Page 33 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
You’d be surprised at the odd things you find in lost property boxes.
My anorak was stuffed into the rucksack, along with a bottle of water, and then I was ready to go.
I went into the café first, even though it was too early to expect anyone to be there, but I thought perhaps if Myfy or Elf was in their kitchen I could have a quick word.
The top half of the stable door was ajar, though, and Myfy must have heard my boots on the floor, because she looked over it.
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Would you like some breakfast? We’re having porridge and toast.’
‘Oh, no, thank you, I’ve had mine,’ I said. ‘I just came to say that I was going over to the Hall this morning, but I’ll make a start on your garden some time this afternoon, before I check the River Walk. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, fine,’ said Elf, popping up next to her sister in a way that started to remind me of an old-fashioned Punch and Judy show I’d seen on the TV. We just needed a dog, a policeman and a string of sausages.
‘You and Ned just arrange it how you want to,’ Myfy told me. ‘His need is greater than ours.’
‘I can’t wait to start on the rose garden – but I’ll see what he wants me to do first.’
‘I don’t remember a time when you could get down any of the paths in the rose garden,’ said Myfy. ‘So good luck with that.’
‘You might find Caspar out there,’ Elf suggested. ‘He had his breakfast early and then we thought we’d try letting him out for the first time, so we hope he’ll come back again.’
Myfy said, ‘But he’s microchipped, if he wanders off.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out for him,’ I promised.
But it was Ned I found first, sitting on the marble bench in the rose garden, tossing food to the koi, whose great red-gold and silver shapes emerged from the murky depths like ghosts, swirled, mouths opening and shutting, then slowly sank back into the darkness again.
‘I wondered who fed those,’ I said, closing the gate behind me and going to sit on the end of the bench, leaving a respectable distance between us.
‘My uncle Theo looked after them and the peacocks – he used to sit here for hours on warm days – but unfortunately he wasn’t much of a gardener.’
‘Sounds like Treena, my sister. Her family had a garden centre and nursery, but all she ever cared about was animals and birds. She’s a vet now, in Great Mumming.’
He was still looking down at the pool, where a last koi surfaced, then vanished, leaving a spreading circle of ripples, so I could safely study his face for a moment. It was intended by nature to be open and good-humoured, with those lean cheeks bracketing a long, straight mouth that could quirk upwards at the corners in amusement. But now, even in repose, it wore a reserved, wary expression that wasn’t natural to it … and maybe my arrival was the cause?
I looked away and found the surface of the water smooth again … and there were our reflections, side by side: my heart-shaped face, with wings of black hair springing from either side of my forehead and eyes darkened by the shadows, so that I looked like a little goblin, green jerkin and all, next to his tall fairness.
I turned quickly and saw that the peacock was strutting through the open gate to the Grace Garden, followed by his drabber and more homely mate.
‘Lancelot and Guinevere,’ Ned said, seeing where I was looking.
‘Really? That’s a coincidence,’ I said, and told him about imagining a hand and arm appearing from the middle of the pond, Excalibur fashion, brandishing a gilded rake.
That surprised a grin out of him that made him look much more like his old self. ‘You’re crazy! Though of course, if we could get it to make a regular appearance, it would certainly draw in the visitors.’
He stood up suddenly, giving me a half-smile that told me he didn’tentirelyyet trust me, but wanted to, and this time I didn’t feel angry. In fact, it was sort of endearing, like a badly treated dog trying to wag its tail. That image made me grin back, which unfortunately seemed to unnerve him.
‘Right, I’d better give you a quick tour of the garden and then start you off on something – though God knows, there’s enough to do to keep ten full-time gardeners busy for a year and I’ve been managing with Gertie and James, and Wayne one day a week, till I fired him.’
‘Well, now you’ve got me too, and I’m not afraid of hard work – in fact, I can’t wait to start,’ I said, then paused before adding, ‘Actually, I had a brief encounter with Wayne yesterday afternoon on the bridge and he wasn’t very pleasant.’
I gave him the gist of what Wayne had said and Ned ran a hand through his tawny hair, so that it stood up on end like a ruffled eagle’s crest, and sighed. ‘I’m sorry about that. He’s got a bit of a grudge about my firing him, but he wasn’t only useless, he took things.’
‘Hedidsay something about you begrudging him a few vegetables to take home.’
‘He helped himself to a lot more than that. The odd bit of produce for his own family wouldn’t have mattered, but he was taking tons of stuff and selling it. Gert was livid; the vegetable and fruit gardens are her preserve. Then I caught him red-handed one day, sneaking out with most of the early potatoes and a brand-new hoe, and that was it. Other things had gone missing too – more garden tools and a tenner from James’s jacket, when it was hung up on a spade handle, but we just hadn’t caught him at it. He denied it, of course.’
‘I suppose he would, but you can’t really talk your way out of a sack of new potatoes and a hoe, can you?’
