One Wednesday evening in late March Marin, Rebecca, and Joss all headed to the monthly meeting of Goswell’s historical society. Rebecca and Marin had been in Goswell for nearly a month, and Marin thought, or at least hoped, that things had settled down into a routine.
Rebecca seemed to be enjoying school, although she didn’t speak much about it, and she’d made firm friends with Natalie. She hadn’t had too many – or any, really – heart-to-hearts with Marin, but then Marin knew she hadn’t really encouraged them. She’d focused on the practical, which was what she always did. She bought another cookbook, this one more contemporary and basic than the dog-eared Complete Book of Rayburn Cookery, and she mastered several easy recipes for beef stew, chicken and ham pie, potato and leek soup, and sausage and bean casserole. She even learned how to bake a basic chocolate cake, which met with Rebecca’s approval.
She’d never had the urge to cook before; her solitary city existence had meant she could quite happily subsist on takeaways and pots of noodles, supplemented by cereal and toast. Often, with her work schedule, she’d eaten her meals standing at the sink.
Now, however, she was keen and even eager to make their funny little house a home; perhaps not with the bustle and noise of the Hattons’ place, with children coming and going, people clattering up and down the stairs, but somewhere that was at least warm and welcoming. She hoped Rebecca was beginning to appreciate her efforts; she ate the meals Marin made, at any rate, and she smiled when Marin joked that she hoped she was improving.
Yet even though their kitchen had become a cheerful place with the big brass kettle and the mismatched colourful mugs, the smells of something fairly delicious simmering on the stove, and a jar of daffodils on the sill by the sink, it had not bridged the chasm of silence that so often stretched between Marin and her half-sister.
Marin did not know what would achieve that. Time, perhaps, as the grief counsellors had advised, but she feared that time would simply cement them in their positions, frozen in isolated silence like Dante’s ninth circle of hell.
“I don’t know what teenager doesn’t give her parent the silent treatment,” Jane told her when she’d invited Marin over for coffee one afternoon in mid-March. “I know you’re not her mother, but you are her authority figure, and it’s par for the course, as far as I’m concerned, to have no idea whatsoever about what is going on in a teenager’s head.”
Marin smiled, knowing Jane meant to encourage her. Perhaps she should be encouraged by the fact that she was doing neither better nor worse than the average parent of a teen.
And yet she longed to know what Rebecca was thinking and feeling. How she was coming to terms with the grief Marin could barely acknowledge herself. What she thought of this strange little life they’d made for themselves in Goswell. What she saw their future looking like as they soldiered on here, a funny family that had come together not by choice.
The trouble was, Marin had no idea how to get Rebecca to tell her any of that, how to ask.
The walled garden, at least, provided a respite from the trials of daily life, an escape from the constant unacknowledged companion that was grief. With the use of Joss’s strimmer, Marin had cleared a good half of it by the middle of March. As she’d worked she’d seen how things were starting to grow back; the thorny brambles had new green shoots. One morning, when she came into the garden, her boots squelching in the soft mud, she saw the bright, tiny heads of crocuses peeping out from the stubbly roots.
She’d completely uncovered the foundations of the little greenhouse or shed or whatever it had been, and she could see where there had been a door. Joss had shown her where the pipes had probably been laid. She’d paced out the building and seen that it wasn’t very big, perhaps half the size of her bedroom.
“A bit small for a greenhouse,” Joss told her one afternoon when he’d come by to check on her progress. “Maybe it was just a shed.”
“With heating?” Marin challenged, eyebrows raised, and he smiled and shook his head.
“It’s a mystery. Someone will know, I reckon.”
Which was why they were now going to the historical society’s meeting, in the hope that someone might know about, or at least might know how to find out about, the use of the building in Bower House’s walled garden.
“It would be really boring if it turned out to be something stupid,” Rebecca said as they walked up the high street to where the historical society met in the old Scout hut by the school.
“Something stupid?” Joss repeated. “What would that be?”
Rebecca shrugged. “I don’t know. Just, like, a shed.”
“We’ve already determined it can’t have been a shed,” Marin said firmly. “But maybe someone lived there.”
“In a building the size of a broom cupboard?” Rebecca exclaimed. “In the middle of a garden? Now that would be stupid.”
“It’s not as unlikely as all that,” Joss answered mildly. “The cottage in the corner of the churchyard used to be where the church gardener lived. The diocese sold it a while back and someone’s done it up and extended it into a proper house. But at one point it wouldn’t have been too much bigger than our mystery shed.”
