‘Don’t rush off, then, because I wanted to talk to you. Ever since your mother told me I couldn’t buy the cottage unless you agreed to it, I’ve been trying to think how to persuade you—and then I thought I’d just jump into the car and talk to you face to face. I suppose I should have warned you I was coming, but I am a creature of impulse.’
‘Lucky you found me, then.’
‘I tried your house first, and I was going to go back later, because your neighbour said you’d gone out.’ He grimaced.
‘Let me guess: she was a blobby, beige woman who was all over you like treacle?’
‘Got it in one. She recognised me, said she was all alone and pressingly invited me in for coffee and to show me her garden.’
‘Everyone in the village recognises you after that last Restoration Gardener programme—and she hasn’t got a garden, just paving and the odd pot, and even those she buys ready-planted from the garden centre and kills almost instantly.’
‘I wasn’t staying to see, so I thought I’d take a walk up the glen, since I only got to the waterfall last time, but if I’d known you’d come here for a bit of peace and quiet I wouldn’t have intruded.’
‘That’s all right, I really was about to leave—I’ve been here for ages.’ I looked around and sighed. ‘I needed to come here, and this is the first time I’ve felt well enough to face the climb.’
‘I’m very sorry about the baby,’ he said sincerely.
Although I’d thought I was all cried out, tears pricked the back of my eyes again. ‘Thank you—and for the lovely roses. That was kind.’
He smiled. ‘I am kind! When I was passing the day you got home from hospital I meant to speak to you—only your husband gave me such an evil glare and you looked so ill that I thought better of it and drove off!’
‘He thought you were a nosy stranger. He…tends to be a bit jealous too.’
‘Well, just don’t make me out to be some kind of ogre because we once spent a night together! If you let me buy the cottage I’ll promise to officially forget all about it, so you see, I’m no threat at all to you.’
‘Officially forget?’
‘You may have been struck by handy amnesia, but I remember it as quite a night, Maddie! I never quite forgot you, though I suppose since you are the only woman ever to run out on me like that, you would tend to stick in my memory,’ he added honestly.
I winced. ‘So you were only pretending you didn’t recognise me at first.’
‘I wasn’t certain it was you, but then it all came back to me. And, Fran, although I had to go on down to Cornwall that day or I’d have lost my chance of my first big garden restoration project, the first opportunity I got I drove back up and searched for you.’
‘You did?’
I must have sounded slightly incredulous, as he grinned and added, ‘Believe it or not, it’s the truth. But, of course, no one knew of Maddie with the big blue-grey eyes and strawberry-blonde hair, and we were into the summer holidays so all the students were away and…’ he shrugged, ‘that was that. As a matter of interest, why did you leave so abruptly? And what on earth were we drinking that night?’
‘Scrumpy cider—someone had flagons of the stuff, and it was pretty rough. I had way too much of it, and…well, you were sort of on the rebound because my boyfriend had just dumped me. But next morning I woke up in your van with a splitting headache and a stranger, which is not something I made a habit of. And I thought I was still in love with Tom and it was all a bit…well, anyway, I just wanted to get away,’ I said honestly.
‘You did that all right. Vanished without trace,’ he said pensively. ‘But I still think it’s a pity you ran off, because we might have had something going there if you’d given it a chance. There was that classic “eyes meeting across a crowded room” moment at the party—and I recall a certain chemistry between us.’
‘I don’t,’ I said decisively, though actually I was experiencing another just then and it was an effort to look away. ‘I expect you’re mixing me up with someone else.’
‘No, I’m not. I even bought a framed book print a few years later simply because it reminded me of your big sad eyes! It was from that fairy story about the sealwoman going back to the sea when her human lover betrayed her trust—you know that one?’
I nodded, trying not to look flattered.
‘I admit I couldn’t remember what you actually looked like until I saw you again, but then I knew you right away. You were a happy memory, Maddie. A lingering taste on the tongue…’
He smiled again, his eyes wrinkling up around the corners, and I went pink and looked away hastily, feeling oddly breathless. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that!’
‘All right,’ he said equably. ‘If you tell me honestly whether you’ve ever thought of me since.’
‘No, never,’ I said shortly and totally untruthfully. I have trouble admitting to myself that I crept back to the car park in search of him later that day (think ‘moth’ and ‘flame’), only to find the van long gone.
‘It was so out of character that I decided to put it right out of my head. By the end of that week I was here to spend the summer living at Fairy Glen and working for Carrie at the teashop.’
I looked around the sunlit glade. ‘I first met my husband, Mal, right here on this spot, just after he bought the house we live in now.’
‘And so promptly forgot all about me?’
I let his assumption that I’d met up with Mal that very summer slide. ‘More or less,’ I agreed.
‘So, when did you know I was Adam?’
‘Only a few weeks ago when I saw a DVD of Restoration Gardener; but then I thought I might be imagining the resemblance since I’d more or less forgotten what you looked like.’
‘And now fate has thrown us together again—in a platonic sort of way, of course. It’s a small world.’
‘I think it’s imploding,’ I muttered.
