A Family of His Own

‘She’s placed her infant in what she believes is a safe haven, Amy. Surely she’s going to put as much distance between them as she can?’

‘Not until she’s sure. She’ll stay close until she’s certain her baby is safe.’

‘How will that help? We have no idea what she looks like.’

She frowned. ‘Maybe we don’t need to. She’s left all her money with Lucy. She’ll be weak. Hungry. In a pretty bad way. We need to search the lanes around Lucy’s cottage, Jake. There’s no time to lose.’

CHAPTER ONE

“If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries…”

William Shakespeare

IT WAS hot for the end of September. A cloudless, still day with only the blackberries to warn that summer was almost over.

Huge glistening fruit that was infuriatingly out of reach.

Kay rubbed the sweat from her forehead, fanned herself with her tattered straw gardening hat and walked slowly back along the hedge, seeking out any that she’d missed, trying to ignore the long brambles lolling over the high wall that skirted the far side of the lane. Brambles weighed down by berries, but which still just evaded the reach of her walking stick.

‘Come on, Polly, this will have to do,’ she said, after scanning the hedge one last time.

‘Have you got enough?’ her daughter asked, looking doubtfully at the pitiful quantity they’d gathered.

‘There aren’t any more. I’m afraid the harvest-supper pies will have to be more apple than blackberry this year.’

Polly’s little face wrinkled up in a frown. ‘But there are loads up there,’ she said, pointing at the top of the wall.

‘I know, poppet, but I can’t reach them.’

‘You could get them down from the other side. Why don’t you go through the gate? No one lives there. Someone’s put up a For Sale sign,’ she added, as if that settled the matter.

How simple life was when you were six years old! But Polly was right about one thing. Linden Lodge had been empty for as long as she’d lived in Upper Haughton.

From her bedroom window she had tantalising glimpses of the wilderness hidden behind the high walls. The roof of an ornamental summer house collapsing beneath the unrestrained vigour of a Clematis montana. Roses running wild. Blossom on trees where, year after year, the ripened fruit had been left to fall and rot in the grass. It was like a secret garden from a fairy tale, locked away, hidden, sleeping. Just waiting for the right person to venture inside, bring it back to life.

It would take more than a kiss, she thought.

When she didn’t answer, Polly, with all the persistence of a six-year-old on a mission, said, ‘They’re for the harvest supper.’

‘What?’

Polly gave a huge sigh. ‘The blackberries, of course. Everyone in the village is supposed to give something.’

‘Oh, yes.’ That was the plan. Everyone contributed to the harvest supper that brought the whole village together in a celebration of the year; a tradition linking them back to the agricultural past of the village.

Her reluctance to try the gate was ridiculous, she knew. If she didn’t pick it the fruit would just shrivel up. Which would be a wicked waste.

‘You could put a note through the door to say thank you,’ Polly said.

Kay found herself smiling. ‘A thank-you note? Who to?’

‘Whoever buys the house. And I’ll draw a picture of the pies so that when they move in they’ll be happy that their blackberries didn’t go to waste,’ she said, tugging impatiently at her hand and leading her towards the gate. It wasn’t actually a gate, as such, but a gardener’s door set into the wall, the faded green paint cracking and peeling in the afternoon sun, neglected as the garden.

‘It’ll be locked,’ she said. Of course it would be locked.

Reason might suggest that she was doing the right thing but as she gripped the handle—her heart beating rather faster than normal—turned it and gave it a push, it still felt like trespassing. There was some initial resistance but then, just as she was about to back off with feelings that were a confused mixture of relief and disappointment, it shifted suddenly and flew back until it was stopped by the weeds.

A blackbird, pinking crossly at the disturbance, flew up out of the long grass, startling her, and she froze, half expecting to hear an angry voice demanding to know what the devil she thought she was doing.

It was just her conscience having its say.

Apart from the sound of her heartbeat hammering away in her ears, only the murmurous hum of bees busily working the vivid clumps of old-fashioned late-summer perennials, stockpiling their larders against the long winter, disturbed the silence.

Blue and purple Michaelmas daisies, Rudbeckia, Sedum. The tough species, survivors that could fight their corner against the rank weeds that had invaded the borders.

It cried out to her gardener’s heart to see someone’s hard work abandoned to the ravages of nature, and nothing could now have stopped her from putting her shoulder to the gate, forcing it back against the weeds and grass that had grown against it, to take a closer look.

Dominic Ravenscar turned his back on the drawing room, the ghostly shapes of furniture hidden beneath dust covers, and stared out at the neglected garden.

It was the moment he’d most dreaded, one he’d been running from for six years, this first sight of Sara’s garden. But no matter how hard he’d run, the demons had kept pace with him until he’d finally understood that there was no place far enough to escape the pain, no shadows deep enough to hide from his memories.

The last time he’d looked through the French windows it had been late spring. The fruit trees had been in blossom, the buds were thickening in the lilac, clumps of yellow tulips were spilling their petals over the grass and Sara had been blooming too with the glow of the new life they’d created. It had still been their secret, a private joy to be hugged to themselves for a while before they shared the news once the first uncertain weeks were safely past.

A double tragedy he had kept to himself, too. After her death it had been too late to share the joy and there had been pain enough to go around without making the aching loss even harder to bear for family and friends.

This vaster emptiness was his alone.

A lax stem from the rose she’d planted to grow “around the door” tapped against the French windows, startling him, forcing him to focus on the present. It wasn’t the only thing that had run wild.

Without Sara to tend it, care for it, nature had been quick to move in and take over. Shrubs were pressing towards the house, lank and overgrown, squeezing out the perennials that were fighting a losing battle for light and air. Weeds had colonised the cracks in the stone paving and grass had grown over the stepping-stone path that curved down beyond the summer house in the direction of the kitchen garden—even that was being crushed under the weight of some climber—while beyond it he glimpsed invasive brambles scrambling unchecked over the fruit trees she’d trained against the wall.

He rested his forehead against the warm glass, closed his eyes to shut out the wreck of his garden, the wreck of his life, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest. He’d bought the house because she’d fallen in love with this garden, enclosed as it was within high walls of old, rose-coloured brick. It would be a safe place, she’d said, for their children to play.

She’d become passionate about making an old-fashioned English garden, crammed with native plants that would attract butterflies and birds. In his mind’s eye he could see her now, ignoring the rain as she set about her roses with the secateurs, catch glimpses of her with her straw hat jammed on her head to protect her fair skin from the sun as she tied the young branches of the peach tree back against the far wall to enhance the kitchen garden.

Walking amongst the fruit trees of the small orchard she’d planted.

There was no escape from the pain in darkness and he opened his eyes. And still he saw her, pulling down the brambles as if admonishing his neglect…

‘Sara…’

His mouth moved but no sound emerged, only the thudding of his heart swelling and pounding in his throat. Then he was wrenching at the door, desperate to get to her. It refused to budge and it took a moment for him to realise that it was locked, that the keys were on the kitchen table where he’d thrown them. Out of reach. Because he dared not move, dared not turn away for a second. If he took his eyes off her she’d disappear…

Instead he hammered desperately at the glass with his bunched fists, wanting her to turn around and look at him.

If she looked, if she saw him too, everything would be all right…

‘Sara!’