The garden of hope

EACH year, before the holiday brochures landed, John’s seed catalogue arrived in the post. Ellen waited, knowing its arrival would bring a flood of memories she wasn’t strong enough to deal with. She

THE sea at Thornbyon-Sea answered before you’d finished asking. Will Hartley liked that about it. He would lift his eyes, shape a thought, and the tide would already be laying its long, even breaths a

WHEN Lady Hargreaves told Valerie that she was the third governess to be engaged for Rosa in a little over a year, it had taken Valerie only a few days to realise that the problem was not Rosa herself

Apart from the For Sale board, the house didn’t look any different from the last time I was here. Six months ago now. The day of my father’s funeral. A memory of how fragile my mother appeared that da

When writer Sheila M Averbuch and her husband moved into their Pencaitland home in East Lothian over 20 years ago, the garden was little more than a flat upper lawn with a steep slope down to the bung

I’D just started work as a nurse and it was my first time living on my own. I managed to rent a tiny flat in Finchley. It came with a window box, a stray cat that hung around mewing for food, plus a n