Chapter 20
The shock of seeing Tobias standing in the middle of the maze hit Emilia like a physical blow.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘I might ask you the same thing.’
They stood staring at each other as if weighing one another’s next move.
‘He’s gone, Emilia.’
‘What?’
‘You won’t be seeing him again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We had a talk, Jay and I, and let me tell you, he understood me perfectly.’
Emilia looked around in panic, swallowing hard as she wondered whether to call out his name.
‘I made it worth his while,’ Tobias added. ‘I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Or rather, money can be very persuasive.’
‘You didn’t! I don’t believe you.’
‘Oh, I did.’
‘Jay wouldn’t have left. It wasn’t about money.’
‘It’s always about money. You saw his face when I gave him the cheque for the portrait. He couldn’t believe his luck. Well, you should have seen it when I gave him the one tonight.’
Emilia shook her head. ‘You’re lying. I know you’re lying! We’re in love. Don’t you understand that?’
‘Love! You’re too greedy, Emilia. You have all the love you need right here.’
She looked at him aghast. ‘What?’
He took her hands in his. ‘Why do you need anybody else?’
‘Get off me!’ She tried to wrench her hands free and he let go of her and it was then that she saw the blood on his knuckles.
‘Oh, my god! What did you do to him? What did you do?’
She beat her hands against his chest and wailed like a mad woman.
‘Come inside,’ he told her, trying to catch hold of her, but she pulled away from him.
‘I’m not going back inside with you.’
‘No? And what are you going to do? Run after him? He’s long gone, Emilia, and he isn’t coming back.’
She started to run out of the maze now.
‘Jay!’ she cried into the night. ‘JAY?’
She could hear Tobias’s footsteps behind her, but she didn’t stop. She had to find Jay. Tobias was lying. He was always lying or trying to manipulate her. He thought he could control her and now he believed that he could control Jay too, but he couldn’t. She wouldn’t let him. He’d never be able to come between them.
She’d just made it out of the maze when she felt the blow to the back of her head and the world turned black.
Emilia came round in her bedroom. Somebody had undressed her and put her to bed and she had the feeling that it wasn’t Mrs Beatty. She jumped out of bed and ran to her door. It was locked. Panic gripped her as she ran to the window. It was still dark. She checked her clock. It was just after one. Had she been unconscious for nearly an hour? Her head was throbbing and hot tears began to fall as she remembered the encounter in the maze. Tobias, who’d always been afraid of the maze, had overcome his fear to prevent her from leaving him. At that realisation, her heart turned to stone. She had no more love for her brother. She could never forgive him for what he’d done.
Spring could be a fraught time for a gardener. Seedlings were growing, demanding to be planted out, but the weatherman might still be warning of late frosts. Patrick and his sons had been making excellent progress in the greenhouse, and the workbenches were full of trays of plants desperate to be allowed to grow and romp in the rich soil of the raised beds.
Both Cape and Mac had warned them not to be too eager to plant out. The safest measure would be to pot up some of the more vigorous plants. It was a time-consuming job, but one which everybody got involved with, glad to shelter from the spring wind in the comparative cosiness of the long Victorian greenhouse.
Anne Marie was enjoying the work. She and Erin had fallen into a routine of helping out in the garden for the first part of the morning and then going inside for the rest of the day to work in the study. It broke things up a bit. Erin was becoming more and more anxious to do some ‘real work’ with the collection, but Mrs Beatty insisted on them making progress in the study first.
She looked up from the bench where she, Erin and Kathleen were planting up the impressive squash plants while the others were working on various other plants on another bench. Cape was chatting to Dorothy and Mac while Patrick was giving his boys instructions.
It was when Kathleen took a tray of finished plants to the other side of the greenhouse that Patrick took his younger son, Elliot, to one side and whispered something in his ear before giving him a little push. Anne Marie watched as the boy started to walk across the greenhouse towards Kathleen, but then stopped, looking back at his father who waved his hand in encouragement. The boy grimaced and Anne Marie continued watching as he walked a bit further, digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stopping just short of where Kathleen was.
‘Dad wants to know if you’ll come to dinner tonight,’ Elliot bellowed, his voice reverberating around the greenhouse, causing everybody to look up from their tasks. Kathleen turned bright red, but it was nothing compared to the look of annoyance on Patrick’s face. He’d obviously intended the message to be relayed more privately than that.
Anne Marie grinned and caught Cape’s eye. He was smiling and she watched as he put down the pot he was holding, wiped his hands on the front of his jeans and walked towards her.
‘Got a minute?’
She nodded, wiping her own hands down her trousers and following him out of the greenhouse. It was a crisp, clear spring day with a beautiful lilac-blue sky. The garden was heaving with irises and bluebells and there was the most delicate of white blossoms on the plum trees they’d planted in the walled garden. It truly was a blessed time of year.
