The Glasshouse

At the bottom of the long garden behind my grandmother's house there was a glasshouse that no one had used for nearly thirty years. It was small, barely the size of a garden shed, and most of its panes were veiled in a soft green moss. Inside, the wooden benches were thick with dust, and three terracotta pots — the only objects left behind — sat in a careful row, as though waiting to be watered by somebody who would not now return.

I had been told, gently but firmly, that the glasshouse was out of bounds. The glass, my grandmother explained, was very old, and very fragile, and a child stepping on a fallen pane could be cut very badly indeed. I nodded. I promised. And then, on the second morning of my visit, while my grandmother was on the telephone in the hall, I unlatched the back door and walked, very slowly, down the gravel path to the bottom of the garden.

The door of the glasshouse had warped in the frame. I had to lean my shoulder against it before it gave way with a soft, reluctant scrape. A wave of warm, green-smelling air rolled out to meet me. It was the smell of moss and old wood and something faintly sweet, as though, decades earlier, the glasshouse had grown sugar.

I stepped inside.

In the back corner, behind the row of pots, was a single chair. It was a plain wooden kitchen chair, painted blue, and on the seat of it lay a notebook. The notebook was leather-bound and small, and someone had tied around it a length of faded red ribbon. I did not touch it at first. I stood in front of it for a long time, listening to the sound of my own breathing in the warm green silence.

When I did pick it up, I expected to find names of plants. Instead, on the first page, in careful, slanted handwriting, were the words:

For whoever finds this. There is no hurry. Sit down.

I sat down on the floor, because the only chair was holding the notebook. I read the next page. And the next. By the time my grandmother called for me from the house — her voice surprisingly gentle, not at all the cross voice I had expected — I had read enough to know that the glasshouse had not been waiting empty for thirty years. It had been waiting for me.

I closed the book. I retied the ribbon. I placed it back, exactly as I had found it, on the seat of the blue chair.

Then I walked back up the garden, and met my grandmother at the door.

"You have been crying," she said. It was not a question. "Come inside. I'll put the kettle on."