Sowing Secrets (18 page)

She’s now cautiously started mentioning that Tom has emailed her and visited, and says he is a fun person. It’s pretty clear that Tom has never quite got any older, and one day very soon Rosie will mentally outgrow him, but meanwhile I can see the attraction – and he has promised to teach her to surf at some point!

On the subject of whether she still thinks he’s her father, she is tactfully silent – or maybe they don’t discuss it. They could find out once and for all, of course: the truth is out there somewhere. But then, the truth might not be what either of them wants.

Oh, well, I expect it will all sort itself out over time. I can’t seem to raise enough energy to care that much at the moment, so long as Rosie doesn’t get hurt.

At least now I’m back at work in my studio in its nest of thorns, guarded from the immaculate conception of Mal’s lawn by a trellis fence completely covered in a demented, ever-expanding Kiftsgate, and once I lose myself in my work I feel happy again for a while.

Will my arms and legs be less rubbery by rose-feeding time? I can’t ask Ma to stagger round with a full watering can of Up-She-Roses at her age, although I dare say Nia would if I asked her. But I don’t want to be a weak and wimpy drain on my friends, who have already been doing my shopping and, in Carrie’s case, supplying me with home-baked goodies.

I am certainly eating well: too well. Losing the baby left a big empty space inside me that I have been attempting, unavailingly, to fill with chocolate among other more nutritious things, so surely I should be feeling better by now …

Got a funny little sketch in the post from Tom today, of him standing on a surfboard while painting at an easel, captioned ‘Catching the big wave!’

Maybe he missed his vocation as a cartoonist. His painting style used to be rather precise and dead photographic realism. I didn’t know he had this kind of thing in him.

I’ve just weighed myself for the first time since the miscarriage and discovered that I am nearly two stone over my ideal weight! This may not sound gross to you, but bear in mind that I am only five-four in my bare feet, and slightly built.

Mind you, if you stretched me a few inches I’d be just right, so perhaps there’s a new dieting angle no one’s thought of yet. The Stretch? Get out your rack and I’ll be your first customer, since clearly I am the sugarplum rather than the fairy Mal yearns for.

I really need to lose some weight before my second honeymoon in the Caribbean (not that I had a first one anywhere), but, to tell the truth, the idea sounds terribly unreal somehow, despite all Mal’s enthusiasm. He loves it there, has moved into a beachfront apartment, been sailing with someone from the office, and boasts of the searingly high temperatures as though I will find the prospect of being barbecued irresistible.

Suddenly I feel a bit better, and the cloud, while still hovering, has lifted slightly.

An alternative women’s magazine,
Skint Old Northern Woman
, has taken my Alphawoman comic strip too, which has given me quite a boost, and also, now the weather is milder, I’m spending a lot of time communing with the hens, doing studies of them in various mediums. I expect there are lots of hen lovers out there, so maybe I could get some card designs or something out of them. While the Fran March Hen Calendar doesn’t have quite the same cachet to it as my rose one, maybe someone would be interested in it.

The other good news is that the doctor confirmed yesterday that my iron count was so much better I shouldn’t stand near magnets, but she still didn’t think I should start dieting just yet.

She is very friendly and, despite nearing the end of my allotted five-minute appointment, I suddenly found myself pouring out to her how the miscarriage had made me realise I really wanted another baby, and about Mal’s horrified reaction. She said men often felt like that because they feared they would no longer be the centre of attention, so their noses were well out of joint, and I told her he had always been jealous of Rosie.

Then we had a good long discussion on this book we’d both read by Margaret Forster called
Good Wives
, about how women had to choose between putting their husbands first or their children, and, historically, it seemed to have been expected that the husband would be in pole position, even if it tore their wives to bits to have to leave their children for years while they followed their lord and master wherever their fancy took them.

Of course there are some women who are so in love with their husband they put them first anyway, but although I am mad about Mal, I’d
die
for Rosie, so clearly I am not one of them. The doctor said she had the hots for her husband to the extent that she’d sell her offspring to the gypsies if he asked her to, but she was just joking. I
think
.

