The Gardeners

What was it about two people that turned them into gardeners. What were they hiding.

Warning ⚠️ This story contains themes that some people may find upsetting ▼

James had never been a keen gardener. It was well known amongst his friends and family. However, about a year after their first child was born, both James and his wife, Ellie found themselves struggling. Everyone was concerned about them. They had begun to isolate themselves from all around them. It appeared to anyone who lived close to them, that apart from James going to work as usual, their focus became just two things, their daughter, Janey, and their garden. Some people were concerned that James was isolating Ellie, others were concerned for Janey, although it seemed obvious that she was thriving.
The garden, which had been just a lawn started to be transformed about ten months after Janey’s birth. When the transformation was done, it still had a main lawn, but there were flowers everywhere and two new water features according to Dan and Celia, who lived next door. They were the witnesses to the new transformation, with Ellie tending the plants and playing with Janey. Yet, Ellie didn’t look happy. She was drawn and pale and had drastically lost weight. Dan and Celia were the sort of couple to indulge in a bit of gossip. So, in the local coffee mornings, James and Ellie’s names would drift around, and people would wonder about it all.
Ellie’s parents were divorced, and she wasn’t really on regular speaking terms with either of them. As an only child, her family wasn’t aware of any problems. They had all visited when Janey was born, but nothing afterwards. They were both on good terms with James’s family. Most of them lived quite a distance away. The closest were his parents, who lived ten miles away. They’d had quite a lot of contact ever since the couple got together, and they adored their granddaughter when she arrived. In that first year they saw quite a lot of each other. But, since Janey’s first birthday, James’s parents had only seen them twice. Now she was approaching her second birthday. Neither of them knew if they would see the family or not for this celebration. There had been occasional video calls, but the visits had almost stopped.

However, one autumn evening, they had a shock, when quite late in the evening, there was a knock on the door. They hadn’t long arrived home from holiday, so they weren’t expecting visitors until at least the following day. On opening the door, they saw a matronly looking woman asking if they were the parents of James Shelton. Their faces showed the panic they felt, wondering if this woman was going to tell them something awful had happened. Rapidly, the woman reassured them that at this time everything was alright. However, she was from social services and wanted to know if they could look after Janey as there were some problems and she wasn’t able to stay with her parents at this time. If they couldn’t take her, then she would have to go into temporary care. She told them that she had been trying to contact them. John and Sylvia were old fashioned. They didn’t feel the need for mobile phones. So, away from home, either shopping or holidays, they were not normally contactable. John and Sylvia didn’t hesitate to say yes to taking Janey. The social worker, Marjory was on the way to the home that would be taking Janey. However, she had taken a chance and driven out of her way to their house, on the off chance that they might be home. She went to her car and retrieved Janey from the car seat along with a bag of clothes, nappies, her favourite toys and all other essentials that a young child needs. She passed her and her worldly goods over and thanked the couple for their help. John and Sylvia asked what was going on, but Marjory couldn’t comment on why Janey needed to be with them. She got them to fill out some forms for her temporary placement, and she left to return to her own family, leaving an uncertain couple wondering what on earth was going on.
The following day, Marjory was back at the home of James and Ellie. The police had now cordoned it off as a crime scene. She was quickly given the facts, and why the tape was in place. She was informed that the couple were at the police station being questioned on an informal basis, just to see what their mental state was. The police tape was a precaution. Having said that, she was assured that nobody was certain anything was wrong at all. It could just be a case of a mum with post-natal depression or similar, and a developing obsession with gardening.
Dan and Celia couldn’t understand it. They had seen Marjory take Janey away, and they had seen both James and Ellie, and all of them looked alright. They wondered if they had been attacked in some way, perhaps they didn’t want Janey to be around with all the chaos. So, the coffee morning chatter that day was all about what was going on next door to Dan and Celia. The coffee morning WhatsApp group was on fire, all waiting for information to come from filter through.
What started as idle curiosity and something to talk about, soon became something far more serious when the police returned with a search warrant. And now, the beautiful garden that James and Ellie had spent so many months developing and tenderly caring for, was being excavated.

It had started, surprisingly, not with Dan and Celia, but with their other neighbours, Stephan and Grace. They were quiet people who kept to themselves. However, they hadn’t failed to notice Ellie’s strange behaviour, especially when her husband was out at work. It wasn’t just one thing; it was a lot of small things. A first child can be very hard, particularly on a mum while her husband is at work. Grace took it upon herself to quietly keep an eye on Ellie; in case she needed any help or support. She wasn’t watching her all the time; she just made sure that she was alright. She had seen the change in the garden. This wasn’t an unusual thing, it’s hard to do the extra things like gardening when you’re preparing for your first baby. After Janey was born, Ellie seemed fine, tired, of course, but happy. She would put Janey on a playmat in the garden, just for a little while seeming to do just enough to keep the garden manageable. She wasn’t out there for long. Grace never saw James in the garden at all, except for a couple of times when the grass needed cutting. As the months went on, Ellie put on weight, she seemed lethargic and less bothered about Janey.
It was when Grace thought that Janey was about ten months of age when things changed, almost overnight. From then on, it seemed as if someone was always in the garden doing something. She saw the two new water features installed and enjoyed looking at them when she was upstairs. Now, instead of popping Janey onto a playmat, Ellie had her in a playpen. She was now spending most of the day gardening. She would stop to feed and change Janey, but there seemed to be very little interaction between the two apart from that. Grace felt sad for them both. Then James would arrive home from work and go straight to work in the garden, leaving, hopefully, time for Ellie to spend with Janey. The obsession with the garden from them both seemed a little strange, but nothing to be concerned about. Grace dismissed it all as the quirks of people.
Then things changed, Ellie started sitting outside on the garden seat, holding Janey. By this time, she was about eighteen months old. Sometimes, she didn’t want to be held and would cry, but Ellie held her all the same, appearing to not be willing for them to be separated. This struck Grace as odd as this was occurring every day, and sometimes for hours, while Janey slept, or was awake. The turning point came, when Grace saw Ellie, as usual, holding Janey. She only had on a nappy, and it was pouring hard with rain. She ran down and tried to get her attention over the fence, but Ellie didn’t even seem to know that she was there. She was singing softly. So, in the end, she called the police.
An officer called to the house about an hour after they had been contacted. By this time, James had come home and retrieved his wife and child from the garden. He was just getting food for them all, when the doorbell rang. They invited him in, and he explained why he was there. Janey seemed fine, but it was obvious that the child had been crying, but of course that was normal for children. Ellie was just sitting at the table staring into space, James seemed agitated, and in amongst the questions from the officer, James asked several times how much longer this was going to take as the garden needed watering. As the light was now fading, it would have made sense. However, it was still raining, he thought to himself, “Why would anyone need to water the garden when it’s raining?”
He left the house, but he contacted his station to see what they thought. By the time he arrived back social services had been contacted. He had thought to himself, “It could be nothing, but you never know.”
The shock was that it wasn’t nothing; the neighbours watched as two tiny bodies were lifted from the garden and taken away. This wasn’t something to be shared with anyone.
The police, along with a counsellor, gradually got to the bottom of how these tiny bodies found themselves buried in the garden.

