The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,127

I’d rather just go up to Jacob’s place and hide out till it’s all over.’

She and Jacob exchanged one of their intimate smiles, but I knew what she meant: I much preferred quiet and peace to crowds, too, but at least in the garden I was long acclimatized to letting the visitors pass me by, like a film whose sound had been turned down to a murmur.

In the pub we found Treena and Luke, who said some of the dig volunteers had only just left.

‘Quite late, really, because most of them have quite a way to travel to get home and you can’t drink if you have to drive,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m staying at Risings – to be on the spot – and I’ve let a friend have my flat while I’m here, so it’s worked out well.’

Ned said he was going to order sausage and chips and I stared at him. ‘You can’t possibly want more food after all you ate at lunchtime!’

‘But that was hours ago, and all I’ve had since is a sandwich!’

‘It’s just as well you work so hard in the garden,’ I told him, ‘or you’d be a tub of lard.’

‘That’s it, Marnie, don’t pull your punches,’ he said, grinning, and when his food had arrived and I tried to steal a couple of his chips, he wouldn’t let me.

‘Buy your own, Ellwood,’ he said, covering his plastic basket protectively with both large hands.

Treena and Luke didn’t stay long because although she had left the dogs at Happy Pets, where one of the staff would have walked and fed them, she wanted to pick them up and get home.

‘The cats will give me hell,’ she said gloomily. ‘That new Siamese is ten times more trouble than any of the others, now he’s settled in.’

‘I know the feeling,’ I sympathized. ‘And Caspar has taken to coming to find me when I’m working.’

Once they’d gone, Ned and I reverted to our favourite topic – the garden – and there was no sign of Wayne that night to jolt my uneasy conscience … Not that it needed jolting, and when Ned suddenly asked me out of the blue if anything was still worrying me that I’d like to tell him about, it would have been the perfect opportunity to Confess All.

But call it cowardice, or simply a reluctance to spoil what had been a lovely day – maybe both – but I smiled at him and lied through my teeth.

‘No, not a thing! I love living here and working in the gardens.’

At least that last bit was true.

I was early for work next day, but Ned had beaten me to it and had already tipped several barrow-loads of Gertie’s best rotted compost on the rose beds, and there were three more full ones lined up.

We began spreading it out around the roots, but after an hour or so he left me to it, and went off to Risings to speak to Wayne about those holes in the lawn, and I carried on alone, feeling a bit uneasy. I hoped he wouldn’t lose his temper. Although he was very easy-going, he could be pushed too far …

I finished spreading the mulch and then awarded some to the Rambling Rector in the Lavender Cottage garden, though, goodness knew, it didn’t really need encouraging. I spread the last bit on the Alchemist rose in the tall bed by the path leading to the arch, on my way to put the last of the barrows away. Then I replaced the ropes across the paths in the rose garden, ready for opening, though actually James was probably right about the pong and none of the visitors would want to venture down them.

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