The Memory Garden Read Online Free Page B

said. ‘I’d have starved otherwise.’
    ‘It was no problem. I don’t know what else you need, but there is a good shop in the village,’ Irina told her. ‘One of the ladies sells food she has cooked herself. Though if you want the big supermarket you must go to Penzance.’
    ‘How far is the village? I’m not sure I can face driving today, especially anywhere that means going back the way I came.’
    Irina smiled and pointed along the track. ‘It’s maybe five, six minutes’ walk down the hill. Not far.’ She hunched her shoulders and shivered. ‘Goodness, this wind.’
    Mel took a breath of the salty air. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘So fresh after London.’
    ‘Where do you live in London? I used to live in Wandsworth,’ Irina said.
    ‘I live in South London too – near Clapham South tube station. How long were you there?’ Mel asked, wondering again about Irina’s origins but feeling it was too early in their acquaintance to ask.
    ‘A year, it must be,’ Irina said, a shadow crossing her face. ‘Here I have been for two.’
    Mel opened her mouth to ask where before Wandsworth, but Irina had already moved on.
    ‘Please call me if you need help,’ she said. ‘I live at the cove – the house with the yellow door. It’s called Morwenna. You’re welcome to knock on the door if you need anything, or just to have coffee. And of course you have my telephone number.’
    ‘Yes, yes, I do. Thanks. That’s really kind.’
    Mel watched Irina hurry back up to the road to where she could just glimpse the mud-splashed rear of a red car. A moment later the engine spluttered into life, roared and the car moved away. Patrick had said Irina looked after Merryn Hall, she remembered as she closed the door, shivering. What was she – a housekeeper, perhaps? But surely Patrick wasn’t grand enough to have a housekeeper – not from what Chrissie said about him and not if he didn’t live here. A cleaner then. Yet that didn’t sound right. Irina hardly matched the stereotype of a country cleaner – apple-cheeked and middle-aged with a rural accent. There was something intriguing, exotic about Irina. She had a face full of character, one Mel would have liked to draw. Perhaps this holiday would be a good opportunity to take up painting again. Except, she reminded herself sternly, as she shuffled through to the bathroom, it wasn’t a holiday and she should be concentrating on writing about other artists, not becoming one herself. Her mother had been right, though. She definitely felt more cheerful this morning.
    It really was the most perfect weather to explore. Mel felt almost jittery with excitement as she stepped out half an hour later, dressed in clean jeans, low-heeled ankle boots and a short russet needlecord jacket. Last night’s demented wind spirit was only impish now, shunting puffs of cloud across a sky as blue as a sailor’s trousers. Mel closed her eyes, welcoming the warm sun on her face. When she opened them, she was dazzled for a moment, before her surroundings swam once more into focus. She almost gasped.
    The grounds of Merryn Hall on every side were a wilderness. She squinted up through the bright light towards the Hall where, glimpsed through sycamore and ash trees, the stone walls were half-covered with climbing plants – wisteria, ivy and Virginia creeper. Vague shreds of memory teased at her consciousness. Long ago when they were children, she and William and Chrissie had played in a wilderness like this – a wasteland near their home with a tumbledown building and Danger! Keep Out signs on the broken-down fence. Their mother would have been furious had she found out.
    Mel swung round and surveyed the view downhill from her cottage. High banks of tangled jungle rolled out before her, swathed with creeper, bramble and bracken. Like living dustsheets, she mused, through which pushed up the shapes of trees, shrubs and who knew what, like hulks of furniture in a disused room.
    In the