The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,80
slide deeply and quickly underneath.
‘You couldn’t play Pooh Sticks here,’ I said when I joined her. ‘They’d get smashed to bits in the Devil’s Cauldron on the other side.’
‘So would anyone who fell in,’ she said, with a shiver. ‘I wonder if anyone ever has?’
‘I expect people do fall in the river further upstream from time to time, but there are lots of big flat rocks sticking out into the water, so they probably get out again. Come on, let’s go and have a cup of coffee in my flat – unless you’d prefer the café?’
‘No, I want to see this flat of yours,’ she said. ‘I’m ready for a hot drink, too. Luke had me all over the site, holding the end of measuring tapes, or carrying things while he took pictures and dictated notes into his tablet. The wind really whips round you like liquid ice up there.’
‘Very poetic,’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Luke later and hearing all about it … And I mentioned to Ned that Luke would be in the pub with us later and he’d be welcome to join us if he wanted to. He’s interested in the dig.’
‘Yes, of course – and I’d like to meet him, too!’
We went round to the back door and had barely got up to the flat when the cat flap gave a huge rattle.
‘That’s Caspar, the cat the Price-Joneses have just taken on from a rescue centre. He’s decided to spend most evenings with me, so they’ve put a cat flap in. I wonder how he knew we were here,’ I added as he appeared. ‘He was in the rose garden five minutes ago!’
Treena made much of him. ‘He’s a bit thin under all that fur, but seems in good condition.’
‘They’re trying to fatten him up a bit,’ I said. ‘He’s half Maine Coon, but they have no idea what the other half is.’
‘Whatever it was, the Maine Coon is winning out,’ she said.
She admired my little domain and said it already looked homely, what with mine and some of Mum’s bits and pieces spread about. Then she picked up Elf’s book and began glancing through it, while I made the coffee. Caspar lay over her knees like a slightly knobbly rug.
‘This is quite interesting,’ she said when I put the mugs and a packet of chocolate digestives down on the chest that did duty as a coffee table.
‘It’s Elf Price-Jones’s book. I bought it in the village. Her style is a bit dull, but it’s full of fascinating information. I mean, I’ve already found out that a distant Vane ancestor of mine ran off with a son of the Lordly-Graces, which makes me very distantly related to Ned.’
‘Really? But everyone does seem to be distantly related to everyone else in these out-of-the-way villages,’ she said. ‘Though not usually, perhaps, the local bigwigs.’
‘I suppose I’m also distantly related to the current Lordly-Graces, too – or Cress, at any rate. But still, it all happened centuries ago, so it’s too remote a connection to count. Of course, no one, including Ned, has any idea I’m a Vane and I’m going to keep it that way. The Vanes are very disliked and sound unpleasant, even without the way they treated Mum. The only member of the family I’ve met is Wayne Vane and he was horrible – and possibly light-fingered.’
‘Well, Mum was adamant you shouldn’t approach the Vanes and make yourself known,’ Treena said. ‘And your mum didn’t want you to even come here, so I think you’re quite right to keep it quiet.’
Later, as we walked up to the Fairy Falls, I told her about the angels-versus-fairies arguments and how I felt sure, as Mum had done as a child, that there was something present up by the falls.
Treena is not at all imaginative and looked sceptical. This being a Sunday and so near Easter, there were quite a lot of visitors about and, although it was beautiful up by the falls, it had none of the magic it so often held.
We went out of the top turnstile and down the village street, pausing for Treena to buy her own copy of Elf’s book. The proprietor of the gift shop, who had been one of the quiz night regulars, greeted me in a friendly way and seemed to know all about me – or everything that was public knowledge, anyway. The whole village presumably does, by now.