When I eventually came out, everyone in the packed waiting room gave me dirty looks.

Another little sketch from Tom, this time of me reclining in a nest of thorns like a bosomy, date-expired Sleeping Beauty, and a figure on a surfboard riding a big wave that seemed to be about to crash down on the sleeping princess’s head. I expect Freud would have a field day with it.

Mal mentioned the diet in last night’s email, and I assured him that the very second my blood count was normal I’d be juicing like mad and doing the detox thing, though it sounds like living hell to me. A physical scourging to go with the mental one over the baby.

I
have
read the book now, though – with amazement! Surely this diet wasn’t meant for humans. Maybe I should try it on the hens first. But no, I couldn’t do that, when they always seem pleased to see me, all running up their coop whenever they spot me and then, as is the way of something with a brain the size of a
petit pois
, all running away again in a fright.

There’s been a fox about, so I’ve just been letting them out for an hour or so before dusk. They scratch about the garden companionably while I potter round pruning my precious rose bushes, before taking themselves to bed in warm straw. We seem to be on a mental par.

OK, I’ve drunk all the Guinness and champagne, and eaten my way through the food parcels Ma left in my freezer, so my iron count has to be totally restored. I’m just tired out by every little thing because I’m unfit – and so fat that I look as if someone has stuck a super bicycle pump up an orifice and inflated me.

It’s no use Carrie and Nia assuring me I’m not gross when my mirror tells me I’m nearly spherical. No more excuses: I
must
diet.

Once my legs were up to the climb I was drawn irresistibly back to Fairy Glen: I’d missed the solitude and the soothingly hypnotic sound of the water falling, and somehow knew that the process of grieving wouldn’t be complete until I’d spent some time there.

I got up to the waterfall and rested for quite a while on my favourite rock, then slowly made my way up the more overgrown path to the oak glade and sat on a fallen stone watching a finger of sunshine work its way towards the orange and yellow lichened surface.

Then I opened my mind to let all the black thoughts flood in: I grieved for the baby I nearly had, and for the way I was naturally losing some part of Rosie too, as she grew older and lived an increasingly separate life. I’d like to have her back with me – but I know she should be out there getting a life, not home with her mum.

I mourned too for the way Mal and I had moved further apart in more ways than the physical one, so that even if the wound healed over the scar would always remain.

I even howled over the good times with Nia and Rhodri here in the glen, though short of amnesia there is no way you can lose a happy childhood: it’s with you for ever.

It was a damn good wallow and I wept floods until I felt empty and sort of cleansed. The black cloud was lifting and receding, letting the light touch me again, and I was conscious once more of the rustling of small creatures and the birdsong.

With a sigh I blinked and found I was now literally sitting in a golden circle of sunshine: spotlit as if to say, ‘Fran March, that’s enough of that! Now get on with the rest of your life. It’s what you make it.’

So, maybe things won’t ever be quite the same again, but when Mal and I renew our vows on Grand Cayman it will be a symbol that we are ready to reforge our relationship into something even better and stronger when he comes home.

Tom and Rosie’s contact will dwindle naturally into a casual friendship once the novelty wears off, and Gabriel Weston will make his programme and then be gone back out of my life like a passing comet; soon there will be nothing to disturb our lives again; no more old secrets waiting to pounce.

And as if on cue the bushes rustled and Gabe walked out of the trees into a patch of dappled sunshine and stopped dead at the sight of me, much as Mal had the first time we met – only here was no darkly handsome Celtic prince, but a man who seemed to blend and be one with his surroundings, woodland wild.

Actually, it was a bit eerie for a minute: he blended in so well I thought I’d conjured up some mythical forest being like the Green Man or Herne the Hunter, but then I saw that he was just as taken aback to find me perched on the stone slab.

‘Fran?’

‘No, it’s Tilly the two-ton tooth fairy,’ I said rather waspishly, angry at being caught out tear-sodden and with reddened eyes like a wet rodent. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you – especially up here!’

