The Cottage in Sweet Meadow Park: A wonderfully uplifting, heartwarming read

Chapter 1

The gates to Sweet Meadow Park were impressive wrought iron affairs which might have once been painted green but were now peeling, revealing a dull black colour underneath. They appeared to be rusted shut, and the chain and padlock were weathered and dirty.

To the side of those tall main gates with their pointed, curling spikes, was a smaller one which Molly couldn’t ever remember being locked. It was currently wedged open, the bottom having gouged a groove into the pitted tarmacked path. A plaque on the wall beside it announced that the park had been officially opened over a century ago by a long-forgotten councillor.

Beyond the gates lay what had once been a popular and well-tended space, but was now more wasteland than parkland, and as Molly slipped inside, she wondered, as she so often did, what it must have looked like in its heyday. She suspected the paths would have been clear of litter, the bandstand alive with music, the flower beds bursting with colourful blooms, and the benches a welcome place to sit for a while to escape the cares of the world.

The park had once been the pride of Sweet Meadow, a green jewel in the crown of the small rural town set in the heart of the South Wales Valleys. Now though, it was little more than a place for dog walkers, for people to use as a cut-through to get from A to B, and for youngsters to congregate and get up to mischief. It had a bit of a reputation as a no-go area after dark, but Molly was sure it wasn’t as bad as people made out.

If asked (not that anyone ever did) she would claim she only visited it because it was a convenient spot to eat her sandwiches when she wanted some fresh air. The park, being only a ten-minute stroll from the estate agent’s office where she worked, was close enough to get to without impacting too much on her lunch break, yet far enough away to feel as though she’d escaped the office.

But that wasn’t the real reason she went there.

The real reason was that Molly Brown was in love.

***

The keys to the cottage clinked heavily as Molly retrieved them from her oversized shoulder bag and hefted their weight in the palm of her hand. There must be at least twenty of them attached to the old iron ring, and she wondered what they could all be for.

Three were large and old-fashioned – the kind that might unlock the door of an old castle in a fairy tale – and she ran her fingers across the ornate bow of one of them as she approached the front door, her heart hammering and her mouth dry with excitement.

Hesitating, she gazed up at the building. She had loved this place ever since she could remember. Hidden away in a quiet corner of the park, yet not too far from the main gates, the cottage peeped out from behind the stalwart trunks of a stand of ash trees. The ground floor was further concealed by lush undergrowth. By “lush” she meant overgrown, but that was a matter for another day.

Constructed out of hand-chiselled grey-brown stone and with a slate roof, it had a door in the middle and windows on either side, a pair of windows in the eaves, and an external brick and stone chimney which she fully intended to restore so she could snuggle up in front of a log fire in the winter. Although it looked small from the front, the property extended a fair way to the rear where a kitchen and pantry were located, and it had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The bathroom had made her shudder when she had peeped her head around the door. The spiders that had scuttled for cover were bigger than the cat she’d spotted lurking in the bushes outside!

Molly knew from her research that the cottage had been built not long after the park was officially opened, and she was pretty sure it hadn’t been updated much since. The outside didn’t look in too bad a condition, although the boarded-up windows didn’t do much for it, but the inside was something else, and she winced when she thought of the amount of work which needed to be done to make her dream come true.

Dado rails, butler sink (she’d keep that), fireplace with bread oven (hmm), creaking floorboards… it certainly had its fair share of period features; and some – the outdoor loo for instance, and the peeling wallpaper throughout – were less of a feature and more of a catastrophe.

At least it had running water, gas, and electricity, however she didn’t need an expert to tell her the whole place needed rewiring urgently. Which was why she’d arranged for an electrician to come tomorrow, to give her a quote. Her main worry, apart from the mountain of DIY that needed to be done, was that he wouldn’t be able to start work for several weeks, which meant that she would be spending a fortune on takeaways – because there was no question of her not moving in immediately, now she’d bought it.

