Trisha Ashley - Sowing Secrets

‘OK, at least we haven’t already seen it a million times,’ Nia agreed, putting it in the machine.

We all replenished our plates and glasses, then started the DVD and sat back expectantly. Carrie’s a keen gardener, I’m passionate about roses and Nia loves flowers generally, so hopefully there should be something there to suit us all.

To the accompaniment of a gentle ripple of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, the title Restoration Gardener wrote itself across the screen with a quill pen over some speeded-up computer-generated images of a Japanese crystal garden growing like iced mould out of bare paper.

Carrie settled back with a plate containing a custard tart, a cherry-topped coconut pyramid and two cream-filled brandy snaps (and that was just for starters). ‘I do love gardening programmes – it’s such a shame we can’t get more channels on the TV in St Ceridwen’s.’

‘It’s a shame we can’t always see the ones we do allegedly get,’ Nia said, scattering shards of meringue. ‘The reception’s so bad they should be ashamed of charging us for the TV licence, and only a masochist would bother looking in the newspaper at what’s on everywhere else.’

‘Do you think Gabriel Weston is his real name?’ I asked, as the quill pen reappeared and wrote it with a flourish. ‘It’s a bit olde worlde and earthy, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t get much more earthy and olde worlde than Bob Flowerdew,’ pointed out Nia, ‘and that’s his real name.’

‘Gabriel is his real name!’ Carrie exclaimed, striking herself on the forehead with the hand holding the remains of the coconut pyramid, so that it was suddenly like being inside a snowglobe (though the custard tart would have been much, much worse). ‘Am I stupid, or what? I read all about him in a magazine last time I went to the hairdresser’s in Llandudno. He’s usually called Gabe, though.’

‘It’s starting,’ Nia warned, and we stopped brushing bits of coconut off each other and turned to face the screen.

Helicopter-borne, the camera homed slowly in on a small Tudor manor house sitting inoffensively among a rolling, sheep-nibbled expanse of grass, with here and there a flight of stone steps or a section of herringbone-brick pathway.

There wasn’t much more garden left there than around Rhodri’s mini-mansion, Plas Gwyn, I thought, taking a bite of Bakewell tart and settling back. All Rhodri’s old gardener, Aled, had to do was drive round and round on his little sit-on mower and indulge his passion for clipping trees into strangely rude shapes.

‘Approaching Slimbourne Manor you might think that there never was a garden here at all, or if there ever was, that all trace had vanished,’ said a warm, deep voice with just the faintest, tantalising hint of a West Country burr.

A strange shiver ran down my back and I sat up and stared at the screen. I’d definitely heard that voice before somewhere, I was sure of it – maybe on some other gardening programme. It certainly wasn’t one you’d ever forget, with a mellow tone that made you think of dark, rich honey and folded tawny velvet … of a pint of best bitter with the sunlight shining through it, or the dappled gold-browns of a peaty stream bed, or … well, you get the idea. Even if the programme was no good I could see how the audience was hooked. I was half-mesmerised myself.

‘Yet, as we get closer,’ the velvety voice continued, ‘we start to notice clues: grand steps that once led somewhere and the remains of beautiful old brick pathways. The grass at the front of the house that looked so flat from high above, from an angle shows the bumps and hollows of a long-vanished knot garden. Slimbourne was once a jewel in a beautiful setting, and we are going to resurrect it!’

‘I don’t see how he can see anything there,’ I said sceptically, trying to shake off the near-hypnosis of that voice. ‘Perhaps he just makes it up.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Carrie, suddenly our instant resident expert, ‘apparently he has an absolute gift for garden design, a huge knowledge of the history of old gardens and a degree in archaeology! And, what’s more, he looked totally hunky in his photo.’

‘I don’t think people say “hunky” any more,’ observed Nia. ‘They say a man is “fit” or “well fit”.’

‘Then he looked well fit. More than well fit. Well fit with knobs on.’

‘I should hope so,’ I said, watching critically as Gabe Weston slowly approached us on the screen, escorting a tall and ancient lady dressed in mottled tweed trousers and an old cricket jumper, her long string of pearls trapped under one pendulous breast.

I jerked upright as though someone had run their finger down my spine, the half-eaten cake in one hand.

‘I’m lucky in having the assistance of Lady Eleanor Arkleforth, the owner of this lovely house, who has already researched the garden thoroughly in the family archives.’

‘Thank you,’ Lady Arkleforth said graciously. ‘I’m delighted to restore the grounds to some semblance of what they once were at last.’

‘I believe you’ve found a plan of how the garden looked originally?’ Gabe Weston prompted.

The camera finally fully focused on the gardener’s highly unusual face, but I could still see it clearly even when it moved on to the garden plan, because his image seemed to have been flash-burned into my retinas.

He had a strong chin, green-flecked hazel eyes rayed at the corners where he had screwed them up in laughter or against the sun, and the sort of Grecian nose you could open letters with. Rich, darkest-honey hair spiralled tightly round his face like a wet water spaniel’s.

‘Are you all right, Fran?’ Nia asked suddenly. ‘Only you look a bit startled. Your mouth’s open and you’ve gone awfully pale.’ She looked from me to the screen, where my nemesis had now reappeared in the flesh wearing one of those archaic winged smiles full of inner amusement. ‘Mind you, he is pretty stunning – he can dibble my beds any time!’

‘And mine!’ agreed Carrie enthusiastically.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ I croaked, though I was by no means certain I hadn’t suddenly flipped. ‘Would you really say he was good-looking? He’s not exactly handsome, is he?’

But distinctive; so very distinctive that a face whose features I had thought safely forgotten suddenly reclaimed its place in my memory, like the last piece of a puzzle locking into place.

‘Back track,’ I said urgently. ‘I think that’s Rosie’s father!’

Nia had replayed the DVD so Gabe Weston’s face was frozen in mid-smile like a mysterious male Mona Lisa, and just as informative.

‘It’s got to be him – there can’t be two men who look like that and have the same beautiful voice with a West Country accent,’ I said, feeling strangely breathless. ‘Unless I’m going crackers!’

‘You already are crackers,’ Nia said, ‘but I believe you. Only I thought his name was Adam?’

‘So did I.’

Carrie, who had been sitting looking totally bewildered, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Rosie’s father is Gabe Weston? But I thought it was Rhodri!’

‘Rhodri? Are you insane?’

‘But you were here all that summer working at Teapots, and thick as thieves with him!’ she said defensively.

‘We were old friends, and Nia was away most of that summer, so he was the first person I told when I realised I was pregnant – but not because he was the father!’

‘Well,’ Carrie said, ‘it wasn’t just me who got the wrong end of the stick, especially when he became Rosie’s godfather! I’m sure half the village still think it.’

‘They think wrong, then.’