The Garden House Read online

  When Angus asked her about Christmas it suddenly made her wonder if Will might come down for it. This idea filled her with pleasure, and then she wondered if instead he might spend it with friends, with Christian. She realizes that she actually knows very little about Will’s life and yet he’s being so kind to her, trying to help her. It occurs to her that there is nobody else with whom she could discuss the texts on Pa’s phone, which is odd, given that until recently she’s hardly known Will at all. And supposing he were to come for Christmas, would he want to go to a drinks party and then Midnight Mass? It’s becoming increasingly difficult to explain his visits and their relationship. Of course, Angus knows their shared family background, but she still occasionally has a problem with how to introduce Will to her friends.

  Angus is asking her a question about her work, and she tells them that a local author has a new book published and that he will be coming into the shop to do a signing session.

  ‘There’s lots to learn,’ she tells them, ‘but I’m loving it. It’s good that I’ve had some previous experience, which certainly helps, but I’ve a long way to go yet.’

  They talk about books as they eat and suddenly Kate asks: ‘Oh, by the way, have you found out who Nancy Fortescue is?’

  El is startled by the question but before she can answer, Angus has picked up on it.

  ‘Nancy Fortescue?’ he asks, beginning to smile. ‘Surely you know about Nancy Fortescue, Kate?’

  Kate shakes her head, looking puzzled. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Never been to The Garden House?’ he asks. ‘Surely you have? The Nancy Fortescue is the little wooden dinghy on the lake. She’s named after a member of the family who created the gardens.’

  El can hardly believe it. ‘A boat?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Angus smiles at her surprise. ‘Of course, Marina was a real garden person, so we often went to The Garden House. She used to do some volunteering there quite a few years back. So who was asking about Nancy Fortescue?’

  ‘I can’t quite remember now,’ says El, prevaricating, confused by this revelation. ‘It might have been a customer. So where is The Garden House?’

  ‘Over at Buckland Monachorum,’ answers Angus. ‘Out of Tavistock on the Plymouth road and turn off at Yelverton. Amazing place. You must go and see it. Or I could take you. We could all go.’

  El feels bewildered by all this information and unnerved by Angus’s suggestion. Her whole instinct tells her that she needs to go to this place with Will – he must be the first to go with her – but how can she explain this? Unwittingly Kate comes to her rescue.

  ‘I shouldn’t think they’ll be open in November, will they?’ she asks.

  El feels a huge relief coupled with great disappointment. She doesn’t want to visit these gardens for the first time with a group of people, but she can’t bear to think that she can’t go there with Will very soon. Angus is frowning, trying to remember.

  ‘I think that they might be open at the weekends through the winter,’ he says. ‘But actually, this probably isn’t the best time of year for your first visit. Maybe we should go in the spring.’

  They all agree that this is a better plan and the party begins to break up. El hugs them both, promises to stay in touch, and hurries out. She can’t wait to get back to the shop and google The Garden House.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Julia walks in the lanes above Buckfast, glimpsing the pale stone of the abbey walls, surrounded by bleached wintry fields and bare-twigged hedgerows. She watches the squirrels, those high-wire acrobats, launching themselves from branch to branch, leaping, climbing, racing each other, as they swing high up in the beech trees. The low November sunshine burnishes the holly berries into fiery crimson and their prickly leaves into shining emerald. A cock pheasant breaks cover, running stiff-legged across the lane, scrambling awkwardly between the bars of a gate and launching suddenly into clumsy flight, whilst Bertie stands disconsolate, his head thrust through the lower bars, watching its escape.

  ‘You wouldn’t have liked it, anyway,’ Julia tells him. ‘Think of all those feathers.’

  She walks on, hands in her pockets, thinking of her visit to The Garden House with Davy. How strange it was to be there with him and not with Martin. How odd to be showing him the places where she and Martin met, having coffee in the café again. At least the spell was broken: that sense of being unable to return. She knows now that she can go back to wander the familiar groves, and no longer feel that in some way she’s been barred from Paradise.

  ‘We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.’

