The Garden Plot Read Free

twice a day.
    Arriving home each evening exhausted from a day working in the chill and rain, Pru ate sandwiches she bought at the rail station for dinner. After three days and nights of that and one splurge at the Cat and Cask, her local pub, she phoned Jo.
    “I know this sounds like a silly question, but I’ve had no time to explore,” Pru explained. “Where’s the nearest shop? I’m not looking for anything fancy.” Living in Chelsea meant that the surrounding shopping areas were filled with lovely, expensive food, clothes, coffee—all out of Pru’s price range as she had yet to make any money at all. The frenetic shopping energy of King’s Road, which cut across Chelsea and Kensington, made her nervous and was too far a walk for a quick shopping trip.
    “Not to worry,” Jo said, taking things in hand. “Tomorrow I’ll take you around and we’ll find everything you need.” She was better than her word, showing Pru not just where to shop—the nearest Waitrose was two streets away, although Pru was on more of a Tesco budget—but also introducing her at Gasparetti’s, the Italian restaurant nearby. Pru fell in love with Gasparetti’s on her first visit and stopped by often, although her dinners consisted mostly of Riccardo’s minestrone with an occasional small plate of pasta.
    By the time she finished her internship at Wisley, Christmas loomed, but she took a philosophical attitude about being by herself in London for the holiday. She couldn’t help but enjoy the sights and sounds—secretly pretending she lived in some version of Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
—and decided she wouldn’t mind being alone on the day. She hadn’t talked with Jo in a week or two, and so was disinclined to phone her and sound pitiful as the holiday approached.
    “You’ll spend Christmas with us,” Jo said, ringing one day out of the blue. “Cordelia, Lucy, you, and me. Cordelia will play for us—oh, you’ll need a party piece.”
    Pru arrived at Jo’s on Christmas morning with a bottle of wine, flowers for the table, and a printed-out copy of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which she had tried to memorize, but she kept getting stuck on the bit about throwing up the sash.
    Jo’s tiny flat had a tiny tabletop tree decorated with tiny exquisitely carved and painted wooden birds. Pru thought Jo might be a bird-watcher, but as it turned out, she had bought the entire tree, already decorated, from Selfridges in an after-Christmas sale a few years before, and only because it fit in her flat.
    As the turkey roasted, the three women asked Pru to explain how Americans could eat a turkey for their Thanksgiving in November and then again just a few weeks later for Christmas. “But isn’t it the same menu?” asked Cordelia. Pru agreed that it did sound odd, but pointed out that Christmas dinners might be ham or beef, whereas Thanksgiving was always turkey.
    Lucy and Cordelia supplied the Christmas crackers. Pru knew about crackers—they looked like toilet paper tubes covered in wrapping paper. The cracker was yanked apart by a person on either end, and with a
pop,
it broke open to reveal tiny gifts andtissue-paper crowns inside. “You see,” said Jo to Pru, “you even us out. I wouldn’t have anyone to pull the cracker with if you weren’t here.”
    They spent the rest of the evening wearing their crowns, drinking wine, playing with the toys, reading the jokes, singing carols accompanied by Cordelia, and presenting their party pieces. Lucy did a few magic tricks, during which the other three helped by paying no attention when the coin she was about to pull from behind Pru’s ear fell on the floor. Pru got through her poem with no hitches, and Jo sang a lovely rendition of “Flower of Scotland.” “There,” she said, “that’s for Alan.”
    Pru spared a thought for Christmas the year before, which she had spent with Lydia and family. She missed Lydia—she missed having a girlfriend. She cherished the