Chapter 10
10
Zofia’s cottage, Rosehill
Blooms and bad judgement
Wednesday
W hen I reached Zofia, not only was she free for a mid-afternoon visit to her garden, she was also about to pass the end of the lane, so in no time at all she arrived to pick me up. Now we’re flying inland towards the village of Rosehill along narrow country lanes with endless high hedges. Unlike Miles, Zofia doesn’t have the problem of a car that is silent.
She yells across to where I’m sitting on the weathered blue leather of the passenger seat. ‘Don’t you just love my trusty old Alpha? It’s the only car that roars louder than Status Quo.’ She crashes through the gears. ‘It’s terrible for guzzling the gas, but Aleksy has electric vans, so our carbon footprint is not so bad.’ She slews into a sliding skid around the next corner, and as we drift to a halt in front of a monumental gateway flanked by high stone walls, some ancient timber gates swing open.
‘Automatic gates were Aleksy’s first job when we arrived ten years ago.’
As she pulls into a broad gravelled area, I’m frowning at the long house built of fudge-coloured stone and mentally waving goodbye to the cottage garden photos I’ve secretly been hoping for.
‘Welcome to Bird’s Nest Hall.’ Zofia rolls her eyes. ‘If ever I say small, I’m being ironic. When you see the roof, you will understand why the name is a joke too.’
I look up at the prickly straw of the eaves. ‘A thatched house so big it could belong to the beanstalk giant.’
As we climb out of the Alpha, Zofia waves her hand towards the wall. ‘We came down from London to work on the Cornish gold rush and ended up here. I will show you the inside after the work is done.’ She beckons me to follow. ‘The house is not important, I bought it for what is on the other side.’
We make our way around the house gable, and when we emerge into the splash of sunlight on the front of the house I gasp. ‘A walled garden!’
Zofia’s voice has softened. ‘That’s what I fell in love with. It’s a physic garden!’
I’ve heard of these before. ‘Is that where the plants have to be medicinal, herbal, or edible?’
She nods. ‘The oldest ones date back to the sixteen hundreds, which was probably when this house originated, although the box hedges are newly planted in the old pattern.’
The grass between the beds is soft under our feet, and there is a central path, with bushes bursting into bloom along each side, and beyond that there are borders. There are so many long views and close-up shots to take as I reach for my phone I hardly know where to begin.
‘Lavender plants always look so beautiful when they’re in a line.’ I crush a sprig between my fingers, then breathe in the deep, oily scent. ‘You have all my favourites here– bay, feverfew, viola, lemon balm, rosemary, jasmine, evening primrose.’ They’re arranged in groups, repeating further along the borders, which are bursting. ‘Everywhere I look there’s another favourite.’
Zofia raises her eyebrows. ‘It’s nice to meet someone who knows their plants!’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘I learned the names from my mum. I’m definitely not a gardener myself, I’m more of a fan girl.’
Zofia smiles. ‘Did you know there are three hundred different types of thyme? It’s my challenge to have as many different varieties as I can. And it’s not limited to herbs– we have roses and perennial geraniums and apple and pear trees, and a rhubarb area.’
‘Do you grow plants from seed?’
She nods. ‘I do, but I propagate from cuttings too. We have restored the greenhouses in the old kitchen garden on the other side of the wall. The bigger borders are there, with beds for growing on.’ Her eyes are shining as she leads me to a wide door and a whole new view beyond. ‘I pour the money into the garden, not the house. I tell Aleksy, a garden takes longer to make; his building work can be done at the end, and that way we will finish together.’
I’m pointing at a long border bursting with yellow and orange flowers. ‘Your marigolds?’
‘I love those especially. A friend harvests and dries the flowers to use in her healing pomades.’ She leads the way to aseries of tables by the garden edge covered with hundreds of small pots, each containing a tiny plant. ‘So far I’ve grown new plants to fill the garden as it grew, but my true dream is to have my physic garden open to the public with a plant nursery alongside.’
There’s so much excitement surging through me I’m flapping my hands. ‘Zofia, you’re ticking every box for a feature piece in the magazine!’ I’m tugging at her sleeve. ‘An ancient restored walled garden where the owner propagates all her own stock, growing plants for self-healing and aspiring to have her own nursery business? Tell me I can run it past my boss, Fenna?’
‘Of course! I’d be honoured!’
I’m leaning against her, collapsing with relief at what I’ve stumbled across. ‘Cosmos and zinnias and nasturtiums and cornflowers and love-in-a-mist. There’s something amazing about a sea of mixed flowers…’ I break off mid-sentence, but someone takes my thought and runs on with it.
