The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller

by Trisha Ashley

  There was still no sign of Ned, but when I found James in the Potting Shed with a cup of tea and a rock cake, he told me he was back and working down the other end of the garden.

  ‘I suppose he thought I’d have finished spreading the manure on the roses on my own,’ I said.

  ‘Is that what you’ve been doing? It’ll be ripe enough to floor a visitor at ten paces in there.’

  ‘It is a bit niffy, but it’s a good country smell and it’ll clear their lungs a treat,’ I said.

  ‘It might clear the rose garden, till it wears off,’ he said, then asked me what had been decided the day before about extending the shop. I explained what we planned and he said he hoped we’d be getting more stock in soon.

  ‘People seem very keen to part with their brass before they go.’

  ‘I know, there’s something about looking round a stately home or garden that makes you want to try to take a piece home with you,’ I said. ‘A souvenir to remind you how lovely it was, I suppose. I do it myself.’

  ‘Well, we need a bit more choice.’

  ‘I know, I kept telling Ned, but he can see it himself now, so there’s going to be a lot more stock soon – including some aimed at the children, with a galleon logo.’

  Then I asked him if Ned had seemed OK, because he’d been to have it out with Wayne about those holes in the lawn.

  ‘He didn’t say anything but “thank you” when I took him a cup of tea down, but he’d been digging like fury and he’s probably down to Australia by now.’

  ‘Oh dear, that doesn’t sound too good. Perhaps Wayne denied it all and they argued?’ That certainly wouldn’t make Ned warm to my loathsome relatives!

  ‘Quite likely,’ James said, a Job’s comforter.

  Ned didn’t look angry when I saw him later, but his face darkened alarmingly when I asked him if he’d spoken to Wayne.

  ‘Yes, he was up at Risings – and I’m certain the spade he was using was one that went missing when he was working for me. But I couldn’t prove it, any more than that it was he who dug those holes all over my lawn, and he knew it.’

  ‘So … he didn’t admit he’d done it?’

  ‘No, but I don’t think he’ll try anything like that again. I’ve warned him that if I ever find him on my property, he’ll be sorry. I think I scared him, but he was still cocky, even when I’d finished tearing him off a strip.’

  ‘I suppose he’s just like that,’ I suggested.

  Ned frowned. ‘There seemed to be a bit more to it than that, as if he knew something I didn’t and then, when I was leaving, he asked me if I was happy with my new gardener and I said it was none of his business.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ I said, feeling deeply uneasy. ‘Did he say … anything else?’

  ‘Yes, that perhaps I wouldn’t be so happy with you, if I knew what he knew.’

  I went hot and cold. ‘What … did you think he meant by that?’ I asked, trying to stop a slight quiver sneaking into my voice.

  ‘I was about to ask him – or possibly shake it out of him – when we saw Audrey Lordly-Grace’s car coming up the drive and he walked off and started digging again. So I thought I’d better leave before Audrey came nosing over to see why I was there.’

  I must have looked odd, because he patted me as if I was a nervous dog and said, ‘Don’t look so worried, Marnie. Don’t forget, Wayne does a lot of gardening jobs around the area, so he’s probably picked up some version of the story about your resignation from the Heritage Homes Trust and thinks I took you on without knowing about it.’

  That was a possibility, and I certainly preferred it to the alternative!

  I smiled weakly. ‘I suppose he must have, but I was hoping it wouldn’t become common knowledge.’

  ‘Local people will take you as they find you, and we all know the truth, so I wouldn’t let it worry you,’ he said reassuringly.

  Little did he realize what I was really worried Wayne might know!

  It was still the school holidays, so the village continued to be busy and, if we didn’t get quite the hordes of visitors crowding in that we’d had over Easter weekend, it was still busier than we could have hoped for.

  Roddy came in early in the afternoon and went round with the first of Ned’s tours, to see how it was done. He’d already studied the plan, guidebook and information boards – in fact, he told me he’d taken pictures of the information boards so he could mug them up.

