The Garden Centre Will Remain Open

Tom knew it was Tuesday when they passed the stone lions.

They sat on either side of the old lodge gates, both of them grey with age and weather, their expressions suggesting that the road had disappointed them personally. One had lost most of its right ear. The other had acquired a traffic cone during the Christmas before last and retained a faint orange mark around its neck.

Tom turned his head to follow them through the passenger window.

“Lions,” he said.

“Still there,” Margaret replied.

“They’ve moved.”

“They haven’t.”

“One of them has.”

“The one on the left?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because we’re looking at them from the other direction.”

Tom considered this. The answer did not satisfy him, but it had enough structure to be useful.

“Tuesday,” he said.

“That’s right.”

Tuesday was Moorfield.

Monday was usually the library, unless the library was shut or the weather was bad or Tom had slept poorly. Wednesday was Margaret’s morning at the church hall, though she had not been for three weeks because Tom had become upset when she left without him. Thursday was shopping in Bedale. Friday was meant to be nothing in particular, which Tom disliked because nothing in particular could not be prepared for.

Tuesday was Moorfield Garden Centre.

They took the same road out of town, passed the same stone lions and turned at the same green sign with the painted sunflower. Margaret parked near the trolley shelter, three spaces from the disabled bays, because Tom preferred to approach the building from the left. It allowed him to see the timber conservatories before the main entrance and gave him time to recognise where they were.

This morning, he had asked twice whether they needed their passports.

He had also tried to put the kettle in the refrigerator and become angry when Margaret stopped him.

Not with her. Not exactly.

The anger had arrived quickly, like a dog startled from sleep, snapping at the nearest movement before either of them knew what it was frightened of. Tom had stood in the kitchen holding the kettle by its base, his mouth working around words he could not find. Margaret had waited. She had learned not to grab things from him unless they were hot, sharp or actively leaking.

Eventually he had looked down at the kettle and said, “That’s not milk.”

“No,” she had agreed.

“Daft place to keep it.”

“Very.”

He had put it back beside the toaster.

They had started the morning again.

Now, as Margaret turned into Moorfield’s entrance, Tom sat a little straighter.

There were two more lions here, though these were made of pale concrete and had been reduced to thirty-nine pounds ninety-nine because one had a chipped paw. Between them stood a blackboard sign announcing:

SUMMER COLOUR HAS ARRIVED

Someone had drawn a bee in yellow chalk. The bee had six legs on one side and none on the other.

Tom pointed.

“More lions.”

“Those are the garden-centre ones.”

“They’re smaller.”

“They’re decorative.”

“What are the others?”

“Judgemental.”

Tom smiled.

It did not transform his face. Margaret had never liked the phrase his old smile, as if there were a warehouse somewhere in which the original Tom had been stored and a less reliable copy sent home in his place. This was still Tom’s smile. It simply arrived less often and sometimes required better directions.

She parked.

Tom did not immediately release his seat belt.

Margaret waited while he looked through the windscreen at the timber sheds, the trolley shelter and the long low building beyond them. Moorfield had expanded in stages over forty years and looked as though several unrelated businesses had agreed to shelter beneath the same roof. The original garden centre remained at its heart, surrounded by a café, a gift shop, a pet section, an aquatic department and a concession selling expensive outdoor clothing to people who rarely went outside.

Green signs pointed in several directions at once.

A forklift moved behind a stack of compost bags.

Somewhere nearby, a reversing alarm gave three shrill beeps and stopped.

“We’ve come for the thing,” Tom said.

“The garden centre.”

“I know that.”

“I know you know.”

“Don’t say it like I don’t.”

“I wasn’t.”

He frowned at the dashboard.

Margaret placed her handbag on her lap and waited again.

After a moment, Tom pressed the seat-belt release.

“We’ll have tea.”

“And a toasted teacake.”

“I don’t like toasted teacakes.”

“You had one last Tuesday.”

“That doesn’t mean I liked it.”

“You said it was excellent.”

“People say things.”

“That is true.”

He climbed out of the car before she could offer help, then stood with one hand resting on the roof while he found his balance. Margaret came around to join him. He held out his hand without looking at her.

They had been married for fifty-two years. Long before appointments, pill organisers and the small white cards Margaret kept in her purse explaining that her husband might become confused, Tom had held out his hand in car parks. He believed drivers became morally defective the moment they saw an empty space.

Margaret took it.

“Watch that blue one,” he said as a hatchback moved slowly along the next row. “He’s not looking.”

“He is looking.”

