A Place of Peace and Solitude

by Rachel Green

I was married once before and lived in a house with a huge garden built on the side of the highest hill for miles around, from the top of which you could see as far as the Malvern Hills on the horizon. The slope of the garden was in excess of sixty degrees but climbing the high steps would reward you with a series of terraced areas winding up to the miniature orchard at the top. The greenhouse was suspended over the void of the rockery and lower terrace and was accessed by means of a rickety iron staircase from the soft fruit area; there was no access from below and my husband was unable or unwilling to commit his bulk to the flaking iron of the stairway, apprehensive of finding himself propelled though thirty panes of plate glass. That suited me just fine. I was free to grow what ever I liked and retained an area that was free of interference by me better half, as he used to call himself (though it was an oxymoron, in my opinion, for a misogynist to judge himself by reference to a woman). I made myself a seat up there from which I could look out over the landscape; a deckchair amidst the cannabis plants.

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Rachel Green, author of Sixteen Sanguine Splashes, is the chronicler of the demon Jasfoup.