Stella’s unblinking eyes met Liddy’s. The whites of her eyeballs had no veins, the hands had no scratches or scrapes, the face no freckles or wrinkles. She was unmarked by life.
The wind had stopped, and the birds were still singing. Liddy shivered though, in the cold, without her coat.
‘Goodbye,’ called Liddy, as loudly as she could. She did not know what else to do. ‘I will love her. You must not worry, now.’
She turned, and walked very, very slowly back along the slippery path to the house. A cautious, metallic sun was beating through the pearl-streaked sky, turning the wet paving stones silver and gold.
‘Your father built this house, and you will grow up here,’ she told Stella, whose warmth, pressed against Liddy’s aching heart, was like moving in front of a glowing fire after too long outside in the bitter cold. Pausing only for a second underneath the lintel with the nightingales, she crossed the threshold and, carefully this time, Lydia Dysart Horner closed the door on things known, and unknown.
Spring was coming. It was not here yet, but now she knew it was coming.
I am beginning to rub my eyes at the prospect of peace. I think it will require more courage than anything that has gone before. It isn’t until one leaves off spinning round that one realises how giddy one is. One will have to teach one’s wincing eyes to look at long vistas again instead of short ones – and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war.
Cynthia Asquith’s diary, 7 October 1918
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Mari Evans for being not just a brilliant editor and publisher and head of everything but making me believe I am a good writer. You are the best. Thank you for your hard work and for trusting me and encouraging me to be better every time.
Thanks to all the wonderful people at Headline: Yeti Lambregts, Viviane Basset, Frances Doyle, Becky Bader, Jess Whitlum-Cooper, Jenni Leech and Katie Sunley with extra thanks and love to Becky Hunter. Thanks to Georgina Moore for all of it and more.
Thanks to Jonathan Lloyd for his sage counsel and kindness and everyone at Curtis Brown especially Melissa Pimentel, Jodi Fabbri and Sabhbh Curran.
I wrote most of this book in the London Library and would like to thank the staff and trustees of this wonderful unique place which has made such a difference to my working life and the books I write.
Thank you to my Shannon France for looking after our children and bringing joy and order into the house. To Maria Colom for showing me her studio and her beautiful paintings, and explaining how she works. To Gill Evans for exploring Highgate Cemetery with me, to Ginny Walton for taking me around St Marylebone Church and to Martin Neild spreading the rug ’neath the tree, metaphorically and actually. Thanks to Bea McIntyre for gardening info and being my real life idol and David Roberts for auction and art world information. Sometimes writers need a stroke of luck and so I would particularly like to thank the God of fate (don’t know her surname) for letting me bump into Natasha Mitchell one desperate morning, and to Nat for coffee and advice and for helping to make one of the most important characters finally slot into place. A special thank you to my old History of Art teacher, Catherine Grubb, who taught us Victorian Art and Architecture as part of our syllabus and made it so enthralling that years later the research I did for this book felt like an enormous pleasure not a chore.
I would like to remember Penny Vincenzi who died earlier this year and whom I miss very much. She made me try to be a better writer but also a better person and I think about her all the time. Floreat circum PV.
I have been so lucky to go to so many wonderful places all over the country to do festivals or talks. So almost finally, thank you to all the lovely readers who have bought my books over the past few years and those who let me know they enjoyed them. You have no idea how much easier it makes this strange job. Thank you to you and to the booksellers and librarians who understand the power of putting books into people’s hands in a world of phones and fake news.
Finally thanks to my love Chris and to the little Bossa. Also to my favourite boys Jake and Sam O’Reilly and their parents. But this book is for Martha, who was very small when I started it, and who is now, as she often likes to tell me, A Big Girl.
November 2018
Reading group guide
The idea of Nightingale House is a vital part of the novel. What impact do you think it has on the family members who live there? How is the response to the house different for each character?
The themes of motherhood and childhood run throughout the story. Consider the mothers in the novel and how they cope with and respond to their children. Are there any common themes? Or are the differences predominantly societal and / or due to different attitudes towards motherhood at different periods of history?
Throughout the narrative, many of the characters keep secrets and even tell lies. Why do they do this? How much of their behaviour reflects real family life?
Why do you think the painting of The Garden of Lost and Found is so symbolically important to Ned and Liddy, and for what different reasons?
The idea of the ideal family home plays a crucial part in this story. Do you think that, in the end, it is essential to the characters’ ability to find happiness, or only a small part of it?
The Garden of Lost and Found is the eponymous painting of the novel. Other titles the author considered were Songs from Nightingale House and Hope House. Why do you think she chose this one in the end? Do you think it is the right title for the book?
Juliet’s actions – removing her children from the home and taking them into an entirely new setting where she will raise them alone – are bold, yet she is not particularly outgoing herself. Is the act of uprooting oneself from one’s life and starting afresh treated as an impractical fantasy or a far-sighted solution in the novel?
‘Isn’t it funny,’ she said. ‘We grew up next to a graveyard, too.’ Mary and Liddy had a traumatic childhood. Do you think they manage to overcome it? Would they be proud of their descendants and of the present-day residents of Nightingale House?
If you loved The Garden of Lost and Found, discover the secrets of the Wilde family . . .
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Tony and Althea Wilde. Glamorous, argumentative . . . adulterous to the core.
They were my parents, actors known by everyone. They gave our lives love and colour in a house by the sea – the house that sheltered my orphaned father when he was a boy.
But the summer Mads arrived changed everything. She too had been abandoned and my father understood why. We Wildflowers took her in.
My father was my hero, he gave us a golden childhood, but the past was always going to catch up with him . . . it comes for us all, sooner or later.
This is my story. I am Cordelia Wilde. A singer without a voice. A daughter without a father. Let me take you inside.
Harriet Evans. She brings you home.
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‘Heart-stopping and wonderful . . . an epic, sweeping, romantic story told brilliantly’ Sophie Kinsella
It begins and ends with Keepsake, the house that holds its shadows too tightly.
What magic is this?
You follow the hidden creek towards a long-forgotten house.
They call it Keepsake, a place full of wonder . . . and danger. Locked inside the crumbling elegance of its walls lies the story of the Butterfly Summer, a story you’ve been waiting all your life to hear.
This house is Nina Parr’s birthright. It holds the truth about her family – and a chance to put everything right at last.
Harriet Evans. She brings you home.
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‘A brilliantly written story that
will stay with you long after the last page’
Fabulous Magazine, Sun on Sunday
The day Martha Winter decided to tear apart her family began like any other day . . .
The house has soft, purple wisteria twining around the door. You step inside.
The hall is cool after the hot summer’s day. The welcome is kind, and always warm.
Yet something makes you suspect life here can’t be as perfect as it seems. After all, the brightest smile can hide the darkest secret.
But wouldn’t you pay any price to have a glorious place like this?
Welcome to Winterfold.
Martha Winter’s family is finally coming home.
Harriet Evans. She brings you home.
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Thank you so much for spending time reading The Garden of Lost and Found. I’m looking forward to sharing my next book with you soon.
Harriet
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The Garden of Lost and Found Page 50