The door opened slightly and Treena peeped cautiously round it, then when she saw I was awake, came and deposited a mug of coffee on the bedside table.
‘I didn’t want to wake you, but I’m just off for a ride and I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll take the dogs with me. The cats have eaten; don’t let them tell you any different.’
‘OK, have a lovely ride. I feel wide awake now, so I’ll get up.’
‘Water’s hot for a shower, and help yourself to breakfast,’ she said, and vanished, though I could hear her boots on the stairs and then her voice talking to the animals, before the front door shut behind her.
I propped myself up with the pillows behind me and then lay there, thinking that the room looked just the same as it had five years ago, when I’d arrived in the dead of night (later than expected, since I’d discovered Mike had locked me into the flat and taken my keys with him, so I’d had to call a twenty-four-hour locksmith to release me), with a car haphazardly stuffed with my belongings and the irrational feeling that Mike might have divined what I was doing, miraculously risen from his hospital bed, and would suddenly appear at any moment, possibly in a puff of sulphur-yellow smoke.
Treena had orchestrated my escape. I’d tried to distance myself from her after Mike’s threats to blacken her professional name if I left him with her help, but it hadn’t been any use: I’d found her one day standing by my unmistakable old 2CV in the car park of the garden I worked at, when I was heading home after work. She’d demanded to know why I wasn’t answering her texts and emails and she wasn’t in the least impressed when I told her about Mike’s threats.
After that, it was easy enough to snatch brief meetings while I was still working. Things only got tricky later. But by then we had hammered out my exit strategy and were all set for the weekend Mike would be away at the conference in Amsterdam. We’d thought we’d only have the weekend and I’d have to cram all kinds of things into the Saturday, like seeing the solicitor Treena had lined up for me, before I vanished to France, but his being so ill gave us a little extra time.
On the Monday morning I posted a letter to him addressed to the flat, saying I’d left him and to contact me via my solicitor, and also sent a copy to the hospital in Amsterdam, for good measure, though I didn’t think it would help speed his recovery. By late morning I was on my way to catch the ferry to France and the Château du Monde.
Most of my belongings stayed at Treena’s cottage. I took my working clothes and some jeans and jumpers, a pre-Mike long washed-denim skirt and old, comfortable ballet flats and a good, warm, loose wool jacket in a cheery bright red that Aunt Em had once bought me. That was pretty well it, apart from my leather rucksack.
I certainly wasn’t taking my laptop and phone. Mike had given me those and I’d eventually realized he was using them to snoop on me. Or so he thought. He never knew about the mobile phone I kept sealed in a waterproof bag in one of the plant pots on the flat’s balcony, or that I had an emergency set of car keys hidden under the bumper – for of course my car keys had been on the ring with the door key he’d taken with him.
There were a lot of things he hadn’t known about me, but he’d been so sure when he went away that weekend that he finally had me exactly where he wanted me.
It all felt a bit like a bad nightmare now, the kind that gave me flashbacks I could have done without.
I got up and showered and then went down to the warm kitchen to forage for breakfast. The two Border collies had gone with Treena, but two of the sedately middle-aged cats kept me company while the other, a three-legged and slightly cross-eyed Siamese, was quite shy.
After I’d washed down toast and marmalade with two more mugs of coffee, I thought I might as well make a start on sorting out the stack of belongings in my bedroom and seeing what I could fit in my car around the stuff I’d brought from France.
I’d been surprised at how much I’d accumulated. There weren’t a lot more clothes, but I’d filled two stacking boxes with old French cookery and gardening books and several old gardening tools I’d picked up along the way. There was also the last-minute find at a junk market of a pair of enormous old butter paddles … I was armed and dangerous.
I’d left most of this stuff in the car last night, just bringing in the rucksack and a slightly moth-eaten carpet bag I’d found in the Château du Monde attic. Just to be sure there weren’t any ravenous inhabitants remaining, we’d wrapped it in plastic and left it in one of the big freezers for twenty-four hours, which Aunt Em reckoned would finish off any lingering moth grubs, so I had the most chilled luggage ever.