“Not properly.”

The driver stopped to allow them across.

Tom raised a hand in acknowledgement, then leaned closer to Margaret.

“Guilty conscience,” he murmured.

The automatic doors opened before them.

Tom relaxed.

Not completely. Margaret could feel the tension still present in his fingers, but the entrance was as he expected it to be. The stack of green baskets stood on the right. The seasonal display stood on the left. Beyond it, the main path divided at the information desk: café and gifts one way, plants and outdoor living the other.

A cardboard sunflower hung from the ceiling.

A stone tortoise squatted beside a display of glazed planters at the path junction. Its shell was streaked with artificial moss and its expression suggested that movement had always been an overrated ambition.

The air smelled of damp compost, coffee and the cinnamon candles Moorfield had been attempting to sell since February.

Janine Patel was at the information desk, changing the date on a whiteboard. She managed the café, but was covering Customer Services because the assistant who should have been there had gone to find a missing delivery driver and had not yet returned.

Janine was forty-five, efficient and capable of remembering every regular customer’s order while showing no sign of being surprised by anything they chose to complain about.

“Morning, Tom,” she called. “Morning, Margaret.”

Tom stopped.

There were mornings when names from other people unsettled him. Margaret watched his face, ready to supply the connection.

Today, he found it.

“Morning, Janine.”

“You’re early.”

“You’re late.”

Janine looked at the clock above her. “I’ve been here since half eight.”

“Still late if we’re early.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Shannon appeared from behind a display of metal herons, carrying a clipboard and a radio. She was a compact woman approaching sixty, with silver hair cut close to her head and the permanent forward motion of someone whose day contained twelve problems and only three members of staff qualified to deal with any of them.

Shannon had managed Moorfield for twenty-two years. This made her responsible for eighty employees, three acres of retail space, a café extension that had never been properly signed off, the emotional welfare of four ornamental carp and every customer who believed a dying plant represented a personal betrayal.

She wore a green fleece with SHANNON — CENTRE MANAGER embroidered over the heart.

“Morning, you two,” she said.

Tom nodded at the radio. “Trouble?”

“Always.”

“What sort?”

“Delivery’s late, there’s a leak near Aquatic Plants, and someone’s parked a van across the emergency gate.”

“Same van?”

“Different van.”

“Same sort of idiot.”

“Almost certainly.”

Shannon glanced at Margaret. It was a brief look, no longer than a blink, but it contained a complete enquiry.

Margaret answered with the smallest lift of one shoulder.

Not terrible. Not easy.

Shannon understood.

“Lavender’s reduced,” she told Tom. “You’ll want to inspect it before someone buys the worst of it.”

Tom looked towards the plant area.

“Why’s it reduced?”

“Because it’s past its best.”

“Shouldn’t sell plants past their best.”

“We sell people Christmas decorations in August. Standards have slipped.”

Tom set off towards Outdoor Plants, still holding Margaret’s hand.

Shannon watched them go before raising her radio.

“Janine, has anyone found the driver of that van?”

Janine touched the radio clipped to her belt.

“I asked twice.”

“Ask in the café.”

“I did.”

“Try the toilets.”

“You think he’s hiding?”

“I think he ordered the full English.”

Shannon walked away, already speaking into the radio.

Tom and Margaret followed the main path through the houseplant section. Tom paused beside a display of rubber plants and touched one leaf between finger and thumb.

“Plastic.”

“It’s real.”

“Feels plastic.”

“That’s why they call it a rubber plant.”

“They shouldn’t.”

“Would you prefer suspiciously shiny ficus?”

“Yes.”

A woman arranging miniature cacti laughed. Tom looked towards her, uncertain whether the sound was friendly.

Margaret squeezed his hand.

“She agrees with you.”

“She should. It’s misleading.”

They continued.

The reduced lavender occupied two metal tables beneath a sign that read FRAGRANT FAVOURITES — NOW HALF PRICE. Most of the plants were still alive, though some had clearly begun making alternative arrangements.

Tom released Margaret’s hand and inspected them.

He had worked with plants for most of his life, professionally and otherwise. Thirty-eight years maintaining council parks, public planting and cemetery grounds had taught him what grew, what failed and what had merely been planted by somebody who would not be responsible for it in six months.

He spoke of his allotment with the solemnity of public service. He had known the best soil for carrots, how to keep pigeons from brassicas and exactly how long to wait before declaring war on a slug. Even now, when the word allotment sometimes vanished and left him calling it the place with the shed, his hands remembered what to do.

