Lavender Lane (Larch Tree Lane #4)

Chapter Twenty-One

Elizabeth looked out of the side window of the kitchen while she waited for the kettle to boil so that she could make cups of coffee for herself and her friend Selina.

She’d been staring out much more frequently since the new people arrived and the place next door began to re-open. And if that made her a nosy parker, too bad. She was sick and tired of living quietly here, even if she was getting older.

Her son might think she should stop wasting her energy fiddling around with her own and other people’s gardens, but her interest was more than just a way of keeping things looking nice. She’d saved a few rare species in her time and was proud of such achievements. There was even one flowering plant named after her.

Anyhow, like many widows, she was glad to have something interesting to do with her days. Her husband had died a few years ago, poor love, her children had grown up and moved away from the area and no, she wasn’t going to leave her beloved garden and buy a flat near either of them. She’d rather babysit plants than young children any day, far rather.

She continued to watch Sean, hoping he was coming to see her because she’d been feeling a bit down and she was hoping this charming newcomer would liven things up for everyone nearby.

He came through the ramshackle gate at the street side of his garden, turned right and started striding across towards her home. Oh, good!

‘It’s my new neighbour and he can only be coming to see me,’ she told her friend. ‘He’s looking rather miffed. I wonder what’s upset him.’

Selina came to join her by the window. ‘He’s rather dishy for a man his age, isn’t he? Is he married?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, we’ll have to check his background socially, but you’re right: he definitely looks miffed. Do you want me to leave? Or can I stay to meet him and watch the fun?’

‘No need for you to leave, but it may not be fun. And I keep telling you that I’m not looking for another husband, or even a toy boy. I wonder what has upset him. We’ll have to learn to manage him if we want good access to the unusual collection of plants growing at his place.’

‘You’re on. That sounds like fun.’

Elizabeth didn’t open the door until the knocker sounded. ‘Sean! Lovely to see you. Do come in.’

He followed her inside but said, ‘I can’t stay, I’m afraid,’ and made no effort to sit down.

‘How are things next door? My friends and I are really looking forward to helping you to get your gardens properly sorted out.’

‘I’ll be really grateful. I have neither the time nor the knowledge to deal with them myself, that’s for sure.’

She grinned and added cheekily, ‘Well, you’ll not get rid of us easily in that case because there aren’t a lot of other heritage gardens nearby for us to play with, so we’ll be happy to continue borrowing yours.’

He nodded then looked towards her guest, so she introduced them properly. ‘This is Selina. She’s looking forward to helping me with your garden.’

‘Thank you in advance for that, Selina. It’s very kind of you.’

‘We’re both excited about your garden. It’ll be lovely when it’s brought up to scratch.’

‘Do sit down, Sean,’ she said again.

‘Sorry but I can’t stay.’ He glanced out of the window then down at his watch. ‘I wanted to ask if you’d seen anyone hanging around nearby behaving suspiciously? We shall want to keep our guests safe from unwanted attention. Some burglars target oldies, seeing them as easier targets.’

Selina frowned. ‘Well, we didn’t get nearly as many passers-by hereabouts till you came to live here, so there are certainly people wandering about. I can’t say whether they’re connected with the re-opening of the convalescent centre, though.’

‘Oh. Thank you for telling me. Could you let me know if you see someone you think looks particularly suspicious or out of place, or who’s been here a few times? I’ll give you my private phone number.’

‘Yes, I’d be happy to do that.’

Selina looked puzzled and asked, ‘What do they think you’re hiding there?’

‘Who knows?’ He turned back to Elizabeth, looking a bit upset. ‘If we go on at this rate the whole town will be treating watching Lavender Lane as a spectator sport.’

She could see that he was upset by it, so spoke soothingly and changed the subject. ‘What exactly do you want us to do to the gardens?’

‘Since I have no experience whatsoever of gardening, I’ll be relying on you completely to tell me what needs doing, and even to explain what these various procedures will entail.’

He stopped because she was chuckling. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘You make it sound like a medical situation with doctors operating on plants instead of people. Have you any idea when we’ll be allowed to start work on the gardens?’

He ran one hand through his hair. ‘Not yet.’ Then he glanced down at his watch. ‘Sorry if I’m not explaining things very well. I’m just trying to tell you something quickly because I have another appointment shortly.’

‘No, I’m the one who should be sorry for interrupting you. Do go on.’

‘I can provide money for plants or whatever else you may need and there are some tools in that shed at the far end of our rear car park that you can use or else bring your own. But apart from that, it’s up to you what jobs you do and in what order. I must try it sometime, digging my fingers in the soil, I mean. Or building sandcastles at a beach. People are always going on about how satisfying doing that can be.’