‘Well,
I
wasn’t expecting to see
you
, either – but I prefer my fairies substantial,’ he said, grinning. He walked out from the darkness of the trees and turned into a mere mortal, though the greens and browns of his clothes still fitted the general ambience a whole lot better than my pink duffel coat. Instead of wearing prosaic wellies like me he had on beautiful dark chestnut leather cowboy boots darkened by the damp grass, which should have made him look affected, but actually suited him.

He got a better look at my face and the grin faded. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on a private moment.’

‘You’re not, I’ve had it,’ I said shortly. ‘I was about to go.’

‘Were you?’ He came and perched on the other end of the slab, half-facing me. I bet it felt cold through his cord jeans, because his thick forest-green fleece didn’t reach below his hips … assuming he had any. He could have turned into pure snake for all I know.

‘Don’t rush off, then, because I wanted to talk to you. Ever since your mother told me I couldn’t buy the cottage unless you agreed to it, I’ve been trying to think how to persuade you – and then I thought I’d just jump into the car and talk to you face to face. I suppose I should have warned you I was coming, but I
am
a creature of impulse.’

‘Lucky you found me, then.’

‘I tried your house first, and I was going to go back later, because your neighbour said you’d gone out.’ He grimaced.

‘Let me guess: she was a blobby, beige woman who was all over you like treacle?’

‘Got it in one. She recognised me, said she was all alone and pressingly invited me in for coffee and to show me her garden.’

‘Everyone in the village recognises you after that last
Restoration Gardener
programme – and she hasn’t got a garden, just paving and the odd pot, and even those she buys ready-planted from the garden centre and kills almost instantly.’

‘I wasn’t staying to see, so I thought I’d take a walk up the glen, since I only got to the waterfall last time, but if I’d known you’d come here for a bit of peace and quiet I wouldn’t have intruded.’

‘That’s all right, I really was about to leave—I’ve been here for ages.’ I looked around and sighed. ‘I
needed
to come here, and this is the first time I’ve felt well enough to face the climb.’

‘I’m very sorry about the baby,’ he said sincerely.

Although I’d thought I was all cried out, tears pricked the back of my eyes again. ‘Thank you – and for the lovely roses. That was kind.’

He smiled. ‘I
am
kind! When I was passing the day you got home from hospital I meant to speak to you – only your husband gave me such an evil glare and you looked so ill that I thought better of it and drove off!’

‘He thought you were a nosy stranger. He … tends to be a bit jealous too.’

‘Well, just don’t make me out to be some kind of ogre because we once spent a night together! If you let me buy the cottage I’ll promise to officially forget all about it, so you see, I’m no threat at all to you.’

‘
Officially
forget?’

‘
You
may have been struck by handy amnesia, but
I
remember it as quite a night,
Maddie
! I never quite forgot you, though I suppose since you are the only woman ever to run out on me like that, you would tend to stick in my memory,’ he added honestly.

I winced. ‘So you were only pretending you didn’t recognise me at first.’

‘I wasn’t certain it was you, but then it all came back to me. And, Fran, although I had to go on down to Cornwall that day or I’d have lost my chance of my first big garden restoration project, the first opportunity I got I drove back up and searched for you.’

‘You
did
?’

I must have sounded slightly incredulous, as he grinned and added, ‘Believe it or not, it’s the truth. But, of course, no one knew of Maddie with the big blue-grey eyes and strawberry-blonde hair, and we were into the summer holidays so all the students were away and … ’ he shrugged, ‘that was that. As a matter of interest, why did you leave so abruptly? And what on earth were we drinking that night?’

‘Scrumpy cider – someone had flagons of the stuff, and it was pretty rough. I had way too much of it, and … well, you were sort of on the rebound because my boyfriend had just dumped me. But next morning I woke up in your van with a splitting headache and a stranger, which is not something I made a habit of. And I thought I was still in love with Tom and it was all a bit … well, anyway, I just wanted to get away,’ I said honestly.