‘Everyone really seems to be enjoying things now,’ Anne Marie said as they walked around the walled garden together. ‘Remember when we first met?’
Cape chuckled. ‘I’ll never forget Patrick’s outrage that he should be involved in a project like this!’
‘He’s really mellowed, hasn’t he?’
‘Gardens are good for people,’ Cape said. ‘The creation of them, the maintenance of them, the dreaming about what’s possible in them.’
‘And the boys too. I actually think you might have two budding gardeners there.’
‘And a new couple.’
‘Yes!’ Anne Marie said. ‘I’d never have put Patrick and Kath together.’
‘I think they’ve surprised everyone, including themselves.’
They walked for a little longer. Anne Marie wondered why he’d pulled her from the group, but didn’t want to prod him. Maybe he had a special job in mind for her.
‘There’s a meteor shower tonight,’ he suddenly said.
‘Pardon?’
‘A meteor shower. Have you heard?’
‘No. No I haven’t.’
‘We could watch it right here from the walled garden.’
‘What, all the group?’ Anne Marie asked.
Cape cleared his throat. ‘I was thinking of just you and me.’
‘Oh.’
He continued. ‘The meteor, well it’s pieces of comet – comet debris if you like – which pass through the earth’s atmosphere.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘Not really. Just what I heard on the radio. But I thought it would be cool to see it. There’ll be hundreds of them passing over the next three days. This would be the perfect place to see them from with no light pollution and a good view of the sky and, apparently, it’s going to be clear tonight.’
‘I see.’
He stopped walking and looked at her.
‘And, well, we haven’t talked much since Poppy came back and since . . .’ He paused. ‘. . . the maze.’
Anne Marie felt a flutter of nerves at thinking of their kiss in the maze.
‘I guess I wanted to make sure that we were still friends,’ he added.
‘Of course we’re still friends,’ she told him.
A look of relief passed over his face. ‘Then you’ll meet me here? Tonight at nine?’
‘Will Poppy be joining us?’ she asked.
‘No, she’s having a sleep-over at a friend’s house.’
‘Will it be cold?’
‘A clear night in April? I’d say it will be freezing!’
She laughed and then nodded. ‘I’ll wear my warmest clothes.’
Anne Marie wasn’t the only one going out that night. Kathleen was buzzing around upstairs, a hairbrush in one hand and an anxious expression on her face.
‘What should I wear? What should I wear?’ she called as Anne Marie passed her on the landing.
‘You’re going to his house, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I’d keep it casual then.’
‘But I want to wear something pretty. He’s only ever seen me in jeans, wellies and old jumpers.’
‘Good point. Have you got a suitable dress?’
‘I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress,’ Kathleen confessed. ‘Since the fire, I’ve been living in nothing but trousers and jumpers as I’ve been trying to put things back together again. But my sister brought me some things. I haven’t really looked at them.’
Anne Marie followed Kathleen into her bedroom and watched as she opened the wardrobe door.
‘Here,’ she said, pulling out a pretty dress in a deep red. ‘Do you think this will do?’
‘I think you’ll blow him away if you wear that.’
‘Really?’
‘Do you want to blow him away?’
Kathleen gave a naughty little smile. ‘Yes. I think I do.’
Anne Marie didn’t have the luxury of choosing a dress that evening. Instead, she wore her warmest trousers and put on several thick layers before leaving the house to join Cape at the garden at nine o’clock.
She couldn’t help feeling a little anxious about meeting him there. After their last venture into the garden at night, she’d promised herself that she would focus on sorting out the mess that was her life rather than jumping headlong into another one. After all, any sort of relationship between her and Cape could be nothing but a mess because they were still involved with other people. She might have left Grant, and Renee might have left Cape, but things were by no means settled.
But surely she was worrying unnecessarily because she and Cape were just friends, weren’t they?
Friends who were meeting in a darkened garden on their own to look at the stars.
She tried to banish the voice inside her head. She wasn’t going to pay it any attention because, although there was an undeniable attraction between her and Cape, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. She wasn’t going to let it.
‘We’re friends,’ she told herself as she walked up the driveway. ‘Just friends.’
How magical it was to wander around Morton Hall’s garden at night. The dark shadows lent it an ethereal quality and the topiary looked more alive than ever in the thin beam of light from her torch.
Cape was waiting to meet her at the cedar tree, his own torch in his hand.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hello.’
‘I’ve brought a flask of tea,’ he told her.
‘I brought some chocolate.’
‘Excellent.’
