The Garden House Read online

  ‘I know a very good hospice shop. Our local hospice was just great to my mum at the end and I’d really like to do that, unless you feel the same about a charity here, of course.’

  She remembers that his mother died of cancer when he was still a boy of twelve and this time she can’t prevent the tears. He puts an arm around her, holds her tightly for a moment then lets her go.

  ‘Life’s shit,’ he says. ‘Look, I’ll get all this stuff into my car and then we’ll have a drink. I think we deserve one, don’t you?’

  She nods and they take the bags out of the bedroom, into the hall, and she stacks them beside the back door whilst Will unlocks his car, opens the boot, and makes space. The bags soon fill it up and the rest he piles on to the back seat.

  El goes into the bedroom and looks around her. Only Will’s things remain, apart from the books in the bookcase. She comes out again and then sees Pa’s coats hanging on the hooks in the utility room. His Wellington boots stand underneath, beside his walking shoes, and she hesitates. Instinctively she decides against giving the coats to Will. These she will keep a little longer. She touches Pa’s navy-blue fleece gilet and then takes it down and tries it on, hugging it around her, feeling its softness. She closes her eyes, squeezing back tears as she remembers him wearing it, knowing that she can’t bear to part with it. It’s only a little too big for her and she puts her hands in its pockets, thinking that it would fit quite well over a big jersey on a cold day. Her right hand encounters something smooth, oblong, hard, and she brings the object out. It’s Pa’s mobile phone. She stares at it, remembering how she looked for it just after he died and then forgot about it. Will is coming back. Quickly she shrugs herself out of the gilet, hangs it back on the peg and hurries into her bedroom. She puts the phone in a drawer and then goes out to meet him.

  ‘All done?’ she asks. ‘That’s amazing. Shall we have that drink, then? What would you like?’

  She leads the way upstairs, realizing that she knows so little about him, and yet he’s just helped her through one of the most important and difficult things in her life so far. As she pours him a gin and tonic El decides to tell him about the job at Book Stop; how she’s hoping they will take her on part time. Will is impressed that she’s got off to such a promising start and asks questions about the shop, what hours she’d be working. Warmed by his interest and enthusiasm, she expands, showing him her CV, telling him about her previous work experience while he lights the wood burner. She finds it hard to believe how easy it is to be in his company, remembering all those years of coolness and avoidance. She also remembers her mother’s insistence – after she met Christian – that Will is gay, and El wonders if this is why there is no constraint affecting them. Anyway, it’s not important. Just at the moment she’s grateful for his kindness, his company and his empathy. He knows what it’s like: the shock, the loneliness, the grief.

  ‘Who’s your neighbour?’ he asks as they sit down to supper. ‘I see there’s another cottage the other side of that little orchard. Who lives there?’

  ‘The farmer’s son, Andy.’ she tells him. ‘He works on the farm and his wife’s just had a baby. They’re great. Very down to earth and fun. They’ve been really sweet since Pa died, and I have to admit that knowing they’re there was quite a big part of giving me the confidence to move down. Secretly, it’s all a bit scary.’

  Will raises his glass to her. ‘It’s a big step but it’s definitely worth giving it a go.’

  She smiles back at him, thinking how nice he is and rather regretting all these years of animosity.

  ‘I know you said you could manage twenty-four hours,’ she says. ‘Does that mean an early start tomorrow?’

  He nods. ‘Straight after breakfast, if that’s OK, but maybe…’ He hesitates, embarrassed, and she steps quickly into the silence.

  ‘But you’ll come again, won’t you?’ she asks, casually. ‘I’d like to show you Tavistock. You must see the Pannier Market. And you haven’t begun to get to know the moor yet.’

  ‘Can’t resist an offer like that,’ he says.

  As they finish supper she wonders whether to mention Christian but decides against it. Remembering how Will fell asleep this morning after his night flight and then his drive down, she wonders if he’s tired and decides to aim for a fairly early night. Will makes no protest and she watches him go downstairs, then begins to tidy up. Suddenly she feels exhausted. It’s been such a huge thing, clearing Pa’s clothes, and she guesses that tomorrow, once Will has gone, the reality will hit her. El sighs, follows Will downstairs, goes into her bedroom and closes the door.