‘You did that all right. Vanished without trace,’ he said pensively. ‘But I still think it’s a pity you ran off, because we might have had something going there if you’d given it a chance. There was that classic “eyes meeting across a crowded room” moment at the party – and I recall a certain chemistry between us.’

‘
I
don’t,’ I said decisively, though actually I was experiencing another just then and it was an effort to look away. ‘I expect you’re mixing me up with someone else.’

‘No, I’m not. I even bought a framed book print a few years later simply because it reminded me of your big sad eyes! It was from that fairy story about the sealwoman going back to the sea when her human lover betrayed her trust – you know that one?’

I nodded, trying not to look flattered.

‘I admit I couldn’t remember what you actually looked like until I saw you again, but then I knew you right away. You were a happy memory, Maddie. A lingering taste on the tongue … ’

He smiled again, his eyes wrinkling up around the corners, and I went pink and looked away hastily, feeling oddly breathless. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that!’

‘All right,’ he said equably. ‘If you tell me honestly whether you’ve ever thought of me since.’

‘No, never,’ I said shortly and
totally
untruthfully. I have trouble admitting to
myself
that I crept back to the car park in search of him later that day (think ‘moth’ and ‘flame’), only to find the van long gone.

‘It was so out of character that I decided to put it right out of my head. By the end of that week I was here to spend the summer living at Fairy Glen and working for Carrie at the teashop.’

I looked around the sunlit glade. ‘I first met my husband, Mal, right here on this spot, just after he bought the house we live in now.’

‘And so promptly forgot all about
me
?’

I let his assumption that I’d met up with Mal that very summer slide. ‘More or less,’ I agreed.

‘So, when did you know I was Adam?’

‘Only a few weeks ago when I saw a DVD of
Restoration Gardener
; but then I thought I might be imagining the resemblance since I’d more or less forgotten what you looked like.’

‘And now fate has thrown us together again – in a platonic sort of way, of course. It’s a small world.’

‘I think it’s imploding,’ I muttered.

But I don’t think he caught it because he just hitched himself up on the stone a bit more and said, ‘Didn’t you say your husband was jealous? So what’s he doing going off and leaving you alone for months,
and
at a time like this?’

‘How on earth do you know that?’ I demanded, startled. My God, I only hoped he couldn’t read minds as well as find lost gardens!

‘Your mother,’ he said predictably.

It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d also shown him that pull-out concertina folder of photos of me from age nought to now that she keeps in her handbag, my school report cards and the china pig I won at a funfair when I was eight.

‘Not that it’s any business of yours, but he’d already agreed to do this contract and we need the money. It’s only six months anyway, and I’m perfectly well again.’

‘Are you? You look a bit pale.’

‘I was anaemic, but I’m nearly better. I just need to get fit and lose a bit of weight.’

‘You look about right to me,’ he said consideringly, though most of me was enveloped in duffel coat and wellies so there wasn’t much to go on. ‘Curvy – which is how it should be. Who wants to go to bed with a bag of bones?’

I assumed this was rhetorical, but I could have replied, truthfully, ‘My husband does!’

‘I’d just concentrate on getting fit again. And you have a daughter already, don’t you? That must be a consolation.’

‘Yes, Rosie – she’s lovely,’ I agreed. ‘She’s at university, studying to be a vet.’

‘Must be a clever girl.’

I looked at him sharply, but clearly the date of our encounter hadn’t stayed in his head the way it had stayed in mine, and he hadn’t the slightest suspicion that Rosie might be his.

Come to that, even this close up I couldn’t see any resemblance between them, so maybe she
is
a changeling. Or perhaps I really did that frog thing – is it parthenogenesis? – and created her all on my own.

I found our gazes had locked again but I couldn’t drag my eyes away until he blinked. It’s not chemistry, it’s hypnotism, I’m convinced of it.

‘I have a daughter too – nearly eighteen,’ he confided.

