The Rose Garden

‘In Spain.’

‘Have you been there as well?’ His eyes crinkled with humour.

‘Well, actually, yes.’

‘Did you like it?’

I lifted my chin. ‘Very much.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘we will take it in small steps. Beginning with Bristol.’

Sealing the bargain, he drew me in close for a quick kiss that lengthened to something more, making me hold to his waist for support, and my hand touched the top of the knife handle slung at his belt.

Drawing back in surprise, I looked down at the dagger, and Daniel’s gaze followed mine. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.

It was not the same knife. This one had a bone handle, a cruder design. I said only, ‘You have a new knife.’

‘Yes. I’ve mislaid my favourite, but ’tis not a matter for concern. Most likely it is somewhere on the Sally.’

I should tell him, I thought. I should tell him I knew where it was. But I couldn’t, because if I did, then it wouldn’t be there in the cave for the boy Mark to find it, as he was supposed to. And if I changed that, then what else …?

‘Eva?’ Daniel was holding me, watching my face. Waiting.

I shook it off. ‘Sorry.’

And then for the first time I realised the way he was watching me; noticed the look in his eyes as the landscape around us began to change, wavering.

I tried to cling more tightly to him, knowing that I couldn’t, and my voice this time was no more than an anguished whisper. ‘Sorry.’

Daniel’s arms came more closely around me. I saw his mouth moving, and knew he was telling me something. I thought he was saying he’d wait for me, but he had already started to fade and I only caught one faint word: ‘Wait.’

Then the wind rose and swirled and collapsed on itself in a rush of unbearable stillness.

My eyes were shut tightly.

I kept them that way, not only because I knew if I opened them I’d only see the green walls of my empty bedroom at Trelowarth, and the empty bed that I was lying on alone, but because I felt them filling with the stinging heat of tears.

I thought I’d learnt the pain of loss, but this was nothing like I’d ever felt before. I’d never in my life felt so alone.

I turned my face into the pillow just in time to catch the first sob rising from this newly hollow place inside me, and the tears came with it, swelling in behind my eyes and spilling over with a force I couldn’t stop or fight.

And through it all, the thing that seemed to me the most unfair was that the birds outside my window went on singing as though it were just like any other morning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

That whole week was horrible. My emotions stayed close to the surface, and I had to concentrate hard to not vent them at every small irritant. Susan had noticed I wasn’t myself, but I heard her explaining to Mark it was likely a mixture of grief and fatigue.

She was right.

Her solution was, too. She kept giving me things I could do round the tea room, unchallenging tasks that would keep my mind busy without really needing much effort. I wiped down the newly bought tables and set them at just the right angle and clipped on the tablecloths, placing a bud vase for one single rose at the centre. I sent all the glasses and cups through the new built-in dishwasher, stacking them clean in their place on the shelves.

Wednesday morning I sat with Felicity, folding the menus.

She was, if it were possible, more quiet and absorbed in thought than me, and since this seemed so foreign to her nature I was finally stirred to push my own self-pity to the side enough to ask, ‘Are you all right?’

‘What?’ Glancing up, she said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine.’ She focused on the menu’s fold. ‘I’m really fine.’

She wasn’t, though. Her hands shook very slightly and I recognised the barest hint of puffiness around her eyes. She had been crying.

When the door swung open at our backs Felicity looked swiftly up, face wary and yet hopeful, then her eyes dulled. ‘Hello, Paul,’ she told the plumber.

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked cheerfully, his muscled shoulders and broad chest set off to good advantage in a black T-shirt this morning. In his fitted jeans and workboots, with his handsome face, he looked like the embodiment of most young women’s fantasies, and yet it seemed Felicity could barely spare a glance for him as she explained the difficulties Susan had been having with the sinks.

She clearly was preoccupied with something – or with someone – and I had a good idea what. And whom.

I found Mark working in the field. The weather had been dry this week and he’d been busy T-budding the root stock that he’d planted this past spring.

Budding was a learnt skill and not everyone could do it as efficiently as Mark could. Moving doggedly along the rows of plants, he bent at each to make a shallow T-shaped cut above the root, and into that he tucked a single bud stripped from the stem of the variety of rose he wanted this one to become. Protected by a rubber patch, the tiny grafted bud would hopefully begin to take by autumn, and lie dormant through the winter months until Mark came next February with his shears to prune the whole plant back to just above the bud.

From that new stump, the bud would grow and flourish, and become a rose as lovely as the ones that were now blooming in the next field over. Some things only needed time to find their proper footing. Time and patience. Others, sometimes, needed a swift kick.

Mark glanced up as I came across the field towards him, and he gave a nod, but didn’t break the rhythm of his work.