Lost and Found on Foxglove Street (The Foxglove Street #9)

Chapter 2

2

Ryan Lewis unlocked the front door to his house on Riverside Road and stepped inside. The cool air of the high-ceilinged hallway was welcome after the balmy heat of the midsummer evening outside.

“Grandma, I’m home,” he called out. “Sorry I took so long.”

His grandmother’s head appeared around the side of the living room door, and she smiled as her gaze travelled to the shopping bag in his hand.

“Did you find somewhere that sells my favourite tea?” she asked, stepping into the hallway.

“I did. The first shop I tried didn’t stock your brand, but the second shop did.” Ryan removed the box of Earl Grey tea from the shopping bag and handed it over. “Is that the right one?”

“Indeed it is. Thank you, Ryan. And sorry for sending you on a wild goose chase.”

“It was no problem, Grandma. I should’ve thought to stock up before you arrived. I know how much you love your special tea.”

“I’m much too fussy.”

“You like what you like and there’s nothing wrong with that. Do you want a cup now?”

His grandmother crossed the hallway to the kitchen-diner at the back of the house, where she sat the box of tea bags on the expanse of marble counter. “I don’t think we’ve got time for tea, not if we plan on getting to the cinema before our film starts.”

“Are you sure you’ll survive the evening without having a cup of tea first? I don’t want you fainting away halfway through the film.”

His grandmother cackled at his mocking tone and swatted his arm. “I’m not that bad.”

“We both know that’s not true, Grandma, not when it comes to you and your tea.”

She gave him an amused sigh, her eyes twinkling. Miriam Lewis, Ryan’s paternal grandmother, was a force of nature and Ryan’s favourite person in the whole world. They’d shared a special bond all his life, ever since he was a little boy and she’d spoiled him with her wonderful baking when he came to visit with his parents and sister at the weekend, always slipping him an extra cookie or cake slice wrapped in a paper napkin to enjoy on the drive back home, along with an extra serving for his sister.

Throughout his life, Grandma Miriam had always encouraged him to pursue his dreams, and that encouragement had shaped the life he now led—a successful life working in a career he loved in the music industry and with the fruits of that success illustrated by the beautiful home in which he now lived on leafy Riverside Road.

He might not have bought this house at all had it not been for his grandmother’s encouragement. The house was huge, grand and imposing, with three public rooms downstairs, along with the vast kitchen-diner in which he now stood, and four bedrooms upstairs. It was much too large for a single man in his early thirties.

But his grandmother had rejected his concerns when he’d first viewed the property, reminding him that the additional space would be invaluable for when he was working at home and wanted to compose on his piano or on the guitar, and that he’d have the luxury of adding a small recording area should he chose to. She’d also argued that he wouldn’t always be alone anyway, that he’d one day have a family of his own, and that the bedrooms would soon fill up with children and laughter.

Although turning the house into a family home remained elusive, Ryan was happy to concede that his grandmother had been right about how much the house suited his needs as a musician and songwriter. The high ceiling and tall bay windows of the second sitting room at the back of the house provided a perfectly serene place to write music, and the space he’d hived off in order to create a small internal sound-proofed recording studio was solid enough for laying down demo tracks.

It was a beautiful house, and Hamblehurst, the small town in which it was located, was a pretty place to live, close enough to London and the clients Ryan worked with but far enough away from the urban sprawl to allow his creative muse free rein. The fact that Grandma Miriam had loved the house from the moment she’d accompanied him on the first viewing only made Ryan love the property even more.

Although he’d owned the house for almost a year, this was the first time his grandmother had come to enjoy an extended stay. Ten months ago, Miriam had been diagnosed with breast cancer and the treatment she’d endured was long and brutal. Watching his beloved grandmother go through surgery and then several rounds of chemotherapy had just about ripped Ryan’s heart in two. While Miriam had faced the gruelling surgery and treatments with typical bravery and determination, Ryan knew that the past ten months had taxed his grandmother in energy and spirit.

Her survival had never been guaranteed, as the hospital oncologist had made only too clear. There were many, many times when Ryan saw in his grandmother’s eyes the toll the ordeal was taking on her, despite her best efforts to grin and bear it.

