The Winter Garden

by Heidi Swain

  ‘As I’m sure you know, it’s led me and Nell to somewhere really rather special.’ I imagined my old friend smiling and nodding. ‘And as wonderful as it is, and as excited as I am to even have the chance to be thinking about taking it on, I am still very sorry about Jackson and his decision to sell up. I know how keen you were to keep the estate in the family. My only hope now is that the next owner will love the place just as much as you did, Eloise.’

  I let my thoughts drift, mulling over what Mum had said, and listened to the soft susurration of the trees, enjoying the feel of the gentle breeze stirring my hair as I turned my face to the sun.

  ‘And that’s exactly why,’ I eventually carried on, having come a little closer to making my decision, ‘I won’t be offering to stay on when Jackson makes his sale. The new owners are bound to want to make changes,’ I swallowed, ‘and even if they do end up being wonderful, I don’t want to be in any way responsible for them.’

  The fact that the sign I had asked her for had been sent was evidence enough that Eloise did understand, and I couldn’t help thinking that the tone of my little monologue made it sound very much like I had found my courage, set aside Jackson’s attempts to knock me down and decided what I was going to do.

  It felt as if a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders as I took a deep breath and walked back to the van.

  ‘Luke, hi,’ I swallowed, ‘it’s Freya.’

  I had planned to make the call when I got back to the house, but having made up my mind, I couldn’t wait a second longer so rang him from where I’d parked at the church.

  ‘Freya,’ he said, ‘hello. We weren’t expecting you to ring so soon. Kate’s here. I’m going to put you on speakerphone. Hold on.’

  ‘Hey, Freya,’ said Kate. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good,’ I said, nodding even though she couldn’t see me. ‘Great actually. I’m not interrupting your lunch or anything, am I?’

  I could hear the girls in the background.

  ‘No,’ said Kate, ‘we’re eating later.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘great. I’ll probably do the same myself today.’

  There was a beat of silence and then Luke spoke. ‘Look you two,’ he said, sounding flustered, ‘as lovely as this small talk is, can we please just cut to the chase?’

  I couldn’t help but laugh and Kate did too.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘We are actually on tenterhooks here,’ Kate said, and I could tell she was smiling. ‘Luke’s even got his fingers crossed.’

  ‘Really?’ I laughed again.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you ringing with good news or bad?’

  ‘Good,’ I said, deciding to put him out of his misery. ‘Well,’ I added, ‘good for me and I hope good for you.’

  I quickly batted away the fear that I might not be good enough, which was still determined to rear its ugly head.

  ‘You’re coming?’ Luke questioned.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said firmly. ‘I’d like to take you up on your offer of a job and a home in Nightingale Square.’

  Luke let out a very loud cheer, which started Abigail, at least I think it was Abigail, crying.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful Freya,’ said Kate. ‘Fantastic news.’

  It really was, so why I found myself on the verge of tears, I had no idea.

  ‘And were you happy with everything in the email?’ she asked as Luke made soothing noises in the background. ‘The salary, terms and so on.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘more than happy, which is more than my current employer will be when I tell him that I’m leaving.’

  I had told Kate a little more about my time working with Eloise and how it contrasted with working for Jackson.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Luke. ‘We won’t be expecting a reference. Your experience speaks for itself.’

  ‘Along with your gut instinct,’ I reminded him, brushing away a happy tear and sitting up straighter knowing that he was right; I was up to the task.

  ‘Exactly,’ he laughed. ‘So, when can you come?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, mentally flicking through dates, ‘as long as we can get all the paperwork sorted and Harold is happily settled in his new place, I can come at the end of the month. I only have to give a week’s notice for every year I’ve worked at Broad-Meadows, so that’s three weeks in total.’

  ‘That’s Hallowe’en weekend,’ said Kate, shuffling papers. ‘We can get everything drawn up and signed by then and Harold is moving next weekend, so that will give me time to sort the house out a bit.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t worry about that, Kate,’ I insisted. ‘Everything there looked fine to me.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll just fling the hoover about a bit,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t tell you how pleased we are, Freya,’ said Luke.