Marin liked the way he carelessly used the word our; it implied a sense of belonging she hadn’t experienced in years, if ever, or at least not since her mother had died.
“Well, hopefully we’ll find out soon enough,” she said, catching Joss’s eye. He smiled at her over Rebecca’s head.
It was still light out, despite it being nearly seven o’clock; as they headed up the high street Marin could see the sheep pasture stretching to the sea, which was no more than a twinkle under the setting sun on the horizon. The sky was a pale blue streaked with long white clouds and the air felt, if not precisely warm, then at least not freezing.
“Spring’s coming,” Marin said, and Rebecca let out a laugh.
“It comes every year.”
“It still feels like a miracle. I saw crocuses in the garden, and there are daffodils by the chestnut tree.”
“The bulbs will come up year after year,” Joss told her. “Even if no one tends them.”
Marin liked the idea that a flower could grow and bloom even under the most indifferent care. Bower House’s proper garden was still a tangle of weeds, although Marin had managed at least to mow the lawn. She’d been spending most of her gardening hours on clearing the walled garden.
They finally arrived at the Scout hut, a temporary building from the 1950s that had, with the help of some minor improvements, morphed into a permanent structure. The inside smelled of sweaty socks and stale boy, and about a dozen people were seated in a circle on folding chairs. A man who looked to be about sixty rose from his chair as they came in.
“Newcomers, how delightful,” he said. “I’m Allan Mayhew, Chairman of the society.”
Marin introduced herself and Rebecca, and Joss gave a quick nod. Allan’s gaze, Marin saw, had narrowed slightly as he caught sight of Joss.
“Joss Fowler,” he said, and she had the sense he was recalling Joss’s history as he said his name. “Good to see you again.”
Again? Marin slid Joss a curious look; he was staring straight ahead, his expression bland. She shouldn’t be surprised, she supposed; Joss had told her he’d grown up here. Yet in the month since she’d known him she’d never seen him except on his own. Even at the ceilidh he hadn’t really talked to anyone but her.
“Come, sit down, sit down,” Allan beckoned, and someone got out a few more folding chairs. They all sat down, and after introductions the meeting began; they were talking about doing a First World War centenary display in the church.
Marin listened with interest about memorabilia and presentations and a possible lecture series on “Goswell Through The World Wars”.
Someone passed around a medal won by their grandfather in the First World War; another person had a newspaper clipping from 1915. Marin studied the tiny type, marvelling at the articles that spoke of a forgotten world: a call to collect sphagnum moss to send to field hospitals for use as medical dressings; an advertisement for Dainty Dinah toffee to send to soldiers that, according to the ad, “helps him to forget what he has been through – the great trials and sufferings he has undergone”. Sold, Marin saw, at all fine confectioners.
Another article outlined the house-to-house collection that had gone on in Goswell to supply funds to purchase huts for the female munitions workers.
“It’s a different world, isn’t it?” Marin murmured to Joss as she handed him the newspaper clipping. “A different era.”
“The era of the girl in the photograph,” he reminded her. “And maybe our mystery shed.”
After the meeting had broken up Marin approached Allan Mayhew, self-conscious yet determined to see if she could find out anything more. She explained about the photograph and the garden, and Allan listened, his head cocked to one side, his bushy white eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know that much about Bower House, to be honest. Just the basics, about the diocese selling it in 1929, when the incumbent at that time retired.” He tapped a finger against his lips, frowning in thought. “I know the photograph you mean, though – I’m just trying to remember who it belonged to.”
“I never even thought of that,” Marin admitted. “Whoever had it might know more about the garden—”
“Perhaps,” Allan allowed. “Although many of those photos were here in the hut, in our archives. They’d belonged to the historical society for donkey’s years. But I could do a bit of digging, if you like, and ask around. Someone might remember where it came from.”
“Thank you, that would be so helpful. And as for the building in the garden…”
Allan shook his head. “That I couldn’t tell you about. I didn’t even know there was one. But like I said, someone might know. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
Although they hadn’t found out anything about either the garden or the girl, Marin felt cheerful as they left the Scout hut and headed back down the high street towards Bower House. She’d done something, and who knew what Allan Mayhew might unearth?
As they approached the church lane where Joss had parked his van, Rebecca turned to him suddenly.