When Miriam was declared cancer-free two months ago, it was a cause of huge celebration in the Lewis family. Ryan’s grandfather, and Miriam’s husband of more than fifty years, had died just a year before the shock of the breast cancer diagnosis, but Ryan, along with his sister and their parents, had done everything in his power to be at Miriam’s side and support her during the long period of treatment and recovery.

When Miriam had shared the news about being declared cancer-free, she’d also announced her intention to live her life to the fullest now that she’d been given this wonderful second chance thanks to the care and support of the superb hospital team who’d shepherded her back to health. She had no way of knowing whether the cancer might return in the future, she’d explained, which meant all she could count on was each day and each moment.

She planned to squeeze every ounce of joy and life out of each of those days and each of those moments and cherish them as the gifts they were. What she wanted most of all, she’d explained, was to spend as much time as possible with those she loved.

Over the past two months, Miriam had spent several weeks staying with Ryan’s parents at their home near Stratford-upon-Avon, enjoying their company before decamping to stay with Ryan’s sister and her family in Exeter. Now, it was Ryan’s turn to host his grandmother, and he’d been anticipating her arrival for days. With his latest songwriting project completed for a famous pop star Ryan was proud to write for, he was looking forward to spending this valuable time with his grandmother.

Miriam would stay with him in Hamblehurst for the next two weeks, before he returned to work and his next songwriting commission. Had there not been several loose ends to tie up with his latest music project before his grandmother arrived, he would’ve been on the ball and remembered to stock up on her favourite brand of Earl Grey tea. It was only once he’d collected her from the train station and driven her to his home and flicked the kettle on that he realised his mistake.

His grandmother had insisted regular tea was fine, but Ryan knew how much she loved her signature Earl Grey blend. The dash around to the shops had taken longer than he’d anticipated, and if he’d realised he’d have to trek all the way across to the high street to complete his quest he would’ve taken the car, but at least he’d found a box of her tea in the end. He wanted his grandmother to enjoy her stay here at his house, and after everything she’d endured over the last year while battling cancer, the least he could do was make sure her favourite brew was on hand.

“How far away is the cinema?” Miriam now asked, having set the box of tea bags beside the kettle on the counter.

“It’s a ten-minute drive to the multiplex at the retail park,” Ryan replied and checked his watch. “We should probably make a move.”

Miriam’s eyes flashed as she smiled. “I’m rather excited about seeing this film.”

“You never struck me as an action film fan, Grandma.”

“Well, I said I wanted to live life to the fullest now that I’m on the road to recovery, and I meant it,” Miriam replied, and a wicked twinkle lit up her eyes. “Although I must confess that I also have a soft spot for that handsome young man in the lead role.”

Ryan let out a soft laugh. The ‘young man’ his grandmother was referring to was about fifteen years older than he was, and was therefore no spring chicken, but he wasn’t about to point that out to his grandmother. If she wanted to ogle the middle-aged actor playing the lead role in the ‘past his best but up for a challenge’ action flick, then who was he to judge?

“I’ll grab my car key and we’ll get going,” Ryan said.

“Hang on,” Miriam said, frowning and dropping her gaze to his shirt. “What’s that strange mark on your shirt?”

Ryan glanced down and noticed a wet smear across the front of his shirt, to which were stuck several wiry dog hairs. He wiped at the mark, dislodging the dog hair but doing nothing but smearing the wet mark further across the fabric.

“I stopped to pet a dog on the way back here,” Ryan explained. “It was a bit of a drooler, and I must’ve got slobber on my hand and not realised, and then transferred it to my shirt. I should probably change before we go out.”

“I’m sure no one will notice. We’ll only be sitting in the dark in the cinema.”

“I’ll change, anyway. The dog was, er, a bit smelly and dirty, to be honest.”

As he turned for the stairs, his grandmother laughed. “Then why did you pet it?”

“It’s a long story,” he called back down the stairs from his bedroom as he unbuttoned the shirt. “This woman I bumped into round the corner had found the dog and asked if it belonged to me. We realised it was probably a stray and she wasn’t sure what to do about it.”

“Poor dog,” Miriam said from the hallway downstairs. “So, what happened to it?”

“The woman said she’d look after it tonight and tomorrow we agreed we’d drop by the vet’s practice to get it scanned for a microchip and find out who owns it. I said I’d go with her because she has to get to work by eleven and seemed a bit alarmed at ending up responsible for the dog when it wasn’t anything to do with her.”

