Then I realise Jack is giving me that oddly distant, assessing look of his again, as if he still can’t quite work me out. I wish he would stop it. Under those watchful blue eyes, I feel gauche and self-conscious, as if all my flaws are being magnified under a microscope.
‘Maybe your mum will change her mind about selling the house?’ I suggest, to fill the pause in conversation.
A shadow passes over his face. ‘No. She never will. When Dad died, she went completely …’ He clears his throat. ‘Well, she wasn’t herself for a very long time, and she still hasn’t recovered. Not really.’
‘How awful.’
‘Asking her to move out now would be the cruellest thing I could do to her.’
He forces a smile, as if embarrassed he’s confided so much. ‘Rushbrooke House reminds me of that Eagles song, “Hotel California”. You can check out any time you like …’
‘But you can never leave,’ I finish. I know the song well. It was one of Ivy’s favourites from the Seventies. Poor Jack …
On the drive back to Moonbeam Cottage, he asks me where I’m dining on Saturday night.
‘Oh, we’re not going out to a restaurant. He’s – erm – cooking for me.’
‘He?’ He glances across then shakes his head. ‘Sorry, don’t mean to be nosy.’
‘It’s fine. He’s the new poet in residence?’
Jack darts a look at me. ‘You’re having dinner with Sylvian?’
‘Yes. Why? Do you know him?’
‘I know of him.’ He twists his lips into a scathing smile. ‘I assume you’ll be trying to reform him, then.’
I stare at his profile as he pulls in outside Moonbeam Cottage and switches off the engine. ‘Reform him?’ What a strange, old-fashioned expression. ‘What do you mean?
He grins. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. Selena heard some rumours in the village about his, erm, interesting romantic life.’
I turn curiously at the mention of Selena, the woman from the café, wondering how Jack knows her.
He shrugs. ‘Even if the rumours are true, a woman in your position shouldn’t have anything to worry about.’
I glance at him in confusion. A woman in my position? What’s he saying? That even if Sylvian plays around, he’s unlikely to want to play around with me? Well, that’s charming!
‘What do you mean, a woman in my …?’ I begin. But he’s already getting out of the car.
‘Are you coming over?’ He leans back in. I’m still sitting with my seatbelt on. ‘Let’s get this strimmer into your shed.’
TWELVE
‘People always write nettles off. But they make great soup.’
Ivy’s words come back to me as I stand in her garden, surveying the thriving army of nettles I still need to tackle. They’ve established themselves like a thick, defensive barrier all along the front of the hedge. Just looking at them makes my arms feel itchy.
They look vibrantly green and full of vitamins, and they’d probably keep me in soup for about twenty years. Free food! What’s not to enjoy? Especially when you’ve got a whole cottage to paint and very little cash with which to do it. Move over Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and make way for the new Foraging Queen!
An hour later, I’m over-heating with the exertion of pulling them out at the roots, and I’ve gone off nettle soup entirely.
I sink down on the tree stump and wipe the back of my hand across my sweaty brow. I refuse to be downhearted. Ivy Garden is going to look beautiful by the time I’ve finished!
‘Christ, this is a bit of a wilderness,’ says a voice and I spin around.
It’s the girl from the bus stop. And the garden centre.
Layla.
She saunters over and looks around as if she’s the gaffer, inspecting my labours. ‘You left your debit card.’ She digs in her pocket and holds it out.
‘Oh.’ I stand up, pushing back the straggles of hair that have escaped from my ponytail, and take the card. ‘I didn’t realise I’d left it. Thank you. It’s really nice of you to bring it over.’
Layla shrugs. ‘No probs. It was on my way home anyway. So Jack says you’re staying in Ivy’s cottage?’
I nod. ‘Just until I get it sorted out, painted, that kind of thing. And the garden, of course.’
‘And then you’re selling up?’
‘Yep. Going back to Manchester, where I live.’
‘Is that where your family is, then?’
I swallow hard and bend to toss another pile of nettles on the compost heap. Naturally, she assumes I have other family, aside from Ivy.
I paste on a smile. ‘Yes, that’s right. They’re in Manchester.’