I was filling what space there was in the car with the nearest boxes and bundles – some mine, some things of Mum’s that Aunt Em had packed up for me after her death – when Treena returned. She put the dogs in the house and then came back to watch me. Her cheeks were glowing and she smelled pleasantly of horses.
‘It looks like one of those 3-D jigsaw puzzles,’ she said, as I attempted to slide the wooden butter paddles between the back of the passenger seat and a battered tin trunk. ‘What are those things?’
‘Butter paddles, but much bigger than usual. Em reckons the dairymaid who swung these must have been Amazonian.’
‘I expect you’ll find a hundred and one uses for them,’ she said, as I closed the door cautiously. The car didn’t explode, scattering belongings in all directions, as I’d half feared.
‘I’ve made a small hole in the stuff you’ve been storing for me, but I’ll try and do something about the rest as soon as I can. It’s been taking up space in your cottage for way too long.’
‘Oh, no problem,’ she said, looking slightly surprised. She was very laid-back, as were all the Ellwoods. ‘I’d forgotten about them – I mean, they’re just there, in nobody’s way.’
She went to change and then we walked into Great Mumming and had a pub lunch with her old college friend and partner at Happy Pets, Sam, and his wife, Karen, who was a doctor. They were fascinated by my nomadic life in France, moving from one crumbling château to the next, nominally gardening, but in reality also picking up other skills, from French cookery of the more hearty peasant type, to plumbing, plastering and wallpapering.
As I described the funnier episodes and recalled how, on warm summer evenings, the château owners and the volunteer helpers would all gather together at trestle table in the garden to eat after a hard day’s work, I could already see how these years would soon become fond memories, to look back on with pleasure.
During that time, I’d slowly unwound until the old Marnie blossomed forth once again, though with a few additional thorns, as I’d restored walled gardens, semi-wild kitchen plots, neglected formal parterres and even a maze. Reconnection to the earth had been what I’d needed and I’d made many new friends, though never anything more, because I was entirely done with love.
From time to time I’d gone back to the Château du Monde for a little holiday with the family, but the time there never turned out to be that, because I couldn’t resist working in the World Map garden, which gave the château its name. The family had thrown themselves into upgrading and extending the campsite and the lake facilities, then opening a garden centre, before they’d sorted out the accommodation for themselves, and they were still working on making the place a comfortable home.
‘I sometimes wish I’d moved to France with them,’ Treena said. ‘But then, like you, Marnie, living in France was never my dream and my roots are forever dug into west Lancashire.’
We gave the dogs a quick walk when we got back and then a tidal wave of tiredness washed over me and I zonked out on my bed before dinner under a coverlet of cats.
The remains of a pot of spaghetti Bolognese lay on the table along with an open bottle of prosecco, a scene almost exactly like the last evening I’d spent here before I’d set off for France.
Treena had obviously been thinking along the same lines, for she said now, ‘You were still terrified Mike might somehow appear and drag you ho
me, that last night before you left for France, do you remember? I had to put through a call to his hospital in Amsterdam before you were convinced he was still there.’
‘I know, and in retrospect it still seems incredible that I let him get such a hold on me … but I think you have to be in that kind of relationship to understand it fully: how slowly it sucks you in before it even dawns on you what’s happening.’
‘Yes, it took me a long time to work out what he was doing and he had most people fooled into thinking he adored you and was so worried about your mental health, especially after you lost the baby.’
I shivered. I’d got pregnant after my pills had mysteriously ‘vanished’ and before I could replace them, but I’d hardly realized I was expecting before I’d lost the baby.
‘I think the worst thing he ever said to me was that I couldn’t even carry out the one function most women managed without any problem – have a baby.’
