The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,19

rosemary bushes that have got well out of hand and gone woody, and the Rambling Rector rose at the far end is trying to take over the world.’

‘They can be very aggressive,’ I said. ‘Lovely rose, though.’

‘I don’t expect it will take you long to get the upper hand of it,’ she said optimistically. ‘And then, of course, you can spend most of your time next door. We don’t mind how you arrange your hours.’

‘Ye-es,’ I said, and then added tentatively, ‘What exactly are my hours … and days?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say?’ exclaimed Elf. ‘Silly me! We thought perhaps half past eight till five, with tea breaks, of course, and an hour for lunch. Tuesday will be your day off, since it’s the closing day for the café and the River Walk – we sell the tokens for the turnstile to that in the café. When the Grace Garden opens to the public, it will have the same closing day, to fit in.’

‘And, of course, you get Sundays off,’ said Myfy, ‘unless you arrange with Ned to work extra hours in the Grace Garden from Easter.’

‘We all gather together here at about seven on Sundays for dinner, so we do hope you’ll join us,’ urged Elf, hospitably.

‘How lovely,’ I said non-committally, wondering exactly who this ‘all’ were who gathered for Sunday dinner. Were there more Lavender Cottage residents I hadn’t met yet, or did they just mean the nephew?

‘Myfy, you can tell Marnie about the River Walk when you show her round the gardens after lunch,’ Elf went on.

‘OK,’ her sister said amiably.

I had finished my rarebit by the time Myfy was just sitting down to hers, but once she’d caught up, we all had ginger and honey ice-cream … except Caspar, who had now somehow managed to drape his front half over my knees and was snoring and drooling onto my best denim dress. He must have been at least four feet from nose to tail, the biggest cat outside a zoo I’d ever met. I decided to let him carry on.

‘Ginger ice-cream is a good choice to follow the robust flavour of Welsh rarebit,’ said Elf. ‘Though it’s not as good as the lavender and rose.’

‘And you make all of it yourself?’

‘Yes, though Charlie’s sister, Daisy, who is sixteen, loves to help me. She seems to have inherited the Verdi gene for ice-cream making! Although I make some in the old machines in the café, as you saw earlier, I also use the room next door to this one, where I have a more modern ice-cream maker and huge freezer,’ said Elf. ‘Myfy will show you when she takes you round.’

‘Yes, we’ll go out through the house and my studio at the back,’ Myfy agreed.

Elf made coffee and told Myfy how I’d been moving around various French châteaux for the last few years.

‘It’s been fun and given me lots of varied experience, but I felt I wanted to settle down over here now, and with the accommodation included, this is perfect for me,’ I explained.

‘Well, we hope you’ll be very happy with us,’ said Elf. ‘I had a feeling you were going to fit in the moment I saw you,’ she added. ‘There was something sort of instantly familiar about you.’

‘Yes, I felt that too,’ agreed Myfy. ‘But you’ve never been here before, have you?’

I shook my head, wondering what about me could have given that impression. They must have known Mum, but I didn’t resemble her very much.

Elf went into the café to relieve Charlie so he could have his lunch and I cautiously extricated myself from under the cat and stood up, somewhat hairier than before.

Caspar sat up to watch as Myfy pulled on a pair of wellingtons without bothering with socks, shrugged into a long black woollen coat with brightly coloured tassels hanging from a pointed hood and led the way through Lavender Cottage.

She opened the door onto Elf’s ice-cream-making room a crack and prevented Caspar’s attempt to squeeze through with her foot.

‘No cats allowed in there. Same in the ice-cream parlour, though luckily he doesn’t seem to have thought of jumping up onto the stable door when the top’s open,’ she said, closing the door again. ‘Dogs are allowed on the patio, of course, if their owners are well behaved.’

She gave that tilted smile again and carried on along an inner hall, past the foot of a wide, polished wooden staircase and several closed doors, merely saying, ‘Small parlour … formal dining room –