Love in an English Garden

by Victoria Connelly

  ‘He’s seeing somebody,’ Jenna said after she’d finished her second biscuit.

  ‘Your boyfriend?’ Vanessa said, trying desperately to remember his name.

  ‘Carl,’ she said.

  ‘Did he tell you he’s seeing someone?’

  ‘He don’t need to. I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because he never sees me anymore, that’s how. He just turns up at three in the morning, stinking of beer and needing a place to crash. He’s probably been kicked out of hers by then and knows his mum will kill him if he goes home.’

  ‘He still lives with his parents?’

  ‘His mum and sister. They’re soft on him. Let him get away with murder, but his mum can’t stand him drinking.’

  ‘So you let him stay at yours?’

  ‘I made him sleep on the sofa last night. I told him I didn’t want him near me.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘He went before I got up, but he left his jacket behind.’ She paused and took a sip of tea and Vanessa felt that there was more to come.

  ‘I checked his pockets,’ Jenna continued. ‘I don’t know why. I suppose I was looking for something. Clues. I don’t know.’ She looked up and Vanessa saw the haunted look on her face. ‘There were some photos in his pocket. You know those little passport ones? It was of him with some girl I’ve never seen. They were messing about. Kissing and stuff. It was probably the same place he took me to get our photos done!’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  She nodded. ‘I tore them up. I tore them up and stamped on them before putting them in the bin with some old spaghetti.’

  ‘Oh, Jenna!’ Vanessa could feel the waves of pain coming off her.

  ‘I love him. I can’t help it. I know he’s no good for me, but I love him all the same.’ She started to cry.

  Vanessa got up from her chair and was by her side in an instant. She wrapped her arms around the girl, noticing her bony shoulders. Was there any pain sharper than unrequited love? Vanessa didn’t think so. Not when you were young and hadn’t yet experienced the pain of losing a loved one.

  She continued to hold Jenna as the girl cried, letting her free all the pain she’d been bottling up inside for goodness only knew how long.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Vanessa asked at last, handing her a tissue to mop up her face.

  Jenna gave a little nod and a big sniff. ‘Can I wash my face?’

  Vanessa pointed to a door which led into a cloakroom and Jenna disappeared, coming out a moment later after she’d calmed her face down a little.

  ‘Why don’t I drop you home?’ Vanessa offered, not knowing where exactly Jenna lived.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to get out into the garden.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. It calms me.’

  Vanessa smiled. ‘Me too. You know, when my husband was ill, the garden was my sanctuary. I don’t know what I would have done without it. It kept me sane during a really rough time. It always has. Even if life is good and you’ve got no real worries, gardening still helps. It makes you see the bigger picture – the changing seasons, the fact that life goes on.’

  ‘I’d like to have my own one day,’ Jenna said.

  ‘I’m sure you will.’

  ‘Will you come and visit it?’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Jenna said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For listening to me. I don’t have many people I can talk to.’

  Vanessa tried not to look saddened by this admission. ‘Well, you can talk to me whenever you need to, okay?’

  They exchanged smiles and then left the kitchen and went back into the garden.

  It wasn’t until the end of the day that Vanessa managed to catch Jonathan and fill him in on what had happened to Jenna.

  Jonathan let out a long slow sigh. ‘I wish she’d make the break and tell him where to go. He’s no good for her.’

  ‘But she’s in love with him,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘What is that about? How can she love someone who treats her so badly?’

  ‘That’s just it – you can’t reason when it comes to love. You can’t just switch it off when it suits you.’

  ‘But it’s making her so unhappy. I hate seeing her like this.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Did she talk to you?’

  ‘Yes. But mostly she just cried.’

  ‘And she’s okay now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Jonathan ran a hand through his hair. He looked stressed. ‘Look, I’d better get them home. It’s been a long day. Did you get on okay with her? I mean, other than the breakdown?’

  ‘Of course I did. She’s a great girl. She gives a lot.’

  ‘I know,’ Jonathan said. ‘Too much sometimes. I did warn you not to get involved, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did,’ Vanessa said, ‘and I didn’t listen.’

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘I knew you wouldn’t. You’ll pay the price, you know.’

  ‘Very likely.’

  He leaned in and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Hey, I know you’re rushing off now but have you thought any more about your plans for you and the team at the fete?’ Vanessa asked.

  ‘Why don’t you come over tonight and we can talk about it?’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Good.’ He gave her a wink that made her feel like a woman half her age, and she watched as he walked to his van and left for the day.

  Everything was changing, wasn’t it? That’s what went through Jasmine’s mind as she saw her mum waving Jonathan off. She’d just come out of the oast house where she’d been working all day with Marcus. They’d run out of teabags and she was making a quick dash to the house when she spotted them. She stopped and watched, unobserved, as Jonathan leaned forward to kiss her mum. That was hard to take in even though it was Jonathan and she liked him. But he wasn’t her father, was he? It would be easier when Tilda explained it all to her. Jassy always understood things better with Tilda around to explain.