‘The way they sway, and rustle like water in the wind…’
I turn to smile at Zofia for getting it so right, but then I realise the voice is deeper than hers and she’s not moving her lips.
There’s a laugh on the other side of the wall, and a second later, Miles comes sauntering through the doorway, cool as a courgette that’s been in the chiller tray.
As usual, he gets in first. ‘I thought I’d find you in the second garden. It’s exactly as you said, Zofia.’ He raises one eyebrow. ‘Sorry for creeping up on you. It’s so wonderful I had to join in with your visit, Betty Beth.’
‘Forget about the creeping, why are you here at all, Miles? You’re hijacking my tour!’
I know that when I’m so close to solving my immediate career and cashflow problem I should let this go, but as my main reason to come was to stay out of Miles’s way, I can’t stay quiet.
Zofia shakes her head. ‘This is down to me. When I met Miles in town on my way to pick you up he asked if he could come too, so I thought two birds with one stone– my Boathouse Cottage people can enjoy it together.’ She’s looking from Miles to me and back again. ‘And I am right. You do love it; it touches both your hearts in the way I knew it would.’
I’m organising my reply to that when I see that Miles is staring down at my leg.
‘Is there a rip in your dress?’
I give up. ‘It’s not a dress, Miles, it’s a skirt– at least the top layer you’re talking about is.’ I carry on. ‘It is slightly torn, yes, but I mended it as best I could, and the fabric is so pretty I couldn’t bear to throw it away.’
He’s squinting down. ‘I thought maybe you’d caught it on a rose thorn.’
I shake my head. ‘No, it’s a hole that was already there when I bought it in the charity shop. I may not choose it if I were going for an afternoon at the palace, but for a last-minute outing three mins up the road I decided Zofia might like the daisy print so much she’d overlook the flaw. Can the fashion police forgive that blunder?’
Miles is staring at the sky. ‘I was being concerned, not picky.’
‘Great! In that case, thank you.’ I clap my hands and take a jump towards the most distant corner of the garden. ‘Espalier pears! My mum loved those too. I must take a closer look!’
Miles grins. ‘Anything that interesting I have to see. Shall we all go?’
I frown. ‘As it’s personal to me, you’ll probably get more out of watching the wind on the marigolds.’
He’s still looking hopeful. ‘That’s a hard “no” then, Bethy?’
I nod. ‘I won’t be long.’
I’m not sure what it is about Miles that makes me so agitated when I don’t give a toss about him or what he thinks about me. Before he arrived, I was calm, and now every nerve in my body is on edge.
It’s exactly the same at the cottage. Even if I’m way down Pumpkin’s patch of grass, the moment Miles strolls out onto the terraces, my eyes are drawn to him, and however hard I try, I can’t look away. The only way I can rationalise this is that my sixth sense sees him as a rival rather than a housemate. You wouldn’t turn your back on a shark, would you? If he were a tiger, it would make perfect sense to watch every graceful, beautiful, hungry move, so you could save yourself before he went in to eat you.
At least walking across to the other end of the garden gives me a little distance. He’s this awful blend of super critical and insanely distant, while seriously looking straight down his nose at me at the same time. It’s as if every interaction we have has to end in a verbal scuffle. Every time we see each other, we fight.
As I reach the far wall with its neat lines of fruit tree branches and dangling pears spreading across the stonework I turn and see Zofia’s walking two steps behind me.
I sigh and smile. ‘Mum’s espalier pear was up against our kitchen wall, but it wasn’t ever neat like yours. She’d seen them growing against walls in the National Trust gardens and was determined to try for herself at home.’
Zofia considers. ‘Espaliers need a firm hand with their pruning. Scarlett told me you don’t have your mum anymore.’
I sigh again. ‘She would have loved it here. Whenever I’m anywhere especially lovely, it breaks my heart that she can’t be with me to share it. But she wanted us to live happy lives, so I try to make the most of every moment and not dwell on the sad bits.’
Zofia catches hold of my hand. ‘It means a lot to me that you feel that here. This place is very special, but I am simply a very lucky custodian taking care of it for a while.’
My smile widens. ‘And doing a very good job of it.’
She points further along the wall. ‘See, next to the pears, there’s a medlar tree. They’re very old fashioned; you don’t see them very often.’
I’m remembering GCSE English. ‘There was one of those in Romeo and Juliet .’
‘We must mention that to Miles.’ Zofia comes in closer and lowers her voice. ‘You have noticed that he can’t keep his eyes off you?’
I roll my eyes. ‘We all know how straight guys are with women’s chests. That’s how we don’t die out as a species.’
‘It’s not your boobs, it’s your face. You do know what it means when a man stares at your mouth?’