It’s true, in a way. My friends are my family now.
Layla nods. ‘Cool. You’re bloody lucky you don’t have to live in this dump forever.’
‘Don’t you like it here, then?’
She snorts. ‘No. If I had money, I’d be off in a flash. No looking back. But the garden centre pays peanuts so I’m forced to cohabit with my grump of an older brother and a mad mother whose mission in life is to control what she calls my wilful behaviour and to hang on to a decrepit house that’s practically falling down around our ears.’ She rolls her eyes dramatically.
‘How old are you?’
‘Seventeen.’
Ah. Teen years. I remember them well. I stalked around resenting everything, including Ivy, for a long time. Thankfully, once I hit my twenties, I became normal again.
‘Couldn’t you get another job?’ I suggest. ‘Train for a profession, maybe?’
She gives a scornful laugh. ‘What, without a single GCSE to my name? I don’t think so! What do you do, anyway?’
‘I work in a city centre café. My boss, Patty, is lovely. She’s given me time off to come and get everything sorted here.’
‘But you don’t want to be here, right?’
I laugh. How does she know that? ‘Well, I suppose it makes a bit of a change. It’s – erm – very peaceful.’
Layla screws up her nose. ‘But you still can’t wait to get back to the city, am I right?’
I’m not sure I like the way she’s standing there, arms folded, challenging me on what’s quite a sensitive subject. But she’s absolutely right so I nod. ‘Patty’s keeping my job open for me.’
‘So is that really what you’ve always wanted to do?’ she asks. ‘Work in a café?’ Her pale grey eyes are unsettlingly sharp.
‘Well, it probably wasn’t a burning ambition of mine when I was a kid,’ I concede. ‘But it’s fine. I like it.’
‘So why didn’t you “train for a profession”?’ she demands, doing sarcastic quotation marks in the air.
I draw in a long breath. ‘Well … sometimes life can get in the way of your plans. And my circumstances meant I had to leave school at sixteen and get myself a job. Luckily, I’d been a Saturday girl at the café for a few years already, so Patty took me on full-time.’
Feeling like I’m being interviewed for a job, I glance around at the nettles still to be plucked. ‘Any good at pulling up weeds?’ I ask, just to get her off the subject.
She stares, probably wondering about the ‘circumstances’. But I’m not getting into all of that with a slightly obnoxious teenager, who doesn’t know when to be quiet. I know I haven’t exactly achieved the dreams I had as a kid – of going to college and developing my talent as an artist – but who the hell has?
‘What circumstances?’ she asks.
Good grief, she doesn’t give up!
‘Oh, nothing interesting.’ I leap up and grab my gloves which I’d dropped on to the grass. ‘Right, better get on. Thanks for bringing my card.’
‘Bugger off, in other words,’ she says cheerfully, seeming not in the least offended. ‘Righto, no probs.’
‘No, I didn’t mean …’
‘Hey, it’s fine.’ She grins. ‘I’m used to being told where to go. Not in so many words, of course. My snobby mother is much too polite for that and my brother thinks h
e’s being “supportive”.’ She does the quotes thing again. ‘While actually never listening to a bloody thing I say. But hey, that’s families for you. Love ’em or hate ’em, you’re pretty much stuck with them.’
I swallow hard and turn back to the weeding, and Layla finally takes the hint and marches off.
A thought occurs to me. ‘Oh, Layla?’
She turns.
‘Do you know Jack Rushbrooke well?’
She pulls a face. ‘Far too bloody well. He’s my workaholic brother.’
‘Oh.’ I’m surprised, not least because as siblings, they look quite different. Jack is tall, with dark hair and blue eyes, while Layla has the sort of fair skin you can tell will burn easily in the sun. Mind you, it’s impossible to tell what her natural hair colour is.
She scowls. ‘He’s worse than the police. He was thirteen when I was born, so he’s much older than me and he doesn’t approve of me having a boyfriend.’
I think of Adonis.
‘You have a boyfriend?’
She blushes beneath the pale foundation. ‘Yeah. He’s called Josh.’
I nod. ‘I think I’ve seen you with Adon – er, Josh at the bus stop.’