He lifted one lavender pot and examined the stems.

“Dry.”

“It’s lavender,” Margaret said.

“The compost.”

He pushed one finger into it.

“Dry.”

“You’re not meant to put your fingers in them,” said a voice behind him.

Margaret turned. A man in a wax jacket stood with a trolley containing two bags of decorative slate and a ceramic owl. He did not look like a member of staff. He looked like someone who had recently been told a rule and was delighted to have found another person breaking it.

Tom looked at his finger. Then at the lavender.

“How else do you tell?”

“You look.”

“Plants don’t drink through your eyes.”

The man opened his mouth.

Margaret smiled at him. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“I was only saying.”

“So was he.”

The man moved on, pushing the owl ahead of him.

Tom watched until he disappeared behind a display of trellis panels.

“He’s got an owl.”

“He has.”

“Doesn’t know about plants.”

“Probably why he bought an owl.”

Tom returned the lavender to the table.

“They shouldn’t have let these get like this.”

“I expect they’ve been busy.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“You used to forget to water the hanging baskets.”

“I did not.”

“You forgot every June.”

“I delegated.”

“To rain.”

“Efficient.”

Margaret picked up a plant that was less grey than the others. “This one might recover.”

Tom shook his head.

“Too much dead growth.”

“You could cut it back.”

“Could.”

“You like lavender.”

“Not that lavender.”

“You said that last time.”

“Then why are you asking?”

Because sometimes, if she asked the same question in the same place, she got the same answer.

Because repetition was not always loss. Sometimes it was a path. A way back into the day.

Margaret returned the plant to the table.

“All right. No lavender.”

“Robbery at that price.”

“It’s half price.”

“Half a robbery is still robbery.”

They turned towards the café.

The leak near Aquatic Plants had become difficult to ignore.

A yellow bucket sat in the centre of the path, though the water was not falling into it. Instead, a dark wet line emerged from beneath a display of solar fountains and ran across the paving towards Outdoor Pots.

Two members of staff stood over it.

One was Leon from Outdoor Living, who had a beard designed for mountain rescue and became distressed when required to use a stepladder. The other was Priya from Aquatics, wearing blue gloves and carrying a long-handled net.

Shannon stood between them with her clipboard tucked beneath one arm.

“The pipe’s dry,” Priya said.

“The tanks are stable,” said Leon.

“You’ve checked all of them?” Shannon asked.

“All the tanks?”

“All the things containing water.”

Priya looked towards the aquatic department. It contained fourteen display tanks, three ponds, two fountains and a plastic waterfall populated by mechanical frogs.

“There are quite a lot.”

“Start with the ones uphill.”

“The path is level.”

Shannon pointed at the water. “Then explain that.”

The thin stream had reached the edge of the paving. Instead of continuing towards the nearest drain, it curved around the metal grate and flowed the other way.

Tom stopped.

Margaret nearly walked into him.

“What is it?”

He did not answer.

He watched the water.

A few other customers had noticed the leak and were stepping around it with the mild irritation of people inconvenienced by somebody else’s plumbing. A child in red wellingtons attempted to stamp in the stream. His father pulled him away.

Shannon saw Tom watching.

“Careful there,” she called. “Floor’s wet.”

“It’s going wrong.”

“The leak?”

“The water.”

Shannon glanced down. “Water’s generally involved in leaks.”

“It’s going uphill.”

Leon gave a short laugh, then stopped when nobody joined him.

The water was not exactly going uphill. Margaret could see that. The paving was level, or close enough to it. There might have been a shallow dip leading towards Outdoor Pots.

But the drain was nearer. Water ought to have spread towards it.

Instead, the stream narrowed and crept between the paving slabs, gathering in a dark seam that led away from Aquatic Plants.

Tom followed it.

Margaret took his arm. “Let Shannon sort it out.”

“She’ll want to know where it’s going.”

“I do,” Shannon admitted.

“Don’t encourage him,” Margaret said.

“I wasn’t. I was gathering evidence.”

Tom moved carefully along the path. Margaret stayed beside him. The water slipped between two displays: glazed ceramic pots on one side and bags of pond gravel on the other.

“It’s vanished,” Margaret said.

Tom followed the dark seam to a wooden pallet stacked with blue planters and leaned forward.

“Under there.”

“Yes,” Margaret said. “That’s usually what vanishing means.”

He looked at her.

She waited.

Then he laughed.

It came out louder than either of them expected, and for a few seconds they were simply Tom and Margaret in a garden centre, sharing a joke neither of them would remember well enough to repeat.

