Even though I knew in my heart that I had Eloise’s blessing to leave Broad-Meadows and embrace the new challenge of living in Nightingale Square and working in the gardens at Prosperous Place, I did wonder how I was going feel when the time came to finally hand over my keys.
I had learned so much about myself during the last three years and I loved the garden like an old friend. It had offered me solace on darker days and a quiet, gentle support that I wasn’t sure I’d find anywhere else, and certainly not in the bustling city. However, I needn’t have worried about how I was going to cope with all the extra company, because for almost every second after I had told Jackson that I was leaving he had been just half a step behind me, watching my every move and clocking me in and out of every task.
Whether he was concerned about getting his wages’ worth, or that I might leg it with the family silver (not that there was any to speak of), I had no idea and I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking, but I did find his shadowing unnecessarily invasive and when the day to leave did finally dawn, shrouded in an autumn mist which stole my last view of the place, I was feeling more than ready to go.
‘Come on, Nell,’ I said, opening the van door and ushering her into the passenger footwell as another vehicle spookily appeared out of the mist, ‘it’s time to leave.’
There was no room for her in the back, not that she liked riding behind me. She had always preferred shotgun but the plethora of boxes containing our worldly goods and few bits of furniture meant that she had no choice but to curl up under the dash for this ride to Norwich.
Amongst my scant belongings, I had also added a collection of cuttings, garnered from Eloise’s favourite plants. We had taken them together before planting out their parents in the revamped borders as a sort of back-up and gap filler, and now they were coming with me to Nightingale Square to be nurtured and help fill the Broad-Meadows-shaped hole in my heart.
‘We’ll see if we can stop and have a stretch when we’re halfway there,’ I told Nell as she curled her lithe limbs around her and I gently closed the door. ‘Not that it’s all that far, but we don’t want you getting cramp, do we?’
The other vehicle, a van I unfortunately recognised, drew to a stop beside me, and Jackson raced down the front steps from the house, a look of victory lighting up his smugly arranged features. He had obviously been poised to pounce, hiding in the hallway and biding his time to inflict maximum impact.
‘Just a minute, Freya,’ he barked at me.
‘Hello, Peggy,’ I said to the stout woman who had climbed out of the van wearing work boots and a muddy waxed coat, while I ignored my almost-former employee. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘She’s here to do something for me actually,’ said Jackson. ‘Now, where’s that damn dog got to?’
‘It’s a sad business this, Freya,’ said Peggy, the manager of the rescue centre where Eloise had plucked Nell from. ‘I don’t know how the poor old girl will cope with going back into kennels. She hated it last time and now she’s grieving too.’
‘You aren’t serious?’ I said to Jackson.
‘Well, I don’t want her,’ he said nastily. ‘I haven’t got time to look after a dog. Peggy and I have discussed it and this is the only solution. Isn’t that right, Peggy?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she sighed, looking every bit as miserable as Nell would if she caught sight of her former gaoler.
Peggy was a wonderful woman with a heart of gold, but as far as Nell was concerned, she meant other dogs noisily barking, a concrete kennel and a lengthy, possibly infinite, wait. No fireside, no treats, no home comforts and limited walks.
‘We have to do what’s right for Nell,’ said Peggy, opening up the back of the van to reveal a large metal crate. ‘And if Jackson says he can’t manage her—’
‘But I told him—’ I interrupted, shooting Jackson a look.
‘And now you’re leaving too,’ Peggy carried sadly on, ‘the poor love won’t know what’s hit her.’
‘Which is exactly why,’ I said, raising my voice, ‘I told Jackson that I was taking her with me!’
In the days following my resignation announcement, I had made it more than plain, on more than one occasion, that even though he didn’t want her, I did.
‘What?’ said Peggy, stopping in her tracks.
‘Nell is coming with me,’ I reiterated.
‘No, she’s not,’ said Jackson, turning red, ‘because she’s not yours to take, is she? She belonged to Aunt Eloise and therefore, like everything else here now, she belongs to me.’
‘But you don’t want her,’ I said angrily.
‘Which is why, I’m getting rid of her,’ he shot back. ‘My dog, my decision.’
Peggy slammed the van door closed again, making us jump, before adjusting the belt on her coat and drawing herself up to her full height which wasn’t far off six foot. Jackson shrank in response, and were the situation not so dire, I might have laughed at his cowed reaction.