  I really couldn’t believe this was happening. These wonderful people had landed in my life and solved my employment and housing problems in one fell swoop!

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ I told them both, my tears gathering apace. ‘The Winter Garden is going to be wonderful.’

  I could hear Abigail cranking up the volume again and felt as if I might be about to match her.

  ‘I really don’t doubt it,’ said Kate, raising her voice above the din, ‘and I can’t wait to see it. I’ll email you with more details about everything later today, okay?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘and thank you.’

  ‘Bye for now,’ they said together.

  ‘Bye,’ I said, ‘see you at the end of the month.’

  ‘See you on the thirty-first.’

  I ended the call and had a bit of a sob before driving back to Broad-Meadows. Nell rested her head on my lap and I wondered what I was going to do about her now I had made up my mind to move.

  Back at the house I tried to creep up to my room, but my plan was thwarted as Jackson was in the kitchen and insisted that I join him for lunch. He made it sound like a pleasant invitation to socialise, even including Nell in the party, but I was on my guard, which was just as well, because he had barely finished carving the joint of beef – badly – before I realised that this was very definitely a working lunch and the thrilling thoughts I wanted to indulge in about my new job and home were going to have to wait.

  ‘I think that should be enough to be going on with,’ Jackson smiled, once he had finished reeling off a list of tasks for the following week, very few of which had anything to do with the role that I had been employed for.

  ‘I should say so,’ I said, puffing out my cheeks. ‘I only hope you can find someone at such short notice to undertake them. I’ve more than enough to keep me occupied in the garden and of course, you let the housekeeper go, didn’t you?’

  Jane Taylor had worked for Eloise for decades but Jackson had dismissed her within days of his arrival. He had reckoned, long before he had got the measure of the place and the work involved in looking after it, that it didn’t require live-in domestic staff. The agency he had since employed to clean, and who I suspected of gossiping, were slapdash to say the least.

  ‘I’ll be expecting you to muck in, Freya,’ he told me, with a challenging look in his eye. ‘You’re living here now too, after all.’

  I bit my lip, determined not to tell him yet.

  ‘In lieu of charging you rent, I need you to help out in the house.’

  What he really meant was, do most of the work that Jane used to do.

  ‘And you’ll have to go,’ he said, looking at Nell and addressing her in a completely different tone to the one he had only minutes before welcomed her with. ‘I can’t be doing with you cluttering up the place. Can you remember which rescue home she came from, Freya? With any luck they might take her back.’

  That was it. I threw down my napkin and pushed back my chair. My determination not to share my news had flown straight out of the window.

  ‘Don’t worry about Nell,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be taking her with
me.’

  ‘Taking her with you?’ he frowned. ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m handing in my notice, Jackson,’ I said. ‘I was going to tell you tomorrow when I’d had a chance to write my letter of resignation, but your abhorrent attitude has forced my hand.’

  He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, turning redder by the second.

  ‘But you can’t leave,’ he blustered. ‘I need you here to look after the garden. I’m going to have prospective buyers coming around in a few weeks’ time and the lawns will still be growing.’

  ‘Not my problem,’ I shrugged.

  ‘You can’t have another job lined up,’ he said, eyeing me with an expression of annoyance and curiosity, ‘you haven’t had time and I haven’t been asked for a reference.’

  ‘Where I’m going and what I’m going to be doing is no concern of yours,’ I told him, ‘and you needn’t panic, I’m not leaving with immediate effect.’

  ‘Of course, you aren’t,’ he said, sounding further nettled, ‘you can’t because you’ve got to work notice.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

  ‘That’s right,’ he repeated.

  ‘Three weeks,’ I smiled.

  ‘Three weeks,’ he choked. ‘That can’t possibly be right!’