  She remembers that was Martin’s very first text clue: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He loved crosswords, puzzles, Sudoku, and she’d had to sharpen her wits to keep up with him. How she misses that. Deliberately she turns her mind to more positive thoughts, glad that she’s told Davy, who is encouraging her, keeping in touch. And soon the boys will be home for Christmas: her heart lifts at the prospect. She’s got a little plan at the back of her mind that she might invite Davy now that he’s on his own. Of course, she’ll need to check with Laurence and Ollie, but she knows that they’re very fond of Davy. It’s something to think about, to plan for … However, as she turns for home, calling to Bertie, Julia is thinking about El. She wonders if she’s sold the Pig Pen, the cottage Julia has never seen, and where El’s living and working. How proud Martin was of her; how he loved her.

  ‘I wonder how they’d get on,’ he mused once. ‘Your boys and my girl and Freddie.’

  She had no answer for him. It seemed impossible that they could merge into one family, yet other people did it. Why should it seem so impossible for her and Martin? They both knew he would find it difficult moving into her house, and he wasn’t prepared to present El and Freddie with a second family of stepbrothers, and there certainly wasn’t room in the Pig Pen. But the prospect of selling everything, finding some new place for them all, with Julia’s boys in the middle of exams, was too daunting to contemplate. Now Julia is glad that they didn’t attempt it. At least she is still in her own home, her boys’ home, and if they were to leave it, then they will all three decide together what might happen after that. As she strides home, Julia wonders why it should be her luck to lose both the men she’d loved. Then, once again, she deliberately turns her mind away from grief to an article she’s researching for Devon Life about wedding venues on the south-west peninsula. It’s an interesting prospect and she’s glad of the distraction. Work is a good antidote to sadness. And then there’s Davy’s new project, which might just be worth considering after all.

  It’s odd that the visit with Davy across the moor to The Garden House seems to have unlocked some kind of paralysis in her mind. Ever since she read of Martin’s death she’s been in a strange sort of limbo, only just able to hold herself together. Now she is able to think more clearly, to begin to allow the past its place in her life. Sometimes she’s felt like a fly in amber, stuck, unable to move, but since that trip back to the garden she’s begun to free herself up.

  Is it possible that one day she might be able to make some overture towards El? Instinctively she shakes her head. The question comes to mind: what do you hope to achieve? She can’t see the answer to that. No one can bring Martin back and what advantage could it possibly be to her or to El to attempt some kind of conversation? Yet she longs to know that El is recovering, even happy. She would give much to know that El is moving forward. Julia remembers her at the funeral, surrounded by her friends, and she knows that they will be supporting her.

  Julia turns into the driveway, Bertie just ahead, his tail waving as he anticipates a treat. She opens the back door, lets him into the passage and they go together into the warm kitchen.

  * * *

  As she makes some tea, gives Bertie a biscuit, checks his water, Julia thinks again about her Christmas plan, determined to make it a good one for the boys but knowing, too, that the inclusion of someone who isn’t very close family can keep arguments at bay, add a differe
nt and interesting dimension. Her own parents are spending Christmas with her brother in Scotland and her mother-in-law is going to Hong Kong to her daughter’s family, so Julia is able to make up her own guest list without fear of upsetting anyone.

  Julia leans back against the Aga, her hands around her favourite Cath Kidston mug, sipping her tea and remembering how much Bob loved Christmas. All the aspects of it – the tree, the decorations, the food and drink – brought out his generosity, his love of hospitality. The little Georgian house was filled with lights and noise and tantalizing smells – and people. After he died it was almost impossible for Julia to recreate the atmosphere. Bob was so much larger than life, and though the three of them did their best, his absence was palpable. They got better at it, adapted, and Julia is determined to do everything she can to make it a special time this year.

  She has no memories of Christmases with Martin. They were never together. Julia sips her tea, remembering that strange sense of unity, of intimacy. How to explain that feeling of belonging, of anticipation before each rendezvous? She wonders if it could have survived ordinary day-to-day living, imagining how it might have shrivelled and dwindled under the sceptical gaze of their children. The whole point of it was that it was something apart, something rare and secret. Perhaps each of them, instinctively knowing this, had connived at keeping the status quo, neither asking too much of the other or putting any strain on this special relationship they shared.