They walked through to the walled garden, Cape leading the way to the old bench where Anne Marie used to sit on her own. It was already quite cold and Anne Marie was glad she’d thought to bring a woollen blanket with her, spreading it over their knees, and then pulling her hat down as far as it would go.
‘Have you seen anything yet?’ she asked him.
‘Nothing but a couple of planes,’ he replied. ‘You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, maybe a little.’
He laughed. ‘My dad used to take me out at night sometimes. We’d visit gardens he was working on and stand and stare up at the sky. He loved the stars. He knew quite a bit about them too and would point them out, telling me their names.’
‘It sounds like you had a lovely relationship with him.’
‘Oh, I did,’ Cape said. ‘I was lucky.’
Anne Marie smiled in the darkness. ‘I wish I’d been close to my father,’ she said. ‘I wish I was closer to my mother.’
‘Is that something you can work on?’ Cape asked gently.
Anne Marie pulled the blanket a little closer. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said honestly. ‘I don’t think my mum really wants to be close to me.’ She could see Cape was staring at her, but she kept her focus on the sky above. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever had a normal conversation. Whenever we talk, she always brings up my sister.’
‘Your sister who died?’
‘Yes. Anne. She was the first-born, you see. It must have hurt Mum so much when Anne died. She was just seven years old too when pneumonia took her. I can’t even imagine what that feels like – to lose a daughter. My parents never really got over her death.’
‘But that was a long time ago,’ Cape pointed out.
‘I know, but I’ve never been allowed to forget it. Anne was the golden child. The first. The best. I was the second child. The second-best child. I was always made to remember that. My mother was always comparing me to her. Anne wouldn’t do that if she was alive, she’d tell me, or, Your sister would have done a better job than you. I felt it was impossible to live up to this paragon who was no longer here.’
‘Your mother shouldn’t have done that to you.’
‘Maybe it was her way of coping. I don’t know.’
She felt Cape lift the blanket and reach for her hand which was hiding underneath its warmth. How comforting it was, she thought, just to have your hand held by a person who cared about you. She blinked away the tears that were threatening to spill. Where had all this emotion come from all of a sudden? How silly she was being. She took a deep breath and gazed into the inky sky.
‘Looking at stars can make you philosophical,’ Cape whispered.
‘It certainly makes you feel small and unimportant.’
‘Hey, you’re not unimportant.’
‘It sure feels like it sometimes.’
He squeezed her hands again.
‘Kath mentioned your birthday’s coming up soon,’ he said.
‘She did?’ Anne Marie said in surprise.
‘We should celebrate,’ he suggested.
‘I don’t feel very much like celebrating this year.’
‘That’s what Kath said,’ Cape told her. ‘She sounded worried about you. Said you were feeling a bit low.’
‘It’s hard not to with all that’s going on,’ she confessed. ‘But Kath shouldn’t be worrying about me.’
There was a pause before Cape spoke again.
‘So what’s happening with you and Grant?’
‘He emailed me this week. Said he doesn’t want to involve solicitors.’
‘Well, that sounds positive.’
‘It’s not out of any sort of compassion, though,’ Anne Marie said. ‘It’s just because he’s too tight with his money.’
Cape gave a little chuckle.
‘But we’ll be getting a divorce at some point although he hasn’t mentioned that word yet.’
‘And you’re okay with that?’
‘I think it’s the only sane way forward,’ she told him. ‘It’s sad. I don’t think anybody ever gets married without wanting it to last forever, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘I think I’m beginning to find myself again,’ she confessed to him. ‘I’ve started writing.’
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘The other night. I found one of my old notebooks. I hadn’t touched it for years and I was flipping through it, reading all these random jottings from my student days when I’d been dreaming of being a writer. It was like travelling back in time and visiting that other version of myself – the one who’d got lost along the way.’
‘But you’ve found her now,’ Cape told her, ‘and she’s going to be a bestselling writer.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘but I’m going to give it a try.’
They sat for a while longer.
‘Are you cold?’ Cape asked at last.
‘A little,’ she admitted.
Her neck was beginning to ache too and she couldn’t help thinking about her warm bed back at Kathleen’s and how cosy it would be to climb into it with a hot-water bottle and a cup of cocoa.
‘Snuggle up,’ Cape said.
‘What?’
‘Snuggle up next to me.’
They both shuffled a little closer until their shoulders and arms were up against each other.
‘Better?’ he asked.
‘I think so.’
Friends, she whispered to herself. They were just friends snuggling together for warmth.
‘No meteors yet,’ he said.
‘You didn’t just make them up, did you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you didn’t spin me some line about a meteor shower just to get me alone on a bench in the dark, did you?’ She swallowed hard. What had made her say that? Surely she didn’t want to draw attention to their current snuggly situation?
He laughed and she couldn’t help acknowledging how much she loved the sound. It was so full of life and joy.
