The Invisible Garden

The next morning Zara was out of the flat before nine o\'clock, which was something of a record for the summer.

She met Mrs. Obi on the steps. Mrs. Obi was eating her sandwich again and had brought a second one, which she held out to Zara without comment. It was egg and cress and it was very good.

"Today," Mrs. Obi said, "you lead."

Zara had been thinking about the garden she had seen from the roof. She had tried to work out from memory which streets it sat behind. She had drawn a small map on a piece of paper before she left the flat, marking where she thought the tall buildings were and where the garden must be in relation to them.

She showed the map to Mrs. Obi.

Mrs. Obi studied it. "Not bad," she said. "You are missing this street here." She drew a line with her finger in the air. "But the instinct is right. Off you go."

They walked for twenty minutes, Zara navigating, Mrs. Obi following and occasionally making a small noise that meant you are going the wrong way without actually saying it, which Zara found both helpful and slightly maddening. Twice she corrected course. Once she had to backtrack completely.

But then she found it.

It was not a gap this time but a gate. Old iron, painted black, set into a wall covered in ivy so thick that if the gate had been closed you would have assumed the wall was solid all the way along. The gate was open just a little, enough to see through, and beyond it was a garden.

Not a small courtyard garden. A real garden, bigger than Zara had expected, with actual trees, old ones with wide trunks and spreading branches, and grass underneath them that was long and slightly wild, and flower beds along the walls that had clearly been tended recently because there were no weeds and the flowers were all in bloom.

There was a wooden sign on the gate. Zara read it.

It said: "Benevolent Garden. Est. 1847. Open to all."

They went in.

It was extraordinary. Being in the garden, you could not hear the city at all. The trees were tall enough and thick enough to muffle everything. Instead there was birdsong, actual proper birdsong from multiple birds at once, and the sound of the wind in the leaves and someone somewhere laughing.

That someone turned out to be a group of small children having a picnic at the far end of the garden with a woman who was presumably their mother. They waved at Zara and she waved back.

Other people were scattered around. A man reading on a bench. An elderly couple walking very slowly along the path that ran around the edges. A teenager lying in the long grass with their eyes closed.

It felt like a secret even though it was open to everyone.

Zara and Mrs. Obi sat under one of the big trees. The bark of the tree was smooth and grey and had names carved into it going back many years, though they were faded now and mostly hard to read.

"People have been coming here since 1847," Zara said. "That is nearly two hundred years."

Yes, Mrs. Obi said. She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes. And every single one of them sat under a tree and felt exactly what you are feeling right now.

Zara thought about this. "What am I feeling right now?" she asked.

Mrs. Obi smiled without opening her eyes. "Like you found something," she said. "Even though it was here all along."

Zara looked up at the leaves moving in the wind above her. She thought that was probably exactly right.