  As she looks around the kitchen, her glance drifting across the cyclamen in their pots along the windowsill and fixing on the Charlotte Marlow painting Martin gave her, Julia reflects on how little she’d known him. She’d never seen him under stress, with the flu, in a bad mood. He’d never seen her in a panic with a looming deadline, shouting at the boys as she tried to muster them for school in the mornings, grumpy with a cold. They were at their best with each other and now Julia is glad of it. They talked briefly about the people that were the framework of their lives – she told him about Davy and her workmates, and he mentioned names: Angus, who was his senior partner, and other friends, Tom and Cass and Kate – and they talked about their children, but they also discussed books and music and plays. Martin went to the Wharf cinema in Tavistock, whilst she went to the Barn Cinema at Dartington. Each knew what the other was going to see, each kept the other aware of new productions, so that they could discuss them, exchange ideas and laughter. Neither of them ever said: ‘What a pity we can’t go together.’ Even here they kept to their codes: no regrets, no complaining. The secrecy was absolute. And it is this aspect of it that makes it almost inconceivable to imagine describing it to El. What would it be like for her to know about something her father had kept totally hidden from her? Surely she would feel hurt, betrayed? Her own loyalty to him was such a strong, vivid thing, and for it she’d risked her mother’s displeasure.

  How lucky we were, thinks Julia, that we never bumped into any of those friends of his while we were at The Garden House.

  That was their greatest risk, yet they couldn’t resist the gardens. And they were always careful. Anyone seeing them might have assumed that they were two friends who had met by chance whilst walking in the gardens, having coffee on the terrace. Only in Bristol at the flat were they able to be totally free.

  ‘It’s odd,’ Martin said one evening as they had supper at The Florist in Park Street, ‘how flowers seem to follow us around.’

  It amused them that not long after they’d begun to use the flat, this restaurant, which hitherto looked rather like a gentlemen’s club, should suddenly have a new name and a whole new décor.

  Now, a sudden twist of pain to the heart causes Julia to hunch over her mug, eyes tight closed. However can she manage without those moments, without him? But she knows the answer. Work will get her through, as it got her through after Bob died: the discipline of work will keep her focused. And she has her boys to think about, to plan for.

  Bertie nudges her leg and she smiles down at him.

  ‘And you,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not forgetting you.’

  It was Davy who looked after Bertie on those rare dashes to Bristol. He and Phil loved Bertie and were happy to manage him between them at their little house in Plymstock. They teased Julia about her secret lover and she laughed back, pretending to go along with the joke, although she told them that she was going to see an elderly godparent. She didn’t care if they believed her or not and Bertie enjoyed his little holidays. It’s sad for Davy that he and Phil have split up and, on an impulse, Julia takes up her phone from the kitchen table and texts Davy.

  How about Sunday lunch at the pub? Xx

  Perhaps by then she might have had a chance to speak to the boys about inviting him for Christmas. Davy will be the perfect guest, entering into the spirit of it all, ready to have fun.

  ‘And you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’ she says to Bertie, stroking his head, gently pulling his ears.

  The short winter’s day is fading, the wind is rising. Julia pulls down the blinds at the windows and turns on a lamp. A text pings in. It’s from Davy.

  Great idea. Thanks xx

  Julia feels relief. It’s something to look forward to, a little light shining in the lonely days ahead.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cass and Kate come out of Brigid Foley’s boutique in Paddons Row and head off towards Chapel Street.

  ‘That was rather fun,’ says Cass contentedly.

  Brigid is celebrating twenty-seven years in Tavistock with special offers and a glass of bubbly, and Cass is carrying several bags. Looking at her, Kate wonders if her old friend might be thinking that living in the town could have its advantages.

  ‘I’m sure that Tom will totally agree that you need several special outfits for Christmas,’ she says. ‘Or will you just pretend that you’ve had them for ever, like you usually do?’

