The next day dawned cold and bright, and by noon the movers had deposited all of their belongings in various rooms of the house, and Rebecca had already started opening boxes.
“We’ll need a table,” she said as she put dishes away in the kitchen’s little larder. “And chairs. Something cosy and old-fashioned.”
Marin thought of the huge glass-and-chrome table in the Hampshire house, and nodded. “Yes, I suppose this house really needs old pieces. But right now I need a cup of tea. If you can find the kettle somewhere in all that, I’ll go down to the shops and get us some tea and milk.”
“Shop, singular,” Rebecca answered, grinning. “Remember what Mrs Hewitt from the B&B said? There’s only one little shop in the village, and a café down by the beach.”
“And a pub,” Marin reminded her, smiling back. She wanted to get into the spirit of things, for Rebecca’s sake. And perhaps for her own as well.
“Three pubs, actually,” Rebecca answered, and then let out a cry of triumph. “Here’s the kettle.” She pulled the modern-looking chrome kettle out of the box, frowning as she looked at it. “Doesn’t really fit, does it? We need a big brass one or something.”
“That one will do for now, I should think,” Marin answered, and grabbed her coat.
The village sparkled under the sunlight, and despite the cutting wind Marin’s heart lifted at the sight of the sheep pasture, the tufty grass glittering with frost, and the high street that cut straight through it before meandering steeply up a hill, terraced cottages on either side.
She found the post office easily enough, a few yards up from the pub, and stepped inside, glancing around at the neat shelves of flour and biscuits and bread. A young woman behind the till nodded her hello, and Marin spent a pleasant few moments browsing her wares and thinking how weirdly and yet wonderfully different all of this was from her life in Boston or even Hampshire, where you hardly ever saw the same person twice, and groceries were ordered online or bought from huge superstores where you were just another anonymous customer.
Not that she’d bought many groceries, or ever cooked much. When living alone she’d subsisted on takeaways and toast, and that hadn’t changed all that much since she’d started taking care of Rebecca. She’d managed to make a basic spaghetti bolognaise – all that had required was a jar of sauce and a pound of mince – but meals were still mostly takeaways, plain pasta, or cereal, with the occasional salad thrown in.
Rebecca hadn’t minded, but as Marin thought of the cosy-looking kitchen with its tall windows and huge range, she felt a sudden urge to learn how to cook. To make nourishing meals and comforting soups for her and Rebecca. To nurse them both back to emotional wholeness and health. A silly notion, perhaps, to think food could heal, but one she still rather liked.
After she had found the things she needed, she took a moment to read all the notices on the board by the door. There were the usual advertisements for house cleaning and gardening services; a lost cat with accompanying photo; an announcement of a weekly quiz at the pub on Thursdays; and a poster for a ceilidh in the village hall that Friday.
Perhaps she and Rebecca could go to the ceilidh. She imagined kicking her heels up in a country dance, and inwardly laughed at herself. She had two left feet and would probably make a fool of herself, but she thought Rebecca might like to go. Perhaps they’d meet some people, find a way into this village and the sense of community it surely promised. Another way to heal.
Marin paid for the tea, milk and sugar at the till, exchanging a few pleasantries about the weather; the woman’s Cumbrian accent seemed impenetrable at first but after a few moments Marin started to understand. She put her shopping in the little cloth bag she’d brought with her, and then headed back to Rebecca and the house.
Rebecca had finished unpacking the kitchen things and had moved on to her bedroom; she’d picked the room in front, overlooking the street, although Marin had told her the room above the kitchen was sure to be warmer.
“You have that one,” Rebecca had said. “I like looking out at things.”
Marin fiddled with the Rayburn for a bit – great, lumbering beast that it was. The sound of its innards flaring to life had been encouraging, and the hotplates on top had finally started to get warm. She boiled the kettle and made them mugs of tea, taking them upstairs. She stood in the doorway of Rebecca’s bedroom and watched her for a moment; she was stacking her books on the floor, as they hadn’t brought any bookshelves.
“We really must get out to a charity shop,” she said as she handed Rebecca her tea. “Otherwise we’ll be living like travellers.”
“I don’t mind.” Rebecca blew on her tea. “But I suppose it would be nice to have a few more things. Make the house feel cosier.”
“I read some of the notices in the village shop,” Marin said. “There’s a ceilidh next Friday.”
Rebecca wrinkled her nose. “A ceilidh?”
“A Scottish dance. Sort of like country dancing. I thought we might go, meet some people.”
Rebecca, as Marin had expected her to, nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, that sounds brilliant.”
Sipping her tea, Marin wondered how long it would take for reality to set in. For Rebecca’s childish enthusiasm to wane, and for her to realize they were actually living here. Maybe next week, when she started at the local school? Or would the newness of that last for a little while? Marin didn’t know when it would happen, but she both feared and expected that Rebecca’s excitement would fizzle out, and she’d come hurtling back to earth. Back to the reality of her parents having died and her life stretching in front of her, looking utterly unlike what she’d expected it to look like just a few months ago.