She looks a little sheepish, obviously remembering the time I saw them snogging.
‘Who’s the girl with the long strawberry-blonde hair?’ I ask casually.
‘Oh, that’s Anne-Marie, my best mate. And by the way, you’re in luck because it’s my day off tomorrow if you want some help sorting this jungle out.’
My heart sinks. The work’s hard enough without enduring the company of an unpredictable and bolshy teenager asking about things I don’t want to dwell on.
‘That’s a very kind offer, Layla.’ I smile politely. ‘But really …’
‘But really I’ll probably end up doing more harm than good? Funny, I get that a lot.’ Her mouth hitches up at the corner.
‘No!’ Guiltily, I rush to put her right. ‘That’s not what I was going to say at all. I’m sure you’d be a hell of a lot better than me at recognising what’s a weed and what’s not. I’d love your help.’
‘Really?’ She throws me a disbelieving look.
‘Yes. Really.’
‘So tomorrow, then?’
I hesitate, about to make an excuse why I can’t be here.
But then I remember the yawning expanse of empty hours I’m facing over the weekend. ‘Great! I’ll be working in the house in the morning. But I’ll be here in the afternoon.’
‘Right, well, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring a couple of hoes to help with getting rid of those nettles and grasses. And if you don’t want to talk, just tell me. Honestly, I promise I’ll be as quiet as a graveyard.’
I nod, wondering about the ‘hoe’ bit of her speech. I thought a hoe was an American term for a ‘loose’ woman. And she’s bringing a couple? I grin to myself. The mind boggles. But I suppose the work would get done faster.
I watch, wincing slightly, as she charges at the wall of thorns and forces her way through.
She yelps indignantly as nature fights back. ‘Bloody stupid fucking hedge.’
Oh God, what have I let myself in for?
The next afternoon, I’m on the sofa drinking coffee and reading up on how best to prepare the soil to plant my wildflower seeds, when there’s a sharp and insistent rap on the window just a few feet from me.
I nearly jump out of my skin with fright.
Layla is peering in at me, using her hands to block out the sun, a puzzled frown on her face. Sighing, I haul myself off the sofa to answer the door. She has a variety of mysterious, long-handled tools with her.
‘Borrowed them from the shed at home,’ she says, seeing my surprised look. ‘My mother likes to think she’s a gardener but with Prudence, it’s mainly a case of all the gear but no idea.’
‘Prudence?’
‘Mum. She prefers Prue, so I call her Prudence.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I grin. ‘That makes perfect sense.’
‘We’ve got about half an acre of grounds at Rushbrooke House, mostly lawns, but all Prudence does is drift around, talking to the plants, like the lady of the manor. Jack does all the hard graft, like mowing the lawns.’
At once there’s an image in my head of Jack labouring over the grass-cutting, shirt flung aside, sweat gleaming on his well-muscled chest, a bit like the hunk in the fizzy drink advert …
No, no, no! What is it with me and men wielding axes or doing sweaty physical labour? I give my head a little shake to dislodge the image.
Layla peers around me into the hallway, as though wondering if I have company. ‘So are you ready? I thought you’d already be over there.’
We go over the road and Layla shows me how to use the hoe to tackle another batch of nettles, weeds and coarse grasses.
‘So, Layla, how come you left school early?’ I ask as we work side by side.
She shrugs. ‘We can’t all be mega intelligent. In our family, Jack got all the brains.’
I frown. ‘I don’t think that’s true. You seem really bright and you’ve got an amazing vocabulary for a kid your age.’
‘I’m hardly a kid,’ she retorts.
‘No, of course you’re not,’ I amend quickly. ‘I just meant …’
‘Yeah, I know. It’s all relative. No offence taken.’
I smile to myself. ‘It just seems a waste that you didn’t stick at school.’
‘Oh God, please don’t start trying to convince me the sky’s the limit if I bother to put my mind to it, because believe me, you won’t get anywhere.’
She turns away and starts attacking the weeds with a gardening fork, driving it into the ground with more aggression than seems strictly necessary.
At that moment, someone appears through the gap in the hedge.
