Wickham Hall, Part 3 Page 2

  ‘Antonio would have been so hurt that I didn’t show up, Holly. I didn’t even let anyone know where I was that day as I waited in the hospital, not even my employer at the ice-cream stall. What if he thought I’d stayed away to avoid him?’

  Her eyes searched mine and I shook my head, not knowing what to say.

  ‘He never came back to Wickham Hall. Not once. I didn’t stop looking for years. He would have got over it eventually, of course, moved on, probably married and had a family of his own. But I have never been able to move on; my biggest sorrow is that he has missed out on having you in his life.’

  I exhaled as the missing pieces of our jigsaw puzzle began to slot together. I had an Italian father. Antonio. Who sounded charming. And just as I’d hoped, Mum had fallen in love with a boy her own age. Relief filtered through me like sunshine on a rainy day. Something else dawned on me too . . .

  ‘I think you’ve just located the source of the hoarding, Mum.’

  She nodded. ‘I had lost so much in such a short space of time that I couldn’t bear to part with anything. I know it sounds crazy, but those newspapers, the things I kept and collected, those are my memories. It started with the issues of the Wickham and Hoxley News in the summer of 1984. Although I didn’t have pictures of Antonio, there were pictures of the festival in there, images that kept my memories alive in my head. And Granddad’s things, too. I couldn’t throw anything away that reminded me of him. I couldn’t lose anything else.’

  I pulled her towards me and hugged her tight, feeling guilty for all the times I’d been angry and frustrated by her inability to let go. Now, at last, I felt I’d got to the heart of her hoarding and I understood the deep sadness behind it.

  ‘Holly,’ she murmured, ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this all your life. Have I been a total nightmare to live with?’

  I thought back to the humiliation of opening the door to people over the years and witnessing the shock on their faces when they saw the piles of clutter in our hall and swallowed. ‘No, Mum. But I do think it’s time to move on, don’t you?’

  She nodded and the two of us sat in silence for a few moments. The sun had sunk from the sky and a cool breeze ran over my skin giving me goosebumps.

  ‘I’m so glad we’ve had this chat, Mum,’ I laughed sheepishly. ‘I’d worked myself up into a panic thinking that Lord Fortescue was my father.’

  ‘Oh, Holly.’ She giggled. ‘You always did have a vivid imagination.’

  We looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘Esme even thought you might have had an affair with the BBC weather man that appeared at the festival that year.’

  ‘Urgghh, I remember him.’ She recoiled. ‘Mustard-coloured tank top and a comb-over!’

  I snorted at the look of disgust on Mum’s face.

  ‘Lady Fortescue still looks for that bracelet, you know,’ I said, chastising her gently.

  ‘Does she?’ Mum chewed her lip. ‘I had every intention of returning it, but there was so much going on that it went out of my mind. And it reminded me of my and Antonio’s last day together.’

  ‘Is that why my middle name is Pearl?’

  She nodded.

  ‘In that case,’ I said, resting my head on her shoulder, ‘you’ve got me as a reminder and I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘You’re right. I should return it.’ She nodded decisively. ‘But how do I do that?’

  I hugged her tightly and shivered in the breeze. ‘I love you, Mum. And leave the bracelet with me; I’ll get it back to Lady Fortescue somehow.’

  A few hours later I paused from closing my bedroom curtains and leaned on my window sill, mesmerized by the huge pale moon that dominated a clear night sky dusted with stars.

  I listened to my own breathing for a moment, revelling in the silence and the peace. A smile spread slowly across my face as realization dawned; all night I had been so wrapped up in Mum’s heartbreaking story that I had forgotten what her revelation meant for me.

  There were hundreds of reasons why Benedict Fortescue shouldn’t make my heart flutter whenever he came near. But he did. And now there was nothing to stand in the way of my feelings for him. Or, I hoped, his for me.

  I climbed into bed, my body relaxing as soon as my head touched the pillow, and set the pearl bracelet down on my nightstand.

  There was also no reason not to accept Ben’s invitation to have dinner with him on Saturday night. There was the small matter of apologizing for turning him down flat and then fleeing the scene. But I could do that in the morning.

