Chapter 6: The Escalation
She moved faster than I expected.
By Thursday — four days after the scene in the street — I received a letter from a solicitor's office.
Monica was claiming trespass and harassment.
She cited the sign on her lawn, the placement of the ladder, and what she called a pattern of intimidatory behavior.
I read it at the kitchen table while Lily drew horses on the back of an envelope beside me.
"Pretty?" Lily held up the drawing.
"Very pretty," I said.
I called a solicitor that afternoon — a woman named Frances Holt, who had been recommended by a colleague of Daniel's at the council where he'd worked.
Frances was direct and unhurried, and she listened to everything without interrupting.
"The trespass claim is weak," she said when I finished.
"You placed items on her lawn, yes, but there's no damage and no ongoing presence.
The harassment claim is thinner still — a handwritten sign expressing a factual grievance is not harassment."
"She's claiming it was intimidatory."
"She st*al from your garden the night after your husband's funeral," Frances said evenly.
"A jury of twelve people would find that context relevant."
"What do I do?"
"You respond.
Formally, through me.
We document everything — the theft of the harvest, the witnesses who saw the ladder in your garden, the letter you retrieved.
We make clear that any further action on her part will be met with a counter-claim for the value of the stolen harvest and for the distress caused to a recently bereaved family."
"She'll say the letter is mine now — that I took it from her."
"Did she ask for it back in writing?"
"No."
"Then we have time." Frances paused.
"Mrs.
Alderton, I want to ask you something.
Is there any reason this woman believes she has genuine leverage over you?
Anything at all that she might have misunderstood or misrepresented?"
"She told our neighbors that my husband confided in her.
That he was unhappy." I kept my voice steady.
"The letter proves that the only contact he had with her was a boundary dispute."
"Good.
Then her leverage is invented." A brief pause.
"Leave her to me for now."
I put the phone down and sat quietly for a moment.
Lily looked up from her drawing.
"Are you sad, Mummy?"
"A little bit," I said honestly.
"Because of Daddy?"
"Because of Daddy, yes."
She climbed off her chair and pressed herself against my side, her head against my arm, the way she had started doing since the funeral.
I put my arm around her and held on.
"He's in the trees," she said.
I looked at her.
"What?"
"Ben told me.
He said Daddy put himself into the trees when he planted them.
So he's still there." She looked up at me with complete seriousness.
"Even though Monica took the apples."
Something cracked open in my chest.
Not the sharp breaking kind.
The other kind — the kind that lets air in.
"Ben's right," I said.
"So she can't really take him," Lily said, and went back to her drawing.
I sat with that for a long time.
The solicitor's letter arrived at Monica's door on Friday morning.
I didn't see her reaction.
But Roy called me at noon.
"She's been on the phone all morning," he said.
"Could hear her through the window.
She was not happy."
"Good."
"Claire." His voice shifted.
"She had a visitor last night.
Late.
A man I didn't recognize.
He was there for about an hour."
"Did you see what he looked like?"
"Sixties, maybe.
Grey coat.
He parked down the street, not in front of her house." Roy paused.
"Might be nothing."
"Might be," I agreed.
But it wasn't nothing.
I knew it wasn't nothing.
I called Paul that evening and described the visitor.
Paul went quiet.
"Grey coat," he said.
"Sixties."
"Does that mean something to you?"
May you like
Another pause — the same half-second kind as before.
"Claire," he said slowly, "did Daniel ever mention a man named Garrett to you?"