  ‘One week for every year that I’ve worked here,’ I reeled off. ‘That’s what your aunt and I agreed and that’s what I’ll honour. It’s all in my contract – not that, as you’re so keen to keep reminding me, it’s legally binding.’

  I was certain I would be getting something far more formal from Luke and Kate and, given what had happened here, I was pleased about that. I supposed I had been a bit naïve when I moved to the estate, but then neither Eloise nor I had ever envisaged a situation like this occurring when she took me on.

  ‘I’m going to check that,’ Jackson said bitterly. ‘I’m going to check that, right now.’

  He jumped up from his chair and stormed out of the kitchen.

  ‘And get that damn dog out of here!’ he shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘Gladly!’ I shouted back, rushing to give Nell a hug.

  Chapter 5

  Even though I knew in my heart that I had Eloise’s blessing to leave Broad-Meadows and embrace the new challenge of living in Nightingale Square and working in the gardens at Prosperous Place, I did wonder how I was going feel when the time came to finally hand over my keys.

  I had learned so much about myself during the last three years and I loved the garden like an old friend. It had offered me solace on darker days and a quiet, gentle support that I wasn’t sure I’d find anywhere else, and certainly not in the bustling city. However, I needn’t have worried about how I was going to cope with all the extra company, because for almost every second after I had told Jackson that I was leaving he had been just half a step behind me, watching my every move and clocking me in and out of every task.

  Whether he was concerned about getting his wages’ worth, or that I might leg it with the family silver (not that there was any to speak of), I had no idea and I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking, but I did find his shadowing unnecessarily invasive and when the day to leave did finally dawn, shrouded in an autumn mist which stole my last view of the place, I was feeling more than ready to go.

  ‘Come on, Nell,’ I said, opening the van door and ushering her into the passenger footwell as another vehicle spookily appeared out of the mist, ‘it’s time to leave.’

  There was no room for her in the back, not that she liked riding behind me. She had always preferred shotgun but the plethora of boxes containing our worldly goods and few bits of furniture meant that she had no choice but to curl up under the dash for this ride to Norwich.

  Amongst my scant belongings, I had also added a collection of cuttings, garnered from Eloise’s favourite plants. We had taken them together before planting out their parents in the revamped borders as a sort of back-up and gap filler, and now they were coming with me to Nightingale Square to be nurtured and help fill the Broad-Meadows-shaped hole in my heart.

  ‘We’ll see if we can stop and have a stretch when we’re halfway there,’ I told Nell as she curled her lithe limbs around her and I gently closed the door. ‘Not that it’s all that far, but we don’t want you getting cramp, do we?’

  The other vehicle, a van I unfortunately recognised, drew to a stop beside me, and Jackson raced down the front steps from the house, a look of victory lighting up his smugly arranged features. He had obviously been poised to pounce, hiding in the hallway and biding his time to inflict maximum impact.

  ‘Just a minute, Freya,’ he barked at me.

  ‘Hello, Peggy,’ I said to the stout woman who had climbed out of the van wearing work boots and a muddy waxed coat, while I ignored my almost-former employee. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘She’s here to do something for me actually,’ said Jackson. ‘Now, where’s that damn dog got to?’

  ‘It’s a sad business this, Freya,’ said Peggy, the manager of the rescue centre where Eloise had plucked Nell from. ‘I don’t know how the poor old girl will cope with going back into kennels. She hated it last time and now she’s grieving too.’

  ‘You aren’t serious?’ I said to Jackson.

  ‘Well, I don’t want her,’ he said nastily. ‘I haven’t got time to look after a dog. Peggy and I have discussed it and this is the only solution. Isn’t that right, Peggy?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she sighed, looking every bit as miserable as Nell would if she caught sight of her former gaoler.

  Peggy was a wonderful woman with a heart of gold, but as far as Nell was concerned, she meant other dogs noisily barking, a concrete kennel and a lengthy, possibly infinite, wait. No fireside, no treats, no home comforts and limited walks.

