‘Ned has a lot on his hands, then,’ I said, because five peripatetic years in France, spent living in old and dilapidated houses, had taught me quite a bit about the subject.
‘If he says he doesn’t want to employ me, are you still sure you want me to work for you and live in the flat?’ I asked tentatively. ‘It would be only half the job and all the benefit of the accommodation.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s not in question. We’re very happy to have you. And I’m sure Ned, now he’s had time to think about what I said to him earlier, will be ready to listen to you.’
‘If he doesn’t, then perhaps I can get some daily gardening locally instead, because your garden won’t be a full-time job. Then you can pay me part-time wages.’
‘Wayne Vane gardens locally, but he’s neither good nor reliable. But it shouldn’t come to that. Ned would be crazy to turn you down, and you’re very cheap.’
I grinned. ‘Fully qualified, very experienced in all aspects of gardening and economically priced,’ I agreed. I still wasn’t quite sure how I was going to persuade Ned that I had never written that unhinged resignation email, but I’d give it my best shot.
‘I’ll see Ned first thing, then I need to go to Great Mumming. I’ve been storing some of my and my late mother’s things at my sister’s house – I mentioned she was a vet at a practice there, didn’t I? Elf said it was fine for me to bring them back with me to sort out in the flat.’
‘Good idea, and I expect you’ll find you can get rid of a lot of it. Very cathartic, disposing of old possessions.’
‘Yes, I think you’re probably right,’ I agreed. I’d already found purging myself of everything that reminded me of Mike pretty therapeutic.
I parted with Myfy at the back door, where I could see that the lights were still on in the café kitchen. She told me that Elf and Charlie would be cleaning down the café – they liked to give it an extra deep clean on Monday evenings – but since it had been a quiet day they’d probably already nearly finished.
It was getting on for five by then and I felt ravenous, so back in my flat I made myself dinner from the ingredients in the fridge, and finished with some honeycomb crunch ice-cream from a box I found in the freezer. It was delicious.
The little flat was quiet and warm, though I switched on the flickering flame effect of the electric log-burner for cosiness and settled down at the table with the temperamental laptop.
It eventually consented to turn on and I emailed Treena to say that I’d be in Great Mumming next day to pick up more of my things, and was she free to meet me for lunch, in which case I could tell her all about my arrival in Jericho’s End then.
An email pinged back almost straight away, suggesting we could eat lunch at the cottage and then she’d help me load the car.
I had so much to tell her tomorrow – and I’d have even more after I’d seen Ned in the morning!
After that, I made a cup of coffee and began to trace the downfall of Ned Mars via the internet. I had a faint suspicion Myfy might have left out a couple of details. Perhaps, although this allegation of an affair had been untrue, he had previously been unfaithful, giving his girlfriend grounds for jealousy? That didn’t sound like the Ned I knew, but I suppose he could have changed in the years since I’d known him.
It was easy enough to track the story back to the original Sunday tabloid article, which was full of innuendo and short on facts, but much as Myfy had said. There was plenty of speculation and a lot of social media slurry, then the paper printed a retraction and apology in the following week’s issue. I suspect there had been a threat of legal proceedings from Ned’s director and her husband. It would all probably have died down after that, had Sammie Nelson not stuck her oar in by selling that nasty little piece to a gossip column. After reading it, I could only suppose she must have done it for money, whipping up something out of nothing. The word ‘paydirt’ sprang to mind and it certainly left a nasty taste in my mouth. There seems to be an art to implying things, without coming out and saying them in a legally actionable way.
Anyway, I just couldn’t believe they’d printed this stuff, because it left their readers with the impression that Ned had not only dropped Sammie from his life when fame beckoned, but she had been pregnant at the time – plus, worst of all, they hinted he’d been violent to her!
My memories definitely didn’t include any of Ned getting her pregnant, socking her in the eye and then dumping her and I’d have been prepared to go into a court and swear it! All the students in my year would know the truth of what happened and the whole class was there when Sammie gave herself that black eye, by standing on the end of a rake. I even remembered Sammie joking at the time that it looked as if Ned had been beating her up, except everyone knew he was so soft he wouldn’t even hurt a fly.
But then, since it was all only implied, I don’t suppose Ned could have sued them for slander, or libel or whichever it was.
It all died down fairly quickly, but so many people are ready to believe anything they read, especially on Twitter.
I felt profoundly sorry for Ned, who hadn’t deserved any of this. He’d been so popular too, since he was very open and good-natured, with a genuine enthusiasm for gardening.
I could see that clearing his name, and proving it was all untrue, was one thing, but the taint lingered and I understood why he felt he had had enough and retreated to Jericho’s End.
The jealous vindictiveness of Ned’s ex-partner had disturbing echoes of Mike’s behaviour towards me. He’d certainly blackened my name with the Heritage Homes Trust … and now it seemed with everyone else on the gardening grapevine.
There had been a new series of This Small Plot, though with a different garden designer presenting it every week, but the ratings had sunk like a stone and, though it was still going, it was now put out on daytime TV.