  And if, as my eyelids succumbed to sleep, it occurred to me that Lady Fortescue’s disapproval might stand in our way, I dismissed it. Anyway, after all that I’d been through today, Lady Fortescue would be the least of my problems, wouldn’t she?

  Chapter 2

  The second day of the Wickham Hall Summer Festival dawned and it was another impossibly bright and sunny summer’s day. Spur-of-the-moment visitors would no doubt turn up and boost our numbers, Andy’s Victorian parasols would probably sell out and hopefully diners would be queuing to reserve a table in Jenny’s shaded outdoor restaurant.

  I, on the other hand, woke up with a splitting headache and managed one sip of water before I had to make a dash for the bathroom to be sick.

  ‘You, young lady, are going nowhere,’ Mum pronounced, frowning at the thermometer after removing its tip from under my tongue.

  So that was that.

  Returning to work was unthinkable. I spent the next forty-eight hours bathed in sweat, drifting in and out of consciousness and clutching my mum’s hand.

  I missed the rest of the festival and by the time I returned to work the following Monday, at the beginning of August, it appeared I’d missed Ben too. The events office was empty and Ben’s half of the room was abnormally tidy. His easel, paint box and canvases had gone as had the little radio he normally played as loud as I’d let him.

  I swallowed my disappointment and sat down at my desk. Five seconds later my heart swooped. Tucked inside the lid of my laptop was a note, written in such scrawly writing that it could only be from one person.

  I read it, pausing every other word to exclaim in surprise and laugh out loud, my cheeks aching with happiness.

  Dear Miss Clipboard,

  I’ve had some rejections in my time, but of all the excuses not to date me, yours gets the prize for the most extreme! Anyway, I’m slinking away to lick my wounds for some time while I gather the courage to ask you out again (see date marked in diary) and also to do some serious thinking. My easel and I will be braving the elements in the Orkney Islands in search of some windswept landscapes. Think of me often, won’t you? A tortured soul, hopes and dreams in tatters, sobbing into my pillow at night . . .

  I’m sure the fact that you’re reading my thoughtfully placed note means that you are back up to full strength, wielding your trusty clipboard and pen at your in-tray like St George in pursuit of dragons, pink cheeks a-glow and tongue poking out when you write. (Did you know the tip of your tongue goes left for emails and right for your diary?) So you’ve got time to think up ways to drum up ticket sales for Bonfire Night and also to conjure up a more plausible excuse than exhaustion and sunstroke (yes, I have spoken to Lucy while you were on your deathbed, she chewed my ear off for nearly an hour on the phone) for the amazing date I’ve got lined up for you (see marked page in diary – again).

  See you in September,

  yours

  Ben

  PS I used your clipboard while you were away so it didn’t get too lonely.

  I sat back in my chair, a wide grin splitting my face in two. The note was so ‘Ben’ that I could almost hear his voice reading it to me. And he’d planned ahead for another date. Ben – planning? Unheard of. Despite leaving him in the lurch to run the festival without me and not having dinner with him on Saturday night, it looked as though he hadn’t completely given up on me.

  Phew!

  My smile drooped slightly when I
reread the bit about being in the Orkneys for a few weeks, but at least I had a date to look forward to. I grabbed my diary and flicked through the next few pages and laughed to myself when I found the entry for the last Saturday in September. Ben had written a message inside a large heart in pink chalk which had smudged across the opposite page: Keep entire day free for date with irresistible chick magnet.

  I read it several times before realizing that my tongue was sticking out.

  ‘Come back soon,’ I murmured, touching my finger to the page.

  I glanced at my desk, which seemed to have morphed into one huge in-tray in my absence. I’d really wanted to go and find Nikki in the gardens for a confidential chat, but there was no way I could leave the office until I’d got that lot under control.

  I began to hum quietly to distract myself from the silence that Ben had left behind and turned my attention to my workload, trying very hard not to mull over what sort of serious thinking Ben had disappeared to do.

  Three hours later, I’d planned my schedule for the next two weeks, written a post-festival press release and emailed it to the local media, approved the leaflet for our Halloween pumpkin-carving activities and selected some pictures taken by the festival photographer to use in next year’s marketing campaign. And after such an intense session, I was ready for some company and a bit of fresh air.