  * * *

  As Will drives away the next morning he wonders if El really believed his little fiction about the charity shop or if she was simply relieved to have the problem totally removed from her. After all, she knows he now lives in a village west of Bristol, near the airport, whilst his mother died upcountry. Probably she wasn’t thinking straight, and he’s glad he was able to take from her the task of delivering the bags to a charity shop in Tavistock.

  He turns up on to the moor, getting his bearings, looking out for landmarks that they’d driven past yesterday. It’s another golden day and he drives carefully, watching out for sheep and ponies, whilst trying to take in the immensity of the landscape. He passes the Two Bridges Hotel and turns left on the road towards Moretonhampstead, determined to take a more direct route than the sat nav showed him on the way down. And all the while, he’s remembering the old stone cross, trying to place its whereabouts in his mind and looking out for it. He’d half wondered about mentioning it to El, but couldn’t quite bring himself to talk about it. His experience there was still just a little too raw.

  He’s hoping to find it, to walk out to it again, yet a part of his mind warns him against disappointment. He’s had his moment, his feeling of release; it’s not the kind of thing that happens twice. He can see now how foolish he was to hold El and Freddie at such a distance for so long, but it was so hard for Will not to see his father’s remarriage as a betrayal of his mother. His father took a long while to let go of his memories of her, and no attempt was made to clear away some of her belongings for several years. This gave Will the feeling that there was plenty of time to find special keepsakes, photos, and then he’d come home from flying school for the Easter holidays to find almost every trace of his mother erased, and suddenly Felicity was in their lives.

  He’s driving slowly now, remembering and watching for the cross. It occurs to him that El is not much changed from the girl that came into his life five years ago. He remembers that Felicity used to nag at her to lose weight, embarrassing her at those family gatherings he made such efforts to avoid. Will always admired El’s dogged refusal to be separated from her father and he’s impressed with her determination to make a success of her new life. She’s such a pretty girl, so interesting and amusing, and he’s glad that at last they can be friends.

  Will wonders what Freddie might think of this new friendship and whether he minds that he, Will, has been clearing out his father’s things. No doubt if Freddie had wanted to do it there would have been no question of El needing Will’s help. There has never been any antagonism from Freddie; he is too placatory, too peace-loving to make trouble. Both he and Will simply avoided any confrontation. They had no desire to be brothers.

  Suddenly, from nowhere, comes a memory. Eleanor marching up to him at a Christmas party, holding up some mistletoe and kissing him firmly on the lips. Will can remember how instinctively he jerked away from the contact. Somehow, weirdly, they were supposed to be stepbrother and -sister, and he was horrified at how her mother might react. Luckily nobody noticed and El, overcome with embarrassment, fled away to her room. Remembering, Will laughs aloud. Perhaps it was her way of completely repudiating the relationship in the only way she knew how, and now he rather wishes that he hadn’t reacted so brutally.

  As he passes the Warren Inn, where he and El had lunch yesterday, and drives across the moor he sees t
he cross standing just off the road on his right. Its blunt twisted shape is diminished in the vast bleak landscape and, slowing as he approaches, Will is almost relieved to see that the small parking space has three cars in it. Their owners are not there – probably out on the moor walking – but he decides not to stop. It won’t be the same on this bright sunny morning. The atmosphere will be different. Glancing in his driving mirror, he pulls into the side and brakes, reaches for his phone and takes a photograph of the cross.

  A car is approaching. Will lets it pass, lays his phone on the passenger seat and then accelerates away.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he says.

