“Hello, Mum. I’m doing well, thanks for asking.”
“We’re waiting on pins and needles here, Emma. You need that head of conservation job,” said her mother, ignoring her.
“Need” wasn’t the way Emma would put it, but she tried her best to shove her annoyance aside. Mum wanted the best for her, and to Mum a stable job at the prestigious Royal Botanical Heritage Society was the best a girl from Croydon without a university degree could hope for.
“I don’t know yet. They said they’d call if I progressed into the next round of interviews,” she said.
“Of course they’ll want to bring you in again. They couldn’t find anyone better to head up their conservancy efforts. And you could have a steady paycheck for once in your life.”
“I have a steady paycheck,” she said. Most of the time.
“Didn’t you spend last summer chasing down that horrible couple who refused to pay you?” her mother asked.
It would have been more accurate to say that her solicitor chased the couple who’d refused to pay the last half of her fees and tried to stick her with a bill of £10,000 for rare plants and hardscaping they’d insisted she work into their garden’s design.
“They paid in the end,” she said with a sigh, remembering the legal fees that had cut into the money she’d recovered.
“After you threatened legal action.”
“That doesn’t happen very often,” she said.
“Admit it, love. Turning Back Thyme is a good little business, but it isn’t exactly paving the streets with gold.”
“Mum—”
“If you took the foundation job, you could finally buy a house. Prices aren’t so bad if you go far enough south of the Thames. You could have your own garden, and you could be so much closer to your father and me instead of roving all over the place,” said Mum.
“I like moving around,” she said.
“Your father and I didn’t pay all of those school fees for you to be homeless,” her mother pushed.
“Mum! I’m not homeless. I live where I work. Besides, if the foundation offered me the job—which they haven’t even done second interviews for—I’d still have to figure out what to do with my company. That isn’t an easy decision.”
“You could sell it.”
“Mum.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
The denial didn’t come as fast as it should have. She loved Turning Back Thyme, but owning a business alone was hard. She lived with the near-constant stress of wondering if this was going to be the year things came crashing down. A few bad jobs—or a stretch of no work—and it wouldn’t just be her livelihood on the line, but her entire crew’s.
If all she had to do was design, it would be heaven, but it was so much more than that. She was also accounting, HR, payroll, marketing, sales all rolled into one. Some days she’d stumble from working on a site to a night spent over her laptop, processing the piles of digital paperwork that came with running a small business. Then she’d fall into bed, only to wake up with a gasp from the recurring nightmare of logging in to the business’s bank account only to find a £75,000 overdraft.
It was days like that—and conversations like this—that made her wonder if she was kidding herself that she could do this for the rest of her life.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I need to make dinner and get ready for tomorrow.”
“You have so much potential, Emma.”
I didn’t raise you to dig around in the dirt all day.
You were supposed to be better than this.
You threw everything away, Emma.
What a disappointment.
Emma couldn’t unhear those words thrown at her during every single fight they’d had when Emma had turned her back on university and chosen this life. A life that Mum, who had risen above her working-class roots, hadn’t wanted for her.
“I need to go, Mum,” she said lamely.
“Send us photos of the house you’