‘You’re taking Nell with you?’ Peggy asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s no question of that. I would never have left her here with him.’
‘You should have told me, Freya,’ she said. ‘As Nell came from the centre, I should have been informed of any change in her place of residence or ownership.’
I hadn’t thought of that. I had foolishly assumed that Jackson would be relieved to have one less thing to deal with when I had told him what I was planning to do, but apparently not. It turned out that he wanted to make as much drama out of the situation as possible.
‘Exactly,’ said Jackson petulantly. ‘But don’t worry, Peggy, because there hasn’t been a change of ownership. The mutt’s still mine. Unfortunately.’
‘Where exactly are you taking her?’ Peggy asked me, holding up a hand to quieten Jackson again.
I looked at him as he craned forward to hear what I was going to say and bit my lip. Thanks to Luke and Kate’s willingness to forgo a reference I had managed to keep my new abode and place of work a mystery and that’s how I wanted it to stay. I hadn’t even furnished my parents or Peter with the finer details. They knew I had a job in Norfolk, but not exactly where. I wanted time to settle before I filled them in.
I beckoned Peggy to follow me until we were out of earshot and then in hushed tones explained the situation, asking her not to pass the information on, especially to Jackson.
‘I see,’ she said, marching back around to where Jackson was standing.
I quickly followed, hoping she was satisfied that I had told her enough to keep Nell out of the metal crate.
‘Have you any idea how busy I am, Jackson?’ she angrily asked. ‘Have you even the slightest inkling how hard it is to feed, clean up after and arrange a schedule of walks for seventeen dogs with just three volunteers?’
‘There’s no need to take that tone,’ he pouted, sounding hurt, but Peggy was in full flight.
‘You have called me out here this morning on false pretences,’ she stormed on. ‘You knew that Freya here – who, by all intents and purposes, has been Nell’s sole care-giver since your aunt’s death – was willing to take the dog on full-time, and yet rather than simply ring to explain what was happening and request a transfer of ownership you insisted I came in person – and not with Nell’s best interests at heart, but because you wanted to make mischief.’
Jackson looked astounded and then angry, but not particularly contrite.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she scolded.
‘Now look here…’ Jackson scowled.
‘Why don’t you get off, Freya,’ she then said, turning to me and smiling. ‘Before that poor creature catches on that I’m here and goes into a decline, and I’ll take Jackson here,’ she added, marching him back up his own steps, ‘into the house to discuss the donation he wants to make by way of apology for wasting my precious time.’
There was no opportunity to say goodbye but the look on Jackson’s face was enough to make my departure from my old life less maudlin and more amusing and I set off down the drive with laughter on my lips and feeling surprisingly light of heart.
It was only an hour’s drive to Nightingale Square, but as promised I stopped en route to let Nell stretch her legs while I checked my phone. There was a message from Kate telling me to go straight to my house because she and Luke were having to make an unexpected trip into the city. She also explained that she’d left my key in the safe which Harold had had fitted inside the little brick porch. She had already sent me the code in one of the many emails we had exchanged and I couldn’t help thinking that it would be nice to see the place for myself and settle in, in peace.
I was just climbing back behind the wheel when my phone vibrated again. It was another message, this time from Luke, telling me not to start unloading boxes on my own because they would be along later to help. Having already managed to pack everything on my own, and carry it down four flights of stairs, I was certain I could cope with the straight run up the garden path, but it was nice that he had thought to offer. As I turned the key and set off again I already knew that I was much going to prefer having considerate Luke rather than suspicious Jackson as my boss.
‘Here we are then,’ I said to Nell, pulling on the handbrake and turning off the ignition once I had driven around the square and parked up outside the house. ‘Home sweet home.’
The square looked a little different to the last time I had seen it. There were far fewer leaves on the trees for a start and every house was adorned with at least a pumpkin or two. I had forgotten it was Hallowe’en.
I was grappling with the key safe when I heard someone clear their throat behind me.
‘You must be Freya?’ asked a man’s voice.
‘That’s right,’ I said, twisting round.
‘I’m John. I live next door with my wife, Lisa, and our little brood.’
‘Pleased to meet you, John,’ I said, abandoning the safe for a moment and turning to look at him properly.
He was a big, solid bloke with a smile as broad as his shoulders and he looked as friendly as they come. The black and red checked shirt he wore made him look like a lumberjack and the size of his hands suggested he would have been useful in the role.