But I don’t think he caught it because he just hitched himself up on the stone a bit more and said, ‘Didn’t you say your husband was jealous? So what’s he doing going off and leaving you alone for months, and at a time like this?’
‘How on earth do you know that?’ I demanded, startled. My God, I only hoped he couldn’t read minds as well as find lost gardens!
‘Your mother,’ he said predictably.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d also shown him that pull-out concertina folder of photos of me from age nought to now that she keeps in her handbag, my school report cards and the china pig I won at a funfair when I was eight.
‘Not that it’s any business of yours, but he’d already agreed to do this contract and we need the money. It’s only six months anyway, and I’m perfectly well again.’
‘Are you? You look a bit pale.’
‘I was anaemic, but I’m nearly better. I just need to get fit and lose a bit of weight.’
‘You look about right to me,’ he said consideringly, though most of me was enveloped in duffel coat and wellies so there wasn’t much to go on. ‘Curvy—which is how it should be. Who wants to go to bed with a bag of bones?’
I assumed this was rhetorical, but I could have replied, truthfully, ‘My husband does!’
‘I’d just concentrate on getting fit again. And you have a daughter already, don’t you? That must be a consolation.’
‘Yes, Rosie—she’s lovely,’ I agreed. ‘She’s at university, studying to be a vet.’
‘Must be a clever girl.’
I looked at him sharply, but clearly the date of our encounter hadn’t stayed in his head the way it had stayed in mine, and he hadn’t the slightest suspicion that Rosie might be his.
Come to that, even this close up I couldn’t see any resemblance between them, so maybe she is a changeling. Or perhaps I really did that frog thing—is it parthenogenesis?—and created her all on my own.
I found our gazes had locked again but I couldn’t drag my eyes away until he blinked. It’s not chemistry, it’s hypnotis
m, I’m convinced of it.
‘I have a daughter too—nearly eighteen,’ he confided.
‘Yes, I remember reading that. Carrie—at the teashop—looked you up on the Internet when she knew you might be doing a programme here.’
‘I didn’t think I was that fascinating.’
‘You’re not. It’s just that nothing ever happens in St Ceridwen’s Well so you’re a seven-day wonder,’ I said dampeningly. ‘But you were telling me about your daughter?’
‘Stella. She went to live in America with her mother when we divorced, and I haven’t seen her since. I tried, but she didn’t want anything to do with me, and it was all very difficult. I still send letters and presents, but she never replies.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said sympathetically. ‘It must be terrible not seeing her grow up.’
He sighed, then looked up. ‘Do you understand teenage girls?’
‘Having been one myself helps,’ I said drily, ‘and my Rosie’s not twenty yet.’
‘Stella sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue. All it said was “how r u dad?”’
‘Just that?’
‘Just that, after what—seven years?—of unbroken silence. It was so weird! I mean, she was a little girl last time I spoke to her, so I felt as though an alien being was trying to make first contact with me. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Only too well, but all girls mutate into strange life forms when they become teenagers,’ I assured him.
‘But sending me a text message?’
‘Texting is their first language and comes as easily as thought to them. Easier. What did you do? Text her back?’
He looked sideways at me and smiled crookedly. ‘I’m a dinosaur—I’d never texted, so I had to find the instructions first. Then I sent her a cautious one back—I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.’
‘And she replied?’
‘Yes, and I’ve had a few more short text messages since, and now one or two emails as well. Informative stuff like, “Mum just got back from honeymoon again and I hate Hardy.”’
‘Who’s Hardy?’
‘Her new stepfather.’
‘What, as in “Kiss me, Hardy”?’ I asked, interested.
‘Apparently. Unless she calls him by his last name.’
‘Weird,’ I said. ‘But I think the messages mean she’s reaching out to you, Gabriel. Now she’s older she probably realises there can be two sides to every story, and because you carried on sending her letters and presents she must know that you never stopped loving her.’
He looked at me with rather touching hope. ‘Do you really think so? I was never sure whether Tamsyn—my ex-wife—was passing them on or not.’
‘Is she that spiteful?’
‘Probably not, though the divorce was a bit acrimonious. It was partly my fault, I suppose. I left her alone in London when I was off shooting new series…too much free time and too much temptation. Then when I found out she’d been unfaithful—’ he shrugged—‘I indulged in a bit of tit for tat with her best friend! Ex-best friend. Big mistake.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you know all about the paternity case and the divorce?’
‘Yes. When Carrie goes into something she makes a thorough job of it,’ I admitted.
‘Oh,’ he said sombrely. ‘Then you know about that other poor woman too—the delusional one?’
‘Yes, but that’s all it was, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but the dirt stuck anyway. And then it seemed whenever I went out with anyone else I’d find it all raked up in the newspapers and magazines, so it’s no wonder Stella didn’t want anything to do with me.’
‘But the scandalous bits all seemed to be old stuff, nothing recent,’ I pointed out. ‘You’re the blue-eyed boy of the TV screen now, and the recent articles all said how quietly you lived and things like that.’
‘I do live quietly, but then, I was never much of a party animal to start with.’ He shrugged again. ‘Perceptions change, but I thought if I moved to the country, made a fresh start, Stella might even come and visit when she’s over here.’