I was sorry for Ned, and understood what he’d gone through, but still, it rather irked me that while I’d immediately felt he was innocent of any wrongdoing meriting what had happened to him, he hadn’t seemed to have had the same faith in me. But I suppose while I knew for a fact that Sammie’s allegations were all untrue, Ned only had his recollections of me to go on. How much would I have to tell him about my relationship with Mike, which wasn’t something I was exactly proud of, before he believed me? If he did, of course. I wasn’t looking forward to the interview.
I switched off the laptop, the internet connection vanishing with a grateful whine, and got ready for bed.
I was just about to get under that inviting duvet after my long day, when I heard a sort of scratching noise from the direction of the landing and went to investigate: if that was a mouse, then Elf and Myfy had serious problems.
But when I switched on the landing light the scratching stopped and was replaced by a sudden loud meowing that came from the other side of the door to Lavender Cottage.
Then there was a thud and the handle on my side moved, though of course it didn’t open, because the bolt was across.
Caspar! I stood undecidedly as the yowl and the thud came again – and after a moment, I cautiously slid the bolt back and the door banged against my legs as a huge marmalade shape barged through.
‘Come in, why don’t you?’ I said sarcastically, then turned to see if the rumpus had woken anyone in the cottage: but the landing beyond the door stretched away into quiet darkness.
‘Pfft!’ Caspar said disagreeably, disappearing into my living room, where I found him making himself comfortable on the sofa.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘you can’t stay here! I mean, I haven’t got a cat tray or anything, and anyway, you aren’t my cat. Where do you usually sleep?’
He narrowed his eyes at me. I determinedly picked him up and he made himself totally limp and twice as heavy as you’d expect. Then he twisted and leaped down, this time heading for the bedroom. He did turn back once and look at me.
His expression said he wasn’t going anywhere without a fight. I hesitated, then opened the door on
to my small landing a fraction, and then the one through into Lavender Cottage. I thought he might get bored and go back where he belonged or, if not, and nature called, find his way back to his usual haunts.
Five minutes after I’d got into bed and put out my light, a huge and heavy shape thumped down next to me.
I didn’t know cats snored. He sounded like one of those hubble-bubble pipes, but without any Eastern promise.
8
Poison
Apart from the fact that there was a large dent on the duvet and a generous sprinkling of long marmalade hairs, I might have thought Caspar’s visit the previous night was just a dream, brought on by tiredness and tension and, perhaps, the need for company.
It was still very early. I’d drawn back the curtains last night and through the window I could see an expanse of dusky, duck-egg-blue sky, warmed by a faint and spreading amber glow. It looked like it might be a brighter and less changeable day.
I got dressed and then looked for Caspar, but he’d vanished back into his own part of the cottage again and someone had closed the door. I didn’t bolt it again: there didn’t seem much point if Elf and Myfy weren’t bothered about locking it from their side, which showed a surprising trust in a total stranger, especially since I assumed Myfy had shared what she’d learned about my resignation from the Heritage Homes Trust with her sister.
I was sure Myfy had believed my version, but Ned might be a different prospect.
In my cafetière I made some of the coffee I’d brought with me, though it tasted quite different here, probably due to the water, which had a distinctly peaty tang. Perhaps it would turn my insides to leather over time, like Tollund Man and all those other people they’d found buried in bogs. I expected I’d get used to the taste in time, though.
My breakfast while in France (unless one of my employers had had a visitor bearing a gift of British streaky bacon and chunky marmalade) had usually been a croissant and a couple of big cups of coffee, so it felt luxurious to be spreading butter and jam (a jar of home-made strawberry, which proclaimed itself on the handwritten label to be of Elf’s making) onto wholemeal toast.
To have a day off before I’d even started seemed a trifle odd … but then, if I couldn’t sort things out with Ned, I’d only have half a job at most, and half a salary to go with it, unless I could get other gardening work locally. But there was no point worrying about that until I’d bearded the lion in his den.
I’d put on my best jeans and a cotton jersey tunic in a dark shade of turquoise, patterned with green willow leaves, a bit William Morris. I added dark grey eyeliner and ruby-tinted lip balm, brushed out the tangles in my hair and examined myself in the full-length mirror set in a bleached wooden frame, which was fixed to the wall at the end of the landing. I thought I looked entirely sane and sensible: nothing there to frighten Ned.
It was now after eight, so I went downstairs, where there was no sound beyond the scullery door, and let myself out into the cottage garden.
It was a still, clear morning, though up in the trees a wood pigeon was giving it some welly.
The rambling crazy-paving path was damp with dew and the overgrown lavender and rosemary bushes sprinkled me with water as I brushed against them – they were more than ready for a good pruning.
I couldn’t see much beyond the high stone walls except trees, but I could just hear the sound of water rushing under the nearby humpbacked bridge and thundering down into the pool below, the Devil’s Cauldron, that Elf had told me had given its name to the pub.
I inhaled deeply as I walked slowly down the path: the air was cold and crisp and smelled of leaf mould as rich and delicious as plum cake.
Further along, the spiders had spread great jewelled webs between the bushes and from both sides of the steep, wooded valley more wood pigeons had woken and joined in with the first. Small, pale beams of sunshine lightly gilded the top of the greenhouse and, despite my mission, my heart suddenly lifted and I felt again a connection with this enchanting valley, and that I had come home.
