to find him, luckily still there.
Stella looked angelic, a sleeping cherub, dimly illuminated by the faint light from her nightlight, which was one of those porcelain ones like a toadstool with a little mouse family inside. She had added one or two of her fuzzy toy mice to the scenario too, I noticed.
I looked down at her, so small and delicate that she reminded me of those old stories of fairy children exchanged with ordinary ones at birth – but if she had been, they weren’t having her back.
The next day Hal popped round to stretch a canvas for Ma. It seemed like a very un-gardener-like thing to be doing.
‘Hal spends a lot of time here, doesn’t he?’ I said tentatively to Ma later.
‘I suppose he does, but it’s evenings and weekends, mostly. Some of the Winter’s End gardeners work Saturdays overtime, especially when the place is open to the public, but Hal says he’d rather take things a bit easier at his time of life.’
‘What about his family?’
‘He’s a widower and his daughter married a New Zealander, so he’s only seen the grandchildren twice in eight years, when they came over here. He won’t fly, he’s scared. I’ve told him he should go on one of these courses to get over it.’
‘That’s a coincidence: Jago’s parents moved to New Zealand when they took early retirement – his older brother lives there. He didn’t say a lot about them, though. It’s a small world.’
‘It is if you fly, as I keep telling Hal.’
‘He keeps your garden this side of total jungle,’ I said.
‘He does that, and I don’t mind him about: he doesn’t fuss me.’
This didn’t sound to me as if there was any big romance going on there, just an odd friendship of opposites. Jago and I, on the other hand, were clearly destined to be friends because we were so very similar … unless Awful Aimee lured him back to London again, of course.
I texted him that the madeleine recipe came out perfectly, and to thank him again, but he replied not to mention it because he always loved to talk cake.
Aimee
Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice
.
I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.
In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.
Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.
They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.
Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.
The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …
He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about
Stella looked angelic, a sleeping cherub, dimly illuminated by the faint light from her nightlight, which was one of those porcelain ones like a toadstool with a little mouse family inside. She had added one or two of her fuzzy toy mice to the scenario too, I noticed.
I looked down at her, so small and delicate that she reminded me of those old stories of fairy children exchanged with ordinary ones at birth – but if she had been, they weren’t having her back.
The next day Hal popped round to stretch a canvas for Ma. It seemed like a very un-gardener-like thing to be doing.
‘Hal spends a lot of time here, doesn’t he?’ I said tentatively to Ma later.
‘I suppose he does, but it’s evenings and weekends, mostly. Some of the Winter’s End gardeners work Saturdays overtime, especially when the place is open to the public, but Hal says he’d rather take things a bit easier at his time of life.’
‘What about his family?’
‘He’s a widower and his daughter married a New Zealander, so he’s only seen the grandchildren twice in eight years, when they came over here. He won’t fly, he’s scared. I’ve told him he should go on one of these courses to get over it.’
‘That’s a coincidence: Jago’s parents moved to New Zealand when they took early retirement – his older brother lives there. He didn’t say a lot about them, though. It’s a small world.’
‘It is if you fly, as I keep telling Hal.’
‘He keeps your garden this side of total jungle,’ I said.
‘He does that, and I don’t mind him about: he doesn’t fuss me.’
This didn’t sound to me as if there was any big romance going on there, just an odd friendship of opposites. Jago and I, on the other hand, were clearly destined to be friends because we were so very similar … unless Awful Aimee lured him back to London again, of course.
I texted him that the madeleine recipe came out perfectly, and to thank him again, but he replied not to mention it because he always loved to talk cake.
Aimee
Aimee Calthrop pondered her phone call to Jago, and the surprising comfort it had given her to hear his soft, mellow voice
.
I could get him back, if I wanted him, she told herself.
In retrospect, it had been such a big mistake to dump a handsome, kind man who adored her … But then, he’d earned peanuts at Gilligan’s and seemed to have no aspirations to do anything other than bake cakes.
Cold feet had set in, which was part of the reason she’d run off to Dubai just before the wedding. But Vann Hamden had seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her arrival when he met her at the airport than he’d been during their brief affair in London, and positively blanched when she tried to kiss him.
They didn’t do that kind of thing in public over there, he’d explained, and immorality was a big no-no, so he was too afraid it would affect his business to step out of line.
Dubai had to be the most boring place on earth: no one seemed interested in having her organise their parties for them and, in any case, she wasn’t part of the fashionable in-crowd there. She couldn’t even shop, because Daddy, who’d liked Jago, had been so cross with her that he’d stopped her allowance. So she spent her days drinking too much (privately; that was also frowned on) and sunbathing none too wisely, between Vann’s visits, and when he said things weren’t working out too well and suggested he buy her a plane ticket home, she accepted the offer.
The whole fiasco was really Daddy’s fault. It was his sudden decision to marry his young PA that had made her nudge Jago into proposing in the first place. And now her place had been taken by a new baby girl for Daddy to dote on just as he’d once doted on her …
He refused to reinstate her allowance, too, saying that since she was in her forties it was time she was earning a proper living, which was another nasty shock, because she’d been totally in denial about
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