the history, the garden, even her discomfort with the presence of a gardener who, let’s face it, had intimidated her. He would have hooted with laughter and turned the whole episode into a huge joke.
Putting the paper down, she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. Almost without realising it she found herself thinking again of Graham’s garden; their garden in Kew.
Rhona Wilson woke with a start. She was still sitting in her chair by the window but it had grown dark outside and she was very cold. She sat there, her head back against the cushions, trying to work out why she was there. She had been tidying the room, going through the drawers of Graham’s desk. She was a tall woman, well built, attractive still. She had looked after herself: her carmine-dyed hair cut into elfin spikes, which, satisfactorily, made her look years younger than her actual age; her manicured nails always immaculate; her complexion carefully preserved from the sunlight; her muscles toned from an hour a day at the gym. Why then did she feel so utterly exhausted and old? Then she remembered. She had been methodically going through his desk, pulling out drawer after drawer, staring at the contents, slowly allowing her rage to build. She remembered this desk. It had been given to them by her aunt shortly after they had married. She had thought of it as a hideous old-fashioned blot on the landscape. She hated old furniture. She wanted to fill their house with modern designer items which she had envisaged choosing with Graham on weekend forays to Habitat or Heal’s or even New York. They did weekend forays all right. To places like Stow-on-the-Wold and Burford, and they returned to Kew with car boots full of yet more ghastly old stuff which he crooningly referred to as antiques.
She had already had a man in from the auction house in Richmond. He had looked round at Graham’s stuff and almost visibly shuddered. ‘Brown furniture,’ he had said, as though it was contaminated with the plague. ‘Valuable once, but worth almost nothing these days, I’m afraid.’ She gave a grim smile, wishing Graham could have heard those words. How they would have annoyed and hurt him!
Their first quarrel had been over furniture, and probably their last as well. He would stroke it with those long sensitive fingers of his as though it was alive, touching it in a way he never touched her. ‘Think where this has been,’ he would say. ‘Think, Rhona, how many generations of people have sat at this desk and written down their thoughts and their dreams.’ She shivered at the memory. Well, that desk was due for a whole lot of new memories. When the auctioneer sent in his valuations she would tell him to take it away with all the other furniture, whatever it was worth. They could burn it for all she cared, as long as she was left with a clean, empty house. She hadn’t had any choice with buying the house either. Graham had inherited this large Edwardian monstrosity from an old aunt. However she shouldn’t complain too much about that now. The estate agent had told her the house was worth well over two million pounds. She licked her lips.
She had tipped the contents of the desk drawers out into a heap on the carpet and that was when she had grown so angry this afternoon. It was full of her stuff. Miranda’s. After all that, there was nothing of Graham’s in the desk to speak of. Her letters, her sketchbooks, her pencils. There were old lists, Christmas cards addressed to them both: Graham and Andy; Andy and Graham; Andy and G. Who the hell called him G? There was no trace of anything addressed to Graham and Rhona. Nothing of Rhona’s anywhere in the house. In her own mind she had blanked details of the day long ago when she had walked out on her husband. In her mind she had elided the years of absence into a monochrome period of loss and mourning for a marriage which had in reality gone sour soon after it had begun – and who was going to contradict her now, when she claimed to be the grieving widow, wronged and cheated by the bitch of a mistress?
Since she had left, Graham had converted the top floor of the house into his office. It was a large room, with windows facing both directions, always full of light. In there, strangely, he did have modern furniture. A serviceable desk, bookshelves, a large table covered in neatly arranged piles of papers and proofs, large old books, too large for the shelves, full of hand-coloured plates of flowers and plants, which the auctioneer said might be worth a bit. He would need to bring in an expert to look at those, he had said. Books were not his speciality. She – Miranda – had a studio on the first floor. Again, a large room, with double aspect. She had taken most of her paints and stuff when she had left. Rhona and Michelle could see they were not worth anything on their own. The drawings and paintings for his book she had left behind and Rhona had told his publisher to come and take them away. A girl had come and collected them, tight-lipped and barely polite as she went methodically through the portfolios and shelves, separating each illustration with sheets of tissue as though they were something infinitely valuable and special. Rhona shuddered at the memory and glanced down at the heap of stuff on the floor. She planned to burn it all.
With a groan she hauled herself up out of the chair and walked over to the window, raising her hands to draw the curtains against the dark. It was then that she froze. There was a bright half-moon in the sky and the garden was flooded with light. A figure was standing on the grass again, staring at the house. It was a woman; at first she couldn’t see her clearly. A tall, slim figure, a tangle of unkempt hair. How the hell had she got in? Rhona was sure she had bolted the side gate. Overwhelmed with anger, she turned and ran through to the dining room. Fumbling with the key she pulled open the French doors and ran out onto the veranda. ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Get out!’ she screamed. Her whole body was suffused with rage. The doors swinging behind her, she leaned over the wrought-iron railings, her knuckles white as she gripped the icy metal and scanned the garden below her. There was no sign of anyone. The garden was empty, the grass, wet with dew, showed no footmarks in the moonlight.
Andy pulled herself out of her reverie, startled. The telephone was ringing. She groped in her pocket for her mobile and then realised it was the landline.
Sian had come up with a plan for a dinner party. ‘On Friday, if that suits you. I’m asking a few people who I think you would like.’
Replacing the receiver, Andy smiled. The cat flap rattled and Pepper appeared. She was no longer alone.
That night Andy dreamed again.
Catrin’s father once more seemed his usual self. The storm had cleared away, the day was bright and he walked across the hills, swathed in his heavy cloak, leaning on his staff, returning to write and eat with a new calm.
When Catrin went into his study later there was no sign of his anguished struggles on the page. He had been as good as his word. She had found the ashes of the parchment in the hearth.
Now he was full of plans and he distracted her from her worries with reminders that time was growing short. In May they would be departing on their annual progress through the border counties betwixt and between England and Wales to visit his various patrons, and they needed to plan their route.
Usually they left on or around the Feast of St Glywys, relishing the lovely May weather, riding sometimes a few miles a day, other times staying a week or more in one place, but this year there was a problem from the start. Roger Miller would not go with them. The son of Dafydd’s former steward had for the last few years accompanied them, leading their pack mule and acting as escort as they traversed the wild, often dangerous and inhospitable roads and trackways between the towns and villages and lonely manors and castles on their route. Since his father’s dismissal it seemed he was no longer available and for several weeks Dafydd pondered the situation. He could not abandon their trip, that was out of the question, and he was growing increasingly worried and irritated until Joan made a tentative suggestion. Her younger brother Edmund could accompany them.