He stared down at his neatly manicured hands, which made the two women study them as well and exchange quick glances. They had clearly not been used for manual labour.

Elizabeth goggled at him. ‘Did you never even try digging in the sand as a child, Sean?’

‘No, never. I grew up in a flat in London with an ultra-neat mother and was never allowed near a sandpit.’ He’d been sent to a school for gifted children, but wasn’t going to brag about his mental abilities, because he was sure now that this special education had been started too young. If he’d ever had children, he’d have given them time to play before putting their noses to a non-stop grindstone.

‘Go on,’ Elizabeth said gently.

‘After I left university, I went to work for the government and was sent here and there in the world, moving on from one project to another, so I continued to live in flats or rental homes in between these forays. I’ve rarely stayed anywhere for long. I suppose I’ve just used the places I’ve lived in as temporary staging posts.’

To his surprise, Elizabeth gave him a sudden hug. ‘You poor thing. You’ve missed a lot. Nothing eases sadness like a stint of grubbing in the soft earth or pruning a shrub or two.’

‘Or stroking the soft petals of a beautiful flower.’ Selina smiled across at a plant on her friend’s windowsill.

‘I’ll have to take your word for that till I’ve tried it myself. I’m hoping to be able to settle down here eventually, once we’ve sorted everything out. I don’t know why, but I like the feel of the place.’

‘You don’t sound to have ever had a real home,’ Elizabeth said.

He glanced out of the window towards Lavender Lane and murmured, ‘No. But I’m hoping perhaps I’ve found a permanent one now.’ He didn’t know why but his voice came out rather choked. He didn’t usually let his emotions get the better of him.

She noticed, of course, and tactfully waited a minute for his feeling to subside before asking, ‘Have you any idea how much money there will be available to do the work needed at your place, Sean? It’ll cost a fair bit to do things properly, so perhaps we’ll need to prioritise the jobs.’

He shrugged. ‘There will be as much money as is needed to do a decent but not lavish job. It’s not exactly my place, though. It was my partner who inherited it and I happened to have a connection to the charity it’s legally and permanently linked to so I came with her to see it and we both fell in love with the place. And with each other.’

This was the story they’d agreed on and actually quite close to the truth, but it still filled him with wonderment and joy that it had happened so quickly. The mere sight of her lifted his heart in a way no other woman had done.

‘So do we need to discuss any suggestions with her as well?’

‘Not necessarily. Especially now. She and I have both got other things going on so we’re a bit busy at the moment.’ He stared at Elizabeth, his expression suddenly stern. ‘But keep all this to yourselves. I don’t want what you’re doing to be talked about widely at this stage, if you don’t mind.’

After another of those thoughtful pauses, he added, ‘Can you please play down the funding we’re providing for your group as well, and not chat about anything else you see going on at the Lane – not to anyone at all, even if they’re your very best friends? If you can’t guarantee that reticence, our mutual arrangements will have to be terminated.’

He waited for their reply, his expression very solemn. There was no doubt he meant every word.

Elizabeth shrugged, hoping she’d hidden her surprise at this vehemence. ‘You said that when we first talked about this, so I’ve been very careful which friends I’ve invited to help look after this garden, Sean. I can assure you that, like Selina here, the others will be totally trustworthy. Lavender Lane has always been a rather secretive place, my mother told me, and if you think I didn’t notice that you and Nina seem to be carrying on that tradition, you’re wrong.’

‘I did feel almost immediately that I could trust you to stay quiet about what’s going on here, and I want to reiterate that both Nina and I very much appreciate your help.’

He held out his right hand and they shook on that, then he pulled a credit card out of his pocket and held it out to her. ‘Nina inherited a gardening fund and this card draws on it. You can use the money for whatever you need to purchase in connection with the gardens next door – but for nothing else. We expect you to be sensible and not go for outrageously expensive or difficult-to-look-after plants, but do please buy whatever you need to make things look cared for as rapidly as you can. The emphasis at this stage is on speed of getting the garden tidied up rather than cost. We want to enjoy living there and for the place to show the world that it’s inhabited again and back to its former use.’

‘You can’t make plants grow to your timetable, only choose them carefully and encourage them to grow. They usually start off small then do their own thing about how fast they grow bigger, however hard you encourage them.’

‘I know that but it looks such a mess at the moment, though I did wonder whether someone had been trimming the lavender plants.’