  I closed down my laptop and headed off to find Nikki in the gardens.

  The weather had turned cooler over the weekend and the sky was heavy with ominous grey clouds. It didn’t seem to deter the public, though; the courtyard tables outside the café were busy, there was a large party of silver-haired visitors wandering amongst the outdoor display at the gift shop and when I paused at the top of the stone steps leading away from the formal gardens, the scene in the parkland that spread out before me was dotted with clusters of distant figures.

  I turned then to gaze at Wickham Hall behind me. Its reddy-brown walls edged with large pale cornerstones, the rows of mullioned windows and the three copper-domed turrets across the roofline were so familiar to me now and my heart swelled with warmth. To me it represented grace and beauty and an unbroken link to an almost fairy-tale past. But what did it mean to Ben? I wondered.

  This would all be his if his parents had anything to do with it. And if he genuinely didn’t want it, I supposed it would have to be sold. I felt a sharp pang of loss, as though it were my own, and hurried down the steps and along the roped-off pathway marked ‘staff only’ towards Nikki’s shed in the Victorian walled kitchen garden.

  ‘Shed’ was perhaps doing Nikki’s domain a disservice. Wickham Hall had several sheds as well as numerous greenhouses and polytunnels, but the one in the kitchen gardens where she had a desk, a phone and a million pots of cuttings was a very pretty, single-storey brick building. It had proper Georgian windows and a pair of soft green wooden doors, framed with a red climbing rose that scrambled over the doorway. A long bench ran alongside the building for gardeners to perch on while they pulled on their boots and a row of upended wheelbarrows leaned against the wall ready for action.

  Nikki was outside with a lorry driver, signing for a delivery of huge sacks full of bulbs, and I took a seat on the bench to wait for her. She handed the driver his paperwork, waved him off and then pointed at the sacks with a grin.

  ‘Are you feeling strong?’

  My three days of illness had left me feeling a bit wobbly, actually, but as Nikki didn’t wait for an answer, I helped her drag the sacks into the dry shed.

  ‘Are these all for spring?’ I panted as we stacked the last couple inside.

  ‘Yep.’ She grinned and wiped a hand across her face, leaving a streak of dried mud. ‘Bulbs are the first signs of new life at Wickham Hall; just when the landscape needs a boost in February — ping — little pops of bright colours start appearing. And when I see that first bulb in spring, it does my system more good than vitamin C.’

  ‘New life.’ I nodded thoughtfully. ‘I reckon I might get some bulbs for our garden.’

  I hoped that by next spring much of the clutter in Weaver’s Cottage would have disappeared and Mum would be in a happier place. Perhaps getting her involved in a garden project would make her focus on a new life outside the cottage and help her to let go of the past? It was worth a try . . .

  ‘Here, look at this. Lovely, isn’t it?’ she said, handing me a battered photograph from her back pocket. ‘A wild flower meadow in spring.’

  The picture was of a swathe of grass smothered with a mass of tiny flowers in white, yellows and pinks.

  ‘Very lovely,’ I agreed. ‘I might even have a go myself.’

  ‘That was my inspiration,’ she said, stowing the picture back in her pocket. ‘But I’ve got massive ambitions for these gardens. Wickham is going to be the destination for spring colour next year. I’ve bought twenty thousand bulbs to plant between now and November.’

  ‘By hand?’ I said, impressed.

  ‘Yep.’ She nodded, a determined glint in her eye. ‘I might need a few more volunteers, come to think of it; it’s backbreaking work. I’ve got eight thousand polyanthuses for the wild flower meadow, four thousand tulips for the parterres in the formal gardens and crocuses and snowdrops for the woodland.’

  ‘And I wrongfully assumed you’d be heading for a quiet period.’ I grinned as a thought struck me. ‘Hey, perhaps we could have a bulb-planting party: invite the public to come along with their trowels and—’

  I spotted Nikki’s raised eyebrow and stopped immediately.