‘You’ve found me out!’ he said.
‘I thought so.’
They laughed together and then silence consumed them once more.
It was very hard for Anne Marie to be sitting so close in the dark with Cape without remembering that other time they’d been alone in the garden at night together: the night they’d kissed in the maze. She wondered if he was thinking about it too. If she was, she supposed it was very likely that he might be too.
She turned to glance at him, but it was hard to make out his features clearly in the darkness even though her eyes had adjusted now and could trace the outline of the wall that surrounded the garden and the dark shapes of the fruit trees at the far end.
‘Look!’ Cape suddenly shouted.
Anne Marie looked up into the sky and saw a bright light shooting across it.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Yes!’ she cried.
‘Wow!’
‘Was it—’
‘Yes!’
‘Amazing.’
‘We’ve seen one!’
‘Will there be more?’ she asked, feeling like a meteor addict who hadn’t quite had her fill yet and was now hooked.
‘Let’s wait and see.’
She felt him squeeze her hand under the blanket and she squeezed right back. It felt as if there was nothing else in the world but the two of them and this moment. There they were, safely cocooned in the walled garden, gazing up into the magical world of the sky and, for a few blissful moments, Anne Marie was able to forget the fact that she was the second-best second daughter, and a failed second wife. Sitting there with Cape, she felt nothing but the best.
They waited for what seemed like an eternity, but was, in fact, only another forty minutes.
‘I don’t think we’re going to get lucky again,’ Anne Marie said.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Cape said. ‘I feel pretty lucky sitting here with you.’
She turned to face him and felt the sweet heat of his mouth upon hers.
‘I know you don’t want to go anywhere with this,’ he whispered.
‘Did I say that?’
‘I think you did.’
‘I might have been mistaken,’ she confessed.
‘Yeah?’
‘Might have.’ She pressed her forehead against his and then they both turned to look at the sky again, just as a second meteor shot across the star-studded darkness.
‘I think that means we’ve got heaven’s blessing,’ Cape whispered.
Cape dropped Anne Marie outside the bed and breakfast just after half past ten, leaning across the car to kiss her again.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes. You?’
‘Never better.’
‘Thanks for this evening.’
‘Maybe one day we’ll go out somewhere that isn’t a freezing cold garden in the middle of the night,’ he said.
‘That would be different.’
They laughed.
‘Will you be at the garden during the week?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to try to pop by and water the greenhouse.’
‘Yes, Patrick said he and the boys like to do that after school now that it’s lighter.’
They paused, neither of them seeming to want to say goodnight.
‘I’d better go,’ Anne Marie said at last.
‘I’d better let you go,’ Cape said, picking up her hand and leaning forward to kiss her again.
‘Good night,’ she managed at last, getting out of the car and finding her key to let herself in to the bed and breakfast.
‘Oh, you’re back!’ Anne Marie said when she saw Kathleen. ‘How did it go at Patrick’s?’
Kathleen nodded. ‘Yeah, good.’
‘Just good?’
‘All right then, very good. He can cook.’
‘Well, that’s always a bonus.’
‘I don’t know why I thought he’d call out for pizza or something, but he really surprised me. The boys too – they’d made chocolate mousse for dessert. It was exceptionally good!’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘When he dropped you home?’
‘We walked home. The boys came too.’
‘Oh,’ Anne Marie said and then saw a little smile spread across Kathleen’s face.
‘And Patrick made them turn their backs as we reached the gate here.’ She paused.
‘Go on! You’re killing me!’
‘And we might have had a little kiss.’
Anne Marie beamed her a smile. She could still feel Cape’s kiss on her own lips. ‘Good for you!’
Of course, Anne Marie hadn’t needed to be told that Kathleen and Patrick had shared a kiss. The minute she’d seen her friend, she’d noticed that her trademark red lipstick had disappeared.
Saying goodnight and walking upstairs to her bedroom, Anne Marie looked down at the thin gold wedding band and the tiny garnet of her engagement ring. She remembered the day Grant had presented her with it. She’d always loved garnets and it was sweet of him to remember that, but it had been hard not to be just a little disappointed with the size of the stone. Perhaps he’d subconsciously known that their union wouldn’t last and had been loath to spend any more on it than he had.
Sitting down on her bed, Anne Marie knew that it was time to take the rings off and she did so now, using a little force to pull them over her knuckles for they’d remained on her fingers since their wedding day. The skin underneath the rings was pale, deprived of sunshine for over four years. And how very bare she felt without them on. They’d become so much a part of her; she’d never even taken them off for cooking or gardening or any other chore.
‘But not any longer,’ she told herself, opening the small jewellery box she’d placed on the bedside table and putting the rings inside it.