  And so she stood there on the path, trying to process her feelings. When a huge bumblebee landed on a nearby rose, she gladly turned her attention away and watched it and, by the time the bee had moved on, so too had Jonathan and her mother and she was able to sneak into the house for the teabags.

  It occurred to her that Jonathan might actually want to move in with her mother. What would that be like? she wondered. They already had two men in the house and it hadn’t been half as bad as she’d been expecting. In fact, she quite liked it. She enjoyed Marcus’s company and Laurie was sweet too. She could tell he liked Tilda and the revelation that they had kissed hadn’t come as a surprise to her.

  Men, she thought. They had a way of changing things. She was quite sure that their little unit of women had been happy enough in the last couple of years. Of course the loss of her father had been felt severely by all of them, but they had slowly adapted. Dolly, Vanessa, Tilda and Jasmine. Four Jacobs women living perfectly happily together, although her mother and grandmother still had a few issues to work out.

  Walking into the kitchen, Jassy forgot the incident with Jonathan and her mother as she got on with the wonderfully mundane task of gathering teabags into a plastic bag.

  Marcus didn’t appear to hear her when she walked back into the oast house. At any rate, he didn’t take any notice of her. He stood with his back to the door, a large canvas in front of him. He was getting brave. She was always encouraging him to work big. ‘Dream big, work big’ – that was her motto. Well, Marcus seemed to be running with it.

  ‘I’ve got the tea,’ she told him, stuffing the teabags into a tin of a royal couple Jassy could no longer recognise through all the paint splatters. ‘Do you want a cup?’

  ‘Please.’

  She boiled the kettle and washed two of the mugs by the sink.

  ‘You’re all hunched again,’ she shouted across the room when she turned to l
ook at him. ‘Don’t do that thing with your neck. You’re storing up trouble.’

  Jassy did a few quick stretches of her own after popping the teabags in the mugs and pouring in the water. It was important to stretch. One could get into some peculiar postures whilst painting. She knew all about that. She’d once gone to a yoga class with Tilda but had had to leave after falling onto the floor in a fit of giggles at the funny poses, which hadn’t gone down well with the po-faced yogi. She’d also tried meditation in order to learn how to relax more. The problem was, she kept falling asleep. Perhaps she’d been a little bit too relaxed, she thought, taking out the teabags. She hadn’t liked that class anyway. It was all lycra and chakras.

  Jassy and Marcus were both serious tea drinkers, preferring it black with no sugar. To Jassy’s mind, anything else was an abomination. Although she did enjoy the occasional ginger nut to sweeten the moment a little.

  She placed her mug on the stool by her easel and walked over to where Marcus was working, watching him for a moment before speaking.

  ‘Who is she?’ Jassy asked him at last, her head cocked to one side as she studied a rather beautiful face.

  Marcus stopped painting and stared hard at the canvas.

  ‘Is it your wife?’

  He glared at her, took his mug of tea and turned back to the canvas.

  Jassy shrugged her shoulders. ‘Suit yourself.’

  She went back to her own easel. Sometimes, artists needed space rather than questions. That was something she told her family anyway. They always wanted to know what she was doing and would constantly ask to see her drawings and paintings. But she didn’t ask them what they’d been doing all day.

  ‘Tara.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Jassy said as Marcus turned around.

  ‘Tara. My wife.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘I – er – didn’t mean to paint her. I don’t know how this happened.’

  ‘You’re unlocking yourself,’ she told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re freeing up the real you at last. I knew that would happen. You started off painting the things you could see in front of you: still lifes, flowers, bottles, that sort of thing. Then we went out into the garden. And now you’re painting things from within. It’s a natural progression.’

  Marcus didn’t look convinced by this. His face looked dark and stern.

  ‘It’s a good painting,’ Jassy told him. ‘I mean, I don’t know if it’s a good likeness of your wife or—’

  ‘It’s a good likeness.’

  ‘Then finish it. Show it to Laurie.’

  ‘Laurie will never see this, okay?’ Marcus’s voice was curt and final.

  Jassy nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We can keep it in here, can’t we? Our little secret.’

  It was only the second time that Vanessa had visited Beeches, but it was already beginning to feel like a second home to her. She loved the modest size of the property. After the sprawling grace of Orley Court, Beeches was a breath of fresh air with its two small rooms on the ground floor.

  Jonathan opened the door as soon as she knocked, ushering her in after the sweetest of kisses.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked him. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Just anxious.’

  ‘About Jenna?’

  He nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about her too.’

  ‘She’s a tough little cookie, but she looked like all the fight had gone out of her when I dropped her off tonight.’

  ‘She was probably tired too. I worked her pretty hard in the herbaceous border, you know.’

  Jonathan smiled at that. ‘Come on through to the kitchen. I’ve got some spaghetti on the go. Is that okay?’

  ‘Lovely!’

  ‘I’ve just picked some basil from the greenhouse. Come and smell it.’

  Vanessa grinned, loving his enthusiasm for all things green.

  A moment later and she was sniffing the basil. It was indeed delicious and still felt warm from having absorbed all of the heat from the day’s sun.

