“No, it’s been locked for as long as I can remember.”
Emma ran her finger over the huge keyhole cut into the iron. “And I take it there’s no key to the gate, then.”
Sydney shook her head. “Another thing I’m hunting for. Andrew suggested getting a locksmith in, but I’ve called two and they both said that the condition and age of the gate means they might have to cut it off its hinges to get it open. Doing that just feels… wrong.”
“Wrong?” Emma asked, pulling back.
“I couldn’t in good conscience destroy part of the garden’s history while I’m working so hard to restore the house. And…” Sydney paused. “There’s just something about the winter garden. It feels so abandoned.”
The entire garden was a living example of neglect, but Emma saw her point. She guessed Sydney was around her age, and the idea that someone could leave this garden untouched and untended for thirty-five years made her shiver. It was so… sinister? Solemn?
Secretive.
Nothing about this job was going to be easy. There were no plans, there was little archive material, and much of the original structure of the garden had been lost to time. But while that might have scared off some of her competitors who preferred the ease of designing a contemporary garden to their clients’ exact specifications, Emma couldn’t help the hint of excitement that fizzed through her when she looked at the hopeless mess. This was what made slogging through payroll and ordering and appointments with her accountant worth it. Highbury House was the sort of project she loved.
“Well, we could get a ladder and try to scale the wall,” Emma suggested.
“Andrew had a go at that,” Sydney said. “He got up there and realized that there was nowhere to safely put a ladder down the other side.”
“When was this?” Emma asked.
“Right after we sold our company. We offered to buy the house from Mum and Dad. Granddad had left them some money, but most of it went to fixing leaks in the roof and trying to heat the place so the damp didn’t set in. It had become a bit of a millstone over the years, but Dad never had the heart to sell it,” Sydney said.
Emma offered her a small smile. “And now you’ve decided to put it back together again.”
“That’s right. We’re Sydney and Andrew Wilcox, saviors of old houses.”
“And their gardens,” Emma said.
“I hope that the scale of the project hasn’t scared you off,” Sydney said.
Even if the size of the Highbury House project had been intimidating, Emma still would have taken it. Mallow Glen had run over by a month because of three different issues with suppliers, forcing her to sacrifice a smaller job doing up a cottage garden in Leicestershire while prepping for Highbury House. Losing that additional injection of money into the business hurt, but Highbury would be a much bigger prize.
“It is tricky,” she admitted. “We just don’t have that much to go on in the way of original documentation or photos, so I’ve drawn up plans based on Venetia’s other designs from the same era.”
“I’ll work on those boxes, I promise,” said Sydney. “Now, what happens next?”
“The crew arrives. You’ve already met Charlie, but there’s Jessa, Zack, and Vishal, too. They’ll start by clearing away the overgrown vegetation so we can really see what we’re working with. I should be able to show you final plans this week.”
Sydney clasped her hands in front of her, looking for all the world as though she was about to break out into song like the heroine in a musical. Instead, she said, “I cannot wait.”
Neither, Emma thought, can I.
* * *
Emma shifted the groceries she’d picked up from one arm to the other and pulled the keys out of her pocket. The letting agent had offered to walk her through Bow Cottage, but she had politely declined. After a day of following Sydney around, she was craving the peace and quiet of her rental.
After just two attempts, she managed to open the red front door and switch the hall light on. She let the door swing shut behind her and let out a sigh of relief before setting about searching for the kitchen in her home for the next nine months. She would deal with the luggage crammed into the back of her car later. First she needed a cup of tea and to charge her mobile.
She found a good-sized sitting room right off the entryway and a small study next to it. Across the hall was a dining room with a big plank-topped table that she would use for drafting rather than entertaining. Next door was the kitchen: basic but pretty, with gauze curtains hanging in the wide windows that looked out over a brick patio and lawn of dwarf ryegrass with a mature Magnolia grandiflora at the back. She slid her grocery bags onto the counter, plugged in her dead phone, filled the electric kettle that stood ready, and began stocking her temporary refrigerator.
She’d just put yogurt and milk away when a message chimed through. She winced when she saw how many texts she’d missed, including several from Charlie asking her if she wanted him to bring anything the next morning when they met on-site and then teasing her for letting her phone run down yet again.
As she kept scrolling, she saw she’d missed a call from Dad. She dialed him back and put the phone on speaker so she could continue to unload her provisions.
“You all right, Emma?” came her dad’s voice, his South London accent out in full force.
“You sound chipper,” she said with a smile.
“I’ve been waiting by the phone all day to hear how your first day went.”
“Hello, love!” called her mother, somewhere in the background. “I’m glad to see you aren’t neglecting your loving parents.”
“Your mother says hello,” said Dad, tempering his wife’s greeting.
Emma sighed. “Sorry I didn’t call earlier. My phone died.”
He laughed. “Your phone is always dying. How was the garden?”
She placed bread out on the counter. “Sad. The current owners, Sydney and Andrew, bought it off Sydney’s parents, who inherited it from her grandfather. It sounds like Sydney’s parents did what they could to keep the place standing, but anything else was beyond their reach. You can imagine the state of the garden.”
“That bad?” he asked.
“In some places it’s been dug over entirely, but others are just wild. There are four morello cherry trees that look as though they haven’t been properly dealt with in thirty years. And then there’s the bottom of the garden. It’s all a mess, and there’s one garden room I can’t even figure out the theme of.”
“Sounds as though you’ve got your work cut out for you,” he said.
“I do. The place must have looked beautiful even just five years after Venetia finished it.” Except she doubted Venetia Smith ever saw her work come to fruition. As far as Emma knew, she’d never come back to Britain once she left.
“I’m sure it was.” The line went muffled, and she could tell Dad had done his best to cover the microphone on his mobile. She braced herself for the moment he came on again and said, “Your mum wants to speak to you.”
Before she could give some excuse—she was tired, she needed to get dinner on—she heard the shifting of the phone from one hand to the other and Mum came on. “Have you heard anything from the foundation?”