Sowing Secrets. Trisha Ashley

Major Slump you should see the Weevil woman next door in her pyjamas.’

      ‘Mona Wevill? I think I’d rather not; she looks bad enough clothed. What about this news you said you had? I’ve got some myself, but you start.’

      ‘I suppose mine’s a mixture of good and bad – and I’m not entirely sure which bit’s which. Christmas was a bit of a roller coaster, because first of all I finally had to tell Rosie all about her real father – or everything I know, which isn’t much, let’s face it – and she wasn’t terribly convinced. Ma’s been filling her head with the idea it was Tom Collinge … but I think she believed me in the end about the itinerant gardener.’

      ‘She’ll get over it. If she asks me I’ll tell her it’s true,’ Nia said. ‘Well, true that there was an itinerant gardener, anyway, because if you don’t know whether she’s Tom’s or not, I certainly don’t. Was that it, or is there more?’

      ‘More. Mal created a website for me as a surprise Christmas present,’ I said, ‘all about my artwork and … but that’s not important. I can show it to you next time you’re round. The thing is, I’ve now got an email address and Tom spotted the site and sent me an email!’

      ‘What? You don’t mean Tom Collinge, Rosie’s probably-not father?’

      ‘Yes! Just to say hi, and how was I, and that he’s got friends up here so perhaps he might drop in some time!’

      She thought about it. ‘I suppose once you are on the Internet you are accessible to anyone who wants to look you up, and he sounds like he’s just being friendly and maybe a bit curious. You can discourage him gently.’

      ‘I can’t discourage him at all, because I deleted the email before Rosie or Mal saw it, and I’ve mislaid the printout.’

      ‘Then he’ll either contact you again and you can be politely chilly, or he’ll think you are a different Fran March and that will be that … and why are you humming “Surfin’ USA”?’

      ‘What? Oh, probably because Tom said he taught surfing.’

      ‘Surfing?’

      ‘Yes, sorry, I thought I’d said. He teaches art and surfing in Cornwall.’

      ‘Are you sure? It sounds an odd mixture.’

      ‘Almost sure … ’ I frowned. ‘But it’s not important, like the other thing I was going to tell you, which is truly shattering: Ma’s decided she’s getting a bit past all the driving and so she’s decided to sell Fairy Glen.’

      Nia froze with her glass suspended halfway to her lips, a fetching fuzz of froth adorning her upper lip.

      ‘Sell the glen? Do you mean just the cottage, or the whole thing?’

      ‘That’s what I said, but it’s the whole thing, of course.’

      ‘But she can’t! I mean, she’s had it since before you were born!’

      ‘She hasn’t actually done much to it, though,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s pretty basic, and she’s left the glen to run wild. And, if she’s going to sell one of her houses, she’s more comfortable in Cheshire with all her friends. She’s going to use some of the proceeds to go on a world cruise.’

      ‘She could give the Glen to you!’

      ‘But Mal and I have got a house already, a very nice house – and I’d like her to have fun with the money, go on a cruise or whatever she wants.’

      ‘Has she really thought about this? She does realise that she can’t come and stay with you and bring the dogs when Mal’s home? He’d vacuum them to death.’

      ‘I know, Rosie’s old dog had so many baths she used to hide at the sound of a tap running. But Ma could come when he was away, and I could go over to visit her. I mean, I don’t like the idea of this any more than you, Nia, but things have to change, I can see that.’

      Nia’s frown cleared a little. ‘The cottage is so rundown, it’s not exactly weekender material, is it? Maybe it won’t sell.’

      ‘Perhaps not, or it may not be worth much, because although there’s lots of land it’s mostly vertical, and the cottage is tiny really – it’s the opposite of the Tardis, because the outside looks much bigger than the inside. I’m going to arrange to have it valued for her, anyway, so we will see.’

      ‘If it won’t fetch much money she might change her mind,’ she said hopefully.

      ‘You know Ma once she makes her mind up about anything … but I’m certainly going to miss walking in the fairy glen once it’s sold.’

      ‘Me too, and I need access to the standing stones,’ Nia agreed, looking darkly brooding (not unusual; she often does), but she didn’t say why.

      ‘What’s your news?’ I asked to distract her, and she scowled.

      ‘The bad news is, my planning application for the workshop’s been turned down.’

      ‘Oh, Nia, I’m sorry!’

      Nia had taken over her old home now her parents had retired to Llandudno, and since her return had been making her exquisite porcelain jewellery in the old outhouse behind the cottage, while she waited for planning permission to rebuild it as a small studio. But now the new owners of the adjoining property had put in objections to the plans.

      ‘English weekenders!’ she snarled angrily, with the sort of expression that should have told her neighbours to head for the border, fast. ‘Here half a dozen times a year, contribute nothing to the village, think they own the place!’

      Most fortunately, she has ceased to be – and now denies she ever was – one of the Daughters of Glendower, keeping the home fires burning in the weekenders’ cottages, or it might have been a case of ‘frying tonight’.

      Sometimes I wonder if Fairy Glen only escaped because Ma is half Welsh and it would be terribly difficult just to burn half of a house (though it is a miracle that Ma herself has not set fire to the whole place with carelessly discarded fag ends by now).

      ‘Have you tried talking to your neighbours about your plans for the pottery,’ I suggested to Nia, ‘as opposed to just glowering over the wall at them?’

      Nia does a good Frida Kahlo glower, due to having those thick straight eyebrows that meet in the middle when she frowns. ‘I mean, they might see your point of view if you explained.’

      ‘I did speak to them. They said they didn’t want to have drinks in the garden to a background thump of me wedging clay, and in any case I was a health hazard!’

      ‘You’ll have to find a workshop nearby if you can’t get planning permission. I’m sure there must be somewhere.’

      ‘Rhodri’s back again,’ she said, seemingly at random. ‘That’s the good news. And do you know you’re singing “There’s a Place for Us”?’

      I hadn’t, but I stopped. ‘Rhodri? Have you seen him?’

      ‘No, Carrie told me – he’d been into Teapots to buy honey and a bag of doughnuts, and stayed for coffee and a chat. His divorce is going through and his ex-wife’s got the Surrey house, the London flat and seemingly most of the money. And she’s got a rich French count in tow too. I think poor old Rhodri’s number was up once he went from Lloyd’s Name to Lloyd’s loser.’

      ‘Oh, no, poor Rhodri! He always was weak as water when it came to the crunch. What’s he going to do? Hasn’t he already lost most of his money?’

      ‘Yes, and now he’s losing most of what he’s got left. But he says it’s a clean-break divorce so he won’t have to pay maintenance, and the daughter’s sort of a model-cum-socialite engaged to someone wealthy and nearly off his hands. So now he’s going to live permanently at Plas Gwyn, and Carrie says he’s thinking of opening