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The van pulled into the car park, and Marie climbed down from the front seat, cheeks flushed with excitement.
‘You got everything?’
‘Yes, we’ve got some small shrubs and loads of seeds, along with planters and growing compost. I came in two pounds under budget.’
‘And you didn’t buy yourself an ice cream?’ Alex walked to the back of the van, waiting for Eammon to open the doors.
‘I bought her an ice cream.’
Eammon grinned, and Alex wished suddenly that he’d volunteered to drive. He’d missed his chance to play the gentleman.
He started to haul one of the heavy bags of compost out of the back of the van, finding that it was more effort than he’d expected to throw it over his shoulder. He and Eammon stacked the bags in the courtyard while Marie unloaded the planters from the van.
‘What do you think? I was hoping that less might be more.’
She’d arranged some of the planters in a group and was surveying them thoughtfully. There was a mix of colours and styles. Some large clay pots, a few blue-glazed ones, which were obviously the most expensive, and some recycled plant tubs, which were mostly grey but contained random swirls of colour. Each brought out the best in the others.
‘They’re going to look great.’
Alex picked up two of the heavier clay pots and Eammon took the pot that Marie had picked up, telling her to bring the lighter plastic tubs through.
Another opportunity for gallantry missed. Alex had carefully avoided any such gestures, reckoning that they might be construed as being the result of the kiss that they’d both decided to ignore, but he reckoned if they were okay for Eammon then they were probably permissible for him, too.
* * *
Alex was clearly struggling with his role at the clinic. If he’d worked for this then he would have seen it as the realisation of a lifetime’s ambition, but it had all fallen so easily into his lap. The inheritance had left him without anything to strive for and it was destroying him.
Marie’s ambitions had always been small: helping her mother cope with the pressures of four young children and a job, then making a life for herself and keeping an eye on her younger brothers. But at least they were simple and relatively easily fulfilled.
After they’d unloaded the van, carrying everything through to the courtyard and stacking it neatly, Alex seemed in no particular hurry to get back to his office. Marie asked him if he wanted to help and he nodded quietly.
She set out the seed trays, filling them with compost, and Alex sorted through the packets. Then they got to work, sitting on a pair of upturned crates that Alex had fetched.
‘So...tell me again what country your great-grandfather was the king of?’
They’d worked in near silence for over an hour, and now that everyone had gone home for the evening they were alone. Marie had been regretting her reaction to Alex’s disclosure about his family, and the subject had become a bit of a no-go area between them.
Alex looked up at her questioningly. ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t exist any more.’
‘I’m just curious. And... I feel sorry about giving you a hard time when you told me about it.’
‘It’s nothing.’ He puffed out breath and then relented. ‘Belkraine. My great-grandfather was Rudolf the Most Excellent and Magnificent, King of Belkraine. Modesty doesn’t run in the family.’
‘I guess if you’ve got a few squillion in cash and a palace then you don’t need to be modest...’ She paused. ‘Did he have a palace?’
‘Why stop at one when you can have several? The old Summer Palace still exists; it’s near the border between Austria and Italy.’
‘Have you ever been there?’
His lip curled slightly. ‘It was my father’s idea of a summer holiday. We’d go there every year, for a tour of what was supposed to be our birthright. It was excruciating.’
Alex sounded bitter. He wasn’t a man who held on to bad feelings, so this must be something that ran deep with him.
‘I’d be interested to see where my ancestors lived. Although I can say pretty definitely that it wasn’t in a palace.’
‘I guess it’s an interesting place. It’s been restored now, and it’s very much the way it was when my great-grandparents lived there. Unfortunately my father used to insist on pointing at everything and telling my mother and me in a very loud voice that all this was really ours and that we’d been exiled to a life of poverty.’
‘Ouch.’