Janey’s birth had appeared to be straightforward, and for a while the couple were tired, but happy. Ellie had become a little insecure for a bit, not wanting James to go back to work. They became closer than ever. What they weren’t banking on was that Ellie would fall pregnant again so quickly. Barely three months after Janey’s birth. However, Ellie couldn’t cope with it, she pretended it wasn’t happening. She didn’t tell James, but she went from wanting him to be with her all the time, to pushing him away. Now, she was happy for him to go back to work. He did, however, make sure that he didn’t plan any business trips until things settled. Sure enough, their life did settle. However, Ellie didn’t want to go anywhere, she always seemed so tired. It was at this point that some of the good relationship she had with her daughter started to drift away from her. However, James couldn’t put off the business trips forever, and it came to a point when he just had to leave them for a weekend. Ellie didn’t seem concerned about it, so he left on the Friday evening, and was due back Sunday evening. It was this Sunday evening when his nightmare began.
James returned home as scheduled. The lights were off, so he assumed that Ellie and Janey were both in bed. As he walked through the front door, he could hear a slight whimpering, he knew straight away that it was Janey. He then assumed that Ellie was up with her, trying to get her to sleep. It was unusual, though, as Ellie had been firm from the start that all sleep training would be in the bedroom. They wouldn’t have her downstairs unless she wasn’t well. So, they would always go to her room and get her back to sleep in there. He walked into the living room and put on a dim sidelight so as not to disturb Janey. What he saw was not at all what he expected, he wasn’t able to process any of it. In the playpen, Janey was quietly crying. On the sofa sat Ellie, holding a baby in each arm. She was just staring off into space. He didn’t know what to do first. He needed to help Janey; he had no idea how long she’d been left for. But, having realised his wife was holding their babies, he needed to check them. He knew in his heart, though, that they were beyond help. They had been far too small. Then, he thought about calling an ambulance. Ellie would need help. First, Janey. He prepared her some simple food and gave her lots to drink as he had no idea how dehydrated she was. He added powder to it that you give to babies who have upset stomachs, so lose fluids. He knew that he had to rehydrate her. She seemed to pick up a little, but he was still concerned. He would keep an eye on her and take her to hospital if things changed. Then, he turned to the babies and Ellie. He gently removed each baby and wrapped them in a towel. Ellie didn’t say anything. A short time after he had taken them, she curled up on the sofa and drifted off to sleep. She had given birth to them in the bathroom. James was aware that she had delivered the afterbirth, the baby girls were identical. He had learned a lot from being there at Janey’s birth. He wasn’t an expert, but he was confident enough to know that the birth, despite it being horrific, had been reasonably straightforward, particularly with-it being twins. He questioned himself as to how he didn’t know that she was pregnant.
There appeared to have been no excessive bleeding, so he decided to leave her to sleep and covered her with a blanket. He sat with Janey for a very long time, knowing the possibility of them losing her if the police believed that she had killed them, or had neglected Janey. He was worried, that although it looked as if they had been still born, he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t prepared to risk it. As he held Janey in his arms, he decided, at that moment, that if the health of both Ellie and Janey didn’t change, and so weren’t at risk, he would tell nobody. He would take some time off and look after them both, just for a while. He would make a memorial for his two lost little girls. He thought, over time that Ellie would recover, that Janey would help her through it, however, it became obvious to him that she needed therapy, but after burying the girls in the garden, he couldn’t risk, in her state, letting anyone try talking to her. So, he kept her close and looked after them both. He changed to doing most of his work at home and only went to the office when necessary. As time went on, this seemed to happen more often. This was what brought them to this place. Sitting in that police station, telling a story he thought he would never share.
The two babies, it was confirmed, had been stillborn. The shock of what had happened had been too much for the couple to deal with, so a judge ordered that Ellie get professional help. She was sent to a centre to stay until she was able to cope again. Janey stayed with John and Sylvia until she was three, with John having complete access to her during that time, and Ellie had access once she was deemed to be stable. Janey was then returned gradually to the family home. They decided as a couple, not to have any more children, and a funeral was held, eventually for Ruth and Tammy, the names they had chosen together for the two tiny girls who would have been loved, had they survived.
The garden was never as beautiful again as it had been when it was a memorial for two little girls.

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