Rose and thorn vine heart design

She drew the shape on the back of a seed packet and slid it across the counter at the ironmonger's. Walter bent a length of galvanised wire to match, then trained bramble and dog rose around it, cutting back every shoot that tried to grow straight. 'Leave the thorns,' she said each time he reached for the shears. 'Things that hurt keep people honest.' So he left them, and the vines climbed and curled into little scrolls that looked like they were thinking something over.

By the second summer the roses had come, one at the top of the heart and one dead in the middle, dark as a bruise in the evening light. Nobody could get through the gap at the bottom without tearing their sleeves, and Edith kept the only key to the iron gate in her apron pocket. Folk said she'd gone a bit funny after the telegram. Maybe she had.

When Edith died they found the gate still locked, and tucked in the hollow of the centre rose was a small brass key, green with age, placed where no bird could reach it. Walter's boy cut through the stems that winter and let himself in. Inside the heart there was only a bench, two chipped cups and a view over the valley to where the lane meets the sea. Now put that gate back on its hinge before the wind takes it.