The Secrets of Ivy Garden Read online

  I’ve always loved painting and sketching, and now it’s proving to be an absolute life-line. Ivy’s big dream for me was to study art at college when I left school. She used to say being an artist was my ‘calling’ because my paintings made people think about life and gave them pleasure. But however much I might have wanted to pursue my art as a career, I knew it was never going to be a practical option because we didn’t have the money. When Patty offered to promote me from Saturday girl to full-time staff when I was sixteen, I jumped at the chance, and I’m still there.

  I still sketch, though, especially now. When I’m focused on drawing the perfect foxglove, it’s easier to keep the dark thoughts at bay.

  I’ve always been the sort of practical, clear-headed person people can count on in a crisis. But since Ivy died, I’ve felt vulnerable and far less sure of myself. My insides shift queasily every time I think of making that long train journey south, leaving behind everything that’s familiar. Even telling myself it’s just for a few weeks, and then I’ll be safely back home, doesn’t seem to make any difference.

  How can I bear to stay in Moonbeam Cottage if Ivy’s not there?

  And then suddenly a memory blazes into my head.

  Ivy and me on the waltzer in Blackpool.

  We booked the same week every year, staying in the same guest house and reuniting with some other families we got to know who did the same. I loved it when I was a kid because there was always someone to play with.

  No holiday in Blackpool was complete without several rides on the waltzer. Spinning round and around, clutching on to each other as the blaring fairground music swallowed our squeals. Laughing helplessly at the thrill of it all.

  Scream if you wanna go faster!

  Ivy always went on it with me, even though I knew it scared her. I think she worried I’d slip out of the safety belt. When we got off, she’d exaggerate her wobbly legs, staggering around to make the little kids laugh. The other mums and dads stood watching, smiling at their children and waving.

  I remember feeling really proud of my fearless grandma for not letting nerves stand in her way.

  Now, hurrying for home, I mentally open my wardrobe and start picking out clothes to pack. I’ll catch the train tomorrow.

  I can be brave, too.

  TWO

  Whenever I think of the Cotswolds, where Ivy lived the last decade of her life, I think of the row of pretty golden stone cottages skirting Appleton village green and the gnarled old oak tree by the cricket pavilion. In my mind, it’s always summer there and the sky is always blue.

  But when I step off the train at Stroud – the nearest station to Appleton – I’m faced with a rather different view of the Cotswolds. Storms have been raging all week, causing destruction right across the country, and today appears to be no exception. I peer out of the station entrance at people scurrying for shelter from the steady drizzle and gusty wind.

  I can’t afford to hang around. There’s only one bus to Appleton every two hours – and the next one leaves in ten minutes.

  Grabbing a firmer hold of my suitcase, I start running for the bus station, dodging passers-by and puddles of rainwater. As long as the bus doesn’t leave early, I should just about make it.

  And then it happens.

  I round the corner a little too briskly, step to one side to avoid a man with a briefcase, and instead, cannon right into someone else.

  Momentarily winded, I register the black habit and white veil the woman is wearing and my heart gives a sickening thud.

  Oh God, I just nearly decked a religious person!

  But worse is to come.

  The nun, who I notice is remarkably tall, stops for a second to regain her balance. But she lists too far to one side and ends up staggering off the pavement into the water-logged gutter.

  To say I’m mortified is a vast understatement.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry!’ I reach out to her, then draw back my hand, just in case she’s taken some kind of vow that forbids any form of physical contact during high winds. ‘God, are you all right?’

  Shit, why did I have to say ‘God’?

  She’s bending to retrieve her glasses, which mustn’t fit very well because they seem to have gone flying when she over-balanced. Her attempts at picking them up are failing miserably – so, flushed and overcome with guilt, I dive in, swipe them off the ground then rub them clean on my coat before handing them back.

  She puts them on, almost stabbing herself in the eye, and that’s when I notice something odd. The glasses are attached to a large, false nose.

  She sways and I grab her arm to steady her, wondering what on earth is going on.

  ‘Seen a bunch of people dressed as monks and nuns?’ she slurs in a voice that’s surprisingly full of gravel and several octaves lower than I was expecting. ‘Disappeared. And it’s my turn to get the beers in.’

  Stunned, I shake my head. So not a nun, then. Not female either, come to that.

  I glance at my watch.

  Bugger!

  Thanks to this stag-do buffoon, I’ve now missed the bus to Appleton and there won’t be another one along for at least two hours.

  An arm snakes round my waist. ‘Hey, why don’t you come along? Join the pub crawl?’

  Actually, how it sounds is Heywhydntc‌mlongjnpubcrawl? I stare up at his stupid false nose and black-rimmed glasses, the lenses of which are like jam jar bottoms. I’m amazed he can see through them. No wonder he charged right into me.

  He sways closer and the booze on his breath almost knocks me flat.

  I feel like weeping. Today’s long journey from Manchester has been emotionally exhausting, to say the least, and now – to cap it all – I’m being propositioned by a drunk disguised as a nun?

  It can’t get any worse. Oh hang on, apparently it can.

  His hand just slipped lower and is clamped so tight, there seems to be no escape. The rest of him might be listing like a yacht in a force nine, but there’s nothing flaky about that firm grasp.

