‘But you might have been a bit more specific about the danger, Mum!’ I said aloud, and Caspar opened one eye, looked at me and then shut it again. The bubbling snores resumed.
From that point, her writing was shakier and most of the entries shorter, until I came to a description of how, in her last year of school, she’d had a Saturday job helping in what was then called Verdi’s Ice-cream Parlour, though the last of the Verdis had married the artist living next door and was by then Gina Price-Jones. They had three daughters and the middle one, Elf, also worked in the café.
So far, this was very much what Elf had told me of the family history and I knew that the eldest of these daughters, Morwenna, had married Ned’s great-uncle Theo and gone to live at Old Grace Hall. It was the next part that really caught my attention.
One Saturday I was sent to the Hall with a message for Morwenna and found the housekeeper turning out a big glazed kitchen cupboard. The top shelf was full of musty old household account books dating back years, which were to be moved to one of the window seats in the library, which already held other family documents.
I wasn’t very interested in them, until one of the books, leather bound and thicker than the rest, slipped from the pile and fell open at my feet. Picking it up, I saw the name of Elizabeth Grace written on the flyleaf.
Well, though never mentioned in my family, I had heard of this disgraced ancestor of mine, who’d eventually married into the Grace family, so seeing the book was full of handwritten recipes, I asked if I might borrow it.
I had to keep it hidden from my family, of course, but I pored over it whenever I could. There were cookery recipes, but also remedies of all kinds. She’d seemed interested in the medicinal uses of herbs. There was, too, a list of the roses that had been planted in the small garden that separated the cottages and café from the grounds of the Hall, though it was now so overgrown on either side of the path through it that you could see nothing other than a thick tangle of briars. I was a romantic, imaginative girl then, though, and loved the old names of the roses.
I turned the page over eagerly, hoping she’d written the list down, but saw with a pang of disappointment that she hadn’t – though, of course, if she’d returned the book to the Hall, then maybe it was still there to be found.
That was the last thing Elizabeth Grace had written there and I was about to close the book, when I saw that a corner of the endpaper had come unstuck and there was the edge of a piece of paper covered in writing underneath it. I managed to ease it out without damaging the book further. The writing was faded and small, but it seemed to be part of a letter – and when I’d read it, I wished I’d left it there, because what it described was so horrible!
My eyes widened as I read on and I nearly dropped Mum’s journal. I wasn’t surprised when she finished by saying that she’d almost burned the page, but in the end replaced it in the book and stuck the endpaper down more securely, before returning it to the Hall.
Where, presumably, it still was …
I sat back, thinking that it had been a night of revelations, none of them good.
If only I’d opened this box first and read Mum’s journal, it would have saved me the scene at the pig farm tonight and probably I’d have told Ned my secret ages ago.
And the journal also revealed something that, however awful, Ned ought to know. That he must know.
Suddenly it seemed urgent that I tell him right now: I couldn’t keep this from him, too.
Without even stopping to put on a coat, I abandoned Caspar to his slumbers, rushed out of the flat and ran straight down the dark road, to hammer on Ned’s door.
It must have been after midnight by then, but the lights behind their heavy curtains still glowed and when he opened the door, Ned was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn earlier. His face took on a wary, shuttered and angry look when he saw it was me.
‘I wasn’t expecting visitors,’ he said coolly and it was only then did I realize that Caspar must have hurtled like a comet through Lavender Cottage and out through the cat flap in the back door, to have arrived before me.
Ned’s face changed as he looked down at me and he said, in a gentler, concerned voice that brought tears to my eyes, ‘What is it, Marnie? What’s happened?’
‘I’ve found something you need to see,’ I said, thrusting the sparkly notebook at him and he stared down at it, and then at me, as if I’d run mad. Then he hesitated, before drawing me in and closing the door behind us. Caspar had already sneaked past and was making for the open library door.
‘I shouldn’t have left you like that, earlier,’ Ned muttered. ‘You’re still in a state of shock.’
I shivered and he drew me into the library, where he made me drink a glass of brandy, which I loathe, and when I’d insisted he read that last entry I’d found in Mum’s journal, he poured one for himself, too.
‘It looks from this like Lizzie had second thoughts about revealing the whole truth, after all, and hid a page away,’ he said.
‘I did think when I read through that copy you made for me, that the account jumped a bit abruptly from the end of one page to the top of the next,’ I said. ‘Do you think this book Mum found would have been put in the window seat in here with the others that were moved?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ll soon find out!’ Ned was already across the room and lifting the lid from one of the large window seats. He removed a bundle of old newspapers and then the first of a mouldering stack of old books.
‘She said it was leather bound and quite thick,’ I reminded him, looking on. ‘Unless your uncle Theo had been rummaging in here, it should be fairly near the top.’
Apart from the addition of the newspapers, it didn’t appear that the earlier layers of documents had been disturbed and we found Lizzie Grace’s recipe book very easily.
I put it on the table and opened it at the back, while Ned fetched a saucer of water and a kitchen sponge, with which he began carefully moistening the edges of the marbled endpaper.
Finally, it began to lift away from the back board of the book – and there lay the paper, just as Mum had said.