Molly had been fascinated by the house ever since she could remember, and when she was little she used to love making up stories about it. Some days she used to imagine it to be the home of a princess who was hiding from her evil stepmother (along the lines of Snow White), other days it might belong to one of the three pigs – the one who lived in a house made of brick, obviously.

As she grew older and left fairy tales behind, she would imagine living there with her very own Prince Charming and filling it with children. That it had been inhabited by the park keeper and his family when Sweet Meadow had employed someone to take care of the park, added to its allure, and she imagined how magical it must have been to grow up in such a lovely place: to hang rope swings from the branches of the ancient oak trees, to play hide and seek in the woodland area, and to swim in the pond. And that was without the performances which she’d been told used to take place on the bandstand, the ice creams that could be bought from the little cafe, and the games of chase and football that would have been played on the field, and she’d vowed that one day she’d buy the house and live in it happily ever after.

That day was today.

The cottage in the park was hers. She owned it.

The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying.

‘Oi! Wotcha doing?’

Molly uttered a squeak as an old man, who had managed to creep up on her and was standing far too close for comfort, startled her. She slapped a hand to her pounding heart and frowned at him.

‘You nearly made me jump out of my skin,’ she told him accusingly, taking a step away.

‘I asked you what you’re doing. That there is private property. Bloody kids. Got no respect for nothing,’ he grumbled.

Molly cocked her head, amused. ‘You think I’m a kid?’

The old man peered at her. The scruffy white and tan terrier, whose lead he was clutching, peered at her also. ‘You can’t be more than twelve,’ he grunted.

‘I’m twenty-nine.’

‘You don’t look it.’ He narrowed his rheumy eyes and his face crumpled into folds as he scrutinised her suspiciously.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Molly said. She didn’t get many, so even one from a grumpy old man was worth having.

‘You can take it how you like,’ he replied. ‘Why are you hanging around here? Haven’t you got a job to go to? Why people can’t mind their own business, I don’t know.’

Molly stifled a laugh.

Oblivious to the irony of his own words, he added, ‘You’ve got no right to be messing about here. This is private property.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she agreed. She held up the bunch of keys. ‘It’s my private property.’

‘Are you from the council?’

‘No, I’ve bought it from them.’

‘You’ve bought Sweet Meadow Cottage? I didn’t know it was for sale.’ He sounded aggrieved, as though the council should have consulted him before they put it on the market.

Molly shrugged. Maybe they should have – she had no idea who the old man was, although she thought she might have seen his dog before. She was, after all, a regular visitor to the park and she liked dogs so she tended to notice them.

‘I picked up the keys today,’ she told him, jangling them again, in case he thought she was lying.

‘Cost much, did it?’

Molly’s eyes widened at the cheek of it. ‘Enough.’

That was an understatement. It had cost her almost everything she had. The bank owned the lion’s share of the property, but she had no intention of discussing her finances with a total stranger.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I need to get on.’ She had booked a whole week off from work precisely to collect the keys and move in. She didn’t anticipate it taking very long though, because she didn’t have much in the way of furniture. Living at home with her mum and dad meant she had a distinct lack of essentials she could bring with her to her new home, and she needed to go shopping urgently. She had also better stock up on cleaning stuff – lots and lots of cleaning stuff.

Molly aimed the key at the lock, but the old man hadn’t finished with her yet.

‘Got a fella?’ he asked.

Blimey, was he putting himself forward for the job? She had never been propositioned by such an elderly gentleman before.

‘No.’ She didn’t elaborate. Her love life wasn’t any of his business, either.

‘You wanna get yourself one,’ he carried on, oblivious to her reluctance to talk to him. ‘I wouldn’t want to live there on my own, especially if I was a pretty little thing like you.’

Another compliment? That was two in less than five minutes. She was on a roll…

She should have thanked him for his concern, opened the door and gone inside, but she simply couldn’t. She had to know. ‘Why? Is the cottage haunted?’

The old man snorted. ‘You wish! Ghosts would be the least of your worries. What you need to worry about is youffs.’

‘Youffs?’

