The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,38

easy to track down.

‘And I suppose I’ll have to try and get my poor old car through the MOT soon,’ I sighed.

‘There’s a small garage in one of the backstreets here that’s reasonable and they don’t give you that “Oh God, there’s a woman in my workshop” look when you go in.’

‘The good thing about 2CVs is there isn’t very much that can go wrong, and if bits drop off, you can stick another one on. Though I don’t suppose there are many as old as mine over here.’

‘Probably not outside a museum, anyway,’ Treena said, pouring us both another cup of tea.

While we drank it, I told her all about my arrival in Jericho’s End, the Misses Price-Jones – or Mrs, in Myfanwy’s case – my glimpse of Wayne Vane (over whose name we both giggled), who was probably a cousin, and then, finally, my surprise discovery that Ned Mars, with whom I’d been at college, was the owner of the Grace Garden, where I was to spend the majority of my working hours.

‘Elf hadn’t mentioned the name of their new shared gardener to Ned, so he was totally taken aback, too, when he saw me, and not in a good way.’

‘I’d no idea you were at college with Ned Mars,’ she said. ‘He’s that tall, fairish bloke who presents a TV gardening series, This Small Plot, isn’t he?’

‘He was,’ I agreed, surprised she knew even that much because, despite growing up in a green-fingered, garden-centre-owning, plant-obsessed family, Treena remained totally uninterested in anything except animals. It had always been that way, while I, merely the adopted daughter, was a bark chip off the Ellwood block.

‘I was at Honeywood Horticultural College with him, though he was a year ahead of me. But although it’s affiliated to a university, Honeywood’s such a small college out in the sticks that we all knew each other. There was only one pub within walking distance, so that helped, too.’

Treena had been at a different university, training to be a veterinary surgeon at the same time, so she’d never visited it.

‘But if you were students together, why wouldn’t he be pleased to see you, even if it was a surprise?’

‘Well, for a start, he’d heard about that resignation letter I’d supposedly sent to the Heritage Homes Trust, with the allegations of inappropriate behaviour against several staff members, and he thought I’d create another scandal when he’d just been embroiled in one himself.’

She frowned in an effort of recollection. ‘That does ring a bell. There was some kind of scandal about him early last year, but I can’t remember what it was.’

‘“LOVE RAT TV GARDENER CAUGHT OUT IN HOT BED”,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘That was the gossip column headline.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Yes, that’s it. Hadn’t he been having an affair with the married director on his gardening show?’

‘Except that he wasn’t. The whole thing was all in the mind of his jealous ex, and there was a perfectly good explanation for that picture they printed of him in a clinch with his director.’

Then I told her everything I’d gleaned from my Google search and what Myfy had told me.

‘Of course, they had to print a retraction and an apology in the next issue, but by then the damage had been done – and it was compounded by another student from Honeywood selling a trumped-up sensational titbit to a gossip column. Ned’s quite sensitive under his rugged exterior and the lies had a terrible effect on him.’

‘But half the male so-called “personalities” on TV really are love rats, aren’t they?’ Treena pointed out. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would harm his career, once the dust had settled, even if it had been true.’

‘It was more like mud settling, than dust. One minute everyone loved him, because he was so open and enthusiastic and nice, and then the next, they were willing to believe sordid stories and say vile things on social media. His image was well and truly tarnished and the TV company got cold feet about the next series, even though the tabloids retracted the main story. When there was some talk of getting different garden designers in for each episode in future, he just quit and went back to Jericho’s End, to put it all behind him and start a new life. And then, of course, I arrived on the scene!’

‘Wanting to put your own past behind you and start a new life where no one knew you,’ she said. ‘It’s odd how things