The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,8
talking to the animals, before the front door shut behind her.
I propped myself up with the pillows behind me and then lay there, thinking that the room looked just the same as it had five years ago, when I’d arrived in the dead of night (later than expected, since I’d discovered Mike had locked me into the flat and taken my keys with him, so I’d had to call a twenty-four-hour locksmith to release me), with a car haphazardly stuffed with my belongings and the irrational feeling that Mike might have divined what I was doing, miraculously risen from his hospital bed, and would suddenly appear at any moment, possibly in a puff of sulphur-yellow smoke.
Treena had orchestrated my escape. I’d tried to distance myself from her after Mike’s threats to blacken her professional name if I left him with her help, but it hadn’t been any use: I’d found her one day standing by my unmistakable old 2CV in the car park of the garden I worked at, when I was heading home after work. She’d demanded to know why I wasn’t answering her texts and emails and she wasn’t in the least impressed when I told her about Mike’s threats.
After that, it was easy enough to snatch brief meetings while I was still working. Things only got tricky later. But by then we had hammered out my exit strategy and were all set for the weekend Mike would be away at the conference in Amsterdam. We’d thought we’d only have the weekend and I’d have to cram all kinds of things into the Saturday, like seeing the solicitor Treena had lined up for me, before I vanished to France, but his being so ill gave us a little extra time.
On the Monday morning I posted a letter to him addressed to the flat, saying I’d left him and to contact me via my solicitor, and also sent a copy to the hospital in Amsterdam, for good measure, though I didn’t think it would help speed his recovery. By late morning I was on my way to catch the ferry to France and the Château du Monde.
Most of my belongings stayed at Treena’s cottage. I took my working clothes and some jeans and jumpers, a pre-Mike long washed-denim skirt and old, comfortable ballet flats and a good, warm, loose wool jacket in a cheery bright red that Aunt Em had once bought me. That was pretty well it, apart from my leather rucksack.
I certainly wasn’t taking my laptop and phone. Mike had given me those and I’d eventually realized he was using them to snoop on me. Or so he thought. He never knew about the mobile phone I kept sealed in a waterproof bag in one of the plant pots on the flat’s balcony, or that I had an emergency set of car keys hidden under the bumper – for of course my car keys had been on the ring with the door key he’d taken with him.
There were a lot of things he hadn’t known about me, but he’d been so sure when he went away that weekend that he finally had me exactly where he wanted me.
It all felt a bit like a bad nightmare now, the kind that gave me flashbacks I could have done without.
I got up and showered and then went down to the warm kitchen to forage for breakfast. The two Border collies had gone with Treena, but two of the sedately middle-aged cats kept me company while the other, a three-legged and slightly cross-eyed Siamese, was quite shy.
After I’d washed down toast and marmalade with two more mugs of coffee, I thought I might as well make a start on sorting out the stack of belongings in my bedroom and seeing what I could fit in my car around the stuff I’d brought from France.
I’d been surprised at how much I’d accumulated. There weren’t a lot more clothes, but I’d filled two stacking boxes with old French cookery and gardening books and several old gardening tools I’d picked up along the way. There was also the last-minute find at a junk market of a pair of enormous old butter paddles … I was armed and dangerous.
I’d left most of this stuff in the car last night, just bringing in the rucksack and a slightly moth-eaten carpet bag I’d found in the Château du Monde attic. Just to be sure there weren’t any ravenous inhabitants remaining, we’d wrapped it in plastic and