Shannon handed her clipboard to Leon.

“Move the pallet.”

Leon looked at the stack of planters. “All of it?”

“No, Leon. Just the immovable bottom half.”

Priya put down her net and helped.

Between them they dragged the pallet aside, producing a noise that caused several customers to turn and a display of wind chimes to begin a nervous conversation.

Beneath it, one of the square paving slabs had dropped by perhaps an inch.

Water ran steadily towards the depression and disappeared into the narrow gap around its edges.

“There,” Tom said.

Shannon crouched.

“Subsidence.”

“Could be,” Leon said.

Shannon looked up at him. “Thank you for confirming the word I just used.”

“We had that by the sheds last winter.”

“That was a rabbit.”

“Big rabbit.”

“It was still a rabbit.”

Priya crouched beside Shannon. “Could the leak have washed the base out?”

“Not this quickly.”

The paving slab gave a faint click.

Everyone looked at it.

Margaret felt Tom’s fingers close around hers.

The slab sank another inch.

Then another.

Shannon stood.

“Right. Nobody touch it.”

Leon, who had been preparing to touch it, withdrew his foot.

Shannon lifted her radio.

“Janine, are the spare barriers still beside Customer Services?”

“Unless somebody’s moved them.”

“Bring two to Aquatic Plants. And the warning tape.”

“What sort of barriers?”

“The yellow ones.”

“The folding ones or the weighted ones?”

“The ones you can reach first.”

There was a soft grinding beneath the path.

The paving slab tipped at one corner.

Water rushed into the widening gap.

Margaret took a step back, bringing Tom with her. He resisted for half a second, still trying to see.

“Come on,” she said.

“It’s going down.”

“So are we, if we stand there.”

Shannon extended both arms, guiding customers away from the area.

“Could everyone give us a little room, please? There appears to be a problem with the paving.”

This announcement drew more people towards it.

It was a fundamental law of Moorfield that customers who ignored every sign in the building would cross three departments to investigate a temporary barrier.

The slab dropped out of sight.

It did not fall far. At first.

There was a crack, a clatter and a hollow thump from beneath the floor.

Then silence.

A black square remained where the slab had been.

Leon fetched a torch from his belt.

Shannon held out her hand. “Give me that.”

“I can look.”

“You said that before the rabbit.”

“It jumped.”

“It was in a hole. That was always a possibility.”

Shannon switched on the torch and shone it down.

The beam revealed compacted soil, fragments of concrete and the edge of another slab. The cavity appeared to be perhaps three feet deep.

Then loose earth shifted.

A chunk of the lower surface broke away and fell.

The torchlight followed it.

The piece of earth became smaller and smaller until it vanished.

No sound came back.

Shannon lowered the torch.

“That’s not subsidence.”

Leon looked into the opening. “Sinkhole?”

“Do sinkholes have bottoms?”

“Usually.”

“This one’s failed to provide evidence.”

Priya peered over Shannon’s shoulder. “Could it be an old well?”

“Inside a garden centre?”

“The building used to be smaller.”

“That does not explain a medieval well beneath a display of blue planters.”

Tom pulled gently at Margaret’s hand.

“I want to see.”

“No.”

“I saw it first.”

“You saw the water.”

“Same thing.”

“It absolutely is not.”

“Might be.”

His voice had changed. The stubbornness remained, but something anxious had entered beneath it. Too many people were gathering. Too many voices were crossing. The wind chimes still moved from the disturbance, adding small bright notes to the hum of speculation.

Margaret turned towards him.

“Tom.”

He looked at the hole.

“Tom, look at me.”

After a moment, he did.

“We’re at Moorfield.”

“I know.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“I know that.”

“We came past the lions.”

“The left one’s moved.”

“We parked by the trolley shelter. We spoke to Janine. You told Shannon her lavender was a disgrace.”

“It is.”

“We’re going for tea.”

“And a toasted teacake.”

“You don’t like toasted teacakes.”

“I never said that.”

Margaret smiled. “There you are.”

His grip loosened.

Behind them, Janine arrived carrying two folding barriers under one arm and a large reel of red-and-white tape around her neck.

“I brought both sorts,” she said.

“Good thinking,” Shannon replied.

“What happened?”

“Floor resigned.”

Janine stared into the opening. “That’s quite deep.”

“That is the current assessment.”

They placed the barriers around the missing slab. Shannon directed Leon to extend the cordon across the full width of the path, then changed her mind when this prevented access to the aquatic department.

