Sowing Secrets (19 page)

‘We could even get to be friends,’ he suggested. ‘If you agree to let me buy the Glen, that is!’

I stood up a bit shakily. My bottom was both cold and numb, and I’d had a good thick layer between me and the stone. I only hoped Gabe’s extremities were not frostbitten – but in a detached and entirely altruistic sort of way, of course.

‘Back to the purpose of the visit?’

‘The place draws me like a magnet,’ he agreed.

‘Not to mention the maze?’

‘You heard about that?’ He laughed. ‘I have a passion for them. That’s the first thing that’s going to be restored.’ He put his hand under my elbow as I slipped on the damp earth, and kept it there while we scrambled back down the overgrown paths to the cottage.

I felt so shaky I probably would only have made it back down on my bottom so I didn’t protest.

‘If I’m not going to let the cat out of the bag about our previous short but sweet encounter, is there any other reason why you don’t want me to have the cottage?’ he asked.

‘Of course not!’ I said quickly.

Liar, liar, your bum’s on fire!
said a helpful voice in my head.

‘
If
you are the right man for the Glen. Ma said you like the cottage as it is?’

‘I love all its grotesque little baroque flourishes,’ he declared.

‘And its inconveniences?’

‘Well, maybe not
all
of those. I would hope to do a sympathetic extension eventually, and maybe update the facilities a bit. But I do like your ma’s style. It’s cosy and a little eccentric.’

That’s one way of describing it. ‘But isn’t it too far from London? It must take you hours to get here.’

‘I don’t actually have to be in London that much, though I do go off all over the place from time to time filming follow-up visits to gardens and other engagements.’

‘TV celeb stuff,’ I suggested.

‘Well, yes. I can only get out of doing so much of it. I’ll probably keep a
pied-à-terre
with office space for my PA in London, but I’ll spend most of my time here. This would be home,’ he added gravely. ‘Somewhere to return to, a place where I can put down roots.’

‘And the glen itself – what would you do to that?’

‘Nothing that would make it any less magical,’ he said quickly. ‘Restore the paths and steps, and maybe tidy up the grottoes and arbours a bit, but I wouldn’t touch the trees and the stones at the top, even if I could – they’re bound to be protected. And you and your friend could walk there any time you wanted – or in Nia’s case, dance.’

‘Did Ma tell you about Nia being a Druid? I didn’t think she knew!’ I said, startled.

‘No, Rhodri let it out. He gave me the impression that if I even
thought
about touching the oak grove or the standing stones, Nia would sacrifice me on one of them.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m going up to Plas Gwyn now. I want to go over the provisional plans for the restoration with him, and make sure he understands what’s happening when we start preliminary filming at Easter – the opening scenes. But first I’m going to take you home.’

‘Oh, I’m quite all right now,’ I protested hastily. ‘I—’

But he didn’t listen to any protest, just whisked me into his admittedly comfortable car and took me home. The Wevills’ curtains were twitching like a poltergeist with a fit was in them, but it must have been Mona because Owen was out pretending to polish the brass numbers on his gate.

Coming home with Gabe is getting to be a habit – and since they now know his car, the Wevills will be scandal-mongering like anything before their cat can lick its ear.

‘So, what about it?’ Gabe said as he pulled up.

‘What about
what
?’ I said. I’d been sleepily daydreaming in the warmth, enveloped in the scent of expensive leather and whatever light but compelling aftershave he was wearing. Or maybe he just exudes an attractive scent like a flower sends out signals?

‘The Glen – can I buy it?’ he said patiently.

I hesitated. ‘Look, it must be clear that I don’t want it to be sold at all, but if it has to be … ’

I stared at him, brows knitted as I contemplated the possible consequences, and he stared back. I had time to count all the bright green rays around his pupils, and
he
blinked first.

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I said finally, and scrambled out. ‘Thanks for the lift—’bye.’

The car moved off, and as I turned I caught Owen watching us out of the corner of his eyes like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I couldn’t see the hidden camera or tape recorder. He turned his back and started rubbing as though the genie of the gatepost might appear and grant him two stone balls and a pineapple.

‘A murrain on all your cattle, and may your number nine drop off,’ I murmured in passing, and a sudden breeze whisked his yellow duster from his loosened grasp and hooked it on to his TV aerial like a dingy pennant.

The moment I stepped indoors a wave of exhaustion hit me, and I lay on the sofa with the whole scene replaying over and over in my head. Finally I fell into a half-doze where images of dappled leaves, green-rayed hazel eyes and warm brown skin danced about like reflections on water.