“Are you going to unpack?” Rebecca asked, and Marin forced herself to push her melancholy thoughts away.
“I suppose I might as well. I didn’t bring much.”
“Go on, then. And when you’re done we can try the door in the garden.”
“You said yourself, whatever’s behind it is covered with bramble,” Marin reminded her. “We won’t find anything.”
Rebecca’s eyes sparkled with a mixture of defiance and determination. “I still want to open it.”
Marin unpacked her things in the small bedroom over the kitchen. It didn’t take long; within the space of a quarter of an hour her clothes were folded neatly in a single chest of drawers, the few books she owned piled on top along with her wash bag. She didn’t have anything else. She surveyed her few possessions with bemusement. On the one hand, it seemed quite an achievement to travel so lightly. On the other… it was, she supposed, a bit depressing. No knick-knacks or mementoes. She hadn’t had any in Boston, and she hadn’t brought any here.
The only photograph she’d brought with her was one of her with her father, taken on a trip to the sea in Norfolk one summer. She was about fourteen in the picture, just a little younger than Rebecca, and the wind was blowing her hair into her face. She was laughing, her hands lifted to pull her hair back. It was a candid and not altogether flattering pose – her hair had gone frizzy and her nose looked too big – but the reason Marin kept the photo, had framed it, even, was because of the way her father was looking at her. He had his arm around her, just for the photo, and he was gazing down at her with a kind of affectionate amusement. She remembered when she first saw the photograph. She kept staring at her father’s face, studying it, because she couldn’t remember him ever looking that way at her in real life. Not, at least, since her mother had died when she’d been just eight years old.
“Ready?” Rebecca appeared in the doorway, bouncing lightly on her heels.
Marin put the photo on top of the chest of drawers. “How are we going to open that door, Rebecca? We don’t have any tools.”
“I thought we could try it with a kitchen knife.”
“I think it’s rusted too much for that.”
“Let’s try anyway,” Rebecca answered. “And if we can’t open it, we could go for a walk through the churchyard. Meet our new neighbours.”
“You mean the Americans who bought the vicarage? I wonder what they think, living so close to the church.”
“As close as we are.”
“Yes, but we’re separated by a wall, at least. The vicarage looks right out onto the church lane. I wonder if anyone knocks on the door, looking for the vicar.”
Marin got her coat and wellies while Rebecca fetched a knife, and they headed out into the garden. It looked even more wild and unkempt in the bright sunlight; a horse chestnut tree was nearly choked by ivy, and the shape of the flower beds could barely be seen beneath the brambles and nettles.
“At least it’s small,” Marin said as she glanced around the square of patchy grass. “It won’t be too hard to keep neat, if we hire someone to cut down the brambles, perhaps.”
Rebecca wasn’t listening; she was hard at work with the latch, attempting to pry it upwards with the kitchen knife. The only result of her strenuous effort was a few flakes of rust fluttering to the ground.
“I think we do need something more than a kitchen knife,” Marin said. “But in any case, I’m not sure what the point is. We’ve enough garden to be getting on with, even if that door does lead somewhere other than the churchyard.”
“Aren’t you the tiniest bit interested?” Rebecca asked. She’d abandoned the knife and was peering through the space between the door and the wall once more. “I really can’t see anything beyond the brambles, but it must be a garden. A secret garden. Why would there be a door to the churchyard?”
“The house was built originally for the vicar’s mother-in-law,” Marin reminded her. “Maybe they put a door in the wall so they could go across more easily, rather than going all the way around the church.”
“Oh, you are so boring,” Rebecca said in exasperation, but she was smiling.
Marin smiled back. “Sorry, I’m afraid I always have been. Not a creative spark in my soul.”
“Maybe you just haven’t found it yet.”
Marin laughed lightly and shook her head. “Ever the optimist, Rebecca.” However, the door had captured her imagination, at least a little. But if it were really just brambles, she couldn’t see much point in trying to open it. “Shall we have a look at the churchyard?”
They left the door and the garden and walked back to the street, following it around to the lane that led to the church, a fine Norman building with the Georgian vicarage beyond it.
They turned towards the church, walking on the well-worn path of slates past the impressive doors and around the corner to the churchyard itself; Rebecca let out a little exclamation, and pointed to a gap in the hedge where it looked as if a gate had once been. The only things left were the rusted iron posts.
“Where does that lead?” Marin asked, and Rebecca laughed.
“To our garden. We’ve almost walked in a complete circle.”
Intrigued, Marin peered through the gap in the hedge and saw the weedy patch of grass they’d left only moments ago. “I’m all mixed up,” she said with a laugh. “But how funny – it must have been put there to give quick access to Bower House from the vicarage.”
Rebecca pointed to a door set in the high stone wall on the other side. “That must lead to the vicarage garden.”
“We really are neighbours.”
They left the remnants of the gate and turned towards the churchyard, the slate path going steeply uphill before ending at a stretch of grass dotted with mossy headstones.
