No. 55.

I stood in the mid-morning silence in filtered sunlight watering potted plants. I didn’t know their names then, but they were orchids, geraniums, begonias, monsteras, lace-delicate ferns, and succulents in long hanging strands that looked like pale green jewels. The pots sat on cascading terraced boards in a west-facing outbuilding that was latticed for semi-shade. 

The outbuilding was at the back of the house next door to mine. I was ten. The owner of No. 55, an old lady by the name of Mrs. Snaith, was away on her annual summer holiday. She paid me each year to keep her plants alive for four weeks. There were hundreds.

I climbed the fence each morning and entered the kind of quiet I had never found anywhere else. Me, the plants, the gentle hiss of the hose, and the drip-drip-drip of the hydrated pot plants onto the cold concrete below the terracing.

No. 55 was utterly, achingly empty under the clear, cloudless early summer sky, and life - mine - was pregnant with its unknown future. The drip-drip sound was a metronome spelling out, forecasting, foretelling my life; if I could only interpret its soft but firm insistence.

Mrs. Snaith had given me the key to the house and although I didn’t really need to go in, I unlocked the back door one day and moved into the unnatural silence of the kitchen, bright with early morning sun. I walked through it to a sitting room with a north-facing window opening onto the side fence and my house beyond. An old radio sat on a dresser. I turned it on, for no good reason other than idle curiosity. The valve took a few seconds to warm up, then soft piano music floated out.

My first memory in life at age three had been lying in bed and hearing tinkling piano music coming in the window. My bedroom window was directly opposite the sitting room in which I was now standing. I switched off the radio, locked up the house and left, feeling like an intruder.