‘Yes, I remember reading that. Carrie – at the teashop – looked you up on the Internet when she knew you might be doing a programme here.’

‘I didn’t think I was that fascinating.’

‘You’re not. It’s just that nothing ever happens in St Ceridwen’s Well so you’re a seven-day wonder,’ I said dampeningly. ‘But you were telling me about your daughter?’

‘Stella. She went to live in America with her mother when we divorced, and I haven’t seen her since. I tried, but she didn’t want anything to do with me, and it was all very difficult. I still send letters and presents, but she never replies.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said sympathetically. ‘It must be terrible not seeing her grow up.’

He sighed, then looked up. ‘Do you understand teenage girls?’

‘Having been one myself helps,’ I said drily, ‘and my Rosie’s not twenty yet.’

‘Stella sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue. All it said was “how r u dad?”’

‘Just that?’

‘Just that, after what – seven years? – of unbroken silence. It was so weird! I mean, she was a little girl last time I spoke to her, so I felt as though an alien being was trying to make first contact with me. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Only too well, but all girls mutate into strange life forms when they become teenagers,’ I assured him.

‘But sending me a
text
message?’

‘Texting is their first language and comes as easily as thought to them. Easier. What did you do? Text her back?’

He looked sideways at me and smiled crookedly. ‘I’m a dinosaur – I’d never texted, so I had to find the instructions first. Then I sent her a cautious one back – I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.’

‘And she replied?’

‘Yes, and I’ve had a few more short text messages since, and now one or two emails as well. Informative stuff like, “Mum just got back from honeymoon
again
and I hate Hardy.”’

‘Who’s Hardy?’

‘Her new stepfather.’

‘What, as in “Kiss me, Hardy”?’ I asked, interested.

‘Apparently. Unless she calls him by his last name.’

‘Weird,’ I said. ‘But I think the messages mean she’s reaching out to you, Gabriel. Now she’s older she probably realises there can be two sides to every story, and because you carried on sending her letters and presents she must know that you never stopped loving her.’

He looked at me with rather touching hope. ‘Do you really think so? I was never sure whether Tamsyn – my ex-wife – was passing them on or not.’

‘
Is
she that spiteful?’

‘Probably not, though the divorce was a bit acrimonious. It was partly my fault, I suppose. I left her alone in London when I was off shooting new series … too much free time and too much temptation. Then when I found out she’d been unfaithful—’ he shrugged – ‘I indulged in a bit of tit for tat with her best friend! Ex-best friend. Big mistake.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you know all about the paternity case and the divorce?’

‘Yes. When Carrie goes into something she makes a thorough job of it,’ I admitted.

‘Oh,’ he said sombrely. ‘Then you know about that other poor woman too – the delusional one?’

‘Yes, but that’s all it was, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but the dirt stuck anyway. And then it seemed whenever I went out with anyone else I’d find it all raked up in the newspapers and magazines, so it’s no wonder Stella didn’t want anything to do with me.’

‘But the scandalous bits all seemed to be old stuff, nothing recent,’ I pointed out. ‘You’re the blue-eyed boy of the TV screen now, and the recent articles all said how quietly you lived and things like that.’

‘I do live quietly, but then, I was never much of a party animal to start with.’ He shrugged again. ‘Perceptions change, but I thought if I moved to the country, made a fresh start, Stella might even come and visit when she’s over here.’

‘Does she come over?’

‘To see her grandparents in Cornwall – and
they
won’t have told her anything good about me. But she’s going to start university over here this autumn.’

‘Then I think she’s definitely trying to build bridges and she does want to see you again.’

‘I hope so. I’ve certainly no intention of stirring up any new scandals that might make her change her mind – not that I ever wanted to stir any up in the first place.’ He looked at me. ‘You know, I haven’t really talked about all this to anyone before … sorry to unload on you.’

‘That’s OK. I suppose we hold a secret or two about each other now, so we’re safe. I don’t want any hint of what we did to reach my husband’s ears, and you certainly don’t want your daughter to hear even a raked-up old scandal.’