Flock of Shadows

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Flock of Shadows Page 11

by Houguez, Claire; Parfitt, Rebecca;


  At his funeral, Molly sat holding my hand again, but this time I kept the church service short.

  ‘I just can’t understand it,’ she said at the wake ‘He was always such a healthy man, all that running and healthy eating, well, it just goes to show, it isn’t good for you. My Harold even said when Henry married you; maybe he should’ve taken up running if it meant he could catch a pretty, young thing like you.’

  I stared at her hard, lowered my head and started to sob. Rubbing at my eyes, I whispered, ‘Oh Henry, what am I to do without you...’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Me and my big mouth. You poor child, all alone again.’

  Sweet Henry left me far better off than my parents did, but still I had to move on. I grew to despise my interfering neighbours. Of course, they all hoped that Henry had seeded his little garden.

  Forewarned is forearmed as they say. I’d overheard Molly chatting with Harold on my wedding day that maybe Henry would now be lucky enough to have the family he wanted, which he hadn’t had with his first wife. Taking no chances, I’d made sure there wouldn’t be any patter of tiny feet.

  As the gossip became unbearable, I decided I needed to escape and put the house up for sale. Lucky for me, I had learnt my lesson and although a container garden wasn’t ideal, it was far easier to move.

  At twenty-two, I found out that money doesn’t last forever. Well, it seemed such a waste of my life, having to work when I could enjoy having someone to look after me. Deciding it might be fun to do a little travelling, I opted to visit some of the countries my favourite plants came from before settling down to work on a garden of my own. I answered an ad online for a gardening companion and moved into an annex of a house where another avid gardener lived.

  Jill, a lovely middle-age petite woman loved gardening almost as much as I did. Intrigued by my mobile garden, she agreed to look after my plants while I did a spot of travelling in exchange for me looking after her house and garden while she went away visiting family and friends around the world.

  I know I should’ve invested my money in buying myself a house with a garden instead of renting, but if I hadn’t taken the opportunity to travel when I did, I would never had met James Welland.

  Meeting him on the plane may seem romantic, but I’d spotted him earlier while waiting in the boarding lounge. Not quite as good-looking as Henry, he was tall, dark, and mysteriously handsome, but something other than that had attracted my attention. He had a presence about him that made me want to know more.

  Before the plane landed at our destination, we were chatting like old friends and I had the information I needed. Single, wealthy with no children, owned a large house and enjoyed having a huge garden, but didn’t like gardening though he loved flowers.

  What more could I ask for, it doesn’t do to have one’s partner too interested in one’s passion, but just enough not to become bored.

  Soon after we met, James asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes. We kept it a simple affair, with just my proprietor, Mrs Price, and James’ housekeeper, Mary, and her husband Roger, his driver as our witnesses.

  Arriving at my new home, I fell in love with the garden. It was more than I could have dreamt of, with its sweeping lawns, wisteria walkways, ponds, and waterfalls. Through large French windows at the back of the house, I eagerly followed paths that took me to hidden places. Behind red brick walls, and hedges in secret, little gardens, I never knew what I would find until I opened an ornate gate into a gardener’s paradise.

  When my travelling garden arrived, James insisted that I covered the plastic pots with wonderful pottery containers, if I wasn’t going to plant them. Don’t get me wrong, I was more than happy, but just a little too apprehensive to let my garden take root.

  The thing I loved best of all in James’ garden was the large heated greenhouse. In the evenings, while my new husband studied his Financial Times, I enjoyed surfing the internet to find more exotic plants I could now grow. Using my father’s notebooks, I knew exactly which ones I was looking for.

  One evening, I found James watching me over the top of his newspaper. He gave me such a sweet smile. ‘Have you for found what you’re looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ I grinned back, ‘I can’t wait to see if I can grow them.’

  ‘I’m such a lucky man. Most women wouldn’t get that excited unless you were buying diamonds and pearls for them.’

  I laughed. ‘Those things don’t grow so don’t interest me.’

  ‘You, my darling are the most unassuming woman I have ever met. Lucky for me I had the good sense to marry you,’ he said, lifting his paper again.

  ‘Thank you for choosing me,’ I said, clicking the pay button for my next order of seeds.

  After four wonderful years of travelling and adding to my collection, James asked the dreaded question. Lying in bed one morning, he slipped his arm around my neck and kissed the top of my head. Running his hand across my flat stomach, he whispered, ‘My darling, you’ve made me so happy. Life has been a joy since you became my wife. My dearest darling, I know how much you love growing plants so why don’t we grow a family of our own and then my life will be complete.’

  I felt my heart sinking as a picture formed in my mind. Rows of my special seedlings wilting in the greenhouse, dying through lack of care and attention while my beautiful garden is becoming a playground for trampling feet, footballs and most awful of all a toilet for dogs and cats. Wherever there are kids there are pets too.

  I smiled up at him, ‘Of course, my darling, you are right, how selfish of me not to want to share our happiness.’

