THE MAN IN THE GARDEN

Annie was doing all right on her own – at least she thought she’d been all doing right, but the stranger was making her wonder

THE man was there again. Annie watched him from her window, her fingers pressed white against the frame. She’d have to challenge him; it couldn’t go on like this.

Every day for a month he’d been there. When he first came he didn’t stay long – maybe 10 minutes gazing at the lawn, hedges, flowerbeds – then one day he came carrying a trowel and started digging weeds from the herbaceous border. From then on there was usually an implement and some activity, though it had no pattern Annie could determine.

Sometimes it was morning and he cut the grass. Other times it was when the day had cooled and the watering can came out. On one occasion he’d brought a deck chair and sat in the sun reading a newspaper.

At first Annie wondered if she was going senile.

Had she arranged a gardener without remembering? But she knew she wouldn’t have been able to do that. The man had simply turned up uninvited.

She’d been a little frightened then. Had he found out she lived on her own and thought that if he spent time in the garden he could find his way into the house without arousing suspicion from the neighbours?

Katy, who brought Annie her shopping twice a week, hadn’t seen him.

“There’s no one in the garden, Annie,” she’d said.

“Not now,” Annie said, “but he comes every day.”

“Are you sure, dear? That would be quite odd, wouldn’t it?”

Annie gritted her teeth.

“It would,” she said. “It is. That’s why I mentioned it.”

“There’s no one there now,” Katy repeated, as though that solved everything.

Annie hadn’t said anything since. She didn’t want Katy thinking she was imagining things or starting to wondering whether to involve the police. Annie was all right on her own and as long as Katy brought her supplies and posted her bills – the only items of mail Annie bothered to open – there was nothing else she needed from the outside world.

At least, she had been all right until now. The man in the garden had made her wonder whether it had been wise to have the phone disconnected. No one had ever called and she hadn’t made a call for years. It was hard enough having Katy in the house. Still, what if there was an emergency?