  I try to move away but the pavement is packed with people and I just keep getting pushed back against him. Then when I do manage to put a small distance between us, he staggers a bit and lurches forward. That’s when I realise he was probably just grabbing on to me in an attempt to remain upright.

  He grins and the cheap nylon veil slips down over one eye. ‘Dirt on your coat,’ he mumbles helpfully.

  I glance down. Sure enough, there’s a big splodge of muck from where I wiped his joke glasses on my otherwise pristine beige coat. The one I had dry-cleaned last week.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbles, catching my look of horror and attempting to look contrite.

  ‘So you should be,’ I snap, thinking miserably of the two-hour wait ahead. ‘Pretending to be one of God’s holy sisters and making me miss my bus!’

  ‘Youdon’tapproveof‌mendressed’snuns?’

  Quick translation while leaning away to avoid beery breath. ‘No, I don’t approve of men dressed as nuns. Especially if they’re rat-arsed. If I were a nun, I’d be absolutely horrified.’

  He snorts, apparently finding it all very funny indeed. ‘Butyouaren’tanunareyou?’

  I grit my teeth.

  A six-foot-two fake nun is using me as a prop to remain standing and people are staring. Plus, I have a two-hour wait for a bus and a lovely reminder of my unholy encounter in the form of a nasty black stain on my coat.

  Just then, to add insult to injury, the bus to Appleton swooshes past, hurling a litre of gutter rainwater at me. Tears prick my eyes as I watch it accelerate off into the distance.

  ‘No, I am not a nun,’ I growl, and Maria von Trapp on growth hormones sniggers like a schoolboy. I fix him with my sternest look. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  He blinks several times at me behind his glasses. At least, I assume that’s what he’s doing because I can’t actually see his eyes through the stupid joke lenses.

  ‘In fact,’ I add, enjoying his confusion, ‘I’m actually training to become
a nun.’

  He snorts, nearly overbalances, then starts convulsing with laughter.

  ‘It’s true,’ I say, feeling ridiculously offended on behalf of nuns everywhere.

  He’s laughing so much, he’s having to lean against some iron railings for support. ‘You off to the convent now, then? Didn’t know there was one in Stroud.’

  I give him my haughtiest stare. ‘Actually, I’m – erm – having a last long holiday in the Cotswolds before I start my training up in Manchester. And if you weren’t so pissed, you’d be wishing me luck instead of acting like an utter moron.’

  I walk off, nose in the air, fairly impressed with my spontaneous put-down. When I turn a moment later, he’s leaning against a lamppost, arms folded, staring dazedly after me.

  Me? A novice nun? Ha, that’s a good one!

  My triumphant smile slips when it occurs to me that a vow of chastity isn’t exactly a stretch for me right now. It’s been well over six months since I did anything even remotely horizontal and non-nun-like.

  I can’t face waiting for a bus, so I decide to treat myself to a taxi. It’s expensive, but I’ll get there much faster. Luckily, the taxi driver seems to sense that I don’t want to chat and leaves me alone with my thoughts as we wend our way towards Appleton.

  We drive through a string of pretty villages and I try to stay calm, telling myself everything will be fine. But the trouble is, I know what’s coming. I know that in a minute, we’ll be driving into open countryside without a single house or village pub or any sign of civilisation to reassure me. It’s the wide open spaces that scare me the most.

  I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t have to look at the fields on either side that seem to stretch away to infinity. I’d thought that with the passage of time, the terror would begin to subside. But here I am, my heart pounding in my ears as if it happened only yesterday.

  I want Ivy so much right now, I feel as if my heart will break.

  Last time I saw her, she was waving me off on the train back to Manchester.

  I remember thinking how elegant she was that day. Normally, Ivy lived in casual trousers and tops. Life was too short, she said, for feeling like a trussed-up goose in the name of fashion. But she’d taken me for an early supper at a nearby pub before driving me to the station in Stroud, which was why she was all dressed up. Right then, on that station platform, she could have passed for a woman in her late fifties. Hard to believe she was seventy-two.

  Actually, the way I usually remember her now is in the old gardening garb she used to wear, or in her hiking gear, fresh from walking in the country lanes around Appleton.

  A painful lump wedges in my throat.

  This is how it happens. I’ll just be starting to think I’m doing okay, coping well, beginning to make plans – then boom! The thought that I’ll never be able to see Ivy or hug her ever again sends a flood of grief washing through me.

  Hot tears prick my eyelids. The nails-in-palms trick isn’t working. Then something Ivy used to say zips into my mind: Worry’s like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.

  I swallow hard, picturing her giving me one of her no-nonsense pep talks. It’s almost as if she’s sitting right here next to me, a twinkle in her eyes, on the bench in her beloved Ivy Garden. Telling me not to worry because things are never as bad as they seem and I’ll figure it out somehow.

  Of course! That’s where I need to be.

  Ivy Garden.

  Her favourite place in the whole world.

  With my eyes still closed, I picture Ivy Garden the last time I saw it, on that final weekend I spent with her.