‘Does she come over?’
‘ To see her grandparents in Cornwall—and they won’t have told her anything good about me. But she’s going to start university over here this autumn.’
‘Then I think she’s definitely trying to build bridges and she does want to see you again.’
‘I hope so. I’ve certainly no intention of stirring up any new scandals that might make her change her mind—not that I ever wanted to stir any up in the first place.’ He looked at me. ‘You know, I haven’t really talked about all this to anyone before…sorry to unload on you.’
‘That’s OK. I suppose we hold a secret or two about each other now, so we’re safe. I don’t want any hint of what we did to reach my husband’s ears, and you certainly don’t want your daughter to hear even a raked-up old scandal.’
‘We could even get to be friends,’ he suggested. ‘If you agree to let me buy the Glen, that is!’
I stood up a bit shakily. My bottom was both cold and numb, and I’d had a good thick layer between me and the stone. I only hoped Gabe’s extremities were not frostbitten—but in a detached and entirely altruistic sort of way, of course.
‘Back to the purpose of the visit?’
‘The place draws me like a magnet,’ he agreed.
‘Not to mention the maze?’
‘You heard about that?’ He laughed. ‘I have a passion for them. That’s the first thing that’s going to be restored.’ He put his hand under my elbow as I slipped on the damp earth, and kept it there while we scrambled back down the overgrown paths to the cottage.
I felt so shaky I probably would only have made it back down on my bottom so I didn’t protest.
‘If I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag about our previous short but sweet encounter, is there any other reason why you don’t want me to have the cottage?’ he asked.
‘Of course not!’ I said quickly.
Liar, liar, your bum’s on fire! said a helpful voice in my head.
‘If you are the right man for the Glen. Ma said you like the cottage as it is?’
‘I love all its grotesque little baroque flourishes,’ he declared.
‘And its inconveniences?’
‘Well, maybe not all of those. I would hope to do a sympathetic extension eventually, and maybe update the facilities a bit. But I do like your ma’s style. It’s cosy and a little eccentric.’
That’s one way of describing it. ‘But isn’t it too far from London? It must take you hours to get here.’
‘I don’t actually have to be in London that much, though I do go off all over the place from time to time filming follow-up visits to gardens and other engagements.’
‘TV celeb stuff,’ I suggested.
‘Well, yes. I can only get out of doing so much of it. I’ll probably keep a pied-à-terre with office space for my PA in London, but I’ll spend most of my time here. This would be home,’ he added gravely. ‘Somewhere to return to, a place where I can put down roots.’
‘And the glen itself—what would you do to that?’
‘Nothing that would make it any less magical,’ he said quickly. ‘Restore the paths and steps, and maybe tidy up the grottoes and arbours a bit, but I wouldn’t touch the trees and the stones at the top, even if I could—they’re bound to be protected. And you and your friend could walk there any time you wanted—or in Nia’s case, dance.’
‘Did Ma tell you about Nia being a Druid? I didn’t think she knew!’ I said, startled.
‘No, Rhodri let it out. He gave me the impression that if I even thought about touching the oak grove or the standing stones, Nia would sacrifice me on one of them.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going up to Plas Gwyn now. I want to go over the provisional plans for the restoration with him, and make sure he understands what’s happening when we start preliminary filming at Easter—the opening scenes. But first I’m going to take you home.’
‘Oh, I’m quite all right now,’ I protested hastily. ‘I—’
But he didn’t listen to any protest, just whisked me into his admittedly comfortable car and took me home. The Wevills’ curtains were twitching like a poltergeist with a fit was in them, but it must have been Mona because Owen was out pretending to polish the brass numbers on his gate.
Coming home with Gabe is getting to be a habit—and since they now know his car, the Wevills will be scandal-mongering like anything before their cat can lick its ear.
‘So, what about it?’ Gabe said as he pulled up.
‘What about what?’ I said. I’d been sleepily daydreaming in the warmth, enveloped in the scent of expensive leather and whatever light but compelling aftershave he was wearing. Or maybe he just exudes an attractive scent like a flower sends out signals?
‘The Glen—can I buy it?’ he said patiently.
I hesitated. ‘Look, it must be clear that I don’t want it to be sold at all, but if it has to be…’
I stared at him, brows knitted as I contemplated the possible consequences, and he stared back. I had time to count all the bright green rays around his pupils, and he blinked first.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said finally, and scrambled out. ‘Thanks for the lift—’bye.’
The car moved off, and as I turned I caught Owen watching us out of the corner of his eyes like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I couldn’t see the hidden camera or tape recorder. He turned his back and started rubbing as though the genie of the gatepost might appear and grant him two stone balls and a pineapple.
‘A murrain on all your cattle, and may your number nine drop off,’ I murmured in passing, and a sudden breeze whisked his yellow duster from his loosened grasp and hooked it on to his TV aerial like a dingy pennant.
The moment I stepped indoors a wave of exhaustion hit me, and I lay on the sofa with the whole scene replaying over and over in my head. Finally I fell into a half-doze where images of dappled leaves, green-rayed hazel eyes and warm brown skin danced about like reflections on water.
Sowing Secrets Page 18