The Rose Garden Read Online Free PDF Page B

waiting for mine,’ Susan said. ‘I’m too fussy, Mark tells me. I want what my dad and Claire had.’
    ‘God, you’ll be waiting a long time for that.’ Even my parents, for all their devotion to each other, hadn’t been a patch on Uncle George and Claire. The Halletts had been one of those rare couples who, between them, made a little world that no one else could touch. True soul mates.
    Susan ran the dishrag round a coffee mug. ‘I know. Worth waiting for, though, I think. And it doesn’t mean I can’t have some adventures in the meantime.’
    She’d been born to have adventures. Although she’d been the youngest and the smallest of the four of us, she’d been the one most likely to explore, to push the boundaries, and she’d often had the skinned knees and the bandages to prove it. From the little I had seen now of the woman she’d grown into I suspected she still had that spirit in her, that her mind still saw beyond the limits others liked to place on things.
    Which made me wonder why she had come back here, to this quiet little corner of the country, and Trelowarth.
    ‘Mark said you’d been living near Bristol,’ I ventured.
    She glanced at me. ‘Did he?’ I had the strong impression I had somehow touched a nerve without intending to, but Susan hid it with a shrug. ‘Yes, well, I had my own catering business up there, did he tell you?’
    He hadn’t, but I took the opportunity to shift to safer ground. ‘So then you should be able to make a success of your tearoom.’
    ‘I hope so. I mean, Mark would never complain, but I know that it hasn’t been easy these past few years, since Dad’s investments went—’ She stopped and glanced at me and quickly looked away and would have likely changed the subject if I hadn’t stopped her.
    ‘Susan.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Trelowarth’s in financial trouble?’ I could read reluctance in her eyes. I asked her, ‘How bad is it?’
    ‘Bad enough. But don’t tell Mark I told you or he’ll plant me in the garden with the roses.’
    I imagined a place this big must take a good deal of money to run. Apart from the house, there was all the land—not just the gardens themselves, but the fields where the roses were actually grown. Most of the regular work could be done by two men, but with Uncle George gone that meant Mark would have had to hire someone to help. They’d be busiest during the winter months, digging the bare-rooted roses and shipping them off to fill all of the orders that would have come in through the year, after which all the rest of the harvest still had to be potted and delivered to the garden centres that had always sold Trelowarth roses. But even at this time of year there was much to be done. Taking care of Trelowarth, I knew, was a full-time concern.
    ‘Anyway,’ Susan said, ‘that’s really why I came back. To help out where I could.’
    ‘Hence the tearoom.’
    ‘Exactly. My dad used to talk about having one someday. I thought if we put in a tearoom and opened the gardens for tours, it might bring in some revenue and make more people aware of our product.’ She heard her own words and smiled wryly. ‘I’ve been swotting up on marketing, can you tell?’
    ‘Good for you, though. That’s just what you should do.’ My gaze found the folder of plans she had left on the table. ‘You mind if I look at these?’
    ‘No, go ahead. Only—’
    ‘—don’t tell Mark. I know.’ I reached for the folder. ‘Why is he so set against your tearoom?’
    Susan set the final teacup on the draining board and pulled the plug to let the water out. ‘I wouldn’t say he’s set against it, more that he’s resistant, and that’s just because it doesn’t fit his vision of Trelowarth. Mark’s a purist, like my grandfather. Change doesn’t interest him.’ She grinned. ‘If you ask me, Mark’s simply not sure about sharing our roses with strangers.’
    Reading her notes while I finished my coffee, I rotated one drawing slightly to help