The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,4

was still there. I felt as if an hour had passed, but the same small white cloud above my head had hardly shifted and I knew it must have been barely minutes. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, then put the phone to my ear again.

‘Yes, I’m still here, but I think I just had a near-death type experience, where the dodgier parts of your life rush past your eyes.’

‘No, that one must have been a new-life experience, because there’s no reason to put off coming back to the UK now, is there?’

‘I expect he lost interest in me long ago anyway and there was no reason why I shouldn’t have come back after the divorce was finalized,’ I said. ‘But now he’s remarried it somehow feels … safer.’

A sudden wave of homesickness swept over me for the rolling farmlands, upland moors and little market towns of west Lancashire, where I had been brought up. I wanted to walk on the flat, pale golden sands at Merchester, with the wind blowing stinging sand against my bare legs and the taste of salt on my lips.

‘He’s got someone new to work on now he’s remarried,’ Treena said. ‘Sylvie, my receptionist friend, said his wife is a vet too, and she’s joined his practice so he’s going to be able to keep tabs on her all the time. She’s only a couple of years older than you were when you got married – he seems to like them much younger than he is.’

I shivered, though that might have been the icy breeze winding around me.

‘So, when are you coming home, Marnie?’

‘As soon as I can find a job, though not with the Heritage Homes Trust, because after Mike managed to convince them I’d had a breakdown, alarm bells and whistles would go off if I sent in an application – or to the National Trust and English Heritage, because rumours do get around in the gardening world. I don’t think I could ask them for a reference, either,’ I added wryly.

‘Maybe not,’ she agreed. ‘But I expect some of the people you’ve been gardening for in France would be happy to write you references.’

I’d spent the last five years moving around the surprisingly large circle of ex-pat château owners, working for little more than pocket money and board and lodging, returning to my family at the Château du Monde from time to time.

Once I’d begun to feel safe, I’d found the life fun, but it meant I had little savings, and the small and decrepit old Citroën 2CV I’d arrived in was my only asset, unless you counted fluent, but Lancashire-inflected, French and a large collection of battered old books on gardening in that language, which I’d picked up along the way.

‘I seem to have lost my ambition to work my way up the gardening hierarchy of any big organization,’ I said, turning it over in my mind. ‘I think a job on a private estate with a cottage thrown in, something like that, would be perfect.’

‘You can stay with me while you look.’

It was a kind offer, but her end-terrace cottage was so tiny and full of animals that staying there wasn’t going to be practical for more than a couple of days.

‘Thanks, Treena, that would be lovely, but I think it would be best if I could have something lined up before I got back,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my BSc Honours in horticulture, so that and a few references from people over here should do it.’

‘There are always copies of the Lady magazine in our waiting room at Happy Pets. They used to carry a lot of adverts for jobs like that with accommodation thrown in, so I’ll scour the recent issues,’ she offered.

‘As long as the work involves gardening, I’m not fussy,’ I assured her. ‘I can even do some handyman stuff, after helping renovate all these old French houses.’

‘Handywoman,’ she corrected. ‘But I know it’s the gardening you love best – never happier than when you’re grubbing about in compost and mulch.’

I grinned. ‘There are a couple of job sites online I can look at, too, but I know I’m going to be back at the bottom of the ladder and starting again on a low wage.’

Aunt Em had given me her old laptop the year before and, though temperamental to turn on, was OK once it got going, apart from an anxious whirring noise from time to time. It