The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,93
would be win-win.’
He winced slightly. ‘When the garden’s open, I’m hoping to spend most of my time down at the bottom of it, in the roped-off areas.’
‘And I’ll be making sure I’m well out of sight when there are any journalists or cameras about,’ I told him. ‘I really am hiding out and I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.’
‘You’re not still nervous about your ex finding you, are you?’ he asked curiously. ‘I thought you said he stopped trying to track you down ages ago and found someone new.’
‘N-oo …’ I said slowly. ‘I mean, I know he hasn’t got any power over me now – and I can’t understand how I ever let him have any – but he might think it was amusing to turn up, if he knew where I was. And I don’t know how I’d feel, seeing him again.’
I gave a shiver, somewhere between irrational fear and anger.
Ned gave me a look I couldn’t read, but didn’t say anything.
‘Butter paddles …’ I murmured, following an inner train of thought.
‘What?’ he said, surprised.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘Mike’s not interested in old gardens – or any kind of garden – so as long as I keep my name and face out of the media, I’m safe enough. But Jericho’s End hasn’t turned out to be quite the quiet backwater to lose myself in that I hoped it would be.’
‘That’s true, but for a small village up a dead-end road, it has a lot going for it,’ he said. ‘Only in the middle of winter is it really quiet, especially if we get bad weather. The road in snows up, the bus is cancelled and Elf closes the café.’
By now he’d drunk the coffee I’d put in front of him and eaten two gingernut biscuits and a bourbon cream. He looked slightly less frazzled.
‘What do you want me to do this morning?’ I asked as the phone, muffled by the cushions, began to ring.
‘If you could bear it, hold the fort in here for a couple of hours,’ he said. ‘Answer the website emails, open that stack of mail I haven’t got round to, and put anything urgent in a heap. Then if you could answer the phone—’
‘It sounds like a morning of unadulterated pleasure – not,’ I said.
‘I’ve made a list of some other things you might have time to do and here’s a list of passwords and stuff you might need to know.’
‘Not another list? You have been busy! But yes, I suppose I’ll be your PA and secretary and dogsbody – just for today.’
‘You get free run of the coffee and biscuit tin,’ he offered.
‘And what will you be doing?’ I asked as he got up, stretched cautiously, like a cat in a slightly too small box, and put on the jacket that was hanging on the back of his office chair.
‘I’m off to Great Mumming first, to get a master set of all the keys cut, to hang in the Potting Shed. We’ll have to be much more careful to keep the gates to the private areas locked against the visitors, because there are always some unable to read the signs and I don’t want them wandering round into the Lavender Cottage garden, or sneaking off to peer in the Hall windows.’
‘Would people really do that?’
‘You’d be surprised. Anyway, the master set of keys will be in the Potting Shed and we all have a key to that.’
‘Good idea.’ I didn’t want to carry any more keys, because I already jangled like a gaoler when I walked, due to the bunch of Lavender Cottage ones, as well as those to the Grace Garden.
When he’d gone I did help myself to more coffee and then settled down in front of the laptop (feeling a warm glow of pleasure that he trusted me enough to give me his password) and replied to all the emails he’d mentioned, though I think they might have been breeding in the inbox since he last looked.
Ned had been right and most of them asked the questions the website had been set up to answer …
Duh.
But there was one from a married couple living locally, who described themselves as keen amateur gardeners, retired but very active, offering to work for nothing as volunteers. I noted down their names and email: this was the sort of help that would be invaluable!
After that, I gingerly replaced the phone on its rest, but it had rung itself into an exhausted silence.