  That’s the thing about life, it can be such a bitch, when you least expect it. I didn’t see much point in trying to explain that I didn’t want to share my life or garden with kids or pets. If James couldn’t see that I was happier on my own, in the greenhouse, with my plants, then he would never understand why I didn’t want children.

  This time, I took it slowly, allowing my seedlings time to establish themselves, knowing I would need them again soon.

  Arriving back from our holiday in Mexico, James’ health had deteriorated. As soon as we touched down, he told his driver, Roger when he met us at the airport to take him straight to his doctor.

  ‘You take a taxi home, my darling,’ James said to me as beads of sweat gathered on his brow, ‘I’m sure it isn’t anything serious.’

  That evening as I helped him into bed, he told me, his doctor was baffled by his illness and had taken a blood sample before giving him a course of antibiotics believing he may have picked up a bug or been bitten by some insect while we were on holiday.

  The next morning after spending most of the night in the bathroom, I suggested he might find my father’s herbal soup far more helpful than his doctor’s pills. The following night he slept well and in the morning he told me he felt much better.

  ‘Your father’s concoction should be bottled up and sold, I feel wonderful this morning, Jenny,’ he said as he kissed me.

  Leaving James sitting on the patio in the sunshine while we waited for our breakfast, I headed for the greenhouse to check all was well. James had had an irrigation system installed so I wouldn’t panic about my plants while we were away. I just didn’t trust the young lad, Adam, James had hired to help me in the garden to look after my delicate seedlings. I was just checking my cold frames to see if any of my seeds had germinated, when I heard a heart-chilling scream and a crashing sound.

  Dashing along the path to the house, I found Mary standing on the patio with her hands covering her mouth, sobbing, while all around her feet lay the broken remains of the breakfast tray.

  James’s head hung over the side of the lounger, his eyes stared up at us blankly. From the corner of his blue lips, a thin dribble of black bile stained his chin and the collar of his white shirt.

  His hands fascinated me the most. They lay on his lap lo
cked together as though in prayer. I made a mental note to myself to write that down at the first opportunity I got.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Welland, he’s dead, is he?’ Mary sobbed.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, guiding her indoors, ‘we’d best phone for his doctor, and then I’ll find Roger.’

  ‘My dear, are you all right?’ she said patting my arm, and staring into my face.

  I bit my bottom lip hard as if I was fighting back the tears. ‘It’s like losing my parents all over again, Mary, but James wouldn’t want me to go to pieces now, the shock might...’ I broke off mid-sentence. Lowering my head, I rubbed at my eyes as though to wipe away my tears.

  I believe you must make the best of what life offers, so when an opportunity presented itself, I took it. Having got away with it once again, I wanted to enjoy reaping the rewards of my labour, though I was reluctant to have to start my garden again.

  However, this time, James had willed everything to me believing I was carrying the heir to his fortune.

  Looking back now, I can see I had been too hasty in my decision. While making a repeat trip to our local library to hunt out another list of best-selling crime novels for my new husband, I realised the stark reality of what a fool I had become.

  Why me? Why not his bloody lazy daughters? For the last two years, it’s the same every week.

  Oh I’m sorry, I know I’ve jumped a bit, but there wasn’t anything amazing about how I came to be married to Andrew Picbred.

  Anyway, as I was saying, my husband, Andrew, believed in supporting his local library. When his little sweethearts come a calling, I’m sent to collect his latest want list. This is too difficult for his daughters to collect for him on their way over to see him, but no, I have to stop whatever I was doing and travel into town to fetch the books. If I had known he was going to be such a pain I would’ve started my special treatment sooner.

  Every time I saw their car parked outside my house, my blood boiled. Sorry, I should explain something here. Sometimes you don’t see what’s under your nose. Andrew seemed a nice enough chap, chatty, not too pushy, bit of a laugh really. We met online in a plant forum. Then I kept bumping into him at different flower shows I was attending, as if by accident, of course I now know it was all part of his plan.

  Soon he was messaging me online asking if I was going to the next event and could he stay at mine overnight then we could travel together. Slowly, it became the odd weekend and then longer. When he asked me to marry him, I thought as he was practically living at mine that we might as well.

  On our wedding day, he suddenly informed me that he’d had to sell his property after his latest business venture hadn’t quite worked out to clear a large debt.

  With hindsight, I suppose I should’ve realised he’d been stalking me, but it wasn’t until he moved in with his collection of prized tea roses, all potted up in containers, I knew I’d been played for a fool.

  The straw that broke the camel’s back came when one day I was busy in the greenhouse, and Adam came rushing to find me all in a panic.

  ‘Missus... you better come quick... I tried to stop him, but he... wouldn’t listen to me,’ he stuttered out, his arms in a flap.

  ‘Adam, calm down it’s all right, now slowly. What are you talking about?’ I said, moving a tray of pots to the cold frame.

  ‘Mister Picbred... he’s digging up some of your plants... saying it’s just as much his garden now.’

  Hurrying along the path, I followed Adam through to a sunny spot near the patio to find Andrew digging up some of my well-established plants.

  ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ I screamed.

  ‘Planting myself a rose garden,’ he said, discarding one of my prized monkshood plants. ‘I’ve always fancied having one. You’ve plenty of the garden left for yourself to allow me to have this small part. Anyway, all you’re growing here is weeds.’

