Chapter 24
‘How are you feeling?’
Miranda waved and strode across the farm shop courtyard. Meg had been admiring the masses of pretty floral bouquets wrapped in brown paper by the door outside the farm shop.
‘Come and pick your own with me if you like. I’m just grabbing a morning snack for me and Beth and then I’m heading up to the flower farm.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. We’re in the midst of chaos, as usual, but it’ll be nice to have a distraction for half an hour or so.’
Meg hesitated. ‘Oh, I should probably –’ and then stopped mid-sentence.
‘Are you meant to be somewhere?’ Miranda raised a questioning brow.
‘No. Nowhere at all.’
‘Then come and have a look. I promise it’s worth it.’ Miranda held the door open and beckoned her inside. ‘Have you got shopping to do?’
‘I’ll do it on the way back. I was going to grab a coffee and read my book for a while.’
They ordered coffees and some cake – Miranda recommending the chocolate-covered millionaire’s shortbread – and then headed out together to the car park.
The weather was strangely warm, and Meg wound down the windows as she followed Miranda’s little car up the farm track, past the front of Applemore House itself and down a slope to an unassuming pale green door, set in a wall which was faded with age and hung with ivy.
‘I’ve brought cake,’ called Miranda as they went through the doorway, ‘And a visitor.’
‘Oh hello,’ said a tall woman in a blue and white striped Breton top and jeans.
‘Meg, this is Beth, who still hasn’t made it to Pilates, and is therefore not as limber and supple as us.’
‘Watch it, you.’ Beth grinned while taking the coffee Miranda offered her. ‘Some of us have small children to think about.’
‘Talking of Pilates,’ said Miranda, biting into a piece of shortbread and dropping crumbs everywhere, ‘I think I’m definitely getting fitter or something. I didn’t actually want to cry when I got out of bed this morning.’
‘Me too.’ Meg laughed at Miranda’s expression of surprise. ‘I went for a walk before breakfast first thing.’
‘You see,’ said Miranda, waggling her eyebrows at Beth. ‘Our bodies are temples, basically.’
‘Temples full of sugar,’ said Beth, breaking off a piece of chocolate and popping it into her mouth.
‘That still counts. I said Meg could come and have a look around. She’s staying down at the lighthouse while Helen is away.’
‘Ah yes, Rilla told me. How’s the work for the visitor centre going? Has it started yet?’
Meg shook her head. ‘Someone turned up today to do some more measuring – well, I think that’s what they were doing – for some fencing. Well, I assume it was for fencing.’
‘You’re going to have to work on your information gathering if you want to pass as an Applemore local,’ said Miranda, laughing. ‘If someone like Tom from the farm shop café or Dolina had been down there they’d have extracted all the info possible.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
Miranda took her for a guided tour of the walled garden that made up the Applemore Flower Farm. There were neat rows of tulips and nodding blue muscari, structures of hazel wood and twine ready for sweet peas to grow up, and forget-me-nots massed together like tiny blue pinpricks.
‘This is so beautiful. I can’t believe all this is hiding behind that wall.’
‘It’s magic, isn’t it? We’re flat out at this time of year, of course.’
Meg put a hand to her chest as her heart seemed to swell behind her ribs. ‘This makes me miss my garden.’
‘Oh – are you a gardener too?’ Miranda reached down to pull out a piece of chickweed, which was strangling a delphinium shoot.
‘Not on this scale, but yes.’
‘This place saved my sanity.’ Miranda paused and looked across the rows of plants, a thoughtful expression on her face. ‘Gardening is like therapy.’
‘It really is. I wouldn’t have survived my –’ Meg stopped mid-sentence. ‘Gardening kept me going.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Miranda. ‘There’s something about getting your hands dirty that just seems to clear your mind.’
‘Someone else said that to me recently,’ Meg said, thinking of Gabe.
‘Someone?’ Miranda cocked her head and narrowed her eyes.
Meg couldn’t help smiling. ‘Just someone I met.’
‘Well, whoever it is, they seem to be making you smile, so that has to be a good thing, given everything.’ Miranda started walking and Meg fell into step beside her as they strolled down towards an ancient, gnarled apple tree.
