I grinned at her and gave her a thumbs up. I had never met anyone with more energy than Tilly. I felt like I had this mad sister now and it was nice because I could tell her all these things and she listened and never told me I was stupid or anything.
Mum gave us a five-minute call for the food and Rory had found a whole bucket of old tennis balls and was pelting them at Tilly as she shrieked and hid behind the net: ‘Rory, I’ll tell Mum!’
‘Rory!’ his mum called.
I couldn’t help laughing.
Elsie and Mary barely glanced up. Elsie was sat in a deckchair on the lawn holding an orange drink which had lots of fruit in, swatting away a wasp as she listened to Tilly’s grandma. They seemed to always have stories to swap, sometimes about the olden days and Elsie had got me to get loads of boxes down from the attic and she had shown me loads of photos and diaries of their mother.
Mary was really nice and she knew loads about vegetables and had given me some cuttings for the allotment. I’d told her I was going to grow tomatoes but she’d said maybe I needed to do cabbages because they’d be ready for winter. I wanted to check in the book Elsie gave me from the library ’cos it had loads of helpful stuff in it. Elsie had given me my own copy of The Wind in the Willows too and she’d read me a chapter whenever I went over now. At first, I pretended to be really into it just to please her but actually I did really like it, especially when she did all the different voices.
Looking at Elsie next to Mary I’d never think she was the lady I was dumped on when we first arrived in the village. She’d got me to help her clear out her mum’s bedroom in the house and she’d bought me a bed for the times when Mum worked late. She had said I was allowed to paint the walls any colour and I had asked if we could do a mural of space and she said yes, which is so cool. She looked so relaxed and I thought then of that map in the tin I’d found in her garden and how none of this would have happened if I hadn’t dug it up. That thought made me feel warm and I left the tennis court and walked up the garden towards the group.
We ate sausages and burgers that were charred and piping hot in the middle and then had bowls of strawberries with cream and sugar. Most of the others had got up to go to the kitchen, helping to clear away, and I was sitting with Elsie as she watched me finish my burger.
A thought struck me then, something that I had wanted to tell Elsie for a long time.
Her eyes were closed and the sun was warming her face as I turned to her, my voice low and serious.
‘Ells, can I tell you something?’
She opened one eye, sitting up when she saw me staring at her, something clearly on my mind.
‘Of course,’ she replied, shifting in her chair to face me, her expression serious. ‘Go ahead,’ she said, all her attention on me.
‘The thing is,’ I began, ‘I needed to tell you… I’ve been wanting to tell you since we first met…’
‘What is it, Billy?’
Elsie waited, holding her breath, watching me as I leaned in really close, my words almost a whisper.
‘I really hate custard creams.’
Dear Mother,
I’ve never written to you. Isn’t that strange? When you were alive there was never any need and when you were gone I never knew what to say.
I am sorry.
No one knows me better than you. No one has ever loved me more than you. I know that, I have always known that.
I don’t blame you. I used my anger towards you and your secret as an excuse not to face the world, not to face my fears. And look how much I almost lost.
Meeting Billy has made me want to live in the present again. I don’t want to stay stuck in the past, I want to make new memories. I have moved into your bedroom now, I wear some of your favourite clothes: bright colours, things you would have loved to see me in.
Your daughter Mary is beautiful, wise and kind. You would have loved her and I am sorry that you never met each other. It is my greatest joy to share all my memories of you with her. She is endlessly fascinated, asking me details that send me spinning back through time and thinking fondly of our life together: two peas in a pod, we were.
I love you, Mother. I hope you know that. I hope you are glad that Mary and I have found each other and that your family lives on in your beautiful grandchildren and in the stories we tell them.
I think of you often; you are so much a part of me, and now I have others around me too who make me whole.
Your Elsie
If The Garden of Lost Memories left you reaching for the tissues and wiping your eyes, don’t miss out on Ruby Hummingbird’s first book, the beautiful and heartbreaking The Wish List. This special novel shows us that for the truest loves, the end is never really the end…
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Books by Ruby Hummingbird
The Garden of Lost Memories
The Wish List
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
The Wish List (available in the UK and in the US)
A Letter from Ruby
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read The Garden of Lost Memories. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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I really wanted to write a moving story about two unlikely friends and the importance of choosing our own family. This book was such a challenge at the beginning because Elsie started out as such a misery! I really hope you understood why she was as prickly as she was and hopefully, you were really rooting for her by the end of the novel. As for Billy… bless him, I already miss writing his chapters. He was a joy to write and I really hope you loved him as much as I did.
If you did enjoy The Garden of Lost Memories it would be amazing if you could leave a review online. However brief, they all help readers to discover my books. I also love hearing from my readers – you can get in touch on my Facebook page or through Twitter and Goodreads. Come and tell me what you loved and also recommend other books to me – I’m always on the hunt for my next read.
Thank you so much for choosing to read my book,
Ruby Hummingbird
Acknowledgements
This book was a challenge and I really wanted to do the story justice. An enormous debt of gratitude to my editor Christina, who thrashed out the plot with me and continued to ask questions throughout the process. Working with you has been a pleasure from start to finish. You have an enormous energy, an exceptional editorial eye and great chat! I always look forward to catching up with you and hope these books find readers.
To the hard-working team at Bookouture – thank you all. Thank you to Natasha Hodgson for the great copy-edit. Kim is a tour de force and there are countless others who work tirelessly to ensure every book is given a chance of success. Thank you to the Little, Brown Rights team: Andy, Kate, Hena and Helena, who continue to try to get editors around the world interested in my books.
To Clare, my lovely agent, and the rest of the Darley Anderson team. You are a fantastic agency and I am lucky to have you on my side. Thank you for all you do for me.
Thank you to my parents for being so encouraging about my first book – I hope you love this one too! Thank you to my husband for putting up with the endless disappearances for edits and more. To my kids – I love you loads.
Lastly, I want to say a particular thanks to the numerous book bloggers who left glowing reviews of my first book – The Wish List – on their own blogs, NetGalley, Goodreads and Amazon. It was amazing to read such lovely thoughts and feel that Albie had touched you all too. Your support definitely made an enormous difference and the book would not have done so well without you all. I really hope you love Elsie and B
illy just as much and I can’t wait to hear what you think.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Storyfire Ltd, 2020
Written by Ruby Hummingbird
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-180-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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