  I bit my tongue and marked his card, then turned my back on him. What can one say about roses other than they’re nice to look at. That’s when things really started to go wrong between us.

  For a while things settled down nicely. He pruned his roses and lavished his attention on them, leaving me to get on with my main interest. Then his daughters started. I think to save face; he hadn’t told them the truth about losing his business. So behaving as though he was the one who owned everything, he allowed them to encourage him in his pursuit of his dream to setting up his rose growing business, by planting more for showing and selling.

  I knew they never liked me, but Andrew always said they would come round to loving me as much as he did.

  It’s a shame that I didn’t feel the same about him, or his daughters, Tina and Freda. I certainly wanted to free my life from them, but I knew that would be pushing it just a shade too far, so I had to wait for the right moment.

  When Andrew suggested that we should hire a cook and a cleaner after Mary and Roger retired, I was pleased, but then he wanted to hire two professional gardeners and sack Adam because he had damaged one of his precious roses.

  ‘That bloody stupid boy doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Why you’ve kept him on all these years, God only knows.’

  ‘I’ve never had a problem with him. He does what I want him to do. He has learning problems, I know, but he’s a hard worker and loyal too. It’s up to me who stays and who goes, not you!’

  During the night I heard Andrew in the bathroom being sick. In the evening he’d dined on a spicy chicken, while I had opted for baked salmon and light salad. After that food didn’t seem to sit well with him. Every morning, nausea would hit him in the early hours. He was even unable to keep my soup down. Embarrassed by what was happening to him, he had suggested that we hired a nurse too, but I said no I was his wife so I would look after him. Since his illness, his two darling daughters had kept well away, not wanting to catch the sickness bug, so they told me over the phone.

  Every day, he got weaker and paler. Soon some sort of paralysis laid claims to most his body, confining him to a wheelchair. On his good days, he would ask if I could take him to see his roses. Complaining that I had neglected them, he would watch me eagle-eyed as he told me how to prune them.

  Saying goodbye to Andrew came easy to me, unlike his daughters. Not only were they angry with me for digging up his awful roses, but also because they found out that they hadn’t inherited anything apart from a few of their father’s personal pieces. They even had the nerve to accuse me of killing their father. I told them, if they had visited him more often they would’ve seen how ill he’d become.

  When I met Charlie I fell in love. Don’t get me wrong, I used the word love loosely. To start with he was a lot younger than my normal choice in men. After the trouble I had with my last husband’s kids, the last thing on my mind was to rush into anything.

  At thirty-five, I wasn’t getting any younger. Charlie, ten years older than I, a self-made millionaire, with large brown eyes, good looks and no children was an ideal soul mate for me. For the first time in my life I wanted to settle and have a real marriage that went on forever rather than a few years.

  Charlie was such fun. Business trip or not, he would take me with him. Having our own jet plane meant we could go anywhere we wanted to, one day in Paris, then over to South America, following day in China.

  I was in heaven. When I went with him, I always hired a car or jeep. While he was in a meeting, I would spend the day seeing my wonderful plants growing in their natural surroundings. I enjoyed that far more than shopping for beautiful clothes, fine jewellery, or works of art. I was happy and I thought he was too.

  And for once, death was the furthest thing from my mind.

  One day when I came in from the garden, I found him in the library studying the books in my gardening section. Turning toward me he smiled, but instead of lightening up his laughing brown eyes, they looked more like narrow, black slits.
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br />   ‘An interesting collection you have here,’ he said patting the spines of the books. He crossed the distance between us then wrapped his arms around me, smiling broadly, but his happiness didn’t show in his eyes.

  I laughed. ‘Why thank you. I didn’t know you were interested in gardening, Charlie.’

  ‘We can’t know everything about each other. Otherwise, there would be no air of mystique, and that would spoil everything,’ he said releasing his hold on me. ‘Let’s go out tonight. Have a meal somewhere special.’

  ‘That will be lovely. It’ll make a nice change,’ I said as my eyes scanned the collection of books, that I’d seen him looking at.

  ‘I’m going for a shower,’ he said closing the door.

  After he’d gone, I crossed to the shelf, and tried to work out which book had caught his interest, but I couldn’t tell. Silly I know, but I had kept a few little mementos of my dearly departed ones. Just a few odd photographs of my parents, my happy grooms, and notes on which flowers and plants I like best. Like most passionate gardeners, I kept notes on all my plants i.e. how well they grew, if they were true to form, from cuttings or seeds, and how long they took to germinate as well as their side effects.

  Not long after the incident in the library, things began to change between us. Suddenly, Charlie took an interest in the garden and wanted to go to the Chelsea Flower show in London with me.

  At first I was excited as he became enthusiastic about growing vegetables. We stood side by side in the potting shed planting up our new seedlings together. He enthused about what squashes he wanted to grow for the village fete, something I never wanted to do even though over the years I had received letters about opening my garden, as others in the village did. To me, it was like showing off and the thought of all those people wandering around, put me right off.

 

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