‘Aye. The blighters hang around the park, getting up to no good and making trouble. I blame the parents. And the school. The police need to pull their finger out and get it sorted. In my day, they would have got a clip around the ear. And the council has a lot to answer for, letting it go to rack and ruin.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I don’t envy you,’ he finished, his tone ominous.

‘I’m sure it’s not that bad,’ she said.

‘You’ll see.’

Concealing a frustrated sigh, Molly turned her attention to the door. Her parents had displayed a similar reaction when she’d told them she intended to buy the cottage, and they couldn’t see the vision she had for it, either. Yes, it would take work and yes, it would take money, but when she’d finished renovating it this cottage would be the epitome of cute. It was halfway there already but luckily for her, people hadn’t been able to see past the boarded-up windows, the ivy crawling up the outside, and the weeds choking the path. Because if anyone else had spotted its potential she would never have been able to afford to buy it, as someone would surely have trumped her offer.

Heavy breathing made her hesitate, and she glanced over her shoulder.

The old man hadn’t moved and was watching her with great interest. As was his dog, who was staring at her with brown button eyes, his folded ears pricked, his head cocked to the side.

‘There’s not a lot to see,’ she said. ‘It’s really dark inside.’ She pointed to a window. ‘Boarded up.’

‘I can see that for myself. I’m not stupid.’

‘I didn’t say you were. I thought you might have been hoping for a gander.’

‘I’m not interested and I’m not being nosy. I just want to make sure the roof doesn’t fall on your head.’

‘It won’t.’

‘An architect, are you?’ he snorted.

‘An estate agent, actually.’

The old man chortled. ‘I’d have thought you would have known better than to buy this eyesore if you really are an estate agent.’

‘I really am. Now, you must excuse me, I have lots to do.’

This time he guffawed. ‘You can say that again.’

Ignoring her audience and with her heart in her mouth, she fitted the key into the lock and turned it. The door opened with considerably less protest than when she’d come to view the place a couple of months ago, and she took it as a good sign.

What wasn’t such a good sign was the pigeon that flapped about her head in a frenzy of feathers. The dog let off a volley of excited barks, and Molly screamed in shock as the bird flew off after depositing a nasty wet dollop on her shoulder.

‘Ew.’ Molly wrinkled her nose and peered at the splodge on her T-shirt, wondering whether she had any tissues in her bag.

‘That’s lucky, that is,’ the man said, after he’d shushed his dog. The terrier glared into the branches of a tree, and the pigeon calmly stared down at it. Molly had a feeling it was laughing.

‘What’s lucky? Being pooped on by a bird?’ She didn’t think it was lucky at all. Blimmin’ annoying, that’s what it was.

‘Nah, it’s lucky you let it out. It might have died in there and the stench would have been awful.’

Thanks for that, she thought, hoping to goodness there weren’t any more birds in the cottage, dead or alive.

She rooted around in her bag for a tissue, muttering darkly to herself. There must be one in here somewhere…?

‘Here, have this.’ The man pulled a hanky out of his pocket. It looked clean and she was about to accept his offer, with the promise of laundering it before returning it to him, but she hastily changed her mind when he spat on it. ‘That should get most of it off,’ he said.

‘It’s OK, I’ll manage. Thanks all the same.’ She pressed the flashlight app on her phone and held it up, illuminating a small dingy hallway. ‘Nice meeting you,’ she said, expecting him to walk off and leave her in peace. But she thought he was going to follow her inside when he took a step towards her, and she hastily backed away.

‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.

‘Why do you want to know?’

He grinned at her, revealing a row of yellowing teeth. ‘I want to know your name because we’re going to be friends.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes.’ He sounded very sure of himself.

‘Er, right, yeah… um… hi, I’m Molly.’

‘Bill,’ he announced. ‘And this is Patch.’ And without another word, the old man turned on his heel and was off, shuffling down the path at a rate of knots.

Bemused, Molly watched him go. Then she turned her attention back to the cottage and a smile crept over her face as she hugged herself in glee.

If she had thought she was in love before, she realised she was utterly besotted now.