Page 36 of The Twilight Garden

‘Voices? Oh… it was the radio. I turned it off. And of course you’re not interrupting anything. How could you be interrupting?’ She smiled, but she looked more ruffled than puzzled. ‘It’s lovely to see you, in fact. Have you got some news? There’s what looks like it might be a twinkle in your eye.’

‘We found the house,’ said Gemma, grinning from ear to ear. ‘And you’ll never guess which one it is…’

She followed Ashley through to the kitchen and quickly filled her in on all that they had discovered over the last day or so.

‘I’ve also found an interesting article today which I want to follow up, and a few more photos, but I need to get them printed off. And possibly enlarged, although that might make the definition even worse. I’m not sure what kind of equipment the library has but I’m hoping they might be able to help.’

‘I can do them for you,’ replied Ashley. ‘We’ve got a printer upstairs.’

‘Oh… that’s perfect then,’ replied Gemma, surprised. She opened up her laptop and swivelled it around. ‘I don’t want to take all your ink, but if you could just do these two to start with, that would be a big help.’

‘Maybe if you screenshot them first and email them to me, I can try and enlarge them from that. We’ve got an A3 printer – it’s my husband’s. I’ll have a look anyway.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks so much.’

‘Wait here, I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Before you go, there is one more thing I wanted to ask you.’

‘Oh…?’

‘Just that I wondered… When we met before you said you didn’t work or anything, and if you’ve got a bit of time on your hands… I’m obviously not able to spend too long on my feet at the moment, so it wouldn’t be straight away, and I want to plan a little more as well, but once I get going on the actual garden there’ll be a lot of work to do.’

‘Are you asking me to help out?’ said Ashley, her eyes bright with excitement.

‘Yes, if you think you⁠—’

‘Oh God, I’d love to.’ She clasped her hands together. ‘That would be brilliant!’

13

APRIL

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

​— ​HENRI MATISSE

Sweet peas, clarkia, love-in-a-mist, cornflowers, poppies, cosmea, scabious and lilies…

Gemma looked up from her list and smiled. ‘Oh, and roses,’ she murmured to herself. ‘How could I forget roses?’

She made another note, the book she had been writing them in now almost full, overflowing with ideas and (very badly) hand-drawn maps and sketches. How many of these ideas would come to fruition was yet to be seen, but it was more a point of capturing them so that Gemma didn’t forget them. They came to her at all times of the day, quite often at four in the morning during the gentle dreaming time in which she so often found herself.

Of course there was another reason for writing them all down – it was the only thing which made Gemma feel as if she was marginally in control. There was so much to be done and, now that the initial excitement had died down a little, she was beginning to feel overwhelmed by all that was ahead of her. She was getting better at managing her impatience though, turning to Rowan’s words whenever she felt panicked by the lack of speed at which things were progressing. What is this thing we all have with time? It was true. She needed to stop trying to rush it and instead stand still in the moment and notice what it brought. Gardens were never really finished. They evolved and grew, changed and changed again. Mother Nature decided much of it, but almost as much was trial and error. And that was the beauty of it. She must remember that. Her garden would not be finished this year. It might not be finished the next and, in all likelihood, in six months’ time she would be gone. So in the meantime, she would live alongside the garden, through the months that followed, a constant companion to her daily life. It was, categorically, not a chore to be finished, but a lifelong work, and one which she would hand over to Willow in due course.

She closed the book she had been reading and stowed it away in her bag. The queue at the desk had gone now, and with any luck the librarian would have been able to print off copies of the documents she had asked for. There was also a much bigger prospect waiting for her behind the desk. A copy of Cornwall’s Secret Gardens – the book which Gemma had found listed on an obscure website when she had last been in the tearoom.

After virtually a whole day of searching, she had managed to locate a copy of it online, at a second-hand and antiquarian dealer, but the cover price of a hundred and sixty pounds was beyond them. So the search had been resumed, through the library this time, and although it had taken almost two weeks, this morning’s email announcing its arrival had brought that same flush of excitement which Gemma had felt in the early days of their discovery.

Hannah was on duty as Gemma reached the desk, and the librarian smiled, picking up a sheaf of papers which lay on the counter.

‘All done,’ she said, handing them to Gemma to look through. ‘Is that everything?’

Gemma nodded. Hannah had been incredibly helpful, directing her to the library’s ancient but useful microfiche reader, as well as a whole host of other resources she could use to help her find what she was looking for. And she seemed genuinely interested in her research, eagerly asking for updates whenever she saw Gemma. Now, she pulled out the book which Gemma had been waiting for from under the counter and pushed it towards her as if it was the holy grail.

‘Well, here it is… finally,’ she said. ‘I really hope it’s going to be useful.’

Gemma grinned. ‘So do I. There are going to be some very disappointed people back home if it isn’t, me included.’ She tapped the book’s cover. ‘I almost daren’t look inside, in case it’s not what we hoped for.’