‘These things can be a bit tricky,’ he said, reaching around me and lining up the numbers in double time and with surprisingly nimble fingers. ‘There you go.’
The little door dropped down and there, as Kate had promised, was the key.
‘We’ll come over in a bit,’ he said, with a nod to the van, ‘and give you a hand to unload.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I told him, ‘but there’s really no need. I haven’t got all that much.’
‘It’s no bother,’ he insisted. ‘We’ll make short work of it, and save you the bad back.’
I went to let Nell out of the van and it was only then that I realised that he had said ‘we’. I wondered who the ‘we’ would be. If I wanted to settle in, in peace, then I had better be quick about it.
With my heart hammering in my chest, I turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. The layout was exactly as I remembered it, with the stairs ahead and the sitting room to the right with the dining room and kitchen behind it, but there were a few gaps on the walls now and the shelves were mostly empty.
With the absence of some furniture, the rooms felt bigger too. Not empty though, just big. There were bunches of fresh flowers and foliage in vases in every room and a ‘welcome to your new home’ card from the Lonsdale family propped up against the kettle in the kitchen and another from Harold, with a note explaining about the noise the hot water pipes made. There was even a bowl of water already set out for Nell and, after flicking on the kettle, I discovered not only milk in the fridge, but eggs, bread, ham, a cold cooked chicken and some leafy salad – no doubt from the Grow-Well – too.
‘My goodness, Nell,’ I said happily. ‘I think we’ve fallen on our feet here, don’t you?’
She thumped her tail in response as she drank her fill before wandering back into the sitting room and curling up in front of the fire, even though it wasn’t turned on.
I took my tea upstairs and checked out the rest of the rooms. Everything was sparkling and fresh and there was a welcoming scent of lavender as I sat down on the bed. Clearly, Kate hadn’t been able to resist giving the place an autumn clean after Harold had moved out. Not that there had been anything amiss with his housekeeping skills, but she obviously wanted to make the house feel a little different and I was grateful that she had gone to so much trouble to make me feel welcome. There were just enough gaps and vacant spaces for me to add my own things and then the place really would feel like home.
I banished thoughts of the cottage I had left behind, and the cramped rooms I had more recently been holed up in and went back downstairs to think about where I was going to put everything. I had barely started when Nell began to bark and someone rang the doorbell.
‘Welcome to Nightingale Square,’ beamed Kate, holding out a bag for me to take once I had opened the door.
‘Come in,’ I smiled back, ‘and thank you. What’s all this?’
I led the way down to the kitchen and turned the kettle on again before peering into the bag.
‘Sweets,’ I said, looking at her again. ‘Thank you.’
‘They’re not for you,’ she laughed. ‘It’s Hallowe’en. They’re for the trick or treaters. Jasmine’s helping Luke to carve a pumpkin for you. They’ll bring it over in a bit.’
‘That’s great,’ I told her. ‘Thank you so much.’
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been actively involved in the spooky goings-on at Hallowe’en. Broad-Meadows was too isolated to attract door-to-door visitors.
‘And thank you for making the house so welcoming,’ I added. ‘I’ve just finished looking around and everything is wonderful.’
‘It’s my pleasure,’ Kate told me, ‘and I’m so excited that you’ve moved in today of all days.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because I moved into the square on Hallowe’en too,’ she told me, ‘and Lisa from next door gave me exactly the same welcome gift,’ she added with a nod to the bags. ‘My life has been completely transformed since I came here, Freya, and I’ve got the feeling yours is going to be too. I’m not suggesting it’s going to be all plain sailing, but we’re a great community here and everyone looks out for each other.’
Right on cue, and as if to prove her point, the doorbell went again. I shut Nell in the kitchen, in case she was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed. I knew I was.
‘Shall we get cracking then?’ John beamed, rubbing his hands together. ‘And get this stuff into the house?’
He wasn’t alone this time. Graham and Carole had been drawn in as reinforcements and I could see Luke crossing the square carrying a very impressive, if slightly wonkily carved, pumpkin, with the two girls in tow. Kate came to stand behind me and I got the feeling that telling them I’d rather manage on my own would either offend them or be ignored and actually, seeing the kind look on all their faces, I found I didn’t want to manage on my own. For now, at least, I’d had enough of flying solo to last me a lifetime.
‘All right,’ I said, tossing John the keys to the van, ‘let’s make a start.’