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“I wouldnae know where to start.”

“These,” she says, pointing to a low sprawl of dark-green leaves with a few yellow flowers poking up through them. “Creeping buttercup. All of this can go.”

She picks up a narrow metal tool with a V-shaped tip and pushes it into the soil at one clump. “Loosen it first, like this.” She rocks it back and forth. “Then give it a twist, and pull.” The clump comes away trailing a tangle of white roots. She gives it a wee shake and drops it in the bucket beside her.

She rummages in a canvas tool bag on the grass, comes out with a second weeder, and holds it out to me.

I lower myself beside her and do as I’m told, tackling another clump. The whole thing comes up by the roots. I shake it off and drop it in the bucket.

“All right?” she asks.

“Aye.”

I go after the next one. Loosen, twist, pull, shake, dump. Then the next.

There’s something to it, actually. Get hold of the problem, give it a pull, chuck it in a bucket. I’ve cleared a decent patch before I realise I’m no longer thinking about the rematch.

My phone vibrates in my pocket.

I sit back on my heels, wipe a hand on my shorts, and take it out. A message from a number I don’t recognise.

Hi Ryan, it’s your maw. I’m so proud of you. I’m in a good place now and there are some things I’d really like to say to you. Could we meet? It would mean a lot to me x

I read it twice, then block the number. I’ve blocked more of her numbers than I can count. Doesn’t make a difference. All she has to do is borrow somebody else’s phone.

“Ryan?”

I shove the phone back in my pocket. “My maw.”

“Oh.”

She pauses, doesn’t push, but I feel the need to explain.

“She wants to meet up. Says she’s in a good place.” I stab the weeder into the soil. “Always the same promises. I’ve heard it all before.”

I give the clump a twist and pull harder than I need to. The roots snap, leaving half of them in the ground. I dig about with the weeder, hunting for the broken bits. Briony carries on beside me for a while.

Eventually, she says, “What was she like with you, when you were growing up? If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”

I work another broken root loose. “She wasnae cruel to me. Never lifted a hand to me or anything like that. But the benefit money went on drugs. There’d be nothing in the cupboards a lot of the time. And the electric kept getting cut off because she wasnae paying the bills.”

I stab the weeder into the soil again and hit a stone, so I toss the tool onto the grass and go in with my hands. “So, aye. She never hit me. But when she was using, it was like I wasnae even there. Her boyfriends, though—that was a different story.”

Briony turns to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the soil.

“At the wedding,” Briony says carefully, “you said one could be volatile.”

I get my fingers round another clump and pull. It comes away clean, roots and all.

“Shug.” I shake the soil off and dump it. “You saw Vale on Saturday. Same kind of man.”

“Oh, Ryan. How old were you?”

“Eleven when he first turned up. He was a bully. Worse when my maw was too far gone to notice.”

The next clump won’t budge. I pick the weeder back up, get it under the root, and lever.

“And…how long was he with your mum for?”