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She found the mornings the worst. After he had gone she would make a cup of tea, sit quietly in the dining room, and listen to some light classical music on the radio. She wondered about her sex life with Mr Thorneycroft, with his twenty-seven years as a production supervisor, and she wondered what it would be like to be loved, really loved, by a man. To be enticed into bed, naked as a baby, to be spoken to, softly, to be touched, to be touched again and again, to have her hair stroked, her arms, her legs, to have no rush. She thought about these things, did Mrs Thorneycroft.
Mrs Thorneycroft had her own little vegetable patch, her own little cultivation of rampant weeds, herbs, little pansies, geraniums, and wild mint that threatened to head for the front gate. She had a little fork, a watering can, and a little box in the corner of the bedroom cupboard where she kept packets of seeds.
Sometimes, when she was feeling very naughty, she would take one of her weeds and plant it in the vegetable garden of Mr Thorneycroft. She would watch him from the kitchen window as he made his discovery, see him stiffen up as he discovered something that was there which should not have been there. Mr Thorneycroft did not like weeds in his vegetable patch and could not understand how they came to germinate so quickly. But such is the way of things.
