A Garden of Tarnished Silver

A trickle of muddy water crept down the window glass, a lazy, meandering path over the grime Phillippe hadn’t bothered to clean in weeks. He propped his chin on his fist, elbows digging into the cold sill. Below, in the sad, bare rectangle of earth that was Mrs. Morden’s back garden, something was definitely off. Usually, by mid-March, Mrs. Morden would be out there, trowel in hand, attacking stray weeds with the surgical precision of a seasoned general. She was a woman of routine, a fact Phillippe had catalogued with the cynical expertise of a twelve-year-old who saw routine as a slow, inevitable slide into the grave.

But today, she wasn’t weeding. She was hunched over the remains of an old rose trellis, a skeletal thing that had been stripped bare by the frost. Her movements were jerky, almost furtive. She wore her usual faded gardening coat, thick wool, the colour of bruised plums, but her hands, usually encased in sensible leather gloves, were bare. They looked like gnarled roots, pale and freckled, scrabbling at the soil.

Phillippe watched, a faint hum of the old refrigerator in the kitchen a dull thrum behind him. He didn’t know why he watched her, really. There was nothing exciting about Mrs. Morden. She was just… there. Like the crumbling brick wall between their houses, or the constant low throb in his dad’s knee after a long shift. Just a fixture, slowly wearing down. And watching her, he felt that familiar, dull ache of understanding: this was what it meant, to just… get old. To become a collection of slow, predictable movements, eventually fumbling for things that were no longer there.

He saw her fingers digging, not planting, but rummaging. She wasn’t looking at the soil, but glancing around, quick, anxious flicks of her head towards her back door, towards Phillippe’s window – though he knew she couldn’t see him through the reflected cloud. Her shoulders were tight, her breath puffing out in small, white clouds in the cool air.

And then it happened. A glint of something silver, small, catching the meagre light. It slipped from her fingers, landed with a barely audible *plink* against a loose stone. Mrs. Morden froze. Her head snapped down, eyes wide. Her hands flew, not to pick it up, but to the loose, damp soil beside it. She kicked at it, a clumsy, almost desperate motion, then scraped a handful of dirt over the spot. Not quite covering it, just… obscuring it. Like a frightened bird trying to hide a dropped feather.

Phillippe’s breath hitched, not from surprise, but from something closer to unease. He’d seen plenty of weird things living next to Mrs. Morden – her talking to her petunias, her fierce arguments with a squirrel over a stolen birdseed – but this felt different. This was not the dignified eccentricity of old age. This was… a scramble. A secret, fumbled attempt to hide something small and shiny under the mud of early spring.

He pulled back from the window, the cold glass leaving faint rings on his cheek. The refrigerator hummed louder, a persistent drone. Why hide it? What could an old woman have that she needed to bury in her own garden, in broad daylight, like a guilty child? His mind jumped from a vague memory of a neighbour’s cat burying a bird, to the way his mum always tucked her worry bills under the coffee tin. Everything. Hiding things was just… everything, wasn’t it? Small, pathetic secrets piled high.

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it was none of his business. But the thought burrowed into his brain, a tiny, insistent worm. What was it? Why the panic? His dad always said, 'Curiosity killed the cat, Phillippe, and satisfaction brought it back dead.' But his dad also said, 'Mind your own, kid,' a phrase he rarely followed himself. Phillippe felt a surge of something akin to stubbornness, or maybe just a desperate need for a distraction from the grey hum of his own life. He needed to know.

He waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. The house was quiet. He heard the faint creak of Mrs. Morden’s back door closing, then the distant clatter of what sounded like teacups. She was inside. He slipped on his worn-out trainers, the laces frayed, then grabbed his old, too-small hoodie. The air outside was sharp, biting at his exposed wrists. He shoved his hands into his pockets, the rough lining scratching his knuckles. The smell of wet earth was stronger out here, mingled with the faint, metallic scent of something decaying.

He ambled casually towards the back of their small yard, kicking at a stray pebble. He made sure his movements were slow, unhurried, like he was just… existing. Doing nothing in particular. He didn’t look directly at Mrs. Morden’s garden, not yet. He pretended to examine the loose brick in their shared wall, pressing his thumb into the crumbling mortar. The silence was thick, broken only by the distant caw of a crow. He felt a ridiculous thudding in his chest.

Finally, he turned, his eyes flicking to the rose trellis. The soil was indeed disturbed, a fresh patch of darker, damper earth near the base where the rose stems, like thin, bony fingers, reached for the sky. It wasn’t a neat mound, just a hasty, almost violent scrape. He knelt, pretending to tie his shoe, the damp grass soaking through his worn jeans. He reached out a finger, careful, and prodded the loose earth. It was cold, clumpy, clinging to his skin.

There. Just under the surface. A sliver of metal, barely visible. He nudged it with his thumb, then slowly, carefully, uncovered it. It was a locket. Small, oval, tarnished silver, dull from the earth. A thin, delicate chain was still attached, tangled in the mud. He rubbed it with his thumb, trying to clear away the grit. It felt impossibly old in his hand, a heavy, secret thing. The clasp was stiff, refusing to open.

He turned it over, the coolness of the metal seeping into his skin. There was a faint engraving on the back, but the mud and tarnish made it impossible to read. It felt important. Too important to be buried like a forgotten toy. Why? Why would Mrs. Morden, a woman who catalogued her receipts and labelled her jam jars with obsessive care, bury something like this in the dirt?

His mind conjured up all sorts of ridiculous scenarios: stolen jewels, a hidden will, a secret past. But then he remembered Mrs. Morden’s hands, her desperate kick at the earth. It wasn’t an act of calculated concealment. It was panic. Raw, untidy, human panic. And a sudden thought, cold and unsettling, wormed its way into his mind: what if she wasn’t hiding it *from* someone, but hiding it *for* someone? Or worse, *from herself*?

He felt a sudden chill, deeper than the spring air. He stood up, the locket still in his palm, a muddy, ancient weight. He looked at Mrs. Morden’s house, and there she was. Standing at her back door, just as he’d imagined, framed against the dim light of her kitchen. Her hair, usually pinned in a neat bun, was a little wild, stray white wisps catching the light. Her eyes, usually a faded blue behind thick spectacles, were wide, fixed on him. And on the locket in his hand. She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just watched. A terrible, silent question passed between them, a cold current of unspoken dread. Her gaze held a stark mix of resignation and something akin to a silent plea. Phillippe, clutching the muddy locket, didn’t know what to do next, but he knew, with a certainty that made his stomach clench, that he was now irrevocably part of whatever secret lay buried beneath the soil of Mrs. Morden’s garden.