  He and Ned seemed to be getting on very well and went off into the office to set up the old desktop for the business and induct Roddy into the ways of a PA. Roddy seemed a quiet, scholarly man, who said he’d be happy to work mostly in the office between taking guided tours around, but in any free time, he would work on his own laptop. He was writing a book about the legacy of Oliver Cromwell: the intermarriage of the Cromwell family into the nobility and their descendants. Or something like that.

  Again, there wasn’t so much carelessly discarded litter along the River Walk that day, now that the mad rush of Easter weekend was over. The last visitors making their way towards the turnstile seemed pleasant, too, wishing me good afternoon, which it might have been, if it hadn’t been for what Wayne had been hinting to Ned …

  A little magic was already creeping back in by the waterfall, where silence, except for a little sweet birdsong, reigned once more. I let the atmosphere wash like balm across my sore conscience and felt better for it.

  Ned was expecting me at the Hall at seven, for our first session on the papers, which would be fun – and maybe even exciting, if we found anything relating to the garden.

  When I’d showered and changed, Caspar appeared and I told him I was going out, then suggested he might like to go back and make up to Elf and Myfy for a change, since they were the ones feeding him expensive cat food and dealing with his litter tray.

  This didn’t go down well, especially my attempt to persuade him to return through the cat flap, and when I set off for the Hall, he insisted on accompanying me. In fact, he dogged my footsteps – you can’t really say ‘catted’, can you?

  So when Ned opened his front door, he found Caspar barging past him before he could say anything.

  ‘Come in, why don’t you?’ he said, looking after the long bushy tail and marmalade rump as it made off down the passage.

  Lizzie

  I had no opportunity to visit the waterfall again, but treasured the memory of my experience there … But I did love the apothecary garden at Old Grace Hall, and Mr Richard Grace delighted in my interest and told me many wonderful things about the rare plants there, and how it had been set out so long ago as a physic garden.

  Mr Grace’s wife had died young in childbirth, so he was inclined to be melancholy, but I believe he found some solace in talking to me and telling me of the cuttings and seeds of interesting plants he hoped to obtain for the garden.

  Susanna, bored, would trail behind us and was always pleased when her governess called to us to go home again.

  These visits were some compensation for the long, dreary Sundays spent with my family and the other Brethren.

  Other than Miss Susanna and Master Neville, the rest of the family at Risings seemed barely aware of my existence, though occasionally the master, a large, red-faced man with a loud, booming voice, would chuck me under the chin in passing, a familiarity he took with all the younger female servants.

  30

  Box of Delights

  I’d only been in the Hall once before, with Treena and Luke when Ned had showed us round. This time we went straight into the library, where the lights were on and the log-burner lit, making it look cosy.

  An ancient, battered and metal-banded trunk and a plain deal box stood on the rug next to the coffee table, and neither was exactly small.

  ‘I’ve dipped into the boxes a couple of times and found interesting things, but I’d say the heir to each generation has simply tipped his predecessor’s papers into one of the boxes and started afresh … and then my great-uncle Theo cam
e along and rummaged about in them, mixing the layers up. He did say that at one time he thought of writing a family history, but the way he was going on, it would have been a topsy-turvy one.’

  ‘This could take a while,’ I said, opening the lid on the trunk and finding it crammed right to the top.

  ‘I know, and the other box is just as full,’ Ned agreed.

  Caspar poked his head into the trunk, then sneezed and backed off, looking affronted.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to order some food before we start, from the Lucky Dragon?’ Ned suggested.

  ‘Mmrow,’ approved Caspar from the armchair and listened intelligently as we discussed the rival merits of sweet and sour chicken, Singapore fried rice and prawn curry.

  ‘Sesame toast and spring rolls,’ Ned muttered, jotting things down before phoning the order in.

  ‘That’s enough for four people,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I eat enough for three,’ he said simply, turning off his phone. ‘There we are – we’ve got at least half an hour till it arrives, so we might as well begin.’