I woke from my doze with a feeling of impending doom that wasn’t entirely due to the dream I’d just had, in which I’d been forlornly looking down at an iridescent oil stain on the pub car park where a camper van had once stood. Its rainbow had held no promise of a speedy return.

The part of my brain not occupied with projecting unwelcome memories onto my inner eyelids had been tossing over the facts while I slept, and now presented me with the conclusion that if Gabe Weston actually came to live in St Ceridwen’s there was a high risk that he would get to know that I’d had Rosie years before I met Mal. (Father unknown, candidates various, but popular opinion awarding the cherry to Rhodri.)

Surely he would then eventually suspect that she might be his … or was the whole thing only blindingly obvious to
me
? And what would he do if he did find out … and then
Mal
found out that he found out? Or Rosie? Well, the complications seem endless.

My God, what if the
press
ever found out?

Feeling a need to run this past Nia I left a message on her mobile asking her to meet me at the pub later – and her actually getting a mobile phone, something she’s always been against, is a sure sign that she is seldom going back to her cottage to pick up her messages these days! Is there something she isn’t telling even me, her oldest friend?

While I slept, the post had come. (Huw daily performs languid concentric circles around the village on his bicycle, so the mail can arrive any time.) There was yet another sketch from Tom, this time of a rose with a flattering representation of me in its heart-shaped centre. I think it was meant to be a Damask, but clearly a rose is just a rose to him.

No written message, but when I checked for emails he’d sent me one to the effect that as he rode a big, creamy wave in today he was thinking of me.

Oh dear. I rather feel as though a big wave is trying to overturn
me
when all I’m trying to do is paddle my own canoe to safety.

Elvis was helpfully singing ‘Return to Sender’ in my head, but there doesn’t seem to be a computer button that sends messages back with the words ‘thanks, but no thanks’. And he knows I live here, so I can’t return the sketch.

Maybe Nia can suggest a way of cooling him off – unless I’m flattering myself, and he’s just being kind. I’ll take his little missives with me, anyway, and show her if I get the chance. It will be the first time I’ve been to the pub since I came back from the hospital, apart from my brief appearance on
Restoration Gardener
night, though I have been round to Teapots a couple of times to exercise my legs and see Carrie.

Life is slowly getting back to normal. Well, normal apart from my husband being on the other side of the world, the probable father of my only child moving into the village at any second, and my ex-boyfriend bombarding me with romantic messages while ingratiating himself with my daughter in the mistaken belief he is her father.

I suddenly wondered if Gabriel might just be staying at the hotel tonight. But even if he is, we should be safe enough in the back bar in the early evening, when any halfway decent TV celebrity ought to be stuffing his face in the restaurant or hitting the bright lights of Llandudno.

Before the light went, I fed the hens and then shut them up for the night. The garden was peaceful, just the sighing of the breeze through the bushes and the grating of rose stems against wood …

In fact, there was something very odd about the way the Mermaid and Golden Showers hung loosely from the trellis I’d nailed along the top of the fence dividing our garden from the Wevills’, and I walked across to have a closer look.

Since they moved in I’m used to finding rose prunings from their side tossed over into our garden, but this time they have gone one better. They must have put their secateurs right through the holes in the trellis and snipped through every stem within reach, so the top branches hung there swaying, amputated from the roots.

I am sure I would have noticed if they’d done it this morning when I let the hens out, so perhaps they did it while I was out. Though God knows why – unless Mona had a fit of pique after being rebuffed by Gabriel.

I felt certain they were watching me, even though I couldn’t see them for the tears blurring my eyes, so I made a very rude gesture towards their house.

Tomorrow I would have to pull all the dying stems out and prune the bushes properly, though I’m not sure they haven’t served a death sentence on my poor Mermaid, who was doing so well after a very slow start.

And although they are entitled to cut back any of my plants that grow over into their garden, isn’t cutting them on
my
side illegal?

I drove to the Druid’s Rest since my legs were still a bit trembly from climbing up the glen, but halfway I stopped and tossed the air freshener Mal had hung from the rear-view mirror into a roadside litter bin. Whatever that aroma was supposed to be, the fading smell of vomit from the heater was infinitely preferable.

Huw and Carrie were already there in a dark corner when I walked in – but unusually they seemed to be arguing instead of all lovey-dovey.

‘What’s up with Carrie?’ I asked Nia, joining her at our usual table.

