They have entered a secluded garden, hidden from the house by high stone walls. It is startling not so much for its unexpected appearance, but for the flood of colour and scent that suddenly assaults Dora from every direction. The garden is in full bloom. Vivid jewel-like shades of ruby and amber, amethyst and jade swim before her. She sees red-hot pokers, tangled fuchsias, roses, sunflowers and the pinkest of asters. Helianthus and the sturdy stalks of sedum and globe thistle stand proudly alongside vivid red dahlias. Along one wall a bold hedge of blue hydrangeas nod heavy flowers sleepily in the sun. At her feet a bank of lavender thrusts its lilac flowers up towards the sky and fills her nostrils with their heady scent. She turns in amazement and glimpses flourishing bushes of rosemary, basil and mint and the blue-green leaves of sage and thyme. Beyond the herbs stands a neat vegetable patch. It bears cane towers laden with twisting bean plants and rows of sprouting green tufts that give away the secret location of onions and leeks and carrots, all carefully tucked away in their soil beds. And beyond these, against one wall leans a ramshackle greenhouse, glinting silver in the late morning sun.
It is beautiful; a picturesque kitchen garden and a tiny, private oasis where, it seems, time stands still. Dora half expects a scullery maid to bustle past her at any moment with a wide basket and scissors readied to select herbs and vegetables for the evening meal up at the house. She is reminded of the secret garden she has read about as a child; the whole landscape seems to hum with life, with colour and sound and scent. Turning in amazement she drinks more and more of it in. She sees fat bees drowsy with pollen wafting past on the breeze; butterflies dancing daintily across the flower beds and somewhere, just below the chatter and hum of insect life, lies the low, steady bubble of running water. This final enchanting sound she is able to trace to a small water lily pond set into the centre of the garden. Beside this stands an archway covered in trailing pink clematis and hidden in its shade is a low wooden bench. It is towards this seat that Cassie moves. She brushes at something invisible on the seat, and then sits herself down, patting the empty space next to her. ‘Come, sit with me.’
Dora moves across to the archway, revelling in the heady perfume of lilac blossom and basil as she goes.
‘So, what do you think of our Secret Garden then?’ Cassie asks. As she speaks she turns back to survey the garden, eyeing the rows of plants before her critically. ‘It’s my little project.’
Dora follows her line of sight. ‘Your little project?’ she asks.
‘Yes, the garden here, what do you think?’ Cassie seems amused at Dora’s disbelief.
‘It’s . . . gorgeous . . . beautiful.’ Dora struggles to find the right words to sum up something so tear-inducingly lovely. ‘Did you do this?’ Dora indicates it all with a sweep of her arm.
‘Not on my own, but yes, I did. It’s kept me pretty busy over the last few years.’
Dora is amazed. ‘Since when did you become so green-fingered?’
‘I don’t know really.’ Cassie shrugs her shoulders. ‘I just came out here one day and started digging around. It was a wreck. The whole place was covered in weeds and brambles, not to mention all the old junk from the house that had been heaped up over there.’ She points to one corner, near the greenhouse. ‘But as I started to clear a small patch, or dig out a flower bed, it became clear that underneath it all lay the bones of something really special, just waiting to take shape again. Most of the plants were still there, drowning under everything else. They were just hidden, waiting for someone to bring them to life again.’
Dora sits next to her sister on the low wooden bench and takes in the enchanting surroundings. It is hard to imagine the garden in any state other than the one of near perfection she looks at now.
‘It was Bill’s idea, actually,’ Cassie continues.
‘Bill?’ Dora is confused.
‘Yeah, old Bill Dryden. Remember, the gardener from Mum and Dad’s place?’
Of course she remembers him. ‘Bill was here?’ Dora is still confused.
‘Yes. I know. I was surprised when he turned up here. It was a bit of a shock. He said he was visiting an old friend in Oxford and wanted to look me up. Apparently Mum gave him the address here.’
‘Bill Dryden came to visit you here?’ Dora shakes her head.