“So you agreed to help? That’s very nice of you, Ryan.”

“I think she was hoping I’d volunteer to look after the dog tonight, but we’re off to the cinema, so that was a non-starter. I felt bad for her, to be honest. I got the impression she might just have got home from work and was looking forward to a quiet night, and then this mucky, smelly dog appeared in front of her and wouldn’t leave her alone.”

“Poor chap. I don’t like thinking of dogs roaming around on their own. I wonder what happened to him?”

“I’m sure we’ll sort it out tomorrow once the vet scans him and checks out his microchip details.”

“Assuming he has a microchip. What if he doesn’t?”

Ryan hadn’t thought about that. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. But I’m sure we won’t. The dog has probably just escaped from his garden and run off for a few hours and got himself a bit mucky by jumping into a filthy puddle or something like that.”

Having changed his shirt, Ryan went back downstairs and found his grandmother lingering in his work space at the back of the house, her gaze scanning the long desk where he composed his songs and wrote lyrics.

“It looks like you’ve been keeping very busy, Ryan,” Miriam said, taking in the notebooks and composition sheets piled up across the desk.

“You know me, Grandma. There’s always some tune or jingle rattling around inside my head. If I don’t keep these notebooks and score sheets handy to jot things down, I’d forget most of it.”

Ryan had always worked that way—scrawling ideas and snippets of songs onto paper while he tinkered at the piano or guitar before committing the music and lyrics to the dedicated composition software he used on his computer system. He’d discovered over the years that unless he let a new song or new idea breathe and take shape organically before attempting to structure it formally, the essence of the piece never matured quite the way he imagined, or hoped, it would.

Which was why his desk was covered with so many notebooks and stacks of composition paper, and why the desk itself was so long. Ryan needed the extensive space to work, and with so many song and musical ideas on the go at any one time, and all of them at various stages of development, the expansive desk was required in order to keep his creative system in full working order.

“When I was staying with your sister,” Miriam said, “she mentioned that a song you wrote for some big deal pop star had been nominated for a songwriting award.”

Ryan nodded. “I co-wrote the song with Eddie, actually,” he explained, referring to the skilled pop composer who Ryan enjoyed collaborating with. “We were pretty surprised when it got nominated, but I guess the judging panel must like it.”

“Good for you. When will you know if you’ve won?”

“The award ceremony is next month.”

“Well, fingers crossed. One of the things that kept me going through all that wretched cancer treatment was knowing how well you are doing in life, Ryan. You and your sister, for that matter. Seeing all this that you’ve created…” She swept a hand around the room, signifying the musical scores in progress, the scribbled pages of lyrics, the piano, and the racks of guitars lining one wall. “Knowing you’ve built a life with your creative spirit at its heart makes me very happy, Ryan.”

Ryan stepped towards his grandmother and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “Thanks, Grandma.”

“And it’s wonderful to know you are in demand from all those big pop stars and whatnot, who all want you to write songs for them.”

“I’m grateful they want me.”

“They’re lucky to have you,” Miriam insisted. She cast another look around the room, her gaze settling on his cluttered composition desk and then the piano, before she spoke again. “But I can’t help wondering if, in the middle of all this busy work, you have time to write for yourself?”

Her question caught him by surprise. “Write for myself? Why would I do that?”

Miriam frowned. “Well, because you used to be the one singing the songs, too.”

Ryan laughed. “My days up on the stage are long gone, Grandma.”

She gave him a long look but said nothing. To cut off the turn in the conversation before it became any more uncomfortable, Ryan smiled and ushered his grandmother towards the hallway.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to the cinema so you can ogle your film star crush.”

For a moment, he thought she planned to press the issue and quiz him further. He knew his grandmother well enough to read the challenge in her eyes. But in the end, she just gave a quick shrug and headed for the door.

Still, as his grandmother fetched her handbag and made small talk about the film they were off to see, Ryan had a feeling that he hadn’t heard the last about this.

Which was a pity, because he really didn’t want his grandmother to waste her energy, or the time they had together, by encouraging him to do something that Ryan knew would never happen.

He’d had his fifteen minutes of pop fame as a starry-eyed eighteen-year-old, and remembering how it had all ended was enough to stop him from ever wanting more.

He was content now behind the scenes, out of the spotlight, composing the songs he wrote for others while living happily in blissful obscurity.

And that was all there was to it.