  ‘The day that Tom notices what I’m wearing I’ll get me to a nunnery,’ answers Cass.

  ‘You say that,’ says Kate, ‘safe in the knowledge that there aren’t any left. None that would have you, anyway.’

  They walk in silence for a short way and then Cass says: ‘I can’t bear to think that this might be our last Christmas at the Rectory.’

  Kate tries to think of comforting words but can only come up with platitudes, so she says nothing.

  ‘I know they’re true, the things that everybody says,’ Cass says. ‘That it’s better to do it whilst we’re still fit. That it’s better to jump than be pushed. All that stuff. But it doesn’t make it any easier.’

  Still Kate remains silent as they turn into Chapel Street, but Cass continues her train of thought.

  ‘The thing is, we can’t afford to refuse this offer. They’re really keen, the money’s there, we’d be crazy not to accept it.’

  They stop outside Kate’s gate where Cass’s car is parked and she loads her parcels in and then pauses.

  ‘I need the loo,’ she says. ‘OK if I just dash in for a minute?’

  Kate unlocks her front door and Floss comes to meet them as they go into the cottage. Cass goes upstairs and Kate takes off her coat, thinking about how her old friend must be feeling, trying to imagine what it must be like to live in the same house for forty years.

  ‘At least,’ she says as Cass comes back downstairs, ‘this place isn’t strange to you. That might help a bit while you’re deciding what you want and where you want to be.’

  Cass glances around her. She bends to stroke Floss and looks a little less bleak. ‘It’s a dear little cottage and totally different from the Rectory, which is probably a really good thing. But what about you, Kate? Without the Rectory, or this place as a bolt hole, where will you go when you need a break from your rock? Not,’ she adds hastily, ‘that you couldn’t stay here with us. We can all fit in. That’s not a problem.’

  Kate smiles to herself as she imagines them all squashed into her little cottage.

  ‘Remember that I was always going to let it,’ she reminds Cass
, ‘so it wasn’t going to be an option for me anyway.’

  She doesn’t mention Plum. There’s no need to give Cass an excuse for backing out.

  ‘And anyway,’ Kate adds, ‘Angus has told me I can stay with him.’ She makes big eyes at Cass. ‘Rather good, eh? Bruno down at St Meriadoc. Angus here in Tavistock. What’s not to like?’

  Cass begins to laugh. ‘Another FWB?’ she asks.

  ‘It’ll be fun,’ says Kate. ‘Now if you didn’t have to drive home I’d offer you a glass of wine but, as it is, after your bubbly with Brigid, I shan’t.’

  ‘I suppose that’s one advantage of living in the town,’ says Cass, preparing to leave. ‘You can walk everywhere.’

  ‘As long as you’re not too drunk to stand up,’ agrees Kate. ‘Sure you’ve got everything?’

  Cass nods. ‘Are you sure you won’t come back with me for lunch?’

  Kate raises her eyebrows. ‘Are you kidding me? And have to watch Tom’s face when he sees no less than three Brigid Foley bags? Give me a break.’

  Cass laughs. ‘Traitor. OK then. See you soon.’

  As they hug, there’s a knock at the door and Kate opens it to see Plum on the doorstep. Her stomach gives a little lurch of apprehension but luckily Cass shows no intention of stopping.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Got to dash,’ she says to Plum. ‘Tom will be wanting his lunch. Be seeing you.’

  She hurries away to her car and Kate leads the way back into the cottage.

  ‘I didn’t know you were down.’ she says. ‘This is nice,’ though it isn’t nice at all. She doesn’t quite know how she’s going to explain to Plum that she’ll be letting the cottage to Cass and Tom. But Plum forestalls her.

  ‘I got down last night,’ she says. ‘Dad and I were talking and he told me about Cass and Tom and how you’ve been put into a dilemma about the cottage. I just wanted to say that you mustn’t worry, Kate. Cass is your oldest friend. I quite see that you’ve got to let them have it. Dad says they’ve been given an offer they can’t refuse and they won’t want to make some rash decision about buying. It’s the obvious thing to do.’