‘I think you’re probably right.’ Meg said, putting a hand on the thick branch and feeling the undulations of the bark on her palm. ‘I spent a long time being miserable.’
She surprised herself by saying it aloud. She instinctively liked Miranda, which is probably why the words had popped out of her mouth unbidden. Living by herself down in the lighthouse cottage she’d been surprised to find herself looking for connection and a chance to talk in a way that was completely alien to her. But there was something in Miranda’s easy, laid-back humour that lent itself to the promise of friendship. Helen had told her on the phone the other day that Miranda, too, had experienced her fair share of hard times.
Miranda looked at her for a moment. ‘Yeah, I’ve been there. You said the other day it was complicated?’
Meg hesitated for a moment.
‘Sorry,’ said Miranda, ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’
‘You’re not at all. It was complicated in some ways, and very simple, really in others. I think what it boils down to is that in an awful way Michael dying freed me, and that was hard to get my head around. It sounds so callous, doesn’t it?’
She’d found an ancient album of photos on the shelf in Helen’s sitting room the other day and opened it to discover pictures from more than twenty-five years ago. Photos of her wedding, where an anxious-faced young version of herself looked back at her. She’d looked at Michael for a moment, staring hard at the man in the suit who was smiling for Helen’s camera, and felt unexpected compassion for him.
‘Not really,’ said Miranda, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. ‘I mean it’s a shame he’s dead, but if he wasn’t, do you think you’d have left him?’
Meg frowned. ‘The person I am now would like to say yes?’ She rubbed her forehead and thought for a moment. ‘The man I married… he spent his whole life wanting more. I realised that afterwards. Nothing was ever enough. It was something missing in him, not something wrong with me. Once I figured that out, it was easy to let go of the past.’
‘That makes a lot of sense.’
‘The most complicated thing is dealing with people’s expectations of what a widow should be.’ Meg rubbed her chin.
‘That’s not your problem, though. Believe me.’ Miranda motioned to her colourful, hippy-ish outfit. ‘People will always find a reason to judge you for what you wear or what you do or how you behave.’
‘I’m beginning to realise the secret is not to care.’
‘It’s the secret to living in a small town where everyone thinks they know everything, definitely.’ Miranda raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s a lot more goes on that people don’t notice, mind you.’
Meg thought of the young teenagers passing notes via the lighthouse library that morning, and the young girl furtively taking the eggs.
‘I think you’re probably right.’
‘Oh,’ Miranda grinned. ‘Believe me, I am. There’s all sorts of stuff going on around here and the gossips like Dolina – who means well, but can’t keep her mouth shut – don’t have a clue about it. Saying that, I wouldn’t put it past her to sign up for online dating in the area just so she could see who was on the market.’
Meg gave a gasp of horrified laughter. ‘She would not?’
Miranda giggled. ‘I hope not. But I can tell you that online dating in the Applemore area is not the most edifying experience.’
‘Oh heavens.’ Meg’s eyes widened in horror. ‘I couldn’t do that in a million years.’
‘Probably just as well. I tell you what, every time a half decent man turns up in Applemore they end up snapped up by one of the Fraser women. It’s ridiculous.’
‘What are you saying about us Frasers?’ Beth, wielding a pair of secateurs, appeared.
‘Nothing at all,’ teased Miranda. ‘Just telling Meg that now you lot are all paired up there might be half a chance for the other single women in the village.’
Beth snorted with amusement. ‘Two of us,’ she said, shaking her head as she spoke to Meg. ‘I met Jack when he came to set up the outdoor centre, and Charlotte met Rob in Edinburgh. Lachlan already knew Rilla from when we were young.’
‘Do you have to shoot holes in my theory?’ Miranda rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘Oh, she’s got a point, though. Harry grew up in Applemore, so Polly didn’t really take him off the market…’
‘No, more that everyone else could see it and they couldn’t. Anyway, now that I’ve disproved Miranda’s mad theory that we are some sort of gaggle of man-stealing maniacs, I’m going to cut back the water shoots on this apple tree. It’s far too late, but hopefully I won’t kill it off.’ Beth waved the secateurs at Miranda with a mock threatening expression.
‘And I’d better let you get on with some work.’ Meg realised she was keeping Miranda back from the never-ending list of things to be done in the garden in spring.