  It’s a promise.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After Will has gone, El stands at the door for a moment listening to the sound of the engine fading. In the orchard a blackbird is foraging amongst the long grass, feasting on the remains of the windfalls. She hears voices, a door slams, and then there’s the sound of the quad bike starting up and she knows that Andy is off to work on the farm with his sheepdog, Boy, perched up on the bike beside him. She likes Andy and his wife, Trish. They’re good neighbours, and the baby is sweet. She’s careful not to impose on Andy when he offers to bring in logs, clear the orchard. At this moment she’s tempted to cross to the Hen House, to bang on the door, and shout, ‘Hi, it’s me, Trish. Want to come over for coffee?’

  But still she stands, oddly unwilling to go back inside. She’s trying to decide whether looking at Pa’s phone is a dishonourable thing to do, like reading someone’s private correspondence. Yet she wonders, too, if there might be something she ought to see, some message that might be important, someone she ought to contact. Pa had a very comprehensive database of names and addresses, which she and Angus used to contact people after he died, since she hadn’t found his phone.

  Now she guessed that Pa was wearing his fleece gilet in the garden as he worked, just before he stabbed his finger, and he’d gone back into the cottage, hung up his gilet and hurried to wash his hands, to try to stop the bleeding. The gilet, with the phone in its pocket, has hung there ever since. Somehow the little scene is horribly vivid in her mind. She can imagine the water running whilst he tries to wash away the mud and the blood and how he would be cursing as he tried to get out bandages and plasters and fix them to the wound with his left hand …

  She can hear the postman’s van rattling down the track and she turns quickly and hurries inside, unwilling to be caught in an emotional state. She takes the phone from the drawer and goes upstairs. She knows the battery will be flat and she takes it over to the little table by the bookcase where Pa always kept its charger. She plugs it in, switches it on. There’s a battery symbol, a red line and a cable, and then the screen goes black again. After a few minutes the white apple appears and then the phone comes alive. She knows the password because she set it all up for him, and now there are the little red circles which show that there are unread messages and missed calls.

  El stares at the screen. Now she must decide. Another memory slides into her mind. He’d phoned her later that evening from his landline and left a message.

  ‘Hi there, El. It’s Pa. I managed to stab my finger on a thorn in the garden earlier, clumsy idiot that I am. It’s my right hand and the bandage is a bit bulky so I won’t be texting any time soon. I hope you’re out celebrating. Love you, darling.’

  By the time she answered there was no reply. She didn’t know it but he was already in hospital and she didn’t have the chance to speak to him again. Impulsively she taps the messages and here they are. There are the texts she sent when she got no reply from the landline, one from Angus suggesting meeting for a pint, a couple from Pa’s walking group confirming the next hike, and one from someone simply headed J.

  Where are you? x

  El stares at the message and then scrolls up. Pa’s message reads:

  Sounds like a plan. See you there.

  Quickly she slides up through the messages in reverse.

  Yes please. Nancy Fortescue. 10.45?

  Coffee tomorrow?

  El tries to remember anyone she knows called Nancy Fortescue but can think of nobody, although the name has an odd familiarity. Looking at the date, thinking back, she can see that the meeting was planned for the day after Pa died. She flicks back to the home screen to look at the missed calls and then notices the red dot on the voicemail. Hesitantly she touches the icon, then presses the key to listen to the message.

  ‘So where were you?’ asks a warm, flexible female voice. The voice sounds amused. ‘Hope you haven’t had a drama. Let me know.’

  Resisting with great difficulty the operator’s invitation to return the call. El stands in complete confusion, her mind in a tumult of conjecture, disbelief and surprise. Even as she stands, trying to puzzle it out, her own phone buzzes. She stares at the text. Simon and Natasha are very pleased with her CV and would love to have a chat. They’ll be in the shop all morning if she’s around, otherwise let them know when she can meet up with them again.

  Still in a state of bewilderment, El sends them a message saying that she’s on her way. Leaving Pa’s phone on charge, she hurries downstairs, grabs her bag and goes out to the car.

