Sowing Secrets. Trisha Ashley

was a chilly day even after the sun came up, so I took to running between the house and my studio with sandwiches and Thermos flasks, watched by the cold, bored hens.

      My roses were all frozen in time like so many sleeping beauties, and glittered in the sunlight, although there were still deep-red flowers on my Danse du Feu until just before Christmas.

      I felt a bit weak and trembly, as though I had received a severe shock … which, thinking about it, I suppose I had. But, in reality, nothing much has changed except I now know Adam’s real identity, so I firmly put it out of my head while I got on with my work.

      I completed the final illustration for the calendar of a dog rose trailing over one of the half-ruined Fairy Glen grottoes, then began putting the finishing touches to the cover, which is taken from my studio in its thorny bower, rendered a bit more picturesque than it really is.

      It was a good day’s work, and tomorrow I will be able to pack them up and send them off, together with some cartoons that I’ve got circulating; batches of them come and go in the post, some finding a home, some not. Two have just appeared in Private Eye, and three they didn’t want have been taken by the Oldie instead. I’ve got one or two other projects on the back burner, but the cartoons seem to be bringing in the most cash lately – perhaps because I’m constantly dashing them off between other things. Sheer volume.

      This hit-and-miss aspect of my work drives Mal mad, since I never know how much money will be coming in, but I do religiously pay two-thirds of everything I make into our household account towards the bills. I know Mal earns a huge amount more than me – but then he spends a lot more than me too, on boats, cars, electrical gadgets, stamps, expensive wines and stupid stuff like that, while I pay my own car bills and support Rosie and the hens: the important things.

      As the song (almost) says, the best things in life are free, though Mal certainly wouldn’t agree with that – and even our basic differences in the value we put on things inspires cartoons, so waste not, want not.

      I’m going to start drawing an Alphawoman comic strip tomorrow now the calendar is finished, and I must buy enough meal replacement bars and shakes to get my diet off to a good start when I go into town to post my stuff.

      Nia has summoned me to a Council of War at eleven in the morning at Teapots! Since Rhodri is coming too, I only hope it is a war on debt she means, and not something involving fire and her neighbours.

      It will be good to see Rhodri again, though – and lucky that Mal is still away, since he is inclined to be jealous of any time I spend with my oldest friends. At first we tried to include him, but I think our shared history made him feel an uncomfortable outsider.

      Just as well he spends so much time away or I wouldn’t even have the modest social life I enjoy now.

      I decided not to tell him about the meeting when he called from sunny Swindon to remind me to take his suit to the cleaners, pick up his migraine prescription (he only gets migraine when he drinks red wine, so the answer to that one lies in his own hands) and purchase a birthday card and present for his mother.

      Why me? She hates me! I still have to call her Mrs Morgan, and she never spends a night under the roof of the double-dyed Scarlet Woman – for not only did we marry in a registry office, which doesn’t count, but also I already had an illegitimate child! This makes it all the stranger that the only chink in her scales is her love for Rosie: she succumbed immediately, though don’t ask me why – you’d think only a mother could love such an obstreperous little creature. But love her she does, to the point where I’m sure she’s managed to forget that Rosie really isn’t her granddaughter at all.

      She is also convinced that Mal and his first wife would have resumed their marriage by now if not for me, since they have remained in friendly contact over the years. In fact, they will probably meet up for lunch or dinner a couple of times while he is down there on this contract, but I am not in the least jealous … just illogically uneasy.

      Seeing Alison again seems to make him dissatisfied with our life here together in St Ceridwen’s Well, although when he lived the high life in London he wanted to move to the country and chill out. But now he’s in the country he seems to be trying to live the consumer-driven high life again, so what’s that all about? He’s not going to turn into a middle-aged male weathercock, is he?

      And another worrying thought: we’ve now been married about the same length of time as his first marriage lasted, so did I come with built-in obsolescence? Especially with the Wevills dripping their sly insinuations about me into his ear like a pair of Iagos.

      I wish I wasn’t suddenly having all these worrying ideas.

      And what do you buy a dragon for its birthday? Firelighters for damp mornings?

      Inspiration! Spotted an advert in a magazine for a firm who will create a bouquet to reflect any message you want to send, together with a little booklet explaining the meanings of flowers and plants, so the recipient can have hours of harmless fun working it out.

      I am trying to be subtle here, so no deadly nightshade or anything of that kind.

      The dog rose, ‘pleasure mixed with pain’, perhaps? (Her son is the pleasure – to look at, at least – and she is the pain.)

      After that, feeling rather put upon, I finally ordered a Constance Spry – ‘pink old rose form … luminous delicacy … myrrh scented’ – with my birthday garden tokens.

      OK, I know that they’re prone to mildew and I haven’t got an inch of space left in my bit of the garden, but they are so very pretty that I’m sure Mal won’t mind if I put it near the patio somewhere. The scent would be heavenly when we are sitting out, and I could train it over the trellis round the door.

      I won’t tell him, I’ll just dig a little tiny bed for it while he’s away and heel it in to see if he notices.

      As I sealed the envelope with the order it occurred to me that I might be one of the last people in the country using cheques. Apart from one Switch card I don’t possess a single bit of plastic, although Mal more than makes up for it: when he opens his wallet it unfolds like a stiffly backed patchwork quilt.

      Teapots is right next to the Holy Well and smack opposite the one smallish village car park. Inside it’s painted a brave, welcoming yellow, lined with shelves displaying Carrie’s collection of hundreds of teapots, and with red-checked tablecloths and fresh flowers on each table.

      There are no menus: she bakes breads and pastries each morning as the fancy takes her, but doesn’t do hot food, because she isn’t interested in poaching eggs and deep-frying chips. I admire that – she only cooks what she enjoys, the way I only do gardening involving roses. Her Welshcakes are superb.

      The room was already half full, even though it was too early in the season for the coach parties who come to visit the Holy Well and Rhodri’s house, Plas Gwyn. The café’s popular all the year round, not just for tourists but with the locals too.

      Did I say that Carrie is originally American? I tend to forget, and you can hardly tell from her accent, which I suppose must have worn off over thirty years here in St Ceridwen’s. She arrived as a hippie with a rucksack, guitar and a notebook full of recipes and never left, except for closing up for a month every November and going back to visit friends and relatives in the States.

      She’s very popular in the village, maybe because it’s seen as a sort of compliment that she has elected to live here, bringing in tourists and money. Even her attempts to speak Welsh are treated with benign tolerance, though her grasp of the language is excruciatingly formal and grammatically old-fashioned, like someone talking the most impeccable Elizabethan English. ‘Prithee, wouldst thou like thy Olde Welshe Cream tea with jam or, mayhap, honey from mine own hive?’ That sort of thing.

      But we all love Carrie, she’s so unsquashably bouncy and cheerful. (And she knows everything about everyone, having been conducting a part-time affair with the village postman, Huw, for about a quarter of a century.)

      She was presiding