“Would you like to come in for a drink? Marin makes a mean cup of tea.”
“Does she?” Joss sounded bemused, and Marin inwardly cringed at her sister’s blatant attempt to push her and Joss together. Did teenagers never realize how obvious they were?
“You’re welcome to, of course,” she said after a too-long pause, and in the moonlight she thought she saw Joss smile.
“I’d like a cup of tea, thanks,” he said, and they walked in silence towards Bower House.
Once inside, Rebecca scampered upstairs with mutterings of homework, and Marin cringed again. Rebecca, she thought, couldn’t be more obvious if she tried.
Joss followed her into the kitchen, and Marin felt thick-fingered and clumsy as she filled the kettle and heaved it onto the Rayburn, and then went in search of mugs and milk.
“You look well settled here,” Joss said as he braced a hip against the oak table.
“Trying,” Marin told him. “It’s a lovely little house, the kind of place that could be a proper home, I think.”
“It is that.” He arched an eyebrow. “Better than a flat in a city?”
“Yes, definitely.” She put the milk on the table and closed the fridge.
“But you must miss city life a bit,” Joss said. “The convenience.”
“Not really,” Marin answered, then amended that to, “not yet… But what about you? Have you ever had a hankering to live in a city?”
He laughed, the sound seeming both rich and rusty. “No, I like Goswell.”
“But you lived somewhere else for a bit, didn’t you?” Marin’s back was to Joss as she asked the question, but she felt his hesitation and she turned to see the smile wiped from his face; he looked wary and guarded now.
“Yes, for a bit.”
“But you decided to come back to Goswell?” Wherever he’d lived, it clearly was out of bounds for conversation. Marin wondered if he’d been married; was there a divorce lurking in his background? Had he moved to be with his wife, and moved back again when his marriage had broken down? She knew she was being both fanciful and nosy, but she couldn’t help it. She was curious about Joss Fowler – more curious than perhaps he wanted her to be.
“Yes, it seemed the right thing to do.” His tone was final, but his choice of words intrigued her. The kettle whistled then, forestalling any more questions not that Marin thought she could ask any without Joss becoming more tight-lipped.
As she poured the tea, he changed the conversation anyway. “So I think you said you do something in IT. Can you do that from here?”
“I’m trying to set up my own business,” Marin answered. “Designing and maintaining websites, offering IT services, that kind of thing. Just about everyone has a website these days—”
“I don’t.”
“No Fowler and Son dot com?” she said in a parody of shock, and Joss’s mouth quirked upwards in a tiny smile. “Well, I could see if the domain was available, if you wanted to set one up.”
He hesitated, drumming his fingers on the table, and then gave a nod. “Go on, then.”
“All right, I’ll just get my laptop.” She hurried to fetch it, and then set it up on the kitchen table while Joss poured their tea, adding two sugars to his, which Marin teasingly raised an eyebrow at. He grinned back.
Soon they were both seated at the table with the laptop in front of them, mugs of tea by their elbows.
“So, let’s see,” Marin began as she logged in and pulled up a browser window. “What domain name would you like? Fowler and Son?”
“Seems best to keep it straightforward.”
She typed “FowlerandSon.co.uk” into the browser window, and a notice popped up that the domain name was for sale. “Perfect. That means you can buy it.”
“From whom?”
“A company that buys up a bunch of domain names and then sells them off.”
“That’s a nice little sideline.”
She laughed and clicked through to get to the company’s homepage. “Isn’t it just!” She nodded towards the screen. “There. For sixty pounds a year it’s yours.”
“Sixty quid? And that’s just the name?”
“I think you’ll find,” Marin said, self-consciously adopting a businesslike tone, “that a website drives more business to you—”
Joss held up a hand. “I don’t need the sales pitch. I suppose I can fork out sixty quid for a site. And whatever your going rate is for designing the website.”
“Oh.” Marin felt her cheeks heat. “I didn’t mean you had to use me – that is, my services – for your website. I wasn’t trying to drum up some business.”
“Why wouldn’t I have you do it? I’d rather it was someone I knew and trusted than a stranger.”
“I know, but…” Marin nibbled her lip. “I just don’t want you to think…”
“Don’t worry about what I think,” Joss cut across her. “Trust me, it’s nothing bad.”
