Disarmed by his plea, she stared uncertainly for a moment before drawing her dark brows down into a frown. ‘What’s the point? You’ve already made it clear you think I’m trying to achieve the impossible.’ She let go of her end of the drawing, though. Was the ice melting just a fraction?
‘You caught me off guard this morning, so I might have overreacted a little bit.’ She might have overreacted a bit, too, hanging up on him the way she did, but he left that unspoken in the air between them. ‘Were the photos you sent recent? They really blew me away.’
Her scowl softened a little. ‘I took them a couple of days ago.’
‘So the bluebells are still out? I’d love to see them.’
She nodded. ‘The woods are at their peak right now. You can have a look around tomorrow morning, if you want.’ The concession, offered with a grudging lift of her shoulder, felt like a major victory. He was still a long way from persuading Iggy to let him stick around, but at least she wasn’t trying to kick him straight back out the door … for now.
Deciding not to push his luck too far, he cast around for something else to talk about, the gardens likely to be a flashpoint for her temper. ‘Lancelot mentioned someone called Thomas? Is he the reason everyone in your family’s got unusual names?’
‘What?’ The change of topic seemed to catch her off guard. ‘Oh, yes. He’s my several-times great-grandfather. He became obsessed with the idea that Camland stands on the original site of Camelot.’
Will frowned. ‘I thought it was supposed to be somewhere in the west country?’
Shifting from her knees, Iggy sat cross-legged, her body angled more towards him. ‘The most popular theories are linked to Tintagel in Cornwall and Glastonbury in Somerset,’ she agreed. ‘But there’s also one suggesting Arthur was a warlord from the north. Thomas seized on the idea, even went as far as naming his children after characters from the legends. Lucky for us, it’s a tradition that’s continued through the following generations.’ Her eye roll told him exactly how lucky she thought it was.
She was definitely loosening up now he’d steered them away from the delicate topic of the gardens, and he couldn’t resist teasing her. ‘I don’t recall Sir Iggy having a seat at the round table.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s short for Igraine.’
Her name was beautiful … unique. Much like his first impressions of her. Why she’d choose to shorten it was beyond him, though at least he wasn’t stupid enough to say that to her face. ‘I like it.’
‘Try being stuck with it for a few weeks and then see how much you like it. Half the time people don’t pronounce it properly, and nobody can spell it.’
‘Not ideal, then.’
‘Not really. And not something you’d have any experience of, with a sensible name like Will.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been called plenty of choice things in my time, but you’re right, none of it had anything to do with my name.’ Just his behaviour. After his folks had split up, Will had gone off the rails a bit. He’d stayed with his dad, his mum’s new boyfriend not being keen on having a sullen 14-year-old around to cramp his style.
They’d done all right together at first, but the recession had hit the construction sector hard, leaving his dad short of work. To try and make up the shortfall, he’d resorted to picking up evening shifts as a taxi driver, leaving Will alone for much of the time. Never very academically inclined, Will fell into a spiral of missed homework, detentions, letters home he intercepted and threw away. Eventually he’d been skipping school on a regular basis. Hanging around the estate, he’d fallen in with a rough crowd and started drinking and fighting. Following the nasty encounter with a broken bottle, Will had ended up with a face full of stitches, a police caution and a referral to social services.
The injury had shocked some sense into Will, and he’d returned to school, only to find himself even more out of his depth. He might have drifted back into trouble had one of their neighbours not had a nasty fall. Coming home from school one day, Will had spotted Mrs Tyler sprawled on the path of her spotless little front garden. A smashed up hanging basket next to a stepladder lying on its side told him plainly enough what had happened when he rushed to her aid. Not wanting to move her, Will had called for an ambulance before retrieving a blanket and a pillow he’d found on the bed in a downstairs room-he and his dad used their equivalent one as a dining room. As he wasn’t a relative, they hadn’t let Will go with Mrs Tyler to the hospital. To this day he could still remember how small and frail she’d looked wrapped in a red blanket as they loaded the stretcher onto the back of the ambulance.
Not wanting her to come home to a mess, he’d dug around in their junk-filled garden shed for a broom and swept the soil and broken plants off the path. With his dad’s help, he’d made a trip to the local DIY-cum-garden centre next to their local superstore and he’d done his best to replace the damaged contents of the hanging basket. Returning a few days later with her wrist in plaster and a spectacular rainbow bruise on one cheek, Mrs Tyler had been delighted with his efforts and the wonky basket complete with clashing blooms of red, purple and orange had hung from the wall the entire summer.
It’d started off with a trip to the shops to pick up a few bits for her, then progressed to helping her keep her beloved front and back garden tidy while her wrist was healing. Before he knew it, Will was calling in every afternoon after school because the sweet-natured widow had this or that chore that needed doing. Will soon caught on that she was inventing little jobs for him to do, and though he wasn’t sure if it was for her own benefit or his, they’d struck up an unlikely friendship born of their mutual loneliness. When he’d confessed to her one afternoon about how hard a time he was having at school, she’d persuaded him to get his books out and helped him with his homework. Over endless cups of tea and slices of homemade cake, Mrs Tyler had slowly imbued her love of gardening in Will. In the weeks and months that followed, Will had grew up a lot. He’d apologised to his dad, and knowing Will had someone to keep an eye out for him had given his dad the freedom to look further afield for better-paying work.
The spring after they’d first met, Will decided it was time to tackle the straggly weeds and bits of rubbish littering their own front garden, and with Mrs Tyler’s help he’d transformed the space over the course of the school Easter holidays. Looking back now, two patches of brownish grass and a few pots stuffed with petunias and fuchsias was a modest start for a future Chelsea medal winner, but the sense of pride he’d experienced when his dad had come home from a few days working away to see what he’d done had yet to be equalled. They might not be a family in the conventional sense like the Ludworths, but between the three of them they’d muddled along together very nicely.
The door thumped open just then to reveal Tristan staggering in under the weight of an overladen tea tray. Forgetting his little trip down memory lane, Will jumped up to give him a hand and together they placed it down on a nearby coffee table. ‘I thought you might be peckish,’ Tristan said with a shrug as Will eyed the piles of sandwiches and cakes.
‘There’s enough here to feed an army.’
‘I’d better help you out then.’ Tristan bit into an enormous wedge of Victoria sponge.
It had been a long time since the sausage roll Will had picked up during a five-minute refuelling stop on the journey up. Lifting a sandwich from the plate, he raised it in acknowledgement towards Tristan before taking a bite. ‘Thank you.’
They munched in silence for