  It was a hot August day. We wandered over the road and squeezed through the gap in the hedge, to the dappled woodland clearing that, over the years, Ivy had transformed into a sanctuary of peace and tranquillity.

  She discovered the place years ago, when she was newly married to Peter, my granddad. He died long before I was born, when my mum was only three years old. Ivy never talked about Peter much, except to say he was ‘a good man’. She said that a lot whenever I asked her what he was like, so I still only had a rather hazy impression of him. He was a self-employed accountant and I got the impression he worked really hard. I think Ivy liked to escape the house and leave him in peace with his calculations. More than once, I heard her say laughingly that her ‘secret garden’ had kept her sane during her marriage.

  The clearing in the trees was on public land, on the edge of a wood, and Ivy nurtured it into a lovely woodland garden. She planted shrubs, flowers and grasses for every season, so there was a rolling show of colour all year round, from the banks of snowdrops and crocuses as the frosts of winter melted into spring, to the glorious russets of autumn. Many of the villagers knew about the garden and would pop in for a chat while she worked. She often lounged on the old wooden bench reading the blood-curdling thrillers she loved, her feet up, with an old cushion at her back. She never seemed to mind being interrupted.

  Someone once referred to it as ‘Ivy Garden’ and the name stuck.

  We were there that blisteringly hot afternoon to pick lavender so that Ivy could make her perfumed drawer sachets to sell at the Appleton summer fete. She would run up the tiny white muslin bags on her old sewing machine and then fill them with the evocatively scented dried herb, tying them up with silky pink ribbon. The proceeds would be donated to the village hall community fund.

  After we picked the lavender that day, she set her old gardening trug on the mossy ground and we sank on to the wooden bench under the dappled shade of an oak tree, and drank chilled pear cider straight from the bottle. It was a relief to be out of the sweltering sun and we lingered there a long time, soaking up the birdsong and the buzz of nature, as Ivy Garden weaved its magic around us.

  To our right, the glorious banks of aromatic lavender nestled close to a stone bird bath Ivy had discovered long ago in a local antique shop. Opposite the bench where we sat, on the far side of the little clearing, the tall privet hedge that bordered the road had been ‘scooped out’ to provide a shady place for a little wooden love seat that was Ivy’s pride and joy. She’d had that love seat for years and it was looking a little battered now. But it fitted perfectly in the space, as if it had been designed specially. Back then, at the height of summer, drifts of scented lilies and white foxgloves took pride of place in the garden.

  The taxi slows and I hear the swish of rainwater as we drive through a flooded part of the road. I open my eyes. It’s getting dark, rain still lashing down outside and we’re motoring through another village, past a row of pretty cottages built from golden sandstone.

  Moonbeam Cottage itself sits in a little row of properties just like these, directly opposite the gap in the hedge that leads to Ivy Garden. And in a lovely example of serendipity, the cottage came up for sale at exactly the time Ivy was thinking about selling the big house in Appleton, after my granddad died, and downsizing to a smaller place. She must have been so excited when Moonbeam Cottage, right over the road from her woodland garden, came up for sale. It probably seemed as if destiny had taken a hand.

  During my last visit, she was keen to show off her new garden shed, a very pretty creation in shades of white and peppermint green. Fixed to the side of the door was a wooden placard with a verse carved into it:

  If you long for a mind at rest

  And a heart that cannot harden

  Go find a gate that opens wide

  Into a secret garden.

  Ivy laughed and said the poem was a bit cheesy for her taste, but she wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment, so it was staying put.

  I stare out of the taxi as the fields and houses flash by. When I get to the cottage, I’ll dump my bags and go straight over the road and through that gap in the hedge. If my grandma’s spirit is to be found anywhere, it will be there. In Ivy Garden.

  It’s almost May, which is when the bluebells bloom.

  A little stab of reality hits. I’m planning to clear the cottage
and get it on the market in double-quick time so I can get back to Manchester as soon as I can. So I probably won’t be here when the bluebells come out.

  A chill cloud passes over. But I shake it off and check my phone for messages. I can’t afford to be sentimental about Ivy Garden or Moonbeam Cottage or bluebells. They represent Ivy’s past, not mine.

  The signs for Appleton are becoming more frequent now; I draw in a deep, slightly shaky breath. We’re almost there.

  And that’s when my heart plummets.

  Oh, bugger! I came prepared for a bus journey, not a taxi. I don’t have enough cash on me to pay the fare!

  When I break the bad news to the driver, he says he thinks there’s a cash point outside the village store, and to my relief, when we draw up outside it, so there is. The driver escorts me to the hole in the wall, clearly worried I’m going to run off into the gloom without paying. And then, joy of joys, the bloody machine isn’t working.

  I turn in a panic, as the wind swirls an empty crisp packet around my feet. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Oh God, what do I do now?

  His arms are folded and he’s wearing a resigned expression, as if he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

  Then a voice says, ‘Can I help?’

  I swing around and a man steps out of the alleyway that runs alongside the village store. He arches his brows expectantly.

  ‘No, no, thank you, it’s fine,’ I tell him, although it quite obviously isn’t.

  The taxi driver sniffs. ‘She can’t pay the fare.’ From his tone, this is obviously not the first time it’s happened.