The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,148
leaned over to open my door, obviously expecting me to get out.
‘But, Ned,’ I began, pleadingly, ‘I’m so sorry. I really wanted to tell you but—’
‘You didn’t trust me enough – I get it.’
‘It wasn’t that—’ I began, but he interrupted me.
‘Look, this has been a bit of a shock and I don’t want to talk about it any more tonight. We’ll discuss things in the morning, at work.’
I got out, my knees like jelly and my hopes shrivelling to ashes. Perhaps he’d also fire me in the morning … and then maybe Elf and Myfy would feel differently about me when they knew, too?
I closed the door and he shot away. I watched the car turn into the stableyard beyond the Hall and then trudged round the back of the café and up to the flat.
I was still cold and shaking, and now in such despair that I cried into Caspar’s fur for a whole ten minutes, before I gathered myself together enough to text Treena, before she came looking for me.
Back in flat, talk to you tomorrow. Xx
Then I turned off my phone before she could suggest she came straight over now.
Caspar dried himself off on the sofa cover, with a few un-feline-like remarks, but when I’d made a mug of cocoa and sat down again, he came and draped himself on my lap and head-bumped my chin, which seems to be a slightly painful gesture of affection.
‘I’ve blown it with Ned,’ I told him. ‘If I’d been completely open with him from the start, or at least as soon as we became friends again, then it would never have come to this.’
‘Pfzzk,’ agreed Caspar.
I doubted our relationship would have developed any further than friendship, if he’d realized who I was, but he’d probably have kept me on as gardener.
And that would have been fine … But now, I’d grown to want so much more.
The cocoa dispelled a little of the remaining cold shivery feeling. Ned might have dismissed what Saul had said as mere ludicrous threats, but he hadn’t seen his expression, and I wasn’t so sure.
I rinsed my puffy red eyes in cold water and wondered what to do with myself. It was getting late and tomorrow I was sure Ned would tell me he didn’t want me to work for him any more, that he couldn’t trust me.
But meanwhile, there were several hours to fill and I certainly wasn’t likely to sleep tonight.
What do you do when your world has come crashing down around you like a house of cards?
I could start to pack – and I’d have a lot less to take away with me, now I’d sorted out the stuff I’d had stored at Treena’s, except for the two small boxes of old papers under the bookcase.
I drew them out and put them on the coffee table, then made another mug of cocoa, before opening the flaps on the first box, to reveal a stack of old, yellowing bills. There couldn’t be anything more likely to numb my mind than sorting these.
Caspar, very bored, settled down on the sofa next to me, with a long sigh.
36
Hidden Messages
Most of the contents of the first box were old utility bills and the like, which went straight into a bin bag for recycling, and when I started on the next, it looked like more of the same.
I was just beginning to think that Aunt Em had mixed up two boxes intended for the bin with the ones to save (and perhaps consigned two that weren’t rubbish there, instead?), when I came on a big, sparkly, hardback Paperchase notebook.
It was more Aunt Em’s style than Mum’s, so I wasn’t surprised to see from the inscription inside that she’d given it to Mum one Christmas.
I leafed through it and found a random selection of jottings in Mum’s familiar hand – she seemed to have used it as a kind of journal. She’d dated the entries, and I saw with a pang that they’d all been made during the last few months of her life, to write down whatever thoughts and memories came to her – and her hopes for my future and how proud she was of me …
I didn’t think she’d have been so proud of how I’d behaved recently – but I did think she would have understood. The diary was part of her legacy and I felt such love for her as I read her words from so long ago.