Sowing Secrets. Trisha Ashley

that evolved haphazardly round three sides of a paved courtyard. The oldest part is the three-storeyed hall, with the solar tower poking up above the roof and Zéphirine Drouhin and the knotty trunks of old wisteria entwined around its nether regions; then there is the seventeenth-century wing where Rhodri would have his private apartments, and the stables and outbuildings of various kinds, ripe, as Nia pointed out, for conversion into studios, gift shop and refreshment room.

      The cast-off furnishings of centuries were stored on the top floor of the hall, which opened right into the roof and was accessible by a twisty stair that made you wonder how they carried some of the larger pieces of redundant furniture up there – and how some of them were to be got down again.

      ‘The thing is,’ Nia said, as we finished our tour of the main house and passed through a low door and down two well-worn stone steps into what was once the kitchen, ‘you need to channel the visitors around so that they have to exit through here into a gift shop. Then they step out into the courtyard and there will be the tearoom and the workshops in the old stables – more lovely spending opportunities! And in the summer you could put little iron tables and chairs outside here.’

      ‘I’d need to employ people, though – there’d be wages to pay,’ Rhodri pointed out gloomily.

      ‘You already have Mrs Jones and her team of local ladies to come in and clean, and open it to the public on summer weekends,’ I pointed out. ‘They would probably be happy to work more hours.’

      ‘Yes, and Carrie will staff the tearoom,’ Nia agreed, ‘so you would just need to find someone to run the gift shop, and, if you made it the entrance to the house as well as the exit, they could sell the tickets too.’

      ‘He’d need signs along the drive to direct cars to a parking area,’ I said. ‘You could rope off that flat bit next to the paddock. And people could come to the workshops in winter even when the house wasn’t open, so that would work well.’

      Rhodri was looking dubious about becoming the area’s major employer – in fact, apart from the hotel, pretty nearly the only employer – but as we went around and Nia enthused, he began to look more relaxed.

      I thought it all sounded possible too, with hard work, and Rhodri would be able to keep his family home, scrape a living and still be comfortable in the new wing with the family ghost. (The Grey Lady is a quiet, benign female presence who closes the great oaken doors gently from time to time and tiptoes across the dark wooden floors so as not to disturb the living occupants.)

      Rhodri is going to get some plans drawn up for the gift shop, tearoom and studios, and Nia volunteered to help him to sticker the furniture that is being consigned to the attic, the new wing or the old hall, so that strong removal men can come and change it all about.

      She was having fun, I could tell by the bright colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, so after a while I left them to it and walked off home to feed the hens and do a bit of work before driving into town.

      The work didn’t get done, though; instead, I drew a cartoon of Rhodri as a sort of amiable heraldic lion with the caption ‘Come to Plas Gwyn for a roaring good time!’

      When I checked for emails later there was one from Mal, which I’d expected, but also another blast from the past from Bigblondsurfdude, which I nearly deleted unread with the spam, except that it said ‘Thanks!’ and curiosity got the better of me. Just as well it did.

      Hi Fran!

      Thanks for your message. No, I’m not married. I was in a long-term relationship but we broke up before Christmas. Your daughter sounds great – almost made me wish I had kids! Yes, you’re right, we’ve got a lot of catching-up to do. Hope to call in and see you sometime soon.

      All the best,

      Tom.

      My message? For a minute I thought I really had flipped and emailed him back … until the truth dawned and I realised where my missing email printout had gone. It comes to something when your children plot against you.

      I opened Mal’s message expecting it to be a soothingly mundane list of instructions or fascinating details of how clever he was being, but it was far from that: more an accusation, really, though I’m not quite sure of what. Enjoying myself in his absence, maybe?

      Apparently Owen Wevill emailed him after he and Mona spotted an intruder in our garden the other night, when they couldn’t sleep due to the sound of my late-night party. Of course they weren’t complaining about the noise – on the contrary, they were glad to know I could enjoy myself while my husband was away, and were sure that my old friend Rhodri would do his best to keep me entertained, now he was back living in the village!

      I was livid and sent a reply off straight away.

      Dear Mal,

      I hadn’t realised the Wevills had such over-active imaginations – or that they were sending you bulletins on my movements. If they had really thought there was an intruder, surely they should have phoned the police?

      Of course, what they actually saw was me going up the garden with the torch, as I thought I’d heard a fox trying to get at the hens. This was several hours after Carrie and Nia had been around for an absolute orgy of pizza eating and the riotously noisy watching of a gardening DVD. The Wevills must have ears like bats if that kept them awake.

      If you want to know my day-to-day movements while you’re away, all you have to do is ask, they’re not secret.

      Fran.

      I didn’t deign to mention the Rhodri insinuations. I’m not protesting my innocence to my own husband like some damned Desdemona. He ought to know me better by now.

      Mind you, by now he should also have realised that the Wevills are conducting an undercover hate campaign against me and jumped to my defence, but he takes them entirely at face value. So when Mona fawns and drools over him like a sex-mad boxer bitch she is just being ‘friendly’, and since Owen shares his passion for boats (indeed, was the one who infected him with the mania) he can do no wrong.

      Before the Wevills arrived on the scene my only significant competition for Mal’s attention was his stamp collection, and at least that kept him in the house. But messing about in his boat and going down to the yacht club now occupies all the time we used to spend doing family things together, like walking and going to the zoo. (Rosie was addicted to the zoo – we had to go every Sunday for years.)

      I was still seething about the email when Rosie rang. She’s been phoning me on a nightly basis since she went back, crying into the receiver about her assignment marks, which were not as brilliant as she thought they should be, although they sounded fine to me. This anguish is all mixed up with her dilemma over whether to dump her present nameless boyfriend now, in the hope that the boy she really fancies will ask her out, or whether that would be cruel while he is working hard for his finals.

      When I could get a word in I said sternly, ‘Rosie, did you take an email from Tom Collinge when you were home, and reply to it in my name?’

      There was a gasp. ‘Oh God, Mum – I’m sorry! I was just curious, and I didn’t think you’d reply to him yourself. I meant to keep checking so I could delete the answer before you saw it.’

      ‘Is that supposed to make it all right? And even though you know my password, don’t you think my mail is private?’

      ‘Yes, and I wouldn’t have opened any of the others, really I wouldn’t! And I only told Tom you had one daughter and were married, and asked him whether he was, that’s all!’

      Then she started crying again, so I ended up assuring her I wasn’t really cross and she mustn’t worry about her marks, and suggested a way to finish with her boyfriend so they stayed friends – and I felt like a wrung-out dishcloth after I put the phone down.

      While each call like this leaves me totally on edge and overwrought, it seems to have a totally different effect on Rosie; whenever I ring back worriedly an hour or two later to check that she hasn’t locked herself