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As she waited for her tea to arrive, memories flooded back of her only maternal relative – her wavy hair the colour of early morning mist, worn long but pinned into an elegant chignon, face devoid of entrenched creases, her hazel eyes enhanced with the same golden flecks as Rosie’s own. She could almost smell the lavender scent her Aunt Bernice had favoured. She missed her dreadfully, just as much as she missed her beloved mother.
‘Oh, thank you, that’s exactly what I need.’
She smiled at the young waitress, in a black dress and white frilled apron, who placed a silver tea tray down in front of her, complete with the essential pot of hot water. When she had finished pouring, she took a sip of her tea and for some unknown reason, she was ambushed by a surge of panic as she realised that, if she were her mother, she would have a mere fourteen years left to discover the happiness her mother had found with her father.
Tears smarted at her eyes, and she surreptitiously dabbed them away with her napkin.
Should she grab Angus’s offer and place her aunt’s estate and the probate formalities in his capable hands and agree to market the cottage immediately? Then, when she got back to New York, she would be free to utilise her famously obsessional tendencies to locate the next eligible guy instead of focussing on the next potential shares windfall.
Or had her aunt left her beloved cottage to her, and only her, in the hope that she would keep it, maybe use it again as a bolthole when things in New York became too much. Or did her aunt intend for her to live there? God, no way! Despite her temporary foray into the pages of a Regency-era novel in Angus’soffice, she had no inclination to settle down in an English rural backwater. For one thing, the cobbles ruined her shoes.
She made a decision. She would accept Angus’s kind offer of his services, which meant all that was left for her to do was advise Susan of her inheritance and say goodbye to Emily.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Hi, Em, it’s only me.’
Rosie pushed open the sunflower-yellow front door to Emily and Nick’s imposing Victorian stone semi in Cranbury, a larger village two miles away from Somersby. It boasted not only a village shop and post office but a pub – the quirkily named Dancing Duck overlooking the village green – a little French bistro, and an eighteenth-century parish church, St George’s, the hub of the village community.
A whole year had passed since Rosie had visited Elmwood View, but nothing had changed. In the entrance hallway, chaos reigned, and she was forced to hug the walls, shoes in hand, as she negotiated the debris of toddlerhood that was scattered in her path. Scooters, helmets, Lego bricks, even a toy oven complete with cooking utensils blocked her progress to the hi-tech steel and black marble kitchen, so incongruous in a one-hundred-year-old property.
‘Hi, Rosie. Grab a perch and I’ll brew us some coffee,’ Emily shouted from the laundry.
‘Tea please, Em.’
‘Oh yes, sorry, forgot.’
Emily emerged, her hair flying, her cheeks reddened from exertion. ‘The boys are outside in the garden. We’ve just invested in a trampoline, and I’ve been giving them a demonstration on how to use it safely. Mind if we take our drinks outside so I cansupervise the action?’ She looked down at Rosie’s heels dangling from her fingers and met her eyes with a question.
‘Outside is fine,’ Rosie assured her friend, secretly wishing she’d snatched up her aunt’s ancient green Wellingtons on the way out of the cottage that morning. As she glanced down at her favourite stilettos that she’d worn for her appointment with Angus, she realised it hadn’t occurred to her to slip a pair of sturdy boots into her travel bag when she’d shot off to the UK.
She settled into a seat next to Emily at the patio table, its patina greying from years of battering from the rain, the cries of delight from the jumping-jack boys disguising all other countryside tunes. Her friend’s back garden was as messy as the inside of her house, but it was also a suntrap and Rosie relaxed in the warmth of the spring sunshine.
‘So, how was your meeting with Mr Meadows?’ Emily enquired a tad mischievously.
Rosie couldn’t prevent her lips from curling into a smirk, giving her feelings away immediately as she recalled Angus’s handsome features and the way his shirt moulded his muscular torso.
Emily clapped her hands. ‘Dish the details, Rosie!’
Rosie smiled and provided a brief synopsis of her visit to an attentive Emily.
‘But, Rosie, are you sure he valued Willowbrook Lodge at £250,000? I’m no property expert, of course, but that does seem to be a bit on the low side. The Old Rectory in Somersby was sold just over two years ago when the Reverend Aubrey traipsed off to Uganda for £350,000. I know the housing market is depressed at the moment, but the cottage is in a better location than the Rec – i.e., not backing onto a graveyard! Nor did it have theadditional attraction of a large award-winning garden – well, Willowbrook Lodgeusedto have an award-winning garden.’
‘The lodge is very run down, Em. The windows are blistering paint and the central heating boiler’s ancient. I haven’t dared to switch it on! And, as you rightly mention, the state of the garden is atrocious. It has no kerb appeal.’
‘True, true,’ Emily flicked the sides of her bob behind her ears, ‘but the Old Rectory had no central heating at all. It needed a full electrical rewire, a new kitchen, new bathroom. Nick and I viewed it. We love Somersby but it would have cost another £50,000 to modernise the house, at least. You could spruce up the garden at the lodge a bit though without too much trouble.’
‘How can I spruce up the garden, Em? I live in New York. I can’t commute over to England to pull up weeds and oversee renovations at the weekends. I hope to have started a new job or maybe set up my own company in the next few months. I could perhaps squeeze in a long weekend at Thanksgiving but that’s seven months away. Nor can I afford the cost of the flights!’
Emily wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d love to help, Rosie but, well, as you can see, I’ve got my hands full.’ She gestured the two shrieking boys having the time of their lives. ‘Andit’s the village fair on Saturday. I promised to donate a batch of home-made chocolate crispie cakes and two dozen scones. Shame you won’t be around to come along. It’s always good fun.’
She paused.
‘But,’ she proceeded cautiously, ‘to let Willowbrook Lodge go in its current state would be an insult to Bernice’s memory. She adored that cottage and its garden. You know, she opened it to the public for charity under the National Gardens Scheme each year. She even supplied the local garden centre with unusualvarieties of herbs. Wouldn’t it be a great tribute if the garden could be nurtured back to its former glory in her honour?’
Rosie experienced a jolt of shame at the phone call she had made to Angus before she had hammered on Emily’s door, and her willingness to ditch the whole package in his hands and hare off back to Manhattan without a backwards glance. She had no idea what Bernice had intended her to do with the cottage, but did she foresee its immediate sale? Had her aunt offered her the benefit of her sage guidance and a refuge once again – in death, as in life?
‘Em, you know I—’