  ‘We have to do what’s right for Nell,’ said Peggy, opening up the back of the van to reveal a large metal crate. ‘And if Jackson says he can’t manage her—’

  ‘But I told him—’ I interrupted, shooting Jackson a look.

  ‘And now you’re leaving too,’ Peggy carried sadly on, ‘the poor love won’t know what’s hit her.’

  ‘Which is exactly why,’ I said, raising my voice, ‘I told Jackson that I was taking her with me!’

  In the days following my resignation announcement, I had made it more than plain, on more than one occasion, that even though he didn’t want her, I did.

  ‘What?’ said Peggy, stopping in her tracks.

  ‘Nell is coming with me,’ I reiterated.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Jackson, turning red, ‘because she’s not yours to take, is she? She belonged to Aunt Eloise and therefore, like everything else here now, she belongs to me.’

  ‘But you don’t want her,’ I said angrily.

  ‘Which is why, I’m getting rid of her,’ he shot back. ‘My dog, my decision.’

  Peggy slammed the van door closed again, making us jump, before adjusting the belt on her coat and drawing herself up to her full height which wasn’t far off six foot. Jackson shrank in response, and were the situation not so dire, I might have laughed at his cowed reaction.

  ‘You’re taking Nell with you?’ Peggy asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s no question of that. I would never have left her here with him.’

  ‘You should have told me, Freya,’ she said. ‘As Nell came from the centre, I should have been informed of any change in her place of residence or ownership.’

  I hadn’t thought of that. I had foolishly assumed that Jackson would be relieved to have one less thing to deal with when I had told him what I was planning to do, but apparently not. It turned out that he wanted to make as much drama out of the situation as possible.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jackson petulantly. ‘But don’t worry, Peggy, because there hasn’t been a change of ownership. The mutt’s still mine. Unfortunately.’

  ‘Where exactly are you taking her?’ Peggy asked me, holdi
ng up a hand to quieten Jackson again.

  I looked at him as he craned forward to hear what I was going to say and bit my lip. Thanks to Luke and Kate’s willingness to forgo a reference I had managed to keep my new abode and place of work a mystery and that’s how I wanted it to stay. I hadn’t even furnished my parents or Peter with the finer details. They knew I had a job in Norfolk, but not exactly where. I wanted time to settle before I filled them in.

  I beckoned Peggy to follow me until we were out of earshot and then in hushed tones explained the situation, asking her not to pass the information on, especially to Jackson.

  ‘I see,’ she said, marching back around to where Jackson was standing.

  I quickly followed, hoping she was satisfied that I had told her enough to keep Nell out of the metal crate.

  ‘Have you any idea how busy I am, Jackson?’ she angrily asked. ‘Have you even the slightest inkling how hard it is to feed, clean up after and arrange a schedule of walks for seventeen dogs with just three volunteers?’

  ‘There’s no need to take that tone,’ he pouted, sounding hurt, but Peggy was in full flight.

  ‘You have called me out here this morning on false pretences,’ she stormed on. ‘You knew that Freya here – who, by all intents and purposes, has been Nell’s sole care-giver since your aunt’s death – was willing to take the dog on full-time, and yet rather than simply ring to explain what was happening and request a transfer of ownership you insisted I came in person – and not with Nell’s best interests at heart, but because you wanted to make mischief.’

  Jackson looked astounded and then angry, but not particularly contrite.

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she scolded.

  ‘Now look here…’ Jackson scowled.

  ‘Why don’t you get off, Freya,’ she then said, turning to me and smiling. ‘Before that poor creature catches on that I’m here and goes into a decline, and I’ll take Jackson here,’ she added, marching him back up his own steps, ‘into the house to discuss the donation he wants to make by way of apology for wasting my precious time.’

  There was no opportunity to say goodbye but the look on Jackson’s face was enough to make my departure from my old life less maudlin and more amusing and I set off down the drive with laughter on my lips and feeling surprisingly light of heart.