  ‘I didn’t bring any wine with me,’ Vanessa said, remembering his abrupt rejection of the bottle she’d brought last time.

  ‘How about an iced apple juice? Straight from an orchard in the Weald.’

  ‘Sounds perfect.’ She watched as he poured the drinks and then he opened the back door out into the garden, which was a tapestry of colour with lupins, larkspur, cornflowers and roses. The tomatoes in his tiny greenhouse had almost reached the roof and the vegetable beds were brimming over with produce.

  ‘So, have you talked any more to the team about the fete idea?’ Vanessa asked as they sat down together on a sun-warmed bench.

  He took a sip of his drink before answering. ‘I ran some ideas by them earlier today.’

  ‘And?’ Vanessa asked, eager to hear what they’d made of it.

  ‘Yeah, I think they went for it on the whole.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to tell sometimes. They can be a little unreceptive to change. You know, anything outside their comfort zone.’

  ‘So, what did they say?’

  ‘Well, Andy asked if it was a fete worse than death.’

  Vanessa groaned.

  ‘Yeah. You can always rely on Andy for the wisecracks. Nat wanted to know if they got to keep the money made from sales and Oz wanted to know if they got paid to man the stalls.’

  Vanessa laughed. ‘Good businessmen.’

  ‘I told them that payment came in the form of satisfaction for a job well done, and that we could probably run to tea and cake. I think they were beginning to get excited by the idea of showing their produce to the public. I told them there’s nothing quite like selling something that you’ve grown yourself and knowing that a stranger is going to eat it for their tea. I could see them taking it all in. I think they’re actually really looking forward to it.’

  ‘And Jenna?’

  ‘I don’t think she said anything. She was pretty quiet and then she went to join you in the south garden.’

  ‘She didn’t mention the fete to me. I think she was thinking of that no good man of hers.’

  Jonathan put his glass down on the bench beside him and took Vanessa’s left hand in both of his.

  ‘Finding someone good isn’t easy,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s why I feel so lucky to have found you. Thank goodness I was putting that advert up in the shop that day. We might never have met otherwise.’

  ‘We might have.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Elhurst is a pretty small place.’

  ‘But we haven’t run into each other before.’

  ‘I think we might have eventually met. Maybe one day, I’d have been cycling down the lane and you’d have been speeding along in that van of yours. You’d have driven right through a huge puddle, splashing me all over.’

  ‘What?’ Jonathan cried.

  Vanessa giggled. ‘You’d have stopped, of course.’

  ‘I should hope so!’

  ‘And we’d have got talking.’ She gave a little shrug and Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think it would have happened like that.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I think we might have met somewhere in the valley. One evening, just as it was beginning to cool. You’d have forgotten to wear a coat.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  He nodded seriously. ‘And I, naturally, would have taken mine off and placed it around your shoulders, stealing a quick kiss from you as I did.’

  ‘Oh! And I would have slapped you!’

  ‘No you wouldn’t have.’

  She laughed at his certainty.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘we did meet.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, closing her eyes as he kissed her.

  They ate at the table in the kitchen, the back door open so that they could enjoy the evening birdsong. It was a much more relaxed affair than the fir
st dinner they’d shared. She cringed whenever she thought of that. Thank goodness they’d managed to get through to the other side of all that awkwardness.

  Now, they could happily amble from topic to topic. Most of their conversation was garden-related, she had to admit, but everything seemed joyful and easy between them.

  After dinner, Jonathan got up to make them a cup of tea and Vanessa walked through to the living room where she was greeted by the overwhelming scent of sweet peas. She spotted the little vase full of pink, white and lilac blooms and went to inhale them before casting her eyes around the room. There was something particular she was looking for. It had been on the bookcase, hadn’t it? Only it wasn’t there now and, looking around for a second time, she couldn’t see it anywhere.

  Jonathan must have moved the photograph of Rachelle.

  Chapter 20

  At first, Vanessa thought she was dreaming but, after a few moments, she realised that her mobile really was ringing. She switched on her bedside lamp and looked at the clock. It was after four in the morning. Who on earth could be calling her at that time?

  She picked up the phone and instantly recognised the number.

  ‘Vanessa?’

  ‘Jonathan – what’s wrong?’

  ‘Can you come over?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Just come, will you?’ And he hung up.

  Vanessa sat up in bed feeling stunned. What on earth was the matter?

  Whipping the covers back, she swung her legs out of bed and quickly got dressed before running downstairs. She shoved her feet into the first pair of shoes she found and grabbed her bag and car keys.

  The summer sky was slowly beginning to lighten as she ran to her car. Her heart was racing as she tried to imagine what was going on with Jonathan. Why hadn’t he given her some hint? Was he unable to talk on the phone? All sorts of crazy thoughts went through her mind as she drove the short distance to Beeches.

  He was there at the door when she pulled up. He looked terrible. His face was pale and drawn and his beautiful red hair was a mess.

  ‘Jonathan?’ she cried as she got out of the car and ran the short distance towards him. ‘What is it?’

  He guided her into the house, his arm around her shoulder.