‘Yes. I didn’t know what we’d talk about, to be honest. It was awkward at first. But then we just chatted about Dorset and the house and Mum and Dad, and you, and Alfie . . .’
‘You talked about me? And Alfie?’ Dora can’t keep up.
‘Yeah, nothing special. Just stuff like when we used to badger him for wheelbarrow rides; and that time we nicked all his flowerpots and canes to make jumps for our imaginary horses; and when Alfie hid in the pile of lawn cuttings and Mum went ballistic at him for traipsing grass all through the house.’ Cassie pauses. ‘Do you remember Bill showing us how to take a geranium cutting? I’d forgotten all about that, but he remembered. Such a sweet man. He died, you know?’
‘Yeah, I saw Mum a few weeks ago. She told me.’
Cassie looks at Dora with interest. ‘You saw Mum? How was that?’
‘Oh, you know. Difficult.’
Cassie is staring at her searchingly with her clear blue eyes but Dora doesn’t feel ready to expand just yet.
Cassie shrugs. ‘Anyway, you wanted to know about the garden, right? I was working as a waitress in London, just killing time really, when I met Felix. We got friendly and he invited me down here to stay. He’d just inherited the old place and didn’t really know what to do with it. I came to stay for the weekend and, to my shame, never left. Swan House became my home.’
Dora nods and wonders privately again if her sister and Felix are together.
‘Anyway, Bill came to see me, God, it must have been about five years ago now. We took a little walk around the grounds. He was the one that spotted the door into the garden here. He went off when he saw what was in here. It was a mess, but he saw beyond all of that. It was all down to him really. He was the one that could see the promise of what lay underneath it all. He suggested I get my hands dirty. “Treat it like a little project,” he said. “You look like you’ve got the time.” Cheeky beggar.’ Cassie laughs.
‘I see,’ says Dora. But she doesn’t, not really. She can’t control an unpleasant rush of bitterness that wells up inside her. While Dora has spent the last few years wrestling with guilt and grief, her sister, it appears, has been living like a character out of The Good Life; tucked away in some grand old love-nest with her hands in the soil and the sun on her hair. But then, she supposes, perhaps that’s possible when you just up sticks and leave your family behind, mired in their pain and anxiety, while you dance off into the sunset without a care in the world.
‘Anyway, it took me a few months to get up the nerve,’ Cassie continues, seemingly unaware of Dora’s surge of anger. ‘Bill’s idea kept bugging me, but I’d just walk past the gate there, and poke my nose in, but then get scared and back straight out again. Until one day I woke up and thought today’s the day. I found some old gardening gloves in a store cupboard and I came down here and started clearing brambles that very afternoon. And after a week or two Felix got me some proper tools, just a spade and secateurs . . . a trowel, a wheelbarrow. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to convince me to keep going. And the more I did, the more it sucked me in. It became my therapy, if you like.’
‘So this is the Secret Garden Felix was talking about?’ Dora asks, suddenly understanding.
‘In part, yes,’ says Cassie. ‘The garden was the starting point. We began growing vegetables and flowers. A few more friends came and joined us, helped out in the grounds, until Felix realised we couldn’t use everything ourselves. So rather than waste it we took the extra produce to the local farmers’ markets. It’s all organic, of course, and the posh old dears round here went crazy for it. Now it’s not just fruit and veg. We make jams, soups, cakes – our own-brand muesli too! Felix came up with the name “Secret Garden”.
It works rather well, don’t you think?’
Dora nods. She can see how their business taps into the current zeitgeist for all things home-grown and organic. ‘But how did you know what to do with all of this?’ she asks, still baffled at her sister’s talents. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘I read books . . . lots of books, and Bill helped. I’d write to him about what I was doing and he’d send me letters full of information and advice about different plants. He sent me sketches of herb gardens and veggie patches and so I’d learn from him too.’
‘Like a correspondence course,’ Dora muses. ‘But you’re a natural. You have green fingers. You must have got them from Granddad.’