‘Hasn’t she told you? Huw had a poison-pen letter saying she was seeing someone else!’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Yes, but these things are sort of insidious – they plant nasty ideas in people’s minds. There are a few going round lately, apparently, though not everyone is admitting to it.’ She looked a bit self-conscious.

‘Nia! Have
you
had one?’ I demanded, wide-eyed.

‘No, Rhodri. I was there in his office when he opened it, and he’s so transparent I knew something was up and made him show me.’

‘So what did it say?’

She went slightly pink but said off-handedly, ‘Oh, something about my setting my cap at him – so old-fashioned – and he’d better watch out, and perhaps he’d better find out why my last husband got rid of me so fast.’

‘I don’t call nearly twenty years fast,’ I objected.

‘No, it was quite ridiculous, and Rhodri said he’d
like
it if I set my … well, anyway, we just laughed it off,’ she said hastily.

I didn’t press her: things seemed to be going quite nicely without any intervention from me, and with a bit of luck she would shortly lose the last vestiges of her ‘you lord of the manor, me peasant’ hang-up, which is totally outdated, and then there would be no bar to True Love.

Do Druids have weddings?

‘I wonder who the poison-pen writer is? And why haven’t
I
had one? I mean, everyone knows I had an illegitimate baby, and then what with Tom turning up and that scene in the restaurant you’d think I’d be a prime candidate!’

‘Yes, but maybe
other
people are getting them about
you
?’ she suggested, which was a bit disconcerting.

‘There has been an odd sort of atmosphere around the village lately,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘And old Miss Griffiths didn’t answer me when I spoke to her the other day, but I assumed she was just going deaf. Do you think—’

‘Don’t get paranoid. As you say, your misdoings are all old news, so raking them up again wouldn’t shock anyone.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ I said, and described (suitably edited) my conversation with Gabe Weston. ‘I don’t want him hearing any rumours that might make him speculate about who Rosie’s dad is!’

‘Even if he’s living here, I don’t suppose he’ll hear any local gossip,’ she said reassuringly. ‘But did he
really
say he wouldn’t touch the standing stones and oak grove if he bought the Glen?’

Nia’s priorities are clearly in a different order to my own.

‘Yes, apparently Ma had told him we both loved to go there, and it was a special place for us.’

I tactfully refrained from informing her that he also knew about the Druid thing, since she seems a bit secretive about it. ‘He doesn’t want to do anything radical to the rest of the glen, or the cottage either. In fact, he was being so horribly understanding I ran out of reasons not to let him buy it – only now I’m afraid that if he’s actually living here and finds out that Rosie isn’t Mal’s, eventually he might suspect that she’s his daughter.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, from what you say,’ she said optimistically. ‘He doesn’t seem to know exactly how long it’s been since the night you met, does he? So unless something does put it into his head, you should be safe enough. I mean, even if he
does
hear the village gossip, the palm is likely to go to poor old Rhodri.’

‘I suppose so – and, Nia, you’ve never even thought for a minute that it actually
was
Rhodri, have you?’

‘No, stupid. He’s as transparent as a jellyfish – how could he keep a secret like that? Every time he looked at you or Rosie it would be written across his face. He loves you like a brother, and Rosie like an uncle.’

I was tempted to ask her how he felt about her, but decided not to: I don’t want to make her go defensive and scupper a promising romance.

‘Where is Rhodri tonight? Is he coming down?’

‘He
is
down – I should have warned you that Gabe is staying over until tomorrow. They went to talk to some gardening firm – the programme hires local labour as well as the regular team they bring with them. Of course, after they finish filming you either have to pay for any help or do it yourself. In our case we’ll have to carry on alone, plus students in the summer and—’

‘What do you mean, he’s down? Down
where
?’ I cut in.

‘Here, in the restaurant, having dinner. They invited me too, but you know how I feel about eating overpriced fancy food with old lemon-face serving it out as though she would like to see me washing the dishes and sweeping the floor instead.’

I relaxed slightly. ‘Oh, well, I’ll be long gone by the time they finish, and I don’t suppose he would come in here anyway.’

‘Why don’t you want to meet him? I thought now you’d had it all out you might not mind so much, and he’s very nice.’

‘He is nice,’ I admitted, ‘and he was really kind about the baby. But even so, Nia, when you’ve shared one night of … shared one night with a total stranger, you don’t automatically feel relaxed and happy meeting him in social situations years later. Especially when you’ve got a great big secret you really, really don’t want him to know.’

‘I think you’re going to have to harden yourself to it, then,’ she said drily. ‘Here he comes with Rhodri.’