Hazard loved working at Mummy’s Little Helper. The more he chatted to the mothers about their various addictions—to heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth—the more he realized how similar they were to him. They exchanged tips on how to deal with cravings and competed to tell the most shocking tales of the “dark days.”
“Good job, gang! Fin, Zac, Queenie, bag up!” said Hazard to today’s gang of “helpers,” aged between four and eight, who’d been following him around, waiting for him to issue instructions. Digging holes here, planting seeds there, bagging leaves everywhere. He handed round rubbish bags for all the weeds they’d pulled up from the flower bed. Six eyes stared up at him, as if he were a person worth looking up to and emulating. While this made him feel a great deal better about himself, it also terrified him. He couldn’t let them down. They’d been let down enough.
“Fin, buddy. Over here!” said Hazard, crouching down to the same level as the little boy who ran over, red-cheeked and grubby. “Don’t tell Queenie I ratted on her, but check your coat pockets for slugs before you go home.”
Hazard had even plundered his diminishing savings to buy a couple of tiny wheelbarrows and some rakes and trowels designed for small hands. He’d never spent much time with kids. He certainly hadn’t been the kind of person who had babies thrust at him to hold, or who was ever asked to babysit, but he was amazed how much he enjoyed it. He’d forgotten how to appreciate the everyday highs, like a glass of orange squash after hours of hard digging, or the fun of making worm farms and racing snails.
Hazard was exhausted after the day’s gardening. But it was a good tired. An honest tired. His muscles ached after hours of hard exercise and his body yearned for a long, uncomplicated sleep. It was nothing like the tiredness of old—toxic, tetchy, and frazzled after thirty-six hours of nonstop partying, being kept awake by a cocktail of chemicals.
He loved the feeling of being connected to nature. It was the first job in his life that actually felt real. He was making something, growing, improving, and doing some good. He couldn’t, however, keep on working for free or he’d be homeless. If only he hadn’t shoved so much of the fortune he’d earned in the City up his nose. Still, at least he’d quit while he still had a septum. One of his City friends had sneezed into a tissue in a meeting, and half of his nose had ended up in his hands. He’d ignored the shock on the faces of his clients and carried on presenting. At the time, Hazard had thought that pure class.
He took out the business card he’d been given by the woman on the street last week. Hazard wasn’t unaware of the stir that he and his Australian workmates were causing at Mummy’s Little Helper. He knew that it wasn’t just their physiques that were proving popular, but also the sunny, exuberant, straightforward nature of the Australian boys, whose very accents brought to mind beaches, wide open plains, and koala bears, and who were such a welcome antidote to the complex ennui of London.
Hazard had spent the afternoon grilling Riley and Brett about the Australian community in London. It turned out that London was full of Australian boys who, because of their Commonwealth links, were traveling on a Working Holiday Visa. They could work, legally, for up to two years in the UK—presuming they could find work to do.
What if, Hazard thought, he and Riley trained some of them up in the garden of Mummy’s Little Helper, then they could take on paid work in the gardens of Fulham, Putney, and Chelsea? There were many gardening companies in London already, he knew, but his would have a unique selling point, a raison d’être. He’d call it Aussie Gardeners.
He’d have to advertise, of course. What he really needed was someone with the ability to reach thousands of women, preferably in the local area, with a fair amount of money. And he had one of those, right under his nose—Alice. Just one or two Instagram posts from her showing him, Riley, and Brett toiling in a garden, and giving their contact details, and he had no doubt they’d be inundated. He was sure that Alice would appreciate the sense of karma—they’d helped her out (and would continue to do so), now she could help them back. What goes around comes around.
Perhaps Julian would design a flier for them that they could post through all the local letterboxes. Although Julian didn’t seem to have very much time for them anymore, ever since he’d been sucked back into the black hole that was the world of fashion. What had possessed them, making him that Instagram page?
The more he thought about it, the more the idea of having his own business excited him. He could be like Monica! What would Monica do? had become his new mantra, in his bid to become more thoughtful, more sensible, more dependable. He had rather a long way to go.
HAZARD OPENED THE DOOR to his apartment building, wiping his feet vigorously on the mat so he wouldn’t tread soil all over the gleaming entrance hall. The modern, glass-plated block of apartments in landscaped gardens and with twenty-four-hour concierge service screamed “successful City trader,” not so much “gardener.” One evening he’d left a bag of his gardening things in the entrance hall for a couple of hours. He’d come back to find a note taped to it saying WORKMEN: DO NOT LEAVE TOOLS HERE! REMOVE OR THEY WILL BE CONFISCATED!
He glanced over at the pigeonholes on the wall that held the residents’ mail. In his, along with the usual fliers and bills, was a letter that his mother would describe as “a stiffy” (which had always made him and his father smirk, while she’d pretend not to understand why): a good-quality envelope containing a hefty piece of card. An invitation.
Hazard opened it as he climbed the stairs. In beautiful, engraved writing it said:
DAPHNE CORSANDER AND RITA MORRIS
INVITE YOU TO
CELEBRATE THEIR MARRIAGE
ON SATURDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2019, 11 A.M.
AT ALL SAINTS CHURCH, HAMBLEDORE
AND AFTERWARD AT THE OLD VICARAGE
RSVP
In the top left-hand corner, Mr. Hazard Ford plus guest was written in fountain pen.
So Daphne and Rita were coming out with a bang. Good on them. He wondered how Roderick was taking the news. He did hope he wasn’t stressing about his father turning in his grave. They weren’t wasting any time, either. The twenty-third of February was only three weeks away. He supposed that at their age it was sensible not to hang around.
Hazard was conflicted. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to celebrate with his old friends from the island, but, on the other, he hadn’t yet been to a party sober, let alone a wedding, with their tradition of all-day drinking. But he’d been clean for four whole months now. Surely he was safe? He could trust himself. None of his old crowd were likely to be at Daphne and Rita’s wedding.
He looked again at the writing in the corner. Plus guest. Who on earth could he ask? Any of his old girlfriends would pull him off the wagon quicker than you could say “Cheers!” But he didn’t think it was a good idea to go alone. He needed to take someone who would keep him on the straight and narrow.
Hazard sat down on his cream leather sofa, pulling off his boots and stretching out his toes, wrinkling his nose at the unmistakable smell of feet that had worked up a good sweat. He’d picked up a copy of the Evening Standard on the way home, so he could read the article about Julian. There was a picture of him in the center of the page, gazing into the distance looking wistful, and not at all like the Julian he knew. The interview was extremely gushy, covering Julian’s life from losing his virginity in Shepherd Market at the age of sixteen to a prostitute, paid for by his father as a birthday present, to becoming a social media star at seventy-nine. It included a long-winded story about Julian’s great friendship with Ralph Lauren, who—it transpired—had based a whole collection on Julian’s eccentric English style, after the two of them did a road trip around the village greens, pubs, and cricket pitches of Dorset. You learned something new about Julian every day.