It was quiet as they walked along, the only sound the rustle of the wind through the leafless trees and the chatter of a few restless rooks. Marin glanced at the headstones and realized neither she nor Rebecca had been in a churchyard since the funeral last August, when Peter and Diana had been buried in a huge cemetery overlooking a motorway. Rebecca hadn’t wanted to visit their graves again; she said she didn’t feel anything there.
Now Marin glanced at her half-sister in apprehension, wondering if seeing the graves would bring a fresh wave of grief, but Rebecca just looked pensive. She stopped in front of a weathered headstone and Marin joined her; the headstone was for a couple whose deaths were separated by twenty years, with the swirling inscription “Reunited” underneath their names and dates.
“At least Mum and Dad didn’t have to wait to be reunited,” Rebecca said after a moment. “Really, that would be a good way to go, wouldn’t it? Together?”
Marin felt her throat close as she thought of how her own parents hadn’t had that. Her mother had died of cancer, just two months from diagnosis to death. Was a car accident, so sudden and brutal, better? “I suppose it spares you one kind of grief,” she said after a moment, and Rebecca nodded before turning away.
Marin glanced at a few of the other headstones: one for a child, clearly beloved, who had died at only six years old, early in the last century – a little gambolling lamb had been engraved on the headstone by her name. A grandmother, “beloved Gran”, who had died only a handful of years ago.
The more recent graves were carefully tended, some with wilted posies or bouquets resting in front of them. The dearly missed grandmother’s, she saw, had an ultrasound photograph in a plastic sleeve in front of it, weighted down with a rock and with a handwritten note, “It’s a boy, Gran!” attached.
Examining all these tokens of both love and grief, she felt almost as if she was spying, or at least as if she were on the outside, looking in on something she’d never had. Swallowing, Marin walked away from the flowers and photographs and glanced again at some of the older headstones, their faces faded and weeds growing round their bases.
Rebecca had already walked on, and Marin joined her, following the grassy path that ran along the edge of the churchyard, and then as they came around the corner they nearly ran smack into a man standing there with a pair of wicked-looking garden shears.
“Oh!” Marin’s hand flew to her chest. Rebecca smiled.
“Hello, there,” she said.
“Afternoon.” The man nodded at both of them, the tiniest of smiles quirking the corner of his mouth. He had a shock of unruly dark hair threaded with grey, and eyes just as dark and completely veiled. His face was brown and weathered, with crow’s feet by his eyes and lines running from nose to mouth, but Marin guessed he was only a few years older than she was, perhaps in his early forties.
“Sorry, you startled me,” she said with a self-conscious smile.
“So I did.” He reached out and snipped one of the branches that twined up the wall, the simple movement managing to seem both confident and careless. He barely looked as he snipped another one, and the tips of the dead-looking branches fell to their feet.
“Do you take care of the church grounds?” Rebecca asked, and he snipped another branch.
“Aye.”
Rebecca stuck out a hand. “I’m Rebecca Ellis. My sister Marin and I just moved into Bower House.”
The man glanced at her hand before taking off his leather glove and shaking it. Obligingly Marin stuck her hand out too, and he shook it. His hand felt huge around hers, corded with muscle and crisscrossed with scratches despite the heavy gloves. “Joss Fowler.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. There was something about Joss Fowler’s contained stillness that made her feel awkward and uncertain.
“We’ve just been looking around the churchyard,” Rebecca said. “Are you pruning the roses?” He gave one slow nod, and Rebecca continued, “Do you know the garden of Bower House? There’s a door in the wall and we wondered where it led to.”
“A door…” the man repeated thoughtfully. He snipped another branch. “I couldn’t say. Haven’t been around there much, myself.”
Rebecca looked rather crushingly disappointed, and Marin decided it was time to move on.
“Nice to meet you,” she called, and ushered Rebecca down the path and around the corner.
“I thought he might have known something,” she said with a sigh. “He sounds like he’s from around here.”
“That doesn’t mean he knows every stick and stone,” Marin answered with a smile. “And in any case, Rebecca, it’s just a bunch of brambles, wherever it leads. Why are you so curious?”
“Because it’s interesting,” Rebecca answered, and for the first time she actually sounded cross. She pulled away from Marin and strode down the path, stopping in front of an old wooden five-bar gate.
Marin slowed, realization trickling through her. Rebecca had shown her in just about every way that the garden was important to her, and Marin had kept dismissing it. If Rebecca was excited about something, then she needed to be excited too. Needed to encourage her half-sister, rather than be such a dismal voice of caution, holding her back.
She joined Rebecca at the gate and unhooked the rope from around the post, letting it swing open. “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” she said stiltedly. “I don’t mean to sound so negative. Let’s open the door to the garden. I reckon we could do it if we found a screwdriver. Maybe there is something interesting back there, underneath all the brambles.”
“Oh, what’s the point?” Rebecca said wearily, and walked on.