The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley Read Free Book Online Page A

reassure himself she wasn’t lying ill or injured somewhere. ‘Gone off sketching something, probably,’ he gave his final verdict as he reappeared. ‘She does it all the time.’ Glancing up at the sky he said, ‘I ought to get her windows shut before this rain starts. You go on, I’ll catch you up. No need for us both to get soaked.’
    The first splat of a raindrop on my shoulder helped convince me.
    I moved quickly through the trees—a little too quickly, perhaps, because before I’d made it halfway through I started feeling dizzy so I stopped and briefly closed my eyes, recovering my balance. When I opened them again the woods became a blur of green and brown and quiet shadows. Damn the Scrumpy, I thought. It was muddling my thoughts and confusing my vision.
    A tree a short distance in front of me went all unfocused, dividing in two. And there suddenly seemed to be two paths as well, one I didn’t remember that angled away to the cliffs. I heard footsteps coming up behind me and I turned, expecting Mark, but there was no one there.
    It must have been an echo, I decided, because here was Mark just coming into view now on the path, and looking slightly blurred as well until I focused with an effort. Seeing me standing there seemed to surprise him. He turned his collar up against the damp wind shaking through the leaves and asked me, ‘Something wrong?’
    ‘No, not at all.’ I stood as steadily as I was able, not wanting to let on how much the Scrumpy had affected me. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t remember which path to take.’
    He laughed at that—the first time I had heard him laugh since I’d been back, and turned me round so I could see with my own eyes the way through the trees. ‘There is only the one path, you know.’
    There seemed little point in arguing. I simply let him take my hand as he had done when I was small, and as we came out of the woods the rain came on in earnest and we made a breathless run for it across the rising field towards the house.
    ***
    The dogs had been out in the garden as well. They sat lined up like penitents in the back corridor while Claire, with mop in hand, dealt with the crisscrossing paw tracks that muddied the floor. The corridor smelt of stone and plaster, and the rubber of old boots left drying underneath the rows of hooks that held a heaped array of well-used coats and cardigans. As Mark and I came diving in the door, wet through and stamping mud from our own feet, Claire gave us both a look.
    ‘Not one more step,’ she warned us, ‘till you’ve taken off those boots. I’m nearly finished, I don’t want to have to do this over.’
    As Mark bent to his laces the dogs swarmed him happily, pleased he’d come down to their level. He fended them off as he told Claire, ‘You don’t need to do it at all. I’ll take care of it.’
    But there was no breaking the long years of habit. She twisted the mop in its bucket of hot water, wringing it out and then slapping it onto the flagstones in front of the dogs. ‘And you lot,’ she said, as she swished past them, ‘can stay where you are, till your feet dry.’
    I could have sworn the dogs snickered, the way men will nudge one another and wink when their wives tell them off. Claire had noticed it too, and she gave them a withering look that made the setter and the Labrador lie down, pretending submission. The cocker spaniel and the little mongrel, Samson, stayed near Mark and would have followed him in defiance of Claire’s orders if he hadn’t told them both to stay. They whined a token protest, but they did as they’d been told.
    Mark said, good-naturedly, ‘ My feet wouldn’t be wet at all, if I hadn’t had to stop and close your windows.’
    ‘Did I leave them open? Sorry.’ Thanking him, she glanced towards the windows just behind him as he straightened, but they both were tightly shut.
    This was the part of the house that we children had passed through most often—the workaday, less showy side