“I’m surprised Sydney’s so familiar with you. Usually toffs like her are too high-and-mighty to talk to the help,” said Mum.
She rolled her eyes. “ ‘The help’? Really, Mum? It’s not 1860. And Sydney’s a nice person.”
“You didn’t have to be the help, you know. You could have taken your place at the University of Bristol and been just like Sydney and Andrew,” said her mother. “All of your teachers said that you had the talent for law, or even business.”
“I know I have a talent for business because I run a business.”
“It’s hardly setting the world on fire, though, is it?”
“Mum, this has to stop!” The words burst out of her all at once. Mum stared at her, stunned that her quiet daughter had talked back, but Emma wasn’t going to stop. Not now. “I made my choices. I decided that I wanted to train rather than go to university. If I had failed, you could tell me ‘I told you so,’ but I didn’t. I built something from the ground up. Something that is successful and that I’m proud of.”
“Then why are you always phoning up, worrying about payroll or tax payments or whatever it is that day?” asked Mum.
“Because doing this by myself is hard.” It was so very hard.
“You don’t think about all of the things your father and I gave up so that you wouldn’t have to risk so much like we did,” said Mum.
“I didn’t ask you to give anything up! Mum, I’m never going to be the kind of woman who goes on skiing holidays in the winter or plays golf on the weekends. I like being in the garden. I like having a pint in the White Lion after work and saying hello to the people in the shops.”
I like it here in Highbury.
Mum stared at her for a moment. “I worry about you.”
“I know you do, but I need you to stop judging everything that I’m doing as a failure because I didn’t pick the life you wanted for me.”
“You shouldn’t have a hard life. Your father and I struggled so much before you were born,” said Mum.
“I have a good life, Mum. One that I chose. It just looks different than the one you picked out for me. I may never have a job in the city and a house in the old neighborhood, and I need you to be okay with that.
“And no more giving my information to people who you think might help my career. Unless they have a garden that needs designing, I don’t want to hear about it,” she said. “So, are we okay?”
Mum gave an almost imperceptible nod. “All right. Fine. Yes, I understand and will not try to help you in your career anymore.”
That wasn’t quite what Emma had said, but it was a start.
“What else?” Emma asked.
“I will stop worrying so much.”
“Good. You could also be a bit more supportive,” she said.
Mum hesitated. “What do you want me to do?”
“Ask me how Turning Back Thyme is going. Ask after Charlie, Jessa, Zack, and Vishal. They always ask about you.”
“I could do that.”
She slung an arm around her mother’s shoulders and hugged her close. “I love you, Mum. Now, if you ask her, I’m sure Sydney will show you the construction in the house. She’s very proud of the work they’re doing here.”
Her mother nodded and then kissed Emma on the cheek.
* * *
The Tuesday after her parents’ visit, Emma stumbled through the door of Bow Cottage, dodging a seed catalog and a letter on the entryway rug. She was exhausted. One of the pipes to the water garden had broken and had required digging up their hard work to find the breakage and repair it. They’d spend the next two days replanting, which would put them behind schedule. Again. It would also mean she would have less time to work on the winter garden.
She’d begun to stake out the areas that she would replant based on Henry’s grandmother’s drawings. Charlie had ceded this project to her fully, and she was okay with that. Every time she went up and over the wall, she felt somehow calmer, as though this were her own space.
Yes, she wanted to get back to it, but first she needed a square meal, a long bath, and about fifteen hours of sleep.
She dropped her workbag on the kitchen table, pulling out her phone to plug it in. The thing had died sometime around midday. She’d thought about running up to the house to ask Sydney or Andrew if she could charge it, but the repair project had distracted her.
Emma moved to the fridge, pulled out a tub of hummus, and tore into a bag of pita that sat on the kitchen counter. She popped the pita into the toaster, and set about hunting around for cheese, chorizo, and some fruit or vegetable that would serve as a nod to health. It was too hot to cook, and she’d learned that if she ordered too often from the Golden Swan Chinese takeaway in Highbury, her meal would come with unnecessary commentary about how often they saw her.
She was cutting up an apple when she remembered the post she’d walked over. Setting down her knife, she retrieved it. She had been wrong; it was two seed catalogs—one stuffed inside the other—and a letter with her address handwritten on the front but no return. Slipping her finger under the flap, she ripped it open and pulled out a sheet of heavy cotton writing paper.
A grin spread across her face. Professor Waylan had written.
20 August 2021
My dear Miss Lovell,
I trust you are well. I was delighted to receive your letter. I do so enjoy the little challenges you send me and your rapacious interest in the past. If only more of your generation had such reverence for the gardens of our great forebearers.
I’m thrilled that you thought to bring me this little challenge about our beloved Venetia Smith. This one was a tricky one. (How very clever of you!) I did not recall a Celeste ever being associated with Venetia, but then I have forgotten more about the great gardener than most will ever learn. When none of my searches in books at home proved fruitful, I broke my happy isolation and took the ferry to the University of the Highlands and Islands, where they are kind enough to allow me access to their research facilities. Finally, after three days of exhaustive hunting, I believe I may have found something for you.
The name Celeste appears in none of Venetia’s archived papers. I had thought that perhaps she was a relation of one of Venetia’s clients, yet that path proved a false end. In Adam Smith’s letters, however, was a clue. He was long engaged to a young woman whom he later married after Venetia left Britain for America. In 1903, not long after the start of his sister’s career, he wrote a letter to his future wife. I have enclosed the pertinent parts below:
You asked me if I miss my parents now that I am an orphan. Simply, yes. Sometimes, when I sit in my chair in front of the fire, I recall my father looking over at my mother with such love as she worked a little bit of needlepoint, completely unaware of his gaze. At those times he would call her his “Celeste” because being married to her was heaven itself.
Quite the romantic, Venetia’s father, Elliot, was!
The second reference appears years later and may be too labored a stretch for your purposes; however, I know you like to leave no stone unturned. Venetia’s eventual husband, Spencer Smith, wrote a letter to her in 1912 from their home outside of Boston while she was overseeing the construction of the Plinth Garden in Minneapolis. In it he writes, “Sometimes when you are away I think back to the celestial connection that forever binds me to you. The joy that slipped through our fingers led us to where we are now. I hope you do not hate me for having no regrets, because now I have you.” He then goes on to describe in quite some detail just how ardently he loves his wife.