  ‘We need a plan,’ I said. ‘Since everything’s already mixed up, why don’t we start by fishing out all the photographs and putting them on the table?’

  ‘Good idea, and when we go through them later, there are a couple of photograph albums on one of the shelves, so we might be able to identify a few of the people in them.’

  We worked away, one box each, trying not to let ourselves be distracted when we came across very ancient-looking documents written on parchment, and only stopped to devour our takeaway, duly delivered by Luke’s assistant, Ken.

  Ned suggested Ken stay and help us with the sorting, but he just laughed and said he had another delivery to make and then a hot date at nine.

  Caspar accepted a couple of prawns from the fried rice, which I hoped wouldn’t upset his delicate tummy, then Ned took the debris through to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of chilled pinot grigio and two glasses, which, if it didn’t help speed up our search, at least cheered us along the way. Caspar, profoundly bored, went to sleep.

  It was late before we were sure we’d found all the photographs, which ranged all the way from very early views of family groups, sometimes posed by the river or the waterfall, to hand-tinted portraits and Box Brownie snaps.

  A few had names and dates on the back in pencil, but you could date some of them anyway by the clothes, or the vintage cars they were proudly grouped around. In the roaring twenties, there seemed to have been a vogue for people pointing at things in the garden, so the backgrounds of those were interesting – the sundial was in one.

  The more recent photos were in the albums but I could already tell that Ned was a true Grace, tall and fair.

  ‘There’s a contemporary description of Nathaniel Grace as a fair giant,’ Ned said, ‘though in those times you didn’t need to be very tall to be thought one.’

  ‘You’re pretty tall for now,’ I pointed out, sifting through the heaps of photos on the table, looking for the more relevant ones.

  There were some very atmospheric ones of the falls and I came across a whole packet just of the Grace Garden, taken before the lower part had been dug up to grow vegetables for the war effort.

  ‘There’s loads of material here for the museum display and the next edition of the guidebook,’ I said.

  ‘I think I’ll have to update that annually anyway, as the restoration of the garden progresses,’ he said. ‘And we’ll have photos of the rose garden in bloom to go in the next one, too.’

  I stood up and stretched. ‘I think we’d better call it a night, don’t you? We can start rough-sorting the papers tomorrow.’

  Caspar watched me put on my coat and then came to wind himself around my legs.

  ‘I’d forgotten about Caspar – he probably needs to go out.’

  ‘He followed me to the kitchen earlier and there’s still a cat flap in the back door there, from my uncle’s day … if he can squeeze through it,’ Ned said. ‘He didn’t show any sign of wanting out then, anyway.’

  He unhooked his own coat from the rack as we went out and said, ‘I’ll see you to your door.’

  ‘There’s no need – it’s only a few yards away and it must be safe enough here!’

  ‘I’d like to stretch my legs anyway,’ he insisted, and we went back the way I’d come, by the road, which was a lot easier than unlocking every gate through from the back of the Hall to the Lavender Cottage garden.

  As usual, a dim light burned at the back of the café and another came on near the side gate as we approached.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ Ned said, opening the gate for me, as Caspar shoved through first in his usual mannerless way. ‘It’s been quite fun, hasn’t it?’ he added, as if in surprise and then walked off, whistling as sweetly as a blackbird.

  And it had been fun, too. Way too much fun to risk spoiling it by telling Ned who I really was: first cousin to the vile Wayne.

  The huge terracotta garden pots arrived early next morning, and Ned and Lex Mariner, who was almost as tall as he was, unloaded them and then moved them into position.

  I watched them with Caspar and the peacocks, though Lancelot and Guinevere got quickly bored and wandered off.

  The pots looked spectacular when four of them were placed at points around the wide circular gravel path, but they also somehow gave the impression of always having been there.

