Trisha Ashley - Sowing Secrets

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘But are you sure it was Gabe Weston? And if so, how come you never told him about Rosie?’

‘I’m sure – and it wasn’t an affair, it was a one-night stand.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you, Fran!’

‘I was drunk and I’d just split up with my boyfriend. All I knew about the man I slept with was that he was called Adam – which, as it turns out, was a lie – that he came from Devon and was a gardener. Even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have found him from that information.’

‘And until now you had no idea who Gabe Weston was?’ Carrie said. ‘Well, isn’t that just amazing?’

‘Tragic, more like,’ Nia said. Then she set Gabe into motion and speech again and we all watched him silently, and in my case angrily, though I don’t know why. He hadn’t sneaked away without a word, it was me who’d done that. All he was guilty of was carelessness.

‘I don’t suppose he’s ever given me a thought since,’ I muttered bitterly.

‘But what about Rosie?’ Nia asked.

‘What about Rosie?’

‘You aren’t going to tell her who her father is, now you know?’

I shuddered. ‘Who her father probably is – and let’s not open that can of worms. You know what Mal’s like, and he’s always sort of assumed Rosie’s Tom’s baby. We’ve been through all that. And if I told Rosie who it was she might try and contact him and be rebuffed, which would be terribly hurtful. Things are better left as they are.’

‘And it sounds like there’s an outside chance she might not be his anyway,’ Carrie said helpfully. ‘So it would probably come down to DNA testing, and just imagine if the father really was your ex-boyfriend after all!’

‘Thanks for that thought, Carrie.’

‘It gets even better,’ Nia said. ‘Tom, Fran’s old boyfriend, has just emailed her and he wants to come and see her.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t answer, so he’s probably got the message,’ I said hopefully. ‘After all this time I don’t want either of them to pop back into my life and mess things up.’

I looked at the screen again. Gabe Weston was smiling, but then I expect he has a lot to smile about, being a successful TV personality. ‘He’s probably married with his own family by now,’ I mused aloud. ‘Even if Rosie were his he wouldn’t want to know.’

‘Divorced,’ said Carrie knowledgeably. ‘His only daughter lives with her mum in America, but his name’s been linked with quite a few other women since.’

‘I bet it has,’ Nia said drily.

Carrie regarded me admiringly: ‘Well, you’re a dark horse, Fran! It’s so romantic, just like The French Lieutenant’s Woman .’

‘I can’t see where The French Lieutenant’s Woman comes in,’ Nia said critically. ‘Gabe Weston looks more like Meryl Streep than Fran does.’

‘And I certainly haven’t been waiting for him to come back,’ I objected. ‘In fact, I’m going to try and forget I ever recognised him. Let’s just let sleeping gardeners lie – that’s seemed to work for me pretty well so far.’

‘Then perhaps you should stop humming “Look What You’ve Done to Me”?’ suggested Nia.

Mal phoned late that night after they’d gone home, and strangely enough I felt as guilty while I was talking to him as if I’d just spent the night with Adam the gardener all over again.

I would have liked to have blotted the memories out in Mal’s arms, but instead I simply had to obliterate them with leftover cake and a bar of chocolate.

In the early hours of this morning I got up, found a torch that worked and went to hide the Restoration Gardener DVD in my studio in the box marked ‘Miscellaneous’.

At that hour the oddest things seem strangely logical.

As I made my way back I saw the pallid glimmer of one of the Wevills watching me from their bedroom window, so I suppose this will go into their next report to Mal, along with my girlie night in transformed into some kind of orgy. I don’t know what made them look out at that time of night because I’m almost sure I wasn’t singing.

They must use mirrors on sticks to watch me some of the time – it’s the only way they can know so much about my movements – but fortunately my rose garden and studio are on the other side of the house, bordering the lane, so once I go through the pergola they’ve lost me unless they have radar.

After that I was wide awake, so I made some hot chocolate, got out the mosaic kit Ma’s cousin sent me for my birthday and started to transform the boring, dead-white-tiled fireplace in the sitting room. I could use some of that box of broken china in the studio too: I knew it would come in handy one day.

It 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.