtime there was a patch of virgin soil waiting to be cultivated.
Agatha made herself and Betty tuna sandwiches for lunch. She had decided to stop offering Hal anything for a while, even though this was exactly against Ruth’s instructions. She didn’t even question his requests for bottles. She had read in one of her books that making a child feel like eating was an issue was not advisable. The same went for children who wouldn’t go to bed. Apparently it was negative attention and because kids crave any sort of attention, however much they get, if you made a fuss about them not doing something they would continue not to do it just to get the attention. It made sense