Free Flowers for the Dead by Barbara Copperthwaite

very bad so far. They tend to hurt him and let him down badly. No matter what lovely things he does for them they seem unappreciative. Often, they showed a bewildering inability to be happy. When that happens he is always forced to act, to put his own needs aside, and to put the woman out of her misery.
    But he has to think about himself a little, and the fact that he was never seen with any of his loves, that there was nothing connecting them in any way, meant that the police would never be able to track him down and arrest him for murder. It is unromantic to have to think in such a way at the start of a romance, but his broken heart has taught him to look after himself as well as the needs of others.
    Murder. Such an ugly word, and so untrue. He is helping these women, like a noble physician would.
    He smiles to himself, turns up the music on his headphones, and watches the crowds slide past his sunglasses as he hunts.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ~ Enchanter’s Nightshade ~
    Fascination
     
    TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
     
    Almost the second Adam stepped outside into the glorious June sunshine, he heard a loud, repetitive call immediately above his head and looked up. Ada put a hand on the child’s shoulder and looked too, pointing.
    “See there, under the roof, where it meets at a point?” she asked. Adam nodded. “That’s a nest of sparrows. They’re what are making the noise. If you look carefully, you might just see the young peeking over the edge and looking down at us.”
    At that very moment a face appeared, tweeting madly. Adam grinned in delight, and hugged his gran.
    The sky was a brilliant blue, the bright green of the leaves standing out against it. The grass below was peppered with clover flowers, daisies and buttercups bursting forth. The odd butterfly flitted past, adding more splashes of colour.
    Adam loved his gran’s garden. She lived in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, a long way away from his home in Colchester. It took three whole hours to get there; was so far that he would fall asleep on the journey, and still have time for lots of games of I-Spy and reading his favourite books.
    Ada’s garden was big. Big enough to fit his own garden inside it twelve times or more. He could lose himself in the little walled garden on one side, or sit in one of the bank of greenhouses that sat at the bottom of the garden. They lay immediately before the special exit from the garden into private parkland Gran shared with a handful of other houses. Adam could climb up the big trees, or make hidey-holes in the spaces under bushes because he knew all the right places to push through the foliage.
    Even in winter he could squirrel himself away indoors because the house had so many rooms. It was a wonderland of concealment for him.
    Best of all, though, was the fact he did not actually feel the need to hide much when he was with Gran. His mum and dad would go into Birmingham city centre to shop or see the sights, or watch cricket at the nearby Edgbaston grounds, leaving him behind. That was the best time in the world, when it was just he and his gran. In winter she would read to him, but when the weather was nice she liked to do gardening. Adam would sit beside her like a faithful hound as she pruned and dug, always talking to him in a gentle voice, explaining everything.
    “We just need to do a little weeding today,” she decided now. “Would you like to help?”
    He nodded, and she handed him a trowel. Then she knelt on her special gardening cushion and grasped a green shot with her thick-gloved hand.
    “This is a stinging nettle starting to come through,” she said. “If you see these you must carefully dig out every little bit of root, otherwise they are very clever, and will pop back up again.
    “They survive the winter underground, storing up food in their roots. Then in spring, up they pop – even the tiniest bit of root left in the soil will mean a whole new plant can grow. So you must be careful and patient when