‘I plead guilty. They needed it desperately, poor things. I couldn’t let them die, so I’ve nipped across every now and then, to give them a helping hand.’

‘Thank you. You’ll be able to tidy the rest up as needed and perhaps buy a few bigger plants of other sorts to help give things a kick start on looking good? The only things we don’t want changing are the lavender bushes, as we’ve already agreed. The place is, after all, named for them. I looked them up online and they did seem rather lovely.’

Elizabeth beamed at him. ‘I shall enjoy organising it all. You probably don’t realise it but those bushes are of a particularly rich blue colour and they smell heavenly too.’

‘I shall look forward to seeing them for myself. And any time you want, you can take some cuttings with our blessing.’

‘Wonderful.’ She got out her purse and put the credit card away in one of the inner slots. He looked so weary, her heart went out to him.

‘Anything else I need to know or do urgently in connection with the gardens?’ he asked.

‘Not at the moment. I’ll get back to you on that once we’ve done our survey and made proper plans.’

‘Good.’ He glanced at his watch again, then moved towards the door. ‘I’ll let you take a very quick look round now so that you can make a start with your planning, but you won’t be able to come back very often until I’ve sorted out a few other things.’

‘You look tired. Why don’t you sit down again and at least have a cup of coffee?’

‘I’d love to do that another time but there’s too much to do setting things up, not just today but all week.’

He moved towards the front door, where he stopped to say, ‘One other thing. You should only come round to work in daylight hours when we can keep an eye on you and your safety.’

She patted his arm. ‘Yes. So you’ve said. And we’ll do that. Now, give us a couple of minutes to change our shoes then we’ll follow you round and take a quick preliminary look at the gardens.’

‘Very well. I’ve someone coming to see me later so you really do need to do it very quickly.’

After he’d left, Selina went out to get her gardening boots from her car and the two women sat down to pull on their sturdy footwear, beaming at one another.

‘That project is going to be fun,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ve never had such a generous budget before.’

‘And to add to the pleasure, it’s money that we didn’t have to provide ourselves and fundraise or beg to obtain. I’m so glad you included me in this project.’

‘We always work well together. Let’s go next door and whizz round our blank canvas then come back and make a rough start on the planning.’ She smiled and made a triumphant fist in the air. ‘Yeah! We’ll be sensible but there’s clearly no need to be frugal this time.’

‘That’ll be such fun, buying the best plants for the various positions.’

Elizabeth had absolute confidence in Selina. She’d known all the people who would now be involved in this project for years and felt sure she could trust them to keep quiet about the details of what they were doing as the project got under way. Well, they’d kept quiet about one another’s marital ups and downs over the years too, hadn’t they?

Sean hadn’t told her exactly what this was all about. It must be something very important if the government was throwing all this money at it. How intriguing it all was. But if a man as savvy as him was worried about danger after dark, then she’d have to make sure from now on that she locked her outer doors and windows very carefully and switched on her perimeter security system at night, even if Selina was staying over.

Thank goodness she had an excellent security system. She wasn’t stupid enough to live alone as a single older woman without taking precautions. Her son had helped her set that up after his father died.

Maybe she’d find out the full details of what was going on next door one day and maybe not. Even if she didn’t, she’d enjoy her part in it because creating new gardens could be such a wonderfully rewarding activity in its own right.

She smiled as it occurred to her that Sean had another focus to his life now apart from his work, and it seemed to have happened quickly. But from the way he smiled at the thought of Nina, it was making him very happy. Well, good luck to the pair of them. Everyone deserved a loving partnership of some sort at least once in their lives and he was a bit of a late starter.

She passed a new notepad to her friend. ‘Here. You’re better at sketching than I am. Can you do a rough sketch as we go round of where the flower beds are with an estimate of their size? This is going to be fun but we’d better hurry. We only have about fifteen minutes left to whizz round this time.’

Selina nodded. ‘I’ll pace it out roughly as we go to get a general idea of size then we’ll go back to your place and start planning.’

‘I wonder when we’ll be allowed to start the real work.’

‘We may have to wait to do that. But it’ll make a great excuse to have a preliminary wander round the plant nurseries in the area, won’t it?’

‘Several wanders.’

‘Of course. But first, do we want a cottage garden look or more formal borders of flowery annuals?’

Selina considered this, head on one side as they walked along the first path. ‘Flowers galore, for sure. They lift just about everyone’s spirits and if this is any sort of convalescent home that will be a particularly good thing. But not too formal. And the plants will have to fit in with the lavender around blooming time.’

‘Yes. I agree.’ With matching blissful sighs, they began work.