And for some reason that innocuous statement sent a shiver of wary pleasure through her. “All right, then. Let’s register the domain name, at least.” Joss watched while she started the process, and when it came to his personal details he took over and typed them in. “Joss Fowler, 2 Seaview Lane, Goswell, Cumbria.”
“Where’s Seaview Lane?” she asked, realizing she was being nosy but still wanting to know.
“Down by the beach. I have a bungalow right by the sea.”
“You must get a lot of wind.”
“On a stormy day the garden, such as it is, floods. But it’s worth it.” He reached for the mouse to click to the next entry box, and put his hand over Marin’s, which was still resting on top of the mouse. For a second his hand completely covered hers, and Marin could feel its dry warmth and solid strength before she pulled her hand away.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and felt her blush return. She was thirty-seven years old and she was blushing because a man had accidentally touched her hand. Good grief.
“There we are.” Joss nodded at the screen. “So FowlerandSon.co.uk is mine?”
“Looks like it.” She smiled, conscious that she was still blushing, her hand still tingling. She felt ridiculous and yet also happy, happier than she’d been in a long while. “We can set up a time for a design consultation, and you can let me know what you want from the website—”
“I don’t think I’d really have the first clue.”
“Well, contact details, of course, and an online form to submit requests?” He nodded and she continued, “And examples of your work, photos of gardens and landscaping.”
“Sounds good.”
“And if you wanted to get really high tech,” she added, “you could write a blog about interesting garden projects you’ve done.”
Joss’s eyebrows rose at this and Marin thought he was going to refuse, but then he said, “What about a blog about the walled garden, and what we find? Someone might stumble across it and know something.”
“What if we don’t find anything?” Marin countered.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Joss asked seriously and Marin knew she didn’t. She’d had a feeling about that garden from the moment she’d seen the door. But could you really trust a feeling?
She hesitated, her hand on the mouse, and then she thought about how coming here had started to change her, how she was trying, in hesitant little steps, to come out of the shell she’d constructed and kept around herself for so long. “Why not?” she finally said. “I could set it up and link it to your site.”
“Perfect. Do you have a camera?” She shook her head and he said, “I’ll bring mine. We can take some photos of the garden. Too bad we didn’t take an initial one when it was all bramble—”
“I think there’s enough bramble left for people to get the idea.”
“Good.”
They stared at each other, the moment spinning out until it seemed to be turning into something else. “Thank you,” Marin said at last, her tone both abrupt and awkward.
Joss raised his eyebrows. “For what?”
“For – for being a friend. I haven’t actually had that many.” Which suddenly felt like far too intimate an admission to make, but she couldn’t take it back.
“And why’s that?” Joss asked quietly.
Marin swallowed. “I’ve moved around because of my job,” she hedged. “And I’ve worked long hours.” Which were not the real reasons, and she sensed that Joss knew it. “My mother died when I was eight,” she blurted. “And my father just… shut down. You think grief brings people together but sometimes it pulls them apart.”
“Yes,” Joss agreed, “it does.” And she had a feeling he knew what she was talking about.
“That’s what happened to my father and me,” she continued. It felt both good and strange to tell him more, to explain. “He completely withdrew and ended up sending me to boarding school just a few months after my mother died. I was so angry and hurt at the time, but too young to know how to confront him on it. And eventually I just started doing the same thing. Shutting people out.”
“To keep yourself from getting hurt.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“And as an adult?” he asked after a moment. “Are you still shutting people out, Marin?”
She thought of her two failed romantic relationships, her handful of friends in Boston, and her sometimes-strained relationship with Rebecca. “I’m trying not to. Now. Here.”
“I think you’re succeeding,” he answered. He lifted his hand and Marin held her breath as he gently tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. It was barely the whisper of a touch, and yet it made everything in her ache and yearn; she felt as if she were stirring to life, just as the garden was, the brambles inside her finally being cleared away.
And then it was over, almost as if it had never happened, and he was standing up and taking their mugs to the sink. “I’ll bring the camera tomorrow afternoon,” he told her. “If you’re free?”
“Yes,” Marin said. She stood up too, the chair scraping across the tiled floor with a screech. “I’m free.”
“Good.” Another brief look passed between them that left Marin feeling strangely expectant, but also unsure. What had just happened? How much had changed between them?
And then Joss lifted a hand in farewell and started for the front door. Marin followed him, and she stood in the doorway as the cold night air swept over her, and she watched Joss walk down the weedy little path and all the way to the church lane, until he was swallowed up by the darkness.