The Rose Garden

‘For the moment, yes. In Cornwall, at Trelowarth. Did Katrina ever talk about Trelowarth?’

‘Yes.’ He knew where I was headed. ‘That’s the place, then?’

I nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. ‘I scattered her up in her favourite spot, up on the hill at the Beacon.’

‘Good choice.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ I gripped the phone tighter and lowered my head, and in a stumbling rush I told him what had happened, how the ashes had refused to settle, swirling on the wind and chasing out across the sea. ‘You wanted her to be where she belonged,’ I said, ‘but Bill, it wasn’t here.’

‘Hey.’ From the hoarseness of that single word I guessed what it was costing him to try to reassure me. ‘Sure it was. I mean, where else—?’

‘With you.’ I heard my voice break, just a little, and I steadied it to tell him, ‘She belonged with you.’

For several heartbeats afterwards the muted party noises were the only sounds that carried down the line. Perhaps, like me, he was imagining Katrina’s ashes blowing westward over the Atlantic. Heading home.

‘I just … I wanted to apologise,’ I said. ‘I got it wrong. You were the great love of her life, Bill. Where you were, that’s where Katrina would have wanted most to be. That’s where she should be.’

His lighter clicked, and I could hear his deep pull on the cigarette, and then the long exhale. ‘She still is, Eva. She’s here with me, every day. You didn’t get it wrong.’ Another pause, and I could sense that he was searching for the words that would convince me of that, grant me absolution. After half a minute more he said, ‘Trelowarth’s just a place, you know?’

Trelowarth, said Daniel’s voice, warm in my memory, is rooms gathered under a roof, nothing more.

My eyes stung. ‘Yes, I know.’

We left it there.

I’d been afraid the day would stretch unbearably. This was still new and strange to me, this knowing what was yet to come, and thanks to Claire I knew that what was coming would not happen until dark. I’d thought the waiting might be my undoing, but the fact was there were still things left to finish, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t have another chance to finish them made every hour fly faster.

It took me till that afternoon to get the files in order that I’d wanted to leave Susan, so she could take care of any future PR work herself. And when I’d switched off the computer there was still the packing left to do.

The afternoon had given way to evening almost before I had noticed, and by the time Claire came round after supper I was only just then finishing the final task of pinning up my hair.

She sat and watched me. ‘I must say, you do that very neatly, Eva. Who taught you how?’

‘Fergal, actually.’

‘The Irishman?’ She placed him with a nod. I’d told her all about the people living at Trelowarth in the past, and Claire had an efficient memory. ‘It sounds as though he helped you quite a bit this summer.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He did.’

‘I’m glad. It makes a world of difference, having someone to confide in.’

There was something faintly wistful in her voice that made me feel a twinge of guilt at leaving her, until I realised that I wasn’t really leaving her alone.

I thought about that evening in her garden when she’d told me what the future held in store for me, and how she’d come to know it. She’d begun a little curiously in my view, by asking whether I remembered when she’d told the story of the Grey Lady who’d vanished at Trelowarth.

‘Yes, of course,’ I’d said.

‘Do you remember when I said it happened?’

‘Yes, before your parents’ time, you said.’ And I’d looked up at her in sudden realisation.

Claire had met my eyes. ‘My parents, dear, aren’t born yet. Not in this time.’

‘And the Grey Lady … ?’

‘Is you.’

She had explained it all again to me, how in the future she would meet an old man in the village who would tell her of the woman who had disappeared before his eyes when he was young. And he would know exactly who I was. He’d know my name.

She’d told me his name, too, and I had tried to take it in, but even so I’d had to stop her midway through her tale to make sure I’d heard her correctly.

‘And he was the old man you met in the pub,’ I’d said, just to be certain, ‘the old man you rented this cottage from.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you said that the cottage had come to him through his wife’s family. And she’d been a Hallett.’

‘That’s right.’ Claire had waited patiently, her gaze expectant on my face, until I’d sorted through the possibilities and reached the only answer.

‘Susan.’ I had been surprised at first, but then it seemed so right that I’d repeated it with pleasure. ‘His wife was Susan.’

Claire had nodded. ‘It was, he said, a very happy marriage. He had lost her just the year before I met him, and he clearly still adored her.’

I had thought a moment, making sense of everything. ‘So you believe him, then. That I’m the Grey Lady?’

‘Oh, yes. He might have been a very old man when we first met,’ she’d admitted, ‘but there wasn’t any problem with his memory. Everything he ever told me would happen did happen, my darling. And he was quite sure about this. As I said, he was there.’