We knew it was part of Lizzie’s account, even before we compared it with the original – and now we could also see how the new page followed on from the bottom of the one describing her decision to appeal to Horace Lordly-Grace to intercede with her father – and what a terrible and catastrophic decision this had been! For, instead of helping her, he had instead, in her own words, ‘most grievously assaulted me – then laughed at my distress, saying it did not matter, since I was to be married almost immediately …’
It was all too easy now to understand why, when she’d finally escaped the room, she’d been in such a state of distress that killing herself seemed the only option open to her.
‘Poor girl,’ I said, with feeling. I remembered that Horace Lordly-Grace had had a stroke later, after Lizzie had returned, pregnant, to beg his help, and I felt he deserved it.
‘She was still a child of fifteen when this happened, too,’ Ned said sombrely. ‘It’s not surprising if she got cold feet at the last minute and decided she couldn’t bear to reveal the whole truth to her son, after all. But at least she didn’t destroy this page, just hid it away where she probably thought no one would find it.’
‘It makes everything fall into place, though. She obviously told Neville the truth of what had happened, when he caught her on the bridge, and that’s why he took her away with him. And really, he behaved very kindly to her, but you can see he couldn’t very well offer to marry her when she was having his own father’s child.’
‘No, he did what he could and I expect would have continued to support her, if he hadn’t been killed in action in Portugal,’ Ned agreed.
‘She must have told Richard Grace the whole thing, too, when he asked her to marry him. She said she didn’t want him to think too badly of Neville, didn’t she?’
I’d long since stopped shivering – the warm room and the brandy h
ad seen to that – but I still felt the shock of this discovery on top of my earlier one.
But I had escaped from my danger, and poor Lizzie hadn’t. My heart ached for what she’d been through.
‘Neville must have been the best of the bunch, because his father was obviously a complete monster,’ Ned said. ‘First rape, then refusing to give her any help when she was pregnant and desperate – and then, when you think that he was the father of the Thomas Grace I’m descended from, it feels pretty vile.’
‘Well, you can’t help that,’ I said.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Maybe not, but being the direct descendant of a rapist, does put the fact that you’re related to the Vanes into a different perspective.’
Not if Saul had managed to dispose of me to the pigs … I thought, but I kept that to myself.
‘But, Ned, you’re related to the Vanes too, don’t forget, through Lizzie – and that means you and I are also distantly connected.’
He pushed back his hair and stood up, wearily. ‘So we are – and your mother and Lizzie seem to have been the best of them, don’t they?’
He bent and pulled me to my feet, then took me in his arms and said, into my hair, ‘I’m sorry about what I said earlier when I was angry. I’m an idiot. What does it matter who we’re related to?’
‘I suppose it doesn’t, really, but I should have told you myself, much earlier. Only I was so happy and we were growing to be such good friends …’
‘And more than friends?’ he questioned tentatively, holding me away a little so he could see me. ‘Marnie?’
I looked up and smiled into his dear face and he kissed me … or I kissed him, I’m not entirely sure on that point. But I definitely heard Caspar make a disapproving noise, so it was no surprise that when we surfaced some time later, he’d vanished from the room.
‘Caspar’s gone – shouldn’t we look for him?’ I asked worriedly.
‘No, he knows where he is,’ Ned said vaguely. ‘Now, where were we?’
I suddenly sat bolt upright in bed – a large and unfamiliar one – and Ned, drowsily trying to pull me back down again, said: ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ve just remembered the most wonderful thing!’
‘Thank you,’ he said modestly.
‘Not that,’ I told him. ‘It was Mum saying in her journal that Lizzie had written down a list of the roses she’d planted somewhere in her recipe book! Shall we go to the library and—’
‘No,’ he said firmly, pulling me down again. ‘There’s a time and a season for everything.’
It was Ned who woke up next, exclaiming, ‘Mayday!’ which seemed rather rude, until he reminded me that the Morris Dancers were going to come and perform on the Green this morning.
‘I said I’d go over early to help Steve rope it off, ready – and look at the time!’
‘Sorry if I’ve distracted you …’ I said, admiring his broad and well-muscled back and then running a finger down it, which might have caused us to be even later, had not Caspar nudged the door open and jumped onto the end of the bed, where he stared accusingly at us.
‘Have you been here all night, Caspar?’ I asked.
‘He probably squeezed through the cat flap and has only come back to make you feel guilty,’ said Ned heartlessly.
Whichever it was, having a cat stare fixedly at you in this sort of situation is very off-putting, so we got up. I declined Ned’s offer of breakfast (I’d probably have been the one cooking it) and left for a shower and a change of clothes in the flat.
Caspar came with me, but then vanished into Lavender Cottage in search of his own breakfast, with a few parting remarks that it was probably just as well I couldn’t understand.
I didn’t rush over breakfast or my shower – I no longer thought my boss was going to fire me for being late … or any other reason. My head was filled with a rosy vision of the future: the two of us, rooted here in the garden, for ever …
I felt full of boneless wellbeing, and also, light-headed from lack of sleep … or something.
