Sowing Secrets (32 page)

Whatever explanations Nia gave to Rhodri caused him to cast puzzled but affectionate looks in my direction all evening, so I’m not sure he’s got the hang of the situation yet. That makes two of us.

Gabe was at the pub too, his mood set to Fair bordering on Sunny, despite having to sneak in the back way to avoid a last lingering coachload of adoring fans.

Afterwards he insisted on walking me home, and we were almost there before he stopped dead and said, very seriously, ‘Fran, I’ve been thinking about you – about us – all afternoon.’

‘You have?’

‘Of course I have. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, since you’re now an unattached female and I’m an unattached male, and we strike sparks whenever we get together, we should just start again from the beginning.’

‘Start what again?’ I asked cautiously.

‘A romance, a relationship – whatever you want to call it. But take it slowly this time and see where it goes.’ He took my hand. ‘You know: I walk you back from the pub like this for a week or two and kiss you good night. One day you invite me in for coffee; then I take you home to see my roses … And one fine morning – hey presto! – I wake up and you’re still there. Transplanted and bedded down. Sown, mulched and rooted.’

‘You say the most romantic things,’ I said breathlessly – because, actually, it works for me.

‘So what do you say?’

From what I could see of him in the poorly lit lane he looked serious enough.

‘A cautious yes … though things could come unstuck when Rosie and Stella find out the truth.’

‘We’ll take it as it comes. We have to live
our
lives, Fran, because they’ll be off living theirs soon enough. So – here’s a fairly chaste, first-night kiss.’

If
that
was chaste, I’m a vestal virgin.

It’s been a week of cautious discovery – and recovery. I’d heard from Mal’s solicitor and accepted his terms, so the house would soon be mine, and I’d turned down an offer from Justin. I wasn’t interested in how much he was willing to pay: I wanted Carrie to have the house.

Ma came back and phoned me, unrepentant that she’d been keeping secrets with Gabe behind my back; and Rosie had her friend staying with her, though she hadn’t mentioned bringing her up again for the weekend, so I presumed she wasn’t after all.

But that Friday night, as I sat in the back parlour of the Druid’s Rest with Nia, Rhodri and Gabe, in they walked – and it wasn’t just
our
table who went deathly quiet and stared, either.

The two girls were like the positive and negative of the same photograph: Rosie fair and Star dark; but otherwise they might have been identical twins.

They made their way across the silent room until they reached our table, and Rosie said, ‘Hello, Mum.’

‘Hello, Dad,’ Star said to Gabe – and then the penny dropped. Star – Stella – Cornwall – oh my God!

‘Haven’t you both got something you’d like to tell us about?’ they asked, more or less in unison, and I groped blindly for Gabe’s hand and gripped it tightly as we stared at our little Midwich cuckoos, come home to roost.

Rhodri, looking profoundly baffled, got up and kissed Rosie. ‘Rosie, great to see you, and—’

‘My sister, Stella,’ she introduced her. ‘Half-sister, really, and she likes to be called Star.’

‘Er, right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Hello, Star.’

‘This is Uncle Roddy and that’s Mum’s friend Nia, who’s living with Uncle Roddy—’ began Rosie.

‘
Really
, Rosie!’ I said indignantly.

‘That, of course, is my mother, Fran—’

‘And this is Gabe Weston, alternatively known as Adam the gardener, my father –
and
yours,’ Star said sweetly.

‘We’ve been rumbled,’ Gabe said to me.

‘Did you have to choose quite such a public spot for the revelations, Rosie?’ I said bitterly. ‘Why didn’t you go the whole hog and hire a town crier or take an announcement out in the paper?’

‘We’re not ashamed to be sisters – in fact, we like it,’ she said, and they smiled a smile of such similarity that it was quite unnerving. God knows, it had been bad enough having only
one
of Rosie.

‘We wanted everything out in the open,’ Star said, and they finally sat down, to my relief.

‘I don’t understand how you met.’ Gabe was staring at them with wary fascination.

‘I went surfing when I was at the Gramps’ in Cornwall, and met Rosie there,’ Stella said. ‘Only I call myself Star mostly. Everyone said we were so alike it was uncanny, and we really got on – better than sisters – and, well, we talked, and then when I had to go back to the USA to finish school we’ve been texting and emailing.’

‘And you were asking me all those questions about when I was younger,’ Gabe exclaimed.

‘Yes, and Rosie’s mum had told her all about this gardener she’d met, and so we just worked it out.’

‘So Gabe is Rosie’s father and Star’s?’ Rhodri said, his brow furrowed.

‘Duh!’ Nia said. ‘Hand the man a coconut.’

‘Well, it’s all a bit confusing,’ he confessed. ‘So … if Fran and Gabe get married eventually, when her divorce comes through, they’ll all be one big fam—
Ouch
!’

Nia’s elbow had connected with his ribcage.

Rosie and Star bent identical severe gazes at Gabe. ‘That depends. Rosie and I both have to get to know Dad. I was only a little girl last time I saw him, and Rosie’s hardly met him.’

‘You were such a plump little thing last time I saw you!’ marvelled Gabe, and Star gave him a dirty look. ‘I can’t believe you two look so alike now.’

‘Puppy fat,’ Star said. ‘I outgrew it.’

‘Look, this has been quite a shock,’ Gabe said. ‘A nice one, but a shock. So why don’t we all go back to Fairy Glen and talk things over? Get to know each other a bit? I’ve got some family photo albums there too. What do you both say?’

They looked at each other, then nodded.

