The Rose Garden

‘I’ll do that.’ I closed my fingers round the little figure. ‘Thank you.’

Mark stood and waited beside the front door as though knowing I’d want our goodbye to come last.

When it did, it was all at once harder and easier than I had thought it would be.

‘Summer’s end,’ he said. ‘Just like old times.’

‘So it is.’

But it wasn’t like old times, not really, and both of us knew it. Those lazy, long-ago summers when the four of us children had run at our will through the gardens and roamed the Wild Wood and played laughingly all through the streets of Polgelly, those summers were gone and would not come again.

Still, the gardens remained, and the roses returned, and there’d be other summers to come and new memories to make.

Mark said, ‘You used to stuff your pockets full of fudge before you left.’

I smiled. ‘I might still do that. What time does the fudge shop close?’

‘Don’t know. Just mind, if you go down the hill you have to come back up,’ he told me, ‘and I won’t be here to carry you.’

‘You’ve carried me enough this summer. All of you.’

‘Yeah well, you needed it, I reckon.’ His keen eyes were understanding. ‘Better now?’

I nodded. Wanting to be honest with him, I said, ‘Mark, I don’t know when I’ll make it back again, or even if … that is, it might be quite a while.’ I let my gaze drop to the ground between us, feeling at a loss, and Mark stepped forwards, wrapping me within his solid arms.

‘It took you twenty years the last time,’ he reminded me. ‘However long it takes this time, it won’t make any difference.’

‘It’s not you,’ I tried to tell him. ‘I love all of you, I do. I love Trelowarth. But …’ I couldn’t find the words.

He found them for me. ‘It’s not home.’

Grateful, I rested my cheek against his for a moment and shook my head.

He took a step away and stood there looking down at me, the same old Mark, the same slow smile, the comfort of his hands still so familiar on my shoulders. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really think it would be. After all, Katrina’s ashes wouldn’t settle at Trelowarth, either.’

I’d forgotten that. I felt my smile wobble but it must have had my heart in it because he flicked a finger lightly down my cheek the way he’d done when I was small and he was feeling brotherly. ‘I’m sorry that I won’t be here to drive you to the station.’

‘Claire can see me off.’

He gave a nod, and leant to kiss my forehead. ‘You take care.’

‘You, too.’

It was past time for them to leave. I stayed there standing in the drive while they went off. I waved, then tucked both hands deep in my jacket’s pockets as the van blurred very briefly in my vision.

From the region of my feet I heard a mournful little whine, and looking down I saw the small dog Samson sitting with his gaze fixed up the road where Mark had gone. He whined again, and trembled slightly, and I bent to give his head a pat of reassurance.

‘It’s OK,’ I told the dog, ‘you’ll see him soon.’

I felt the small bronze pisky weighing heavy in my hand, and in a softer voice I said again, more certainly, ‘You’ll see him soon.’

The pisky’s smile held mischief mingled with its knowing wisdom as I looked at it a moment, and I marvelled again at Felicity’s craftsmanship, giving this small bit of metal such life. I remembered her saying, ‘In Cornwall, one truly feels magic could actually happen.’ And thinking again of the legend of Porthallow Green, I held tight to my pisky and gave it a try.

Eyes closed, I said, ‘I’m for Daniel Butler.’

But the wind that brushed my upturned face was all the answer I received.

Beside me, Samson whined again, and I opened my eyes. The other dogs had taken off already with the happiness of schoolchildren released from supervision, and I could see them bounding in a joyous pack along the path towards the Lower Garden.

Beyond that lay the green rise of the fields above the darker smudge of woods that tumbled down to where the black cliffs met the sea, with the wind raising ridges of white on the water as far out from land as my vision would stretch.

Above those waves the white birds wheeled and spiralled in the air and I was suddenly reminded of what Mark had said about Katrina’s ashes, and I thought back to the day when we’d released them on this hill, when they had gathered in the wind and danced away.

In search of somewhere else, so Mark had thought. Except I knew now in my heart that wasn’t right. Not somewhere.

Someone.

And I thought I knew, at last, where she had gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

He didn’t call back till the following morning.

I worked the times backwards: if it was nine here, that would mean in LA it was one in the morning.

‘Eva?’

I heard the sounds of a party around him – the clink of a glass and an outburst of laughter and over it all the pervasive loud beating of dance music.

‘Bill, hi.’ I sat at the edge of my bed. ‘Thanks for getting back.’

‘I would have called you earlier, but I was on the set, and then it got too late, I figured you’d be sleeping,’ he explained. A pause. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. I’m fine. And you?’

The party sounds receded slightly as though he had stepped away a pace or two in search of a more private corner. ‘I’m managing. You know.’ Another pause. ‘You’re still in Europe?’