Humming (‘An English Country Garden’), I got Treena on the phone and said, ‘Have you got half an hour to spare?’ and when she said she had, told her all that had happened the previous night – or almost all. There are some things you don’t tell even your best friend.
When I finally went to look for Ned, he was alone in the garden lining up pots of dwarf lavender to put in the low bed near the wetland area, his back turned to me. And a very broad, familiar back it was, too …
For a moment I felt suddenly shy, but then he turned and saw me and a happy smile lit his face.
‘Marnie!’ He loped over and hugged me, so that my feet left the ground and the breath was squished out of my lungs, before kissing me. ‘Did I tell you I loved you?’
‘You might have done,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know why you should, though, because I’ve behaved like an idiot!’
‘Never mind – you’re my idiot,’ he said fondly, which was strangely comforting, now I could see how I’d turned a Wayne-sized molehill into the most enormous mountain.
I helped him put in the lavender and then, just before ten, he insisted we go and watch the Morris Men.
‘This first session is really just for us, the villagers and locals. You’ll see – everyone will be there.’
They were, too: Elf, Myfy, Jacob, Gerald … loads of faces I recognized from the village. Even Cress and Roddy, though not Audrey Lordly-Grace, who I expect only turned out if there was a celebrity in the offing.
The middle of the Green had been roped off for the dancing and the bunting brought out again to decorate it. We all gathered round to watch, Ned and I next to Gert and James, and then a man playing a lively tune on a fiddle led the stamping, jingling troop of dancers out of the Village Hut.
They were all big men and their strange garb of beribboned straw hats, brightly patched waistcoats and white trousers tied in at the knee with more ribbon and bunches of small bells should have made them look silly … and yet, they looked oddly impressive, instead.
They took up their places in the centre of the Green and began an intricate dance that involved much waving of red handkerchiefs.
Gerald appeared and started to play his violin along with the fiddler and the tempo picked up for the next dance, in which the Morris Men hit each other with wooden sticks – or at least, crashed them together with a lot of loud noise.
I found it all quite riveting and then, when they’d finally finished, the fiddlers struck up a different tune, one that set my feet tapping.
‘Circle dance time,’ said Elf, whose turquoise head had bobbed up next to me. ‘We all join hands – this is Sellinger’s Round.’
Ned took my other hand and everyone began to circle, though I’d have had no idea what I was doing if one of the Morris Men hadn’t been shouting instructions. Ned was surprisingly light on his feet and had evidently done this before.
‘That was fun,’ I said as we headed back to the garden, where James was already getting the shop ready to open. I’d seen him earlier, watching the Morris Men, but I don’t suppose dancing is his thing any more and he must have slipped away.
‘The Morris Men will go over to the pub for an early lunch and a lot of beer,’ Ned said. ‘Then they’ll come back and do it all again – but that one will be more for the tourists.’
I’d agreed with Ned that I should break the news about my being a Vane to the others here, while he would go over to Lavender Cottage later and do the same for the family – plus take a copy of the page of the letter we’d found and share that unsavoury revelation, too. No more secrets to fester in the dark …
So when Gert went into the Potting Shed to make the first brew of the day, I followed her and revealed that I’d been born a Vane and ghastly Wayne and his father were my closest relatives.
‘My mother was Martha Vane, Saul’s youngest sister. I kept it quiet till recently, because they threw her out when she got pregnant with me, and I didn’t
want anything to do with them. Once I’d met Wayne, I felt even more that I didn’t want anyone to know!’
She stared at me for a moment, kettle in hand, then said, ‘Not surprised. Who would want to admit they were related to that shower?’
But then she added that she remembered Martha as a sweet girl, and she wouldn’t hold my bad blood against me.
Then she said that it was a good day when I arrived in the valley, because I’d certainly cheered Ned up no end, and I could feel myself blushing so made my escape.
I’d left her to pass the news on to the others – and anyone else she liked. Saul might never mention it again, but I’d be surprised if Wayne could keep anything secret for more than five minutes.
When Ned returned from his mission to Lavender Cottage, he said Myfy had been there with Elf, so he’d told both of them and, although shocked about what happened to poor Lizzie, they’d taken the news of my identity in their stride.
And later, after another wonderful Sunday dinner, Elf said she’d had a slight suspicion about me at the back of her mind, ever since she’d told us about Martha Vane the other day. She’d realized I had the same unusual shade of light blue-grey eyes, the irises ringed with black, that Martha had had.
‘And your face is heart-shaped just like hers was,’ she finished.
I confessed the lengths I’d gone to, to conceal it from everyone, which now seemed slightly ludicrous … except my trip to Cross Ways Farm.
‘Saul thought Marnie had realized she was entitled to some of his parents’ estate and had come here under another name to check out what there was,’ said Ned. ‘But Marnie doesn’t want anything to do with them, or their farm. I’ll have to go and have a talk with the old fool.’
No one seemed to find Ned taking on this task for me at all surprising, even when he said, ‘I’ll get a solicitor to draw up some kind of legal document for Marnie to sign, giving up her rights to any inheritance.’
The Garden of Forgotten Wishes: The heartwarming and uplifting new rom-com from the Sunday Times bestseller Page 36