‘Well, OK,’ Star agreed. ‘But I’m staying with Rosie tonight.’

‘That’s all right, Mum, isn’t it?’ Rosie demanded.

‘Yes—yes of course!’ I said hastily.

‘Good luck!’ Nia mouthed to me as we left.

I thought we would need it.

I thought so even more when we got near enough to see a familiar estate car parked outside the cottage. Then the door swung open and Ma stood in the doorway, resplendent in layers of lurid paisley print and high-heeled mules with pink feather pom-poms on the front.

‘Darlings!’ she said when we were all inside and barely begun on the who’s who bit, and took us all into a sort of group hug. And even when she declared slightly cheesily, and with tears in her eyes, ‘One big happy family at last!’ there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Gabe’s were watering more because he was laughing, and so, after a minute, were mine.

‘If you only knew the heart-searchings we’ve had about how we were to tell you two girls the truth!’ I gasped. ‘And then you walk into the pub bold as brass together as if you’d known each other all your lives.’

‘Well, that’s just how we feel,’ Rosie said.

‘Now I have
two
granddaughters,’ Ma said complacently, and I didn’t point out that actually Stella is no relation to her at all.

‘You, Fran,’ she directed me, ‘go to your house with Gabriel and bring back some elderflower champagne. This is a celebration! And food – bring food. While you’re gone, I want my new granddaughter to tell me all about herself.’

As we walked down the dark lane we both heaved a sort of sigh, and I said, ‘Well, that’s not how I’d have
chosen
to do it, but at least it’s all out in the open.’

‘Do you think it’s all going to work out, Fran?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think everything’s going to be a bed of roses instantly; we’re all going to take some time to get used to each other and settle down to the idea that … well, that we’re a sort of extended family.’

‘We could be a
contracted
family,’ he suggested, putting an arm round me. ‘If you marry me when your divorce comes through, that is.’

‘I don’t think that is the opposite of an extended family,’ I said critically. ‘And it’s too soon. Remember
slowly
?’

‘Oh,
sod
slowly,’ he said and, pulling me close, kissed me long and hard.

The champagne was a trifle delayed …

Of course it all had to come out in the press (I suspect Nia’s sister, Sian, of having something to do with it), and ‘SECRET LOVE-CHILD SCANDAL OF TV GARDENER!’ was possibly my least favourite headline. But on the whole there really wasn’t that much scandal to rake up: Rosie’d been born before he was married to his first wife, and she was only secret because I never knew who Gabe was. Our engagement made a neat and tidy ending to the story – love restored, and sealed with a rose diamond – and of course he promised me a rose garden too. How could I resist?

Media interest in the story soon died down, but I’ve had to accept that Gabe will never be able to walk from one end of St Ceridwen’s Well to the other during the holiday season without being accosted by drooling female fans.

Luckily, most of the locals see him as the jewel in the crown of the area’s growing prosperity and clam up when asked for directions to where he lives, so Fairy Glen remains for the most part quietly dreaming in its little backwater.

But then, once the new series of
Restoration Gardener
is aired he may lose some of his celebrity status to Dottie, who he says can be seen in practically every shot, generally brandishing a riding crop and telling the cameraman to ‘Clear orf!’

By high summer it was clear that Rhodri and Nia were making a rip-roaring success of Plas Gwyn –
and
of their relationship. They’ve had more coach-party bookings than they can handle, so goodness knows what it will be like after they feature in the autumn TV series!

Nia’s lovely pottery pieces, especially the delicate porcelain jewellery, sell like hot cakes, as do my cards and calendars in the gift shop. And, speaking of hot cakes, Carrie has opened a tea shop up there now, Teapot2, where you can buy perennial favourites such as ‘Mades of Honour’, ‘Furry Cakes’ and ‘Ginger Parking’ to your heart’s content.

Before the extension to Fairy Glen was built, the cottage was bursting at the seams whenever Rosie, Stella, Ma and the dogs were all visiting at once. And until we all shook down into the normal give and take of family life things were sometimes difficult; but, then, I never was a romantic who expected everything to go right all the time.

Just as well.

When I look back on my life, it’s been like a maze, a rose maze, where all the paths bring me back to Gabe, however I twist and turn. Now both I and the garden around me are settled, seeded and well dibbled, and an air of heavy expectancy hangs on the hot August air.

I work with the door and windows of my little Caribbean-style studio open and the faint chatter of the two girls can be heard in between the joyful ditties of suicidal despair they are playing.

Every so often one of the hens strays over the threshold, moaning quietly (usually Shania, she’s very sociable). The fragrance of the old roses in tubs outside hangs heaven-scent on the air, and the heavy drone of fat bees adds the base notes to a symphony of bliss.

Gabe’s been away filming but he will be home soon and I can feel little shivers of excitement running up and down my spine just at the thought of seeing him again.

I tell you, if any serpent dares to raise its ugly head in
my
new Eden, the Apple of Contentment is going to be rammed right down its throat faster than you can say Cox’s Pippin.

Trisha lives in beautiful North Wales, together with the neurotic Border Collie recently foisted onto her by her student son and an equally neurotic but also vain, bad-tempered and chancy Muse. She is a
Sunday Times
bestselling author.

For further information on Trisha Ashley, visit her website at
www.trishaashley.com
or her Facebook page at
Facebook/trishaashleybooks

I would like to thank Andrew L. Guthrie, General Manager of that glorious little paradise on earth, the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park, Grand Cayman, for kindly advising me on the history of rose cultivation on the island.

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