‘He truly deserved a burst appendix and septicaemia,’ Treena said. ‘God moves in mysterious ways – and it was certainly a godsend for us that he was ill the exact same weekend we’d arranged everything for your escape.’
I smiled through a blur of sudden tears. ‘Yes. It was ages before he got home and could start trying to find me.’
‘He rang me when he got back to the flat and found you gone,’ Treena said, to my surprise. ‘I didn’t tell you at the time in case it worried you. At first he tried to charm me into telling him where you were, and then, when I wasn’t having any of his fake concern about you, he moved on to the threats. But I told him I was recording the conversation and if he tried to blackmail me I’d hand it to the police. That stopped him in his tracks and he rang off.’
‘I should think it did,’ I agreed. ‘Were you recording it?’
She grinned. ‘No, but he didn’t know that.’
‘You said you thought he’d got someone watching you for a while, presumably to see if you led him to where I was hiding.’
‘Yes, and it sounded like the same man Mum and Dad said turned up at the château, asking nosy questions, but of course by then you’d long since moved on and the trail was cold.’
‘The fact that I left him a letter asking him to contact my solicitor to discuss a divorce must have given him a hint I wasn’t coming back,’ I said drily.
‘I expect so, but it wasn’t until he wanted to remarry that he actually did,’ Treena said. ‘Lucky for you – but not for her.’
‘No …’ I agreed. ‘But perhaps things will be different.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, though not sounding convinced, and then tipped the last of the prosecco into our glasses. She passed mine over and raised her own in a toast.
‘Here’s to your new, unfettered and free life in Jericho’s End!’
We clinked glasses.
‘Jericho’s End is an odd name for a village, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Wasn’t there a Jericho in the Bible, where the walls fell down when someone blew a trumpet?’
‘Yes, so there was, but you should be safe unless anyone starts up a brass band,’ Treena grinned. Then she added, ‘It’s just like old times, having you here. I wish you could stay a few days more.’
‘I do, too, but they seemed very keen on my starting work as soon as possible. And actually, I can’t wait to see this magical village that Mum used to tell me stories about. I’m just afraid the reality won’t live up to them!’
‘Haven’t you even looked at the place on Google Maps yet?’ she asked. ‘That gives you a good idea of the layout and you can move around the village as if you’re wearing an invisibility cloak.’
‘No … I don’t quite know why, but I sort of want it all to unfold in front of me when I arrive, not sneak about the place first, via the internet.’
‘You’re weird,’ she said, but in a kind way.
‘Don’t forget, I couldn’t afford a laptop for ages until Aunt Em gave me her old one. I had to rely on occasional access to the internet on someone else’s, and my phones are always the cheapest and most basic ones I can find.’
‘That old laptop of Mum’s is so ancient, it belongs in a museum. Does it even work?’
‘If I turn it on and off a few times and the wind’s in the right direction, then it usually does. It’s started making an ominous whining noise, though.’
‘I’m just about to buy a new laptop, so you can have my old one,’ she offered. ‘It works fine; I just fancied the new model. I’ll clean my stuff off it for you, ready for next time you come over.’
‘Thank you, that would be great,’ I said. ‘I must buy a new phone too. I dropped the previous pay-as-you-go one in a lily pond.’
‘Why not sign up with my mobile phone provider? It’s a rolling thing: you pay every month and you can cancel any time. It’s cheap, too, and if we do it now on the laptop, the SIM will arrive in a day or two. You don’t have to hide behind a disposable phone any longer.’
I thought that seemed a good idea and it took no time to sort out. I refused her offer to get Jericho’s End up on the screen while we were at it, though.
‘No, I’ll wait and see it for real,’ I said. ‘At least I did look for the road to it from Great Mumming on an old UK car atlas I found under the passenger seat, and it isn’t that far away as the crow flies. Have you been there?’
‘Yes, a few times, but only to a biggish house called Risings up on the left of the road before you get into the village proper. The owner’s an overbearing woman with two Pekes that she’s convinced have delicate constitutions. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t bring them to the surgery in Great Mumming, but I make her pay through the nose for dragging me all the way out there for every upset stomach.’
