A Secret Garden: An utterly gorgeous feel good romance

by Katie Fforde

  A Secret Garden

  An utterly gorgeous feel-good romance

  Katie Fforde

  Bookouture

  To women who garden, everywhere.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  A French Affair

  Katie’s email sign up

  Also by Katie Fforde

  A Letter from Katie

  Summer of Love

  A Summer at Sea

  Recipe for Love

  Acknowledgements

  1

  Philly pulled at the gaffer tape with her teeth, failed to tear it and groaned. ‘Hand me those secateurs, Grand,’ she said. Wind found its way up the sleeves of her coat, far colder than wind in April ought to be, in Philly’s opinion. If it weren’t for the primroses in the hedgerows and the trays of forced bulbs in her greenhouse, it could have been February.

  Her grandfather shook his head. ‘You need scissors, or a knife. Here.’ He took out the Swiss Army knife he was never without and cut the tape.

  Philly applied it to the rip in the polytunnel and then looked carefully for more potential holes. ‘If we get the weather that’s forecast, I need to be sure the wind can’t get in.’

  ‘Child dear!’ said her grandfather. ‘A new polytunnel is what you need. Why won’t you let me buy you one?’

  Philly, satisfied the tunnel was as windproof as it could be, handed him back his knife. ‘Grand? Do we have to have this conversation every day? Wouldn’t once a week be enough?’

  ‘C’mon now. There’s a storm brewing that might tear this old thing down. What would happen to your precious salvias then?’

  Philly nodded. ‘They might all be blown to bits, I realise that. But it’s too late for a new polytunnel now.’ She smiled at him, knowing he couldn’t win this argument.

  ‘But it’s not too late for the next gale. You know they say “April is the cruellest month”. It could quite easily produce a hurricane for you.’ He was as stubborn as she was.

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Grand, dear, I owe you enough already and I don’t want to get into more debt with you. I’ll make do with this tunnel until I make enough money for a new one.’

  Her grandfather tutted but didn’t argue any more. He wasn’t giving up the battle, just retrenching. ‘Come away in and have some tea. There’s cake.’

  Philly brightened. ‘So what’s wrong with it? Did you leave the walnuts out of a coffee-and-walnut?’

  ‘It’s a trifle overbaked,’ he said. ‘Or burnt as we said in the olden days.’

  Philly was surprised. ‘What, actual burnt, burnt?’

  ‘Indeed no! But it’s not of merchantable quality.’

  Philly laughed. ‘That’s OK then. But if you wouldn’t mind hanging on, I need to do my posies and check which bulbs are advanced enough for me to bring to the stall. It won’t take long. I’ve all my material picked and ready. Then it’ll be time for the phone call. You remember they’re all off to a party on Sunday so they brought it forward? Could we have tea after that?’

  ‘Of course we could. I’ll put the potatoes in for supper. The cake can be pudding.’

  ‘Perfect!’ She kissed his cheek and took his arm as they set off. Philly headed for one of the outbuildings, her grandfather for the house. She was rather dreading the phone call. She had nothing new to tell her parents, nothing that would make them stop worrying, and therefore nagging for her to come home to Ireland, even if that meant leaving her grandfather here in England.

  She had no desire to abandon the adventure she and her grandfather had set out on, three years ago, when her grandfather had happened to see a smallholding online and something about it appealed to him although he’d been after a house with a few garages. She had gone with him to see it. When she’d seen it, she’d fallen in love with it too. It had a few acres, lots of outbuildings and even a couple of old polytunnels. It was perfect for her to grow plants in and see if her life-long dream to be a plantswoman would withstand real-life experience.

  The house was a tumbledown money pit, no doubt about it, but Philly and her grandfather didn’t mind living in the big old farmhouse kitchen and shutting off other rooms in winter. And what had completely sold it to her grandfather was the mouldering old Alvis in one of the garages. He would have gone to England all on his own, desperately needing a new project and to get away from his family, to distract him from loneliness after his wife died – but when Philly, who had just gone to keep him company at the viewing, had said she wanted to come too, it had all seemed too perfect not to pursue.

  How such a property had stayed out of the hands of developers was a great big hunk of Irish luck. It had an agricultural covenant on it that meant no one could turn the outbuildings into dwellings, even holiday lets. The seller had made sure his property wouldn’t get into what he felt were the wrong hands.

  Also, when Philly and her grandfather had come to see it, the elderly seller had taken a shine to them. He invited them into his mouldering house, gave them tea out of stained mugs and insisted they sat down. As there was no alternative they sank into a sofa that had the consistency of a bog. While they were unable to move without assistance, he grilled them about their plans. When they admitted that they were both running away from a well-meaning but overbearing and conventional family, he decided theirs was the offer he’d accept. Even if it wasn’t the highest. (He told them this at the time.) He was going to take the money for the property and end his days on a narrowboat.