  ‘And have people not burying them deep enough and trampling all over the flower beds?’ She shuddered. ‘No thanks. Why don’t you just work on getting us visitors here next spring to see the flowers and leave the bulb-planting to the professionals?’ She chuckled. ‘Working with Benedict must be rubbing off on you, that sounds like the sort of hare-brained idea he’d come up with.’

  ‘He’s not hare-brained,’ I said defensively, ‘he’s just creative and imaginative and if that’s rubbing off on me . . .’

  Nikki’s eyebrow was up again and a smirk hovered at her lips. I snapped my mouth shut.

  ‘You look hot,’ she said, walking over to the far end of the room to her desk. ‘Here, have a drink. I don’t want you keeling over on me.’

  She picked up two bottles of water and handed one to me. I smiled my thanks and unscrewed the lid. Nikki took a long drink from hers and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

  ‘I had Ben down here on Saturday, wittering on about how it was his fault you were ill. He left you to do too much . . . blah, blah, blah.’

  I hid my smile by sipping at my water.

  ‘He flatters himself,’ I said, secretly pleased that he’d been worried about me. ‘I’m quite capable of managing a heavy workload, even if he did keep adding to it. I just had too much sun, that was all.’

  Nikki stared at me for a long moment until I began to feel uncomfortable and then she sat down on a sack of bulbs. ‘Did I ever tell you where I worked before I came here?’ she said, with a sideways glance.

  ‘Wasn’t it for Will Simpson from Role Play?’ I said with a frown, confused at the change in topic.

  I didn’t fancy perching on a lumpy sack, so pulled her desk chair closer instead and sat down.

  She swigged from her water bottle and nodded. ‘Did I say why I left?’

  I thought for a moment, sifting through all my memories from the last two months. I was sure she’d mentioned something about it on my first day at Wickham Hall.

  ‘Not really,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘You said something about circumstances changing and staying not really being an option. I assumed he’d fallen on hard times and had had to let staff go.’

  She shook her head. ‘I was the one who’d fallen . . . in love. Completely and utterly. But Will was married and I had no intention of coming between him and his wife. It was me who had to do the letting go. Before either of us did something we’d regret.’

  I nodde
d, and memories of Nikki’s angry response to Pippa’s husband’s affair with the au pair came trickling back to me.

  Nikki had never even hinted at her own romantic past before now. In fact, I realized, I didn’t know much about her private life at all. She pulled her wallet out of her pocket and passed me a creased photograph from inside it. It was unmistakably Nikki leaning on a spade – short wiry hair, easy smile and her usual uniform of shorts and a wide-brimmed hat. Standing beside her with his arm casually draped around her shoulders was a tall thin man with bleached-blond hair and a crumpled shirt open to the waist.

  ‘You look very happy, Nikki. And did he feel the same about you?’

  I gave the photo back to her and she stroked it tenderly with her thumb.

  ‘I’ll never really know. Nothing ever happened between us; he was too lovely to cheat on his wife. But he’d started to spend a lot of time with me in the garden and our friendship deepened into something very precious. Keeping my feelings hidden got too hard in the end; I simply loved him too much to stay.’

  My heart twanged with sorrow at such a sad story of a love that could never be. My stomach clenched. Was that the moral of the story she wanted me to hear: a forbidden relationship?

  ‘I think you’re amazing, Nikki. You acted so honourably,’ I said, reaching over to pat her knee.

  ‘Thanks, Hols,’ she said with a wistful smile. She tucked the picture back into her wallet. ‘I think he’s the only man I’ve ever properly loved. Which is why I left. I’m married to this place now. And there are worse relationships, believe me.’ She lifted a shoulder and sighed.

  I took a deep breath, not sure if I wanted the answer to my next question.

  ‘Why tell me all this now?’

  She looked at me for a long moment, as though she was reading my innermost thoughts.

  ‘Because I’ve seen the friendship between you and Benedict grow and it reminded me a lot of Will and me. The difference is neither of you is committed to anyone else. So my advice is this: if you get a chance at happiness with someone, grab it, hold on to it for all you’re worth. I couldn’t have my man, but there’s nothing stopping you going after yours. Well, nothing except . . .’ She waggled her eyebrows and gave me a wry smile.