The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore Read Free Book Online

desperately that once he finished the second draft of his book he would return to his usual charming self, that tragedy struck. Her mother was discovered to have a rampant form of cancer that had spread to her pancreas.
    Whilst Mel, Chrissie and sometimes William between them accompanied their mother on a depressing round of hospital appointments and debilitating treatments, finally finding a place for her in a hospice near home, it was a time of enormous closeness for the family. But it was as though Jake were outside looking in.
    He was supportive, yes, in the sense that he comforted Mel, showing her immense kindness, but Mel felt he never truly entered her distress. She could see the terror in his eyes on the rare occasions he came to visit the ravaged figure of her mother in the hospice. With Chrissie’s husband, Rob, on the other hand, Chrissie’s grief was his also. Once, after a particularly harrowing visit when her mother was clearly in a lot of pain, Mel caught Rob weeping in the hospice reception area. She was deeply touched by his sorrow.
    ‘Have we offended Jake in some way?’ Chrissie remarked another time when Jake dropped Mel off at the hospice and drove off with a wave. ‘Why doesn’t he come in?’
    ‘He wants to visit a bookshop,’ said Mel, glancing at her sister as they walked down the hospice corridor, wary of her sharp tone. Today, she saw, Chrissie’s eyes were red-rimmed and she hadn’t bothered with her usual meticulous make-up.
    ‘I mean,’ Chrissie said, ‘surely he should be here, supporting you.’ Like Rob does , being the unspoken implication. ‘He’s quite, well, self-sufficient, isn’t he?’
    ‘You don’t understand.’ Mel snapped back. Chrissie had struck a tender spot. ‘He feels awkward coming, that’s all. He doesn’t know Mum very well, not like Rob. And he doesn’t like hospitals – ever since his little sister nearly died of meningitis when he was ten.’
    They had reached their mother’s ward, so Chrissie merely raised her irritatingly knowing eyebrows in reply.
    Maureen Pentreath drifted away in drug-induced sleep on a beautiful day in early May. On the way to the crematorium the hearse passed along an avenue of cherry trees. The blossom fell soft as snow.
    In the months after her mother’s death, Mel observed Jake and felt in her heart of hearts that Chrissie had a point. Jake didn’t need to rely on anybody else. He loved her, of that she was sure. He had loved his wife, but had allowed her to grow away from him. He loved his children – but sometimes it seemed he could live without them, so absorbed was he in his writing.
    ‘I wonder whether our children would look like Anna and Freya,’ she said tentatively one Sunday evening.
    He had laughed, uncertainly. ‘Not if they were boys. Anyway, Mel, that’s the last thing we need at the moment. A baby really would push us over the edge.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ she said.
    ‘The disruption. When would I work? When would you work, come to that. I couldn’t face all that again for a while.’
    ‘But not never?’
    ‘Not at the moment, is all I’m saying.’
    She had felt slightly mollified, but feelings of distress began to build inside her. She was already vulnerable, grieving as she was for her mother, and one of the focuses of her grief, as she confessed to Aimee, was that her mother wouldn’t be there when Mel had children of her own. Maureen had not lived to see her younger daughter’s children and they would never know their grandmother. The thought was painful to bear.
    Early in November, Jake announced that he had finished his book. This time, his agent, whilst still encouraging, sounded impatient. ‘It’s much better than it was,’ she told him on the phone. ‘A really fascinating story. But there’s something about the tone that still isn’t right. And your characters need to be more emotionally engaging.’
    ‘What the hell does that mean?’ shouted Jake, after he had finished