‘Weren’t you curious enough to drive into the village for a look?’ I asked.
‘No, I always seem to be rushed for time. I know it’s supposed to be a beauty spot with waterfalls and stuff,’ she said vaguely. ‘But I will come and visit once you’ve settled in and … well, actually, I know someone who will be working there from Easter right over the summer, so I expect I’ll be popping in occasionally to see how he’s getting on, too.’
She looked faintly self-conscious and I gazed at her in surprise.
‘A boyfriend?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Just – someone I met a few months ago. A friend. He’s an archaeologist and he’s got funding for a dig at Jericho’s End. There’s some kind of small monastic ruin near the river on the village outskirts, more or less opposite Risings. It’s never been properly excavated.’
‘A small monastic ruin doesn’t sound very exciting.’
‘To Luke, lumps of mud and random bits of burned bone seem to provide endless excitement.’
Treena had always insisted that she was never going to get married, or live with anyone. She liked her independence and her own way of doing things too much, and had her animals for company. Seeing what happened to me had probably reinforced that determination.
But now I wondered if there was a softening around the edges … though there certainly wasn’t around mine. Once bitten, more than twice shy. Forever shy.
We’d both turn thirty-six this year – we’d been born within a week of each other, and in fact it was at the antenatal clinic that our mothers met and became such close friends. Treena and I had always had joint birthday parties, twins of a kind.
I tactfully changed the subject. ‘This Ms E. Price-Jones sounds very kind in her letters, and there’s a sister, too. They’re expecting me about ten tomorrow and I’m to go into the café, Ice Cream and Angels, which is at one end of Lavender Cottage. She sent me a little map on the back of the last letter, but it was in pencil so I’ve only just noticed.’
‘Strange name for a café,’ Treena commented.
‘Yes … and oddly enough, “ice-cream and angels” was the last thing Mum ever said.’
I’d never told even Treena that before. Now I’d remembered I felt doubly excited. First Jericho’s End and now the name of t
he café were connecting my new life with Mum in a way I couldn’t wait to discover. I hadn’t forgotten Mum’s warning, but I felt there were answers waiting for me.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Then I think that’s a good omen, don’t you?’
4
Going to Jericho
Treena was to set out early for Happy Pets in the morning, since she was taking the first drop-in session. Over breakfast she presented me with a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of the Thorstane and Jericho’s End area.
‘The turn to the village is easy to miss if you haven’t got sat nav.’
‘I sneer in the face of sat nav,’ I said, larding butter onto toast and adding some of last year’s bramble jam. ‘After all, when I went to France I only had an ordinary car atlas and a load of Post-it notes with road numbers written on them stuck along the dashboard – not to mention having to drive on the wrong side of the road – and I found the Château du Monde OK.’
Not that I actually remembered much of that nightmare flight to safety, with the imaginary hounds of hell on my trail in defiance of all common sense and reason.
‘Didn’t you circle Paris twice before you found the right road south?’
‘You know very well that’s just a family joke,’ I said with dignity, though the other one they told – about my having inadvertently bought a supply of high-salt-content mineral water when I stopped for petrol and arriving with a raging thirst – wasn’t.
Treena gave me a spare key to the cottage and left, taking the dogs with her, and saying she couldn’t wait to hear how I got on and I must email her later.
I still felt slightly spaced out and as if this wasn’t all really happening, but I spread out the map on the kitchen table, pushed away the cat that immediately came and sat on it, and studied the lie of the land.
From Great Mumming, which was an attractive small market town, I needed to take the road that ran vaguely eastward towards the large village of Thorstane, which was up on the edge of the moors.
The tiny village of Jericho’s End looked very close to Thorstane on the map, but the turn to it onto a single-track lane came miles before you would expect it to, due to it forming a long, narrow ‘V’ with the main road.
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 3