“No. Leave a route on the far side.”

“That puts people close to it,” Priya said.

“Not once we move the pond-food display.”

“Where?”

“Against the hose reels.”

“That blocks the hose reels.”

“Has anybody come in today specifically for an emergency hose reel?”

A man at the edge of the gathering crowd raised his hand halfway.

Shannon looked at him.

He lowered it.

“Move the pond food,” she said.

The crowd had grown to fifteen people.

A woman with a pushchair was filming the hole on her phone. The man with the ceramic owl had returned and was explaining drainage to anybody who could not escape. Two café customers stood nearby holding trays, apparently unwilling to allow a minor geological event to interrupt their toast.

Tom watched the staff unroll the warning tape.

“That’s not enough,” he said.

Margaret followed his gaze.

The hole remained a neat black square inside the barriers. It seemed darker now, though that might have been because Shannon’s torch was no longer pointing into it.

“What isn’t?”

“Tape.”

“It tells people not to go near.”

“People don’t read.”

“He’s right,” Janine said.

Shannon tied the tape across the first barrier. “People read.”

“Not here,” Janine said. “Yesterday a woman opened a gate marked STAFF ONLY because she thought the toilets might be behind it.”

“They were.”

“She went into the boiler room.”

“Still behind it.”

Something moved beneath the paving.

The sound was faint but distinct.

Three knocks.

Not cracks. Not the random settling of soil.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Every person around the barrier became silent.

Even the mechanical frogs in Aquatic Plants appeared to pause, though this was later attributed to a separate electrical fault.

Shannon looked at the hole.

Leon looked at Shannon.

Priya picked up her net.

The man with the ceramic owl said, “Could be pipes.”

Shannon did not turn around. “Pipes don’t knock.”

“They can.”

“Not politely.”

The woman with the pushchair lowered her phone.

Tom stepped towards the barrier.

Margaret caught his sleeve.

He did not try to pull away this time. His whole attention had fixed on the opening.

Something scraped far below.

Then came another knock.

Louder.

A little dust shifted from the edge and drifted into the darkness.

Tom frowned.

“That weren’t there last Tuesday.”

“No,” Margaret said. “There were begonias.”

Shannon had dealt with a great many emergencies at Moorfield.

She had dealt with a customer trapped inside a display shed after testing the lock. She had dealt with a fox in the café, a wedding party taking photographs in the conservatory section without permission, and an elderly gentleman who arrived every Thursday to complain that the carp lacked discipline.

She had once evacuated the entire building because a member of staff mistook steam from the dishwasher for smoke. She had once refused to evacuate it when a smoke machine in the Christmas grotto triggered three alarms and frightened an elf into the stockroom.

The important thing was to identify what could be controlled.

The hole could be isolated.

The customers could be redirected.

The leak could be stopped once somebody found its source.

Whatever was knocking beneath Outdoor Pots could wait until Shannon had completed the necessary paperwork or until it became more specific about its requirements.

She clipped the end of the warning tape to the second barrier.

“Leon, close this section from the junction.”

“What about Aquatic Plants?”

“Access through Seasonal.”

“That means going past barbecues.”

“People buying fish food will survive exposure to barbecues.”

Priya continued holding the net in front of her.

Shannon looked at it.

“What are you planning to do with that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Fair enough.”

The knocking stopped.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Shannon became aware of the radio chatter at her shoulder, the trickle of water into the opening and the café music continuing overhead. An acoustic version of a song she had disliked in 1987 drifted through the building.

“Should we call someone?” Janine asked.

“I’m considering who.”

“Fire brigade?”

“There’s no fire.”

“Council?”

“They’ll ask whether it’s on adopted land.”

“Police?”

Shannon looked into the hole. “And tell them what?”

Janine thought about it.

“Suspicious knocking.”

“From whom?”

The darkness moved.

Shannon took one step back.

A hand rose over the edge.

It was enclosed in a black iron gauntlet, each finger ending in a jointed metal plate. Mud and something darker coated the armour. The fingertips gripped the paving. Metal scraped against stone.

A second hand appeared beside it.

The crowd drew breath as one.

Priya raised the net.

Leon said a word Shannon chose not to acknowledge in front of customers.

The gauntleted fingers tightened.

Whatever was beneath the path began to pull itself upwards.

Shannon looked at the opening, the barriers and the gathering customers.

There were now more than thirty of them. Several had their phones raised. One café customer had brought a chair.

Shannon lifted her voice.

“The centre will remain open. Use the other path.”