‘Into each life, a little sunshine must fall,’ I said aloud, changing the trite saying to suit myself, since I’d already had the rain, not to mention the thunder, lightning and hailstones. Then I selected the rose garden key from the big ring, which Myfy had helpfully labelled.
I made straight for the gate to the Grace Garden on the other side of the pond: I might love old roses, but this was no time to linger, though as I skirted the dark pool, my weird imagination provided me with the image of a hand rising from the depths, brandishing aloft, Excalibur-like, a gilded garden rake.
That would certainly bring in the paying visitors! I was grinning as I left the overgrown and gloomy tunnel of roses for the light and tranquillity of the apothecary garden.
The early sun was burnishing the ancient bricks of the high, sheltering walls, and this time I noticed at the further end of the garden to my left, beyond the low beds bordered by hedges of lavender, what looked like a tall, black, metal cage.
This was intriguing, but then, so was the whole garden, because from this point I couldn’t really see much of it, what with the rising ground and the specimen trees and banks of tall shrubs.
It seemed entirely deserted, except for a pheasant, who was ambling aimlessly away down the path directly ahead of me, in the manner of his kind, and though I knew I should head to the path to the right, behind the Alchemist rose, where the entrance to the courtyard apparently lay, I instead impulsively followed the pheasant.
My path joined a wider one that curved away on either side, seeming to circle the central beds, which I now saw were planted with mid-height herbs and shrubs. I began to note the signs of recent activity – the paths all newly gravelled and neatly edged, to trace the pattern of what was once there. But there was also evidence of years of neglect.
If the lower half of the garden had been totally let go, then it would take a lot of effort to restore it to what it once was – the repository of healing and useful plants, gathered together in one place: the so-called apothecary, or physic garden. A little Eden … which reminded me of my purpose.
Instead of going in search of the heart of the garden, I took the next right turn that skirted the tall bed of trees and shrubs and went through the wide arch at the top of it, into a paved courtyard. A sign on one of the buildings opposite proclaimed:
Little Edens Garden Design
Small Plots, Big Ideas
The pheasant, who must have followed me in, had now been joined by a slightly bedraggled-looking peacock and his mate, but I barely took them in, for my attention was all focused on the task ahead.
A glimmer of light shone through the slatted blinds over the windows, so I knew Ned was there, and I knocked firmly on the door. And of course, the moment I’d done it, the short, carefully prepared and entirely reasonable explanation of how I’d come to leave my Heritage Homes Trust job flew straight out of my head like a flock of startled starlings and scattered to the four winds.
That was a pity, because it had to be admitted that my naturally slightly acerbic tongue had sharpened somewhat over the last few years, so that I wasn’t always able to stop the slings and arrows of outrageous comment from shooting forth at entirely the wrong moment.
Without the script to stick to, I’d have to try to curb that a bit, so I came across as sensible, quiet, totally non-neurotic and unthreatening.
Added to that, I needed to keep a lid on the bubble of resentment that I felt that he’d accepted the gossip he’d heard about me at face value, while he, as much as anyone, should know not to believe everything he heard.
I mean, it might have been a long time ago since we’d been students at Honeywood Horticultural College, but I hadn’t forgotten what he was like: that we’d laughed together, exchanged heated opinions on gardening matters in the pub over pints of Gillyflower’s Best Bitter and both been in the same team at the end-of-term quiz, winning the coveted Honeywood Cup and a set of chocolate gardening tools. I’d got the
trowel.
These things ought to have lingered in his memory, as they had in mine. He should have known me better.
I remembered now how amused he’d been when, after offering him the chance to front his own TV series, having spotted him in that documentary, the company had approached me to be one of the team, and I’d turned it down flat.
Ned had known how much I’d hated being in that documentary and, naturally, I’d got snappy when the director kept insisting I turn round and face the cameras … and even gave me lines to say.
But evidently the viewers had liked that and the clincher had been the bit where they’d asked Ned to call me over while I was trying to finish weeding the rockery and I told him to get lost in no uncertain terms, not realizing it was caught on camera. They kept it in, and it went down a storm.
Sammie Nelson had been furious when they offered the job to me and not her, after all her efforts with the presenter, though, of course, he wasn’t with the company making the new series, so she was out of luck there.
Yes, I thought bitterly as I stood on the doorstep, Ned should have known me better than to believe the rumours – and at that moment, the door swung open.
The old, gangling, good-natured student Ned I’d been remembering morphed into the current version: nearly six and a half feet of ruggedly attractive, broad-shouldered and well-muscled masculinity, wearing slightly muddy jeans, a blue checked lumberjack shirt and a deeply distrustful expression.
He didn’t look as if he’d spent the intervening years just drawing up garden designs and fronting a TV series, but from what I remembered of the programmes, he’d mucked right in with the heavy work alongside his team.
His light amber-brown eyes widened and grew wary when he saw me and he took an involuntary step backwards, which I have to say I found irritating. Presumably he’d forgotten his crucifix and bulbs of garlic.
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 8