  He had asked if they wouldn’t gentrify the house too much and they had agreed. They had no trouble consenting to this although there was nothing legally binding – just no chance of there being any spare money for anything beyond keeping out the worst of the weather.

  Now, three years later, things weren’t much different. But in spite of the hard work and the discomfort (‘utter squalor ’, as Philly’s horrified mother described it) they both still had their dreams intact.

  It didn’t take Philly long to make twenty or so posies, all in makeshift containers: jam jars, tin cans or yoghurt pots. The containers, although rustic, had had a bit of a facelift – a lick of paint or a good scrub – something to make them look fresh and not as if they’d been salvaged from a huge pile of rubbish found at the house. (Which was where they had all come from.) A bit of oasis, some greenery (she loved the fresh acidity of new spring foliage), several different tulips, dark velvet polyanthus, a few sprigs of blossom and she had informal arrangements that people loved. Then she gathered several pots of growing bulbs, scillas, white and blue grape hyacinths and some late miniature daffodils, and she had something that would grace anyone’s table. Her offerings were very popular with people headed for dinner parties. Philly also bunched together larger sprays of hedgerow plants and small trees that were beloved of flower arrangers. As Philly was sometimes roped in to do the flowers in church, she knew how hard it was to find enough suitable gree
nery if you had a tidy garden and so she provided it. This all supplemented the containers of bulbs that she sold officially but which, she reflected now, weren’t quite such good earners. The posies and greenery bunches represented 100 per cent profit.

  When she’d created enough to make her stall look attractive and make an extra fifty pounds or so, she went back to the house, looking forward to warming up. Then she’d talk to her mother. Dead on six o’clock, the phone rang.

  ‘Well, darling, how are you?’ said Marion Doyle, unable as ever to conceal her anxiety about her youngest child.

  ‘I’m fine, Ma, really. How are the boys?’ Philly had two older brothers who fitted in better with what Marion considered proper.

  ‘They’re fine. Working hard. Now tell me about you.’

  Philly always felt a bit put on the spot when her mother asked this. ‘Well, I’ve got lots of things to sell at tomorrow’s market. And now it’s spring, there’ll be loads of tourists and second-homers wanting to brighten up their gardens.’

  ‘And your grandfather? Is he still – you know – baking?’ In Philly’s mother’s world, men didn’t bake.

  ‘He is – he’s brilliant at it. You should be proud of him.’

  ‘It’s not that I’m not proud, it’s just I find it a bit odd. I blame you, Philomena. You introduced him to that programme.’

  Philly laughed, refusing to be apologetic. ‘I admit I never thought Grand would take up baking just because of Bake Off but he’s brilliant at it! People depend on him being at the stall on Saturday mornings. He even takes commissions,’ she added proudly.

  Her mother sighed. ‘Well, I suppose it beats messing around with that old car, but it’s hardly a manly activity, is it?’

  ‘It’s perfectly manly,’ said Philly, knowing her mother would never accept this. ‘And it is better for him in winter, anyway. It’s far warmer in the kitchen.’

  ‘But the kitchen, darling! Is it even hygienic, baking in there?’

  ‘Ma, you haven’t been over to visit us since that first time. You haven’t seen all we’ve done to the kitchen to bring it up to professional standards of hygiene.’

  Marion didn’t comment. Philly could tell she was holding herself back from saying, yet again, that however much they might have done to the kitchen, the house was still unfit to live in, especially for a man of Seamus’s age. Knowing this would create bad feeling she said instead, ‘Well now, have you got a boyfriend yet?’

  Although Philly was relieved that her mother wasn’t telling her yet again that her grandfather shouldn’t live in such a cold house, she wasn’t awfully pleased with this topic of conversation. ‘No, Ma! I didn’t have one last week either!’

  Her mother sighed. ‘But are you even meeting any young men who might become boyfriends, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere?’ Marion didn’t think much to the very pleasant little town that was less than three miles away from the smallholding.

  ‘Not at the moment.’ Here was where Philly and her mother were in agreement. Meeting a few boys of her own age would be nice. One even. There was a boy who worked on the cheese counter opposite them when they did the market, but she felt so shy if they needed cheese she managed to always get her grandfather to buy it. She wasn’t going to admit this to her mother though. ‘I’m thinking of asking the pub if they need any bar staff,’ she went on. ‘That would be a good way to meet young people.’

  Marion tsked but didn’t comment. She had another little arrow to fling at Philly before she commented on what she thought about her daughter working in a pub. She didn’t really approve that Philly worked as a waitress from time to time, for a very upmarket caterer. ‘Well, don’t forget there’s a lovely boy waiting for you here.’

  ‘Ma, he’s not waiting for me. He’s got a lovely girlfriend.’ This boy was sweet and had been a great childhood sweetheart but he wasn’t much of a one for adventure and risk and had a good safe job in his parents’ stationery business.

  ‘He’d leave her for you if you came home.’

  ‘Well, what sort of a boyfriend would that make him? Anyway, you and the da OK?’