  * * *

  All the while she is with Natasha and Simon she is still thinking about the messages. It is difficult to concentrate while they talk about what her duties will involve when she’s longing to say to them: ‘Do you know anyone called Nancy Fortescue?’ They knew Pa very well and might recognize the name. With an effort she pulls herself together and as she talks with Natasha about checking books in, scanning them into the computer, dealing with wholesalers, El is glad that she’s had holiday jobs in bookshops. It all sounds reassuringly familiar. She loves Book Stop, with its two floors of books and, up on the third floor, the Music Room. Pa once found a remastered CD of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue up there. El remembers how delighted he was and thinks again about the messages.

  There are several customers needing attention now and the phone is ringing, so El agrees that she will start on Friday morning at nine o’clock and goes out into the street. She can’t focus her thoughts: partly excited at the prospect of starting work in Book Stop, partly still struggling with the idea of Pa having a relationship with someone she doesn’t know, or at least with a voice she doesn’t recognize. As she pauses on the corner, trying to pull herself together, she sees a woman at the end of Church Lane waving to her. It’s Kate. El waves back, waits for a van to pass between them and then hurries across the road. Kate gives her a hug.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘You looked a bit lost, standing there, as if you weren’t sure where you ought to be going.’

  El nods rather ruefully. ‘I do feel a bit like that,’ she admits. ‘I’ve got a job in Book Stop and I was just wondering how to celebrate. It seems a bit flat just to go home.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Kate says at once. ‘Come back to the cottage with me and have some coffee. The decorating is nearly done and it’s looking so nice that I can hardly bear the thought of letting anybody else live in it.’

  El laughs as they walk along Duke Street. ‘Then why don’t you stay? Everyone wants you to.’

  As they turn into Chapel Street and she follows Kate into the cottage, El wonders what Kate would say if she were to ask her about Nancy Fortescue. Kate leads her into a living-room, two walls lined with bookshelves, a big table in the centre, and indicates one of the armchairs.

  ‘Would you like to sit down while I make some coffee? The kitchen is very small so this is where I tend to live when I’m here. Gemma and Guy haven’t been gone long so it still feels homely. I think I’ll let it furnished, but I shall take advice.’

  ‘So you won’t move back?’ El leans against the kitchen door, watching as Kate fills the kettle, spoons coffee into a cafetiere and sets the mugs on a tray. She doesn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘When I’m here,’ she says at last, ‘with everyone around, I feel really tempted. But then again, I love being at
St Meriadoc, too. I wish I could be more single-minded.’

  ‘But why?’ asks El. ‘Surely you have the best of both worlds?’

  ‘Not really,’ answers Kate. ‘I can’t afford to leave the cottage empty and come back to it whenever I feel like it. It’s great staying with Tom and Cass, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like actually to live here. Really make it my home.’

  ‘At least it’s here for you, though, if you should really need it,’ says El. ‘You’ve got it waiting for you and meanwhile you can enjoy your other life as well.’

  Kate smiles at her. ‘You’re like your old pa,’ she says. ‘You’re a comforter. You take the positive line. I like that. We all miss him terribly.’

  El is silent for a moment. She is pleased that Kate has spoken so directly and with such affection but tears fill her eyes and she wipes them away quickly.

  ‘I’m thinking of writing a novel,’ she says, almost randomly, to distract herself from this sudden stab of grief. ‘I’ve always wanted to. I’ve got a few ideas and I’m making lots of notes.’

  ‘Now that really is amazing,’ Kate says warmly. ‘Martin would certainly be thrilled with the idea.’

  El stands aside so that Kate can carry the tray into the living-room. She sets it on the table and El pulls up a chair. Kate sits opposite.

  ‘So you think he’d approve of what I’m doing?’ El asks.

  Kate glances across at her, considering the question. ‘I think he’d be very proud of you for giving it a go; for wanting to make it work. And he’d be delighted about your job at Book Stop. He practically lived there.’

  El smiles. ‘It’s only part time, three days a week and flexible, but it’s a really good start for me. I feel fantastically lucky.’

  ‘It’s such a friendly place,’ agrees Kate, ‘and you’ll probably know lots of the customers by sight, if not by name.’