Page 10 of Coming Home to Roseford Villas
This creative endeavour seemed to ease the block she’d been encountering the previous morning, and she found herself scribbling thoughts into the notebook she’d brought with her, putting herself in Francesca’s shoes, and, she thought as she wrote, also tapping into some of that emotion that she’d felt when she’d been writing emails to Leo on the other side of the world. She couldn’t conceive the devastation of discovering that the person she loved was dead: and the exercise helped her to put her thoughts into some perspective, and also gave her some more impetus to write the fictional, doomed love story.
Rory spent three hours poring over the archived material, and it was only when her rumbling stomach threatened todistract the archivist that she decided it was time to stop for a bite to eat. She carefully put the letters back in their box, but as she did so, she noticed that there was an unusual detail in the corner of one of Edmund’s later letters. It appeared just to be a doodle: a sweet little squiggle that perhaps meant something to them both, a private joke or a reference to a shared experience. She wondered what it meant, and thought it would make a great addition to her novel – a sweet little Edwardian version of an emoji, perhaps?
‘Everything all right?’ Interrupting her thought processes, Simon Treloar, Tenth Lord of Roseford and current tenant of Roseford Hall, popped his head around the door. ‘How’s the research going? Is there anything else you need?’
Rory, eyes still blurred, thought for a heart-breaking moment that Edmund himself had risen from the grave. She’d noted the resemblance between Simon and his great-great-uncle from the moment she’d seen pictures of them both, but having spent so much time immersed in Edmund’s letters, the lines between fiction and reality were beginning to blur.
‘No, thanks,’ she replied, her voice trembling slightly. ‘This is all so interesting – it’s certainly giving me a lot of inspiration.’
Simon smiled at her but seemed vaguely disconcerted by her emotional reaction. ‘I’m glad. It’s about time someone made use of the stuff here, instead of it just gathering dust for the next few generations.’
Rory smiled, more strongly this time. Simon seemed oblivious to the wealth of history and heritage around him, but in quite an adorable way. She’d been warned by Stella that Simon was ‘one of life’s eccentrics’ when she’d told her friend that she’d arranged to look at the Treloar archives, and she was intrigued by his casual reaction to his own history.
‘These are all fairly recent finds, too,’ Simon said. ‘They’d been chucked in a box in the attic for years, until the BritishHeritage Fund unearthed them and put them in proper archive boxes. I’m not sure anyone, apart from their preservation experts, has really looked at them properly.’
Rory’s heart sped up. ‘And have you had a look?’
Simon shook his head. ‘I’ve had a quick glance, but some of dear old Edmund’s communiqués were so densely written that I put them down again pretty quickly. After his death, the immediate family must have shoved everything away because of the grief.’
Including the unsent letters to ‘F’, Rory thought. She wondered again why the letters hadn’t found their way into Francesca’s hands. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s certainly been a wonderful experience, getting the chance to handle them for myself. And to find out more about what Edmund was like.’
‘I hope it’s all helpful,’ Simon replied. ‘I’m just glad that the archives are proving to be of some use. There was so much stuff just lying around the place before the BHF took it on and started organising it that it’s great to know someone’s making the most of what’s been collected.’ He regarded her, a serious expression on his face. ‘Are you planning on drawing on any of it directly for your own novel?’
Rory opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, a slightly strident voice echoed up the stairs to the archive room.
‘Simon? Are you there?’
‘Up here, my love,’ Simon replied.
A few seconds later, an attractive brunette popped her head around the doorframe. ‘Hi,’ she said as she caught sight of Rory. ‘I’m Lizzie Warner, Simon’s better half.’ She thrust out a hand for Rory to shake.
‘Hi,’ Rory replied, introducing herself to Lizzie. She’d had the lowdown from Stella about Lizzie and Simon’s romance, which in itself could have graced the pages of a novel, but she hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Lizzie herself, although she’d passedRoseford Blooms, the flower shop that Lizzie owned, a few times on her mooches around the village.
‘How’s it all going?’
‘Great, thanks,’ Rory replied. ‘It’s lovely to spend some time with primary sources, especially when they’re as fascinating as Edmund Treloar’s letters and diaries.’
‘It’s about time someone unravelled the tale of Roseford’s most historical hottie!’ Lizzie laughed. ‘Present company excluded, of course, Simon.’
Simon shot Lizzie a wry look. ‘Of course. I always knew you had a thing for Edmund. I could tell by the way you used to look at his portrait in the Long Gallery!’
Lizzie rolled her eyes. ‘Jealousy is such an unattractive emotion,’ she said, before breaking out into a grin. ‘Anyway, I’m glad I found you. I’ve got a delivery of dahlias for the vases in the Great Hall, and I wondered if you could sign for them? And then we could grab some lunch?’
‘Sounds good.’ Simon smiled back at Lizzie, and Rory was tickled to see the obvious affection between this slightly odd, but obviously deeply in love couple. ‘Just give the main office a ring when you’re finished up here.’ He turned back to Rory. ‘They can sort out any photocopying that you need.’
‘Thanks,’ Rory replied. She felt slightly relieved that, due to Lizzie’s arrival in the archive room, she hadn’t had to answer Simon’s question. In truth, she wasn’t quite sure how much of Edmund’s story she was going to use, but one thing was certain: it had given her plenty of food for thought.
That afternoon, bleary eyed in more ways than one from spending a few hours in the archives, Rory mooched back to the chalet to organise her ideas. She had a fair notion, now, of how the ‘timeslip’ angle of the novel was going to go, but it was tying the past and the present together that would prove difficult. Maybe she was being too ambitious for her first foray into novelwriting? Perhaps it would have been better to have stuck to one time period, and given it her all, rather than trying to force links that were only there in her head?
She was surprised that, after thinking about this idea for so long, now she actually had time to write it, she was becoming more confused about it than ever. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing Leo again, after all these years, that had done it. She felt as though something in her brain had short-circuited, and she wasn’t sure how to fix it. Instead of focusing on the historical part of the story, she found herself drawn to the more modern timeline, the one she’d loosely be basing on her own teenaged experiences of first love.
The problem was, one of the protagonists of that story was living a stone’s throw away, and she felt the blurring of past and present every time she tried to think about the story she was trying to tell. It was one thing to draw upon personal experiences for inspiration: quite another to have a real, live character walking around in her life again.
Sighing, she opened up her laptop and tried to focus on getting her notes into some kind of order. She had to keep focused on why she was here in Roseford, and it wasn’t to get sidetracked by Leo McKendrick.
14
Leo busied himself with the preparations for the next visitors to Roseford Villas, ensuring that the rooms that had been booked were spick and span, and the guests had access to everything they’d requested. The level of detail in the ring binder that Aunt Vi and Uncle Bryan had left him was certainly extensive, and he found himself wondering, if he himself had been in charge, whether he’d have bothered with a lot of it. However, he had to concede that Roseford Villas was a lovely place to stay, and perhaps that was because of his aunt and uncle’s attention to every last detail. He was determined not to let them down.