  When the two men had finished, I had a closer look at the swirls of seaweed and barnacle-like applied decoration that Ned had mentioned, which was strangely beautiful …

  ‘You’d fit easily inside one of those, Ellwood,’ Ned threatened me. ‘Bear that in mind before you give me any more of your sarky comments.’

  Then he introduced me to Lex, who was grinning. He was as dark as Ned was fair, with an aggressively Roman nose. In fact, he was very much like Clara Mayhem Doome; you could see the family resemblance.

  Ned began telling him what we’d been working on recently in the garden and our future plans and something – possibly Ned’s frequent repetition of the words ‘we’ and ‘Marnie thinks’ – seemed to have caused Lex to jump to the wrong conclusion about our relationship. He said he was glad Ned had found someone on his wavelength at last and we must all meet up at the Pike with Two Heads for dinner, when his wife got back from painting a portrait commission.

  ‘Great,’ said Ned, who didn’t seem to have noticed Lex’s mistake at all.

  Roddy arrived early and Ned took him into the office, then later I saw him taking the second tour group round the garden, while Ned thankfully escaped to the half-dug long plots to join me.

  ‘Roddy’s amazing – he seemed to grasp what was needed almost straight away. He’s going to have a chat later with James about what’s selling best in the shop and what else we could stock.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking I could do with some of the volunteers from the dig to start rolling all this rough turf back from round the beds, but you’ll do instead.’

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I seem to be under the deluded impression that I’m the boss round here.’

  ‘Planks.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘We need planks between the long beds, until we put down the new turf.’

  ‘I know – I’ve got a stack of them in the stables. Two minds with but a single thought!’

  And he picked up his spade and began to dig.

  Caspar and I headed for the Hall again that evening. Ned had insisted he’d provide dinner – and this time actually cook something.

  I hadn’t got my hopes up too high, which was just as well, because he’d dashed up to Toller’s and bought a huge pizza and a sherry trifle sealed in a plastic bowl.

  Both were quite nice, though, even if the trifle was covered in slightly synthetic-tasting cream and the glacé cherries on top had never seen a stalk.

  I ate too much pizza and was feeling distinct twinges of indigestion as we settled down in the library
to sift the accumulated paper trail of centuries.

  There were rolls of parchment and crackling sheets of thick, ancient yellowed paper, bundles of letters tied up with string or ribbon, miscellaneous official-looking deeds and documents, invoices and lists …

  But we’d sworn not to start reading anything tonight, just rough-sort it all onto the floor and table, and we mostly managed to stick to that.

  When we finally stopped, dusty, grubby and tired, Ned reminded me that it was the quiz the next night.

  ‘It’ll probably do us good to have a break from all this dust, and we can have another go on Saturday night if you haven’t had enough of it?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. I can hardly wait,’ I said truthfully. ‘It’s been very tantalizing not reading what we’re finding – when there’s bound to be loads of stuff about the garden.’ Then I added, more firmly, ‘But next time, I’ll bring dinner with me!’

  On Friday I discovered that Ned had had the bright idea of carrying a box of the photographs we’d found and the family albums down to the office, so that if Roddy had any time to spare in the afternoon he could attempt to identify the subjects of some of them and pencil the information on the back.

  I thought he’d probably prefer to get on with the book he was writing, if he had some spare time, but when I asked him later, when he’d finished taking the visitors round for the second tour, he said he was finding it very enjoyable.

  ‘I like a challenge,’ he said, and then, as if this had reminded him, remarked that Cress’s mother had invited him to tea after the garden closed, or maybe he was tea, because now I came to think about Audrey Lordly-Grace, with her plump body and spindly arms and legs, she was a bit spidery and possibly might eat him alive.

  But no, he escaped unscathed, because I saw him again that evening in the pub with Cress, sitting at the end of the next table, ready for the quiz.

  Luke wasn’t there, but that wasn’t a surprise because Treena had told me he was going over to her cottage this evening for dinner. She’d be on emergency call tonight, so it made more sense that way.