I have to put a stop to this. ‘I honestly haven’t seen that. And I also absolutely know he never would.’
I’d never planned to share my total humiliation at Scarlett’s wedding, but if Zofia needs an explanation to stop her imagination from running away with this, so be it.
‘Zofia, Miles and I have more history than you realise. A few years ago, at a family event, Miles went out of his way to avoid me, and upset other people a lot more than me with what he did.’ I give Zofia a moment to take that in. ‘That’s how I know– you’re not just wildly off the mark, you’re categorically and absolutely , completely mistaken.’
Zofia frowns. ‘Believe me, I’m old enough to have seen it all before. I’m almost never wrong.’
I laugh. ‘I’m going to be the exception to your rule. I’ve never met anyone I argue with so much.’
She laughs. ‘You can’t deny he is very pretty.’
I sniff. ‘Not on the inside. They’re the worst kind.’
She’s looking at me through half closed eyes. ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’
If Zofia’s this instinctive, I may need to go a little further to make my point.
I make my smile bright. ‘I’ve actually given up on men, but that’s a story for another day.’
Zofia’s eyebrows go up. ‘Or you could save time and tell me now…’
It’s incredible how often I have to justify that I’m on my own. I’m actually terrified that if I don’t and lower my guard the truth might slip out accidentally. If anyone knew that I’m the kind of weak person who let a situation get so out of control that someone broke my wrist, I’d never hold my head up again. I mean, if I still feel like it was all my fault, everyone else would too. It’s still a bit beyond me, how I willingly walked into a room with someone who turned on me like that.
It’s always good to start off with the truth. ‘Our dad left when Scarlett and I were small, and after that my mum never had another long-term partner.’
Zofia’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘ What?! No one at all?’
I shrug. ‘She always had dates, but she never met anyone she liked enough to be a keeper.’ I wrinkle my nose as I remember the reasons she’d give for moving on. Not putting butter all the way to the edge of their toast. The ‘a’ in bath being too long. Mustard yellow socks. Not buying free range eggs. As a teenager I found her pickiness as off-the-scale annoying as it was absurd. It actually drove me round the bend more than Scarlett and her seamless line of ‘steady boyfriends’. I look for a way to sum up. ‘I suppose Mum was an idealist who didn’t want to settle for anything less than perfect.’
Zofia nods. ‘And do you have the same high standards?’
It comes out as a snort. ‘Hell no! After how that worked out for her, I went for all the fun and none of the judgement.’
Zofia’s eyes light up. ‘More boyfriends than hot pasties?’
‘That’s the one.’ I pull a face, because it’s still all true, but out loud it sounds a bit much. ‘Lines of the things. More names than you’d fit on an A4 sheet if you wrote in teensy writing. And I had a ball along the way. But now I’ve left all that behind.’
I’m winding my way around to the speech I’ve polished that covers the truth like an invisibility cloak.
I blow out my cheeks. ‘A new boyfriend every week sounds great, but one day it hit me that I was wasting my energy on wasters. That the fun wasn’t fun anymore. That without the guys and the parties, I’d achieve so much more. So I moved on to better things, and here we are.’
When I add in a ta-da twirl this usually works like a dream to give my non-negotiable-single state a positive shine, and I’m desperately hoping Zofia will buy into it the same way everyone else does.
She watches me come out of my final spin. ‘And how’s this workaholic celibacy working out for you?’
I give her a wink. ‘I prefer to call it professional focus. And since it re-booted my writing work, it has a lot going for it.’
I link my arm through hers and we make our way back across the garden, stopping for photos as we go. By the time we get back to where Miles is standing, I’ve got all the shots I need for now.
I smile across at her. ‘If you don’t mind taking me back to the cottage, Zofia, I’ll get onto Fenna straight away and see if we can get the go-ahead on the idea. Then I can come back for longer to do the piece itself.’
Zofia gives me another searching stare. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay for tea?’
Miles steps towards us. ‘I need to go now too. We can save you the drive, and go together.’
My heart sinks. ‘I’ll walk back.’ I take in his doubtful expression and know I need a better excuse. ‘I travel in the slow lane, Miles. Zofia mentioned you drive like you’re in “Need for Speed”.’
Miles shakes his head. ‘Zofia is legendary in St Aidan for how many times she’s put her car in hedges. If you survived the journey here, driving back with me will be like falling off a wall– in the best possible way.’ He’s still looking at me. ‘It’s five minutes at ten miles an hour. Put your big girl hat on, Betsy Beth, and live dangerously for once.’
Zofia is beaming at me. ‘Well, that’s settled then! Off you both go, and come back very soon!’
And just like that I’m overruled.