Page 57 of The Allotment on Willow Tree Lane

Ceri stared into the distance, her expression guarded.

Night was falling and twilight lay heavily in the deepening shadows and the silhouettes of the trees in the churchyard opposite. Bats were looping and swooping in the air above their heads and a blackbird sang its final song of the evening before fading into silence.

Finally, she spoke. ‘You named the band after your gran, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the flower?’

He nodded. ‘We also named our first proper hit after her favourite variety.’

‘“Dark Dimension”. I should have guessed. All the clues were there… the guitar, the sheet music. It wasn’t the radio or a playlist I heard that night – it wasyou.’ She twisted around to face him. ‘I get why you didn’t want anyone to know who you were, but you should have told me before we slept together.’

‘That’s the thing – I didn’twantyou to know. I was happy with younotknowing. You made me feel ordinary. You got to know me for myself, not because I’m Damon Rogers, lead singer of Black Hyacinth.’

She was studying him, a hint of pity in her eyes. ‘Yes, I did.’

Her lips parted and his gaze dropped to her mouth. He desperately wanted to kiss her, but he was too scared to try. She might understand why he’d kept his identity from her, but he didn’t believe she would forgive him.

But when she leant towards him and her arms wound around his neck, he knew that she had, and as he lost himself in the kiss he realised that he never wanted to let this wonderful woman go.

Ceri trailed her hand across the bowed heads of the poppies growing between the headstones as she made her way across the graveyard to the place where Hyacinth was buried.

The headstone was black marble, and it caught the light of the full moon as it shone through the trees, casting dappled shadows across its gleaming dark surface. The words were picked out in white, a stark contrast.

Ceri noticed fresh flowers and assumed Damon must have put them there. She also noticed that the hyacinths he had planted were fading fast. Soon the goodness in the leaves would be withdrawn into the bulbs and the plants would lie dormant until next spring.

Slowly sinking to the ground, she sat cross-legged next to Hyacinth’s grave and wondered where to begin.

She wasn’t entirely sure why she was here, but after they’d said their goodbyes and Damon had left to see to his guest, she had been too restless to sit still, and her feet had brought her to Hyacinth.

Sighing, she plucked one of the leaves and brushed it absently against her cheek.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ she began, ‘but although we’ve never met, I feel I can talk to you.’ She had already felt an affinity to the woman who had created such a beautiful garden when she had been shown around it, and now they also had a shared concern for Damon in common.

‘Mrs Moxley is right: you would have been proud of your grandson. Maybe not so much when it comes to your garden, though,’ she added quietly. ‘It’s going to take more time and effort than Damon can give, to bring it back to its former glory. Actually, that’s what I want to talk to you about…’

Ceri had no idea whether any good would come of sharing her feelings with an inanimate headstone, but she felt there was no one else she could talk to. And talking it through might help get things straight in her head, because right now she was a jumbled mess of conflicting emotions that she had no idea how to deal with, having never before felt this way about any man.

Damon had got under her skin from the very first moment she had seen him watching her dance in the meadow, and he had worked his way into her heart without her even realising. But it had taken the events of this evening, when she thought she had lost him, for her to understand that she had fallen in love.

How reckless of her.

It didn’t take a genius to know that Damon Rogers of Black Hyacinth fame would never be content in a small place like Foxmore. He was here to heal and once he had, he’d be off, back to fame and stardom, and she’d be left with nothing but her memories.

Ceri didn’t want him to go. She wanted to get to know him properly, to see where this brand new relationship of theirs might lead. But she knew he wouldn’t give it up for her. And neither would she ask him to, because trying to keep him here would be like trying to hold on to starlight – impossible.

She should have ended it tonight, as soon as he’d told her the truth, but she hadn’t been able to. Instead, she had forgiven him his deception and had kissed him until she was breathless and weak with longing.

‘Oh, Hyacinth, what am I going to do?’

Was it her imagination, or did she hear the wind whisper, ‘Follow your heart…’

Getting to her feet, Ceri trailed her fingers across the smooth marble, lingering on the name of the woman who rested there, vowing to make the most of the time she and Damon had together. It was the only thing she could do.

Sadie had discovered the wine. When Damon entered the house, he found the door to the cellar ajar and Aiden’s sister sitting in the corner of the sofa with her legs tucked underneath her bottom and a glass of red in her hand.

She leapt to her feet when she saw him, hastily put the glass down, slopping some of its contents on the little table, then flung her arms around his neck and clung to him. He could feel her trembling as she began to cry.

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