The Rose Garden

I waited for Claire’s arguments, and braced myself against them. There was no way I could properly explain in words why this was so important to me, why it seemed so right to me that something of my sister should remain here, something tangible.

Claire looked at me a long and silent moment. ‘I think,’ she said finally, ‘that would be a lovely legacy. Katrina would be pleased. How can I help?’

We talked it over while we moved into the kitchen from the studio, and Claire made some suggestions as she put the kettle on to boil, and by the time she’d filled the Wedgwood teapot we had worked the whole thing out between us.

‘I’ll go see Mr Rowe at the bank in Polgelly tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He can help me get everything organised.’

Claire smiled. ‘You’ll have to fortify yourself then, for the climb back up afterwards. Which biscuits would you like? I’ve coconut or chocolate.’

As she set the biscuit tin down on the table I shook my head. ‘I’ll have to walk up and down The Hill ten times a day, if I keep eating these.’

‘Nonsense. You’re too thin as it is.’

‘There’s no such thing in California as “too thin”.’

Claire’s dry and wordless glance said much about her view of California and its fashions, but she didn’t say a word. She only opened up the biscuit tin and tilted it towards me till I took one. It was coconut. I shared it with the dog, who’d come to join us with expectant eyes and wagging tail. He settled by my chair as I asked, ‘Have you seen the greenhouse yet?’

‘I haven’t, no.’

‘They’ve painted. It looks wonderful.’ I filled her in on everything Felicity and Susan had been doing, while we sat and drank our tea.

I liked this kitchen, liked the feel of it, the cosy warmth and comfort that owed more to Claire herself than to the decorating. She changed the feeling of the rooms that she was in. She made them welcoming.

And maybe that was why I felt my sister’s presence here as well, this evening. It didn’t take a great stretch of imagination to picture Katrina in the empty chair just at the table’s end, with her chin propped on one hand the way she’d always sat when she was following the flow of conversation.

And when we took our tea into the sitting room I felt her come along and curl herself into the sofa at my side, so that I felt no need or inclination to get up, and when Claire told me I looked tired and brought a pillow and a blanket so that I could ‘rest my eyes’ I didn’t argue, only lay my head back happily, still feeling that Katrina was right there with me.

Perhaps she was.

But when I woke, she’d gone.

I’d slept much longer than I’d meant to. It was morning, and the smell of toast still hovered in the kitchen. Claire had left a note: Gone walking with the dog. Help yourself to what you like.

But she had cleaned the kitchen and I didn’t want to spoil its spotlessness, and having slept the whole night in my clothes I felt rumpled. My breakfast could wait, I decided, until I’d got back to Trelowarth and showered. I wrote my own note underneath Claire’s, thanking her, and propped it back up on the table.

Then taking my coat, I slipped out the front door. It had rained in the night, and the leaves in the woods all held loose beads of water and when the wind chased through the branches and set them to shivering light little showers came scattering down on my shoulders and head, and my boots slipped a bit in the mud of the path, but I didn’t much mind. And as I came out the far side of the woods there was sunlight at last breaking through the clouds over my head, and Trelowarth itself standing waiting to welcome me, and Susan coming out now to walk round to the greenhouse. I’d go out myself after breakfast and help her, I thought. And then I’d go down to the bank.

When I took my next step, though, the heavens suddenly opened with a fury, and a torrent of rain blown by wind struck me full in the face out of nowhere. I struggled to regain my footing, steadying myself against the onslaught of the sudden storm, and made a dash towards the house and shelter.

The wind was like a wild thing pursuing me. It shrieked as I blew through the back door and slammed it shut behind me, and the blast of rain that followed pounded on the wood like fists demanding entry.

I had water running in my eyes. I pushed my hair back from my forehead, stripped my jacket off and shook it out and turned to hang it on its hook with all the other coats.

Except there were no other coats. No row of hooks. No rack of boots.

The realisation hit me with the same force as the storm, and just as suddenly. I let my jacket drop. It made a puddle on the flagstone floor as, stepping from my muddy boots, I padded in on stockinged feet.

In the kitchen, the gnarled branches of the apple trees were scraping at the window and their dripping leaves cast ever-changing shadows in the dimness. All the dishes had been cleared away, the pots scoured clean and set to wait upon the fireless hearth that smelt of cold dead ashes. No one had been cooking here this morning.

Very quietly, I took my sodden coat and boots and stored them out of sight beneath some sacking in the little room that Fergal called the ‘scullery’, which looked to simply be a place for storing things and washing up, with wooden boxes, woven sacks and empty jugs shoved up against the walls, one small scrubbed table and a tall free-standing cupboard with an iron lock.

Then slipping from the scullery I tiptoed back across the kitchen to the narrow back staircase that might let me get to the safety of ‘my’ room before someone saw me. I didn’t have to worry about Daniel or Fergal, of course, but they weren’t the only people living here, and they’d both said that Daniel’s brother Jack might be returning any time. For all I knew, he might be home already.