It’s the boy from the garden centre. Tom. I recognise him from the green uniform. He looks around him.
‘Hey, what a great place. I’ve heard people talking about it. It’s awesome.’
His enthusiasm warms my heart and I smile at him. ‘Thank you. Ivy would have been chuffed to hear that.’
He smiles back and glances quickly over at Layla, who’s showing no interest at all in his appearance. ‘Sorry to butt in,’ he says. ‘But can I give this to Layla?’
‘Of course you can.’
He walks over to where she’s wielding her garden fork like a weapon of mass destruction. The weeds really don’t stand a chance.
‘Shame you don’t labour this intensively at work,’ Tom quips, and she looks up at him, shielding her eyes against the afternoon sun.
‘Joke.’ He grins, holding up a paperback with a skull and crossbones on the front. ‘A thriller with more gore and guts than a butcher’s block. Any takers?’
Unimpressed, Layla sticks out her hand. ‘Go on, then.’ She takes the book and plonks it down on the grass then goes back to her weeding.
‘So are you going to Barton Fields?’ he asks, looking around at the bluebells and the pink climbing roses adorning one of the oak trees. The roses are just beginning to bloom, although Layla has said she’s going to prune them.
Before she answers Tom, she glances accusingly over at me. I quickly look away, to show I’m not listening, which seems to be little short of a capital offence in Layla’s book.
‘I’m probably going with Josh and a few of the others,’ she says ultra-casually. ‘So I guess I’ll see you there.’
‘Right.’ Tom nods, taking it on the chin, and I feel his pain. ‘Okay, well, I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Enjoy the book.’
As he leaves, he and I exchange a look of amused frustration.
‘That Tom is so nice and polite,’ I murmur later, as we’re taking a break, sitting on the grass, cooling down with bottles of chilled pink lemonade I brought from the fridge at home. ‘He’s funny, too. And he seems to like you a lot, although I can’t imagine why.’
She glares at me. ‘Well, thanks, I must say!’
‘Don�
��t be so sensitive, Layla.’ I laugh. ‘All I meant was you don’t seem to give him any encouragement at all, yet he keeps on trying.’
‘He’s a geek.’
‘Right.’
She sighs heavily to indicate I really haven’t a clue, then tips her head back and drains her lemonade bottle.
I stare at her thoughtfully as she runs her hand over the grass at her side. ‘My best subject at school was art. I can do a mean caricature. I’ll do you if you like.’
Layla looks up. ‘You can draw?’
I nod.
‘Can you paint as well?’
‘I like doing watercolours. Ivy wanted me to go to art college but we couldn’t afford the fees.’
‘That’s a shame.’
I shrug. ‘Maybe. But my point is, everyone is good at something. So what’s your special talent? Apart from a photographic memory?’
She looks sulky again. ‘I was the class clown at school. That’s what I was good at. I made people laugh and I bunked off – a lot – because I hated it so much.’
‘Why did you hate it?’ I ask. ‘Did you get bullied?’
She turns in surprise. ‘No. Well, a bit – mostly because I didn’t have a dad like everyone else.’
‘Oh.’ My heart goes out to her. I suppose I’d assumed her parents must be divorced. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks, but it’s no big deal. He died just before I was born. It was one of those unexplained deaths. He just went to bed one night and never woke up.’ She shrugs. ‘William Rushbrooke. He was forty-five.’
She says it all so matter-of-factly. I wonder if she’s had to grow a hard shell to cope with the fact that she never knew her dad.
‘Mum was totally devastated apparently. But I never met him. And what you’ve never known and all that …’
‘I know what you mean,’ I murmur.
‘Do you?’
I smile sadly. ‘Both my parents died when I was four, in a road accident.’
Layla’s mouth drops open. ‘Oh God, that’s awful.’
‘Yes.’ I shrug. ‘But I didn’t do too badly. I had Ivy to look after me.’
She tips her face to the sun. It’s nearly June and the weather is hotting up. ‘So have you got any other relatives?’ she asks. ‘Aunties, cousins, whatever?’
The Secrets of Ivy Garden Page 10