Cassie smiles. ‘Yes. I suppose so. Now that the others help out it’s run like a cooperative, of sorts. We share the profits, and put some back into the house, for its upkeep. Felix is useless at managing the place, but we bully him into it. There’s even a supermarket chain sniffing around. They want to distribute our produce in some of their local stores, but we’re all a bit nervous about that. We don’t want to lose the essence of what we do here. It’s important to us all that we keep the business small, localised.’
‘Is Felix your boyfriend?’
Cassie lets out a snort. ‘Me and Felix? God no, he’s just a friend.’
Dora nods, unsure why her question has been met with such derision; he seemed nice enough in the short time she’d met him.
There is a brief lull in their conversation and Dora closes her eyes and breathes deeply, trying to release the tension in her neck and shoulders. Her ears fill with the sounds of insects and birds and she realises, suddenly, that it feels good to be out of London. It has been the right decision to come, no matter what follows next. She turns back to her sister, eyeing her warily before asking her next question.
‘So, you’re . . . happy then?’ Her question sounds more confrontational than she’d intended and Cassie studies her carefully for a moment, before answering.
‘Yeah, I guess I am.’ She leans back against the worn wooden slats of the bench and says with a faint smile, ‘I like it here. I’ve got my friends, and the garden to keep me busy. It’s enough for now.’
‘Mmm . . .’ says Dora. She tries to look pleased, but there it is again, that surge of bitterness churning in the pit of her stomach. She wants to know more. There are still so many things unspoken between them. Cassie, however, seems to have finished talking for the moment. She closes her eyes and turns her face to catch the sunlight and so they sit there, together on the bench in silence for a while longer before Dora summons the courage to ask her next question.
‘Cassie?’
‘Yes?’
‘I need to know why you left. You know, not exactly why you left, but why you left in that way?’ She pauses again. ‘I mean, one moment you’re leaving for university and I’m stuck in Dorset with Mum and Dad, then the next thing I know is you’re in hospital, supposedly having tried to kill yourself. Then Dad leaves Mum and shacks up with Violet, and all the while I’m stuck at Clifftops, virtually on my own.’ Dora is trying to control her emotions but an accusatory edge has entered her voice. ‘Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do? Why didn’t you talk to any of us? Didn’t you realise what your leaving like that would do to us all?’
Cassie shakes her head. ‘It must have been hard for you,’ she says quietly. There is another silence, filled only by the flutter of wings as a bird takes off from a nearby pear tree. When the sound of its feathers beating the air has faded Cassie continues.
‘To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about any of you. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. I know you might have felt shut out, like I didn’t care, but I just couldn’t stand being around you all then. When I was at Clifftops I felt surrounded by Alfie . . . and the emotion surrounding his death. I couldn’t bear to look at you all and see the suffering. It was too painful. Deep down I knew Edinburgh wasn’t an escape. I wanted to end it. I wanted to be free from it all . . . from all of Mum’s and Dad’s expectations, from all of the pain. I suppose I thought it might be a relief to you all if I just disappeared. I thought I was doing you a favour, but, looking back, I know I couldn’t have been more wrong.’ Cassie turns again to look at her sister with a sad sigh. ‘It was pretty cruel, wasn’t it?’
Dora nods and Cassie sighs deeply again, seemingly resolved. ‘So I guess it’s time we talked about it all; all of the secrets that have brought us to where we both sit today, if that’s what you want?’
Dora doesn’t say anything. She holds her breath, fearful that if she speaks, Cassie will change her mind and the spell of intimate confession she appears to have cast over her sister will be broken. Cassie, however, doesn’t waver. She continues in a slow and steady monologue.
‘That day . . .’ Cassie pauses. A shadow passes over her face. ‘That day, when Alfie went missing, well, you know how it changed things for us all, for ever. I was pretty messed up after he died. We all were, in our own ways, but I really struggled. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I just knew Mum and Dad thought it was my fault. I knew they blamed me.’
‘For Alfie?’ Dora is shocked. Did Cassie blame herself as well?
‘Why wouldn’t they? After all, how could Alfie just disappear on a crowded beach when I was supposed to be looking after him?’
‘We were both responsible that day, Cassie. If you are to blame, then I am too.’ Dora feels sick; this is exactly what she has been afraid of, but Cassie is shaking her head vigorously.
‘No, Dora, you’re wrong. Trust me, it wasn’t your fault. Not at all. If there was one innocent in our family that summer it was you. You . . . and Alfie, of course. Poor Alfie.’
‘Yes,’ Dora sighs, ‘poor Alfie.’
‘You know they never said anything,’ Cassie continues after a pause, ‘but I could tell what Mum and Dad were thinking. At least, I thought I could. They’d fall silent whenever I walked into a room, or avert their gaze from me. I could have sworn Dad would leave the room when I entered. And it all just reinforced what I already knew: it was my fault!’ Cassie scrapes at the earth with the toe of her trainer. ‘I just couldn’t take it. I was desperate to escape but there was nowhere for me to go. I had school and A levels coming up. Mum and Dad had such expectations . . . they seemed to know better than I did who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. I was so confused. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted. So I just tried to lose myself where I could; you know, parties, sex, drink and drugs. I think I was just trying to feel something, you know, anything but all that awful teenaged confusion and the overwhelming grief about Alfie.’ Cassie rubs at a dirty mark on her jeans.
Dora swallows and wonders if she’s brave enough to ask. ‘Is that why . . . is that why you cut yourself?’
Cassie turns her wrists outwards so they can both see the thin, silver scars criss-crossing like cobwebs all the way up her tanned arms. Dora winces at the sight of them but Cassie just shrugs.
‘It was another way of taking control, I suppose.’
Dora nods.
‘You know, when I got my A level results I felt nothing but a deep, sweeping depression. It was all there, laid out for me, the exact future Mum and Dad had planned for me. But they didn’t have a clue. They didn’t know how far from the exalted prodigal daughter I really was. I wasn’t who they thought I was. I felt suffocated . . . I had to run . . . I had to get away from you all. I couldn’t face letting you all down again. That’s why I went to London. That’s why I tried to kill myself.’
Dora thinks she knows the rest but Cassie continues.
‘I was hysterical when I woke up in hospital and realised I was still alive. I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Clifftops and even though Dad tried his best to persuade me I was adamant: I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t face any of you. In the end I found a job working as a waitress for a while, in some grotty café. It was pretty shit. The pay was awful and the customers were pigs . . . but then I
met Felix. We got friendly and he invited me here, to his family house. I suppose the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been healing ever since, slowly coming to terms with the past – and the grief and the guilt I felt about Alfie.’
‘That sounds familiar. I know a thing or two about guilt.’
‘I’ve told you, Dora,’ Cassie says firmly, ‘you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing.’
‘You say that, Cassie. Dan says it. Dad says it. But it still doesn’t help. I was there with you on the beach that day. It was as much my fault as it was yours. If Mum or Dad thought, even for just one wild second, that you could have been held in some way responsible then I should shoulder some of that blame. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.’
‘Trust me, Dora, it’s different.’
‘But why? Why is it different? I’m only eighteen months younger than you. It’s not that big a gap. Do those few extra months in age that you have over me make you somehow more responsible for Alfie’s safety that day?’ Dora shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Cassie eyes her sister carefully. ‘This is why you’re here, isn’t it? You still haven’t let him go, have you?’
Dora shakes her head again. ‘No. I guess not.’ She pauses, and then continues in a rush. ‘That day, at the Crag; I still think about it all the time. Do you?’
‘Some days, sure, but not every day. I think that’s probably good, don’t you?’
Dora nods, but she is even more confused now. She’d always imagined her sister to be the unstable one and yet here Cassie is, seemingly at peace with the world while Dora struggles to move forwards with her own life, paralysed by dreams and panic attacks.
Secrets of the Tides Page 33