  ‘We’re fine. Just worrying about you two tearaways.’

  Philly laughed. ‘Well, there’s no need. And you can hardly describe us as tearaways. Grand is a respectable man in his seventies and I’m over the age of consent.’

  ‘You’re twenty-three! That’s hardly the most responsible age.’

  ‘How old were you when you and Da got married?’ As she knew the answer to this Philly felt she’d scored the winning goal.

  ‘OK, so I was only nineteen but I was a very mature nineteen and you were only twenty when—’

  ‘We’re going to be all right, Ma,’ said Philly, interrupting. ‘I know we are. I’ll make a go of my plants and Grand is happy. What more can you ask for?’

  ‘For you both to be back home in Ireland! But I know that’s a vain hope.’ Marion sighed. ‘I’m glad you’re both happy. And don’t leave it too long before coming to see us again.’

  The market the following day was even more hectic than usual. It took over the centre of the town once a week, in front of the old, picturesque buildings that included an ancient abbey, used as the parish church, which was almost as big as a cathedral. Currently outside it was a despondent thermometer displaying how much more money they needed to raise in order to repair parts of the building but it was still beautiful.

  Now spring was here – according to the calendar if not the weather currently – holiday-home owners, who had stayed in London over the winter, were beginning to come down to their little places in the country and wanted to beautify them. The market was also somewhere they could bring visiting friends and as you could buy almost everything you needed for a weekend’s entertaining in an enjoyably green and environmentally sound way, it was bustling. Having a second home was more acceptable if you supported local businesses, Philly assumed was their thinking. As she and her grandfather benefited she had no complaints. They were busy almost to the end. The boy with the floppy hair whom she liked was on the cheese stall. They were doing a roaring trade too.

  They were just about to pack up when a tall, attractive, middle-aged woman with dark red hair cut stylishly in a wavy bob came over.

  ‘Caught you!’ she said. ‘I am desperate for cake. And posies.’

  ‘Hello, Lorna,’ said Philly. ‘I’ll wrap the posies for you.’

  Lorna rummaged in her purse. ‘How much for them?’

  ‘I’m giving them to you,’ said Philly firmly, ‘if I can have the jars back. The flowers cost nothing, you know that, and as my best customer for the nursery, you get them free.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lorna. ‘I feel I shouldn’t have asked now.’

  ‘Of course you should. Now, Grand, how much are you going to charge Lorna for the cake?’

  ‘Is a fiver too much?’ he asked.

  ‘A fiver is an absolute steal, but I’ll take it,’ said Lorna.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look to be the sort of woman who eats a lot of cake,’ he said, putting it in a bag.

  ‘I do! Well, I have a bit now and again. The rest I cut into slices and freeze. Then when I want a gorgeous pudding I put it in the microwave, heat it up and then serve with ice cream. It’s delicious.’

  ‘It does sound good,’ said Philly. ‘We must try that, Grand.’

  ‘Well, in exchange for a recipe, you must tell me why you call your grandfather “Grand”. It’s not in the normal range of grandfather names and I’ve wanted to know for ages but never dared ask.’

  ‘It’s short for Grandiloquent,’ said Philly after a short pause.

  ‘I never cared for any of those “Grandpa” sort of names,’ said Seamus. ‘I came across “grandiloquent” and thought it was a fine sort of a word. I suggested the little ones call me it, but it only stuck with Philly.’

  ‘My mother encouraged it,’ Philly explained. ‘She said that Grand was pretty much a delinquent in many
ways, although we do know it’s not the same word really.’

  Lorna laughed. ‘Well, thank you for that. And how are my salvias coming along?’

  ‘Fine, I think. And will you be wanting more tubs of delphiniums this year?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so. They were beautiful last year, really made an impression. I’ll be sending you a list of things I need soon. I know I should have done it before but you know how things go.’

  ‘It’s a shame more people don’t get to see your garden,’ said Philly.

  ‘It’s not my garden, thank God,’ said Lorna, ‘but you’re right, it should be seen more. Perhaps when it’s a little further along in its restoration we’ll think about opening it. It is still very early days.’

  When Lorna had taken her cake and her posies and moved away, Seamus said, ‘That is a fine figure of a woman.’

  ‘She is,’ Philly agreed. ‘But she’s a bit young for you.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said her grandfather.

  Philly carried on packing up the stall. Maybe, instead of asking her about her love life every week, her mother should have been considering that of her father-in-law.

  2

  The following Monday morning, Lorna’s boss handed her a cup of coffee and then sat down on the step next to her. In front of them was a bumpy bit of turf that would one day (Lorna fervently hoped) be a fine lawn. Behind them were the tall columns of a graceful Palladian frontage. By mansion standards, Burthen House was on the small side, but by those of any normal home, it was enormous. Built of the honey-coloured stone common in the area, it needed a bit of work to make it truly elegant but Lorna liked its rather decayed beauty. One day, she knew, it would be fully restored but she preferred it now, really.