The Memory Garden Read Online Free Page A

screaming, until their mother took the book away. She used to counter the girls’ night fears with an old Cornish prayer she had been taught as a child – what was it? Something about being saved ‘from ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night,’ ending with ‘Good Lord, deliver us!’
    Just then, there was a particularly loud creak from outside on the landing. Mel, lying in bed, tensed up, her sixth sense switched onto high alert.
    It’s just the wooden stairs settling, she soothed herself. As fear slowly receded, the ghouls of doubt and sorrow clamoured for attention instead, and waves of desolation washed over her. She cried a little, feeling as vulnerable as a child lost in the dark. Eventually, as she used to when tiny, she cuddled a pillow for comfort. When she slipped into fitful sleep, she could almost hear her mother’s voice whispering, ‘Everything will look better in daylight, darling.’ She only hoped that without her mother there this mantra would still hold true.
    As she slept, the house whispered its secrets.
     
    ***
     
    I lay everything in the drawers like Jenna said except the books Mr Reagan gave me. Then I see the paper in the bottom of the bag. I smooth it out. No need to read it again, I could tell you every word by heart. And what it means. That I’ve lost everything before I even found it. And because of that I’m sent far from home to this bare attic room with its sight of the early-evening sky. Outside , the rooks whirl in dozens, nay, hundreds, chattering and arguing like fishwives on market-day. Look at them go! Off they swarm to the pine trees on the hill beyond.
    A clatter on the stairs. ‘Pearl?’ It’s Jenna .
    Quickly I fold the paper, open the top drawer of the chest and shove it inside, just as she bursts into the room.
     

Chapter 2
     
    The wind got up in the small hours of the night, howling down the chimney, playing chase through the trees, rattling the windows like some demented child-spirit. Mel awoke at three and lay tense and wakeful, hiding out like a small animal in its hole until, at first light, the gale quietened and she drifted into exhausted slumber.
    When she opened her eyes next, the room was filled with sunlight and someone was banging on the front door. She sat up in a daze and looked at her watch. Ten past nine – she never slept this late in London. Throwing back the duvet, she reached for her dressing-gown, then, still befuddled with sleep, she stumbled downstairs.
    She unlocked the front door and peeped out in time to see a tall, slim woman disappearing back up the track.
    ‘Hello,’ Mel croaked, and the woman swung round. Seeing Mel, she hurried back, her dark curly hair blowing about. She was huddled in a zip-up fleece, her arms folded tightly across her chest against the cold. One hand, Mel saw, clutched a car key. She opened the door wider.
    ‘I’m sorry, I wake you up. I am Irina.’ The woman was about Mel’s age, 37, perhaps a couple of years younger, and Mel liked her instantly. Her eyes were black pools of sadness in her heart-shaped face, but when she smiled, her teeth showed very white in contrast to her olive skin and her face seemed to light up from within. Her voice was higher and clearer than it had seemed on the phone, with a lilt Mel couldn’t quite place.
    ‘Oh hi,’ Mel replied. ‘Don’t worry, I needed to get up. Why don’t you come in?’ She stood back, holding the door, but Irina glanced at Mel’s state of undress, must have detected the bat-squeak of uncertainty in her voice and shook her head.
    ‘No, I have my daughter in the car. I only came to see that you’d got here safely. I’m sorry that I wasn’t here last night. I had to collect Lana from a friend’s house, you see. Is everything all right? You had a bad journey?’
    Mel explained about getting lost and how she hadn’t been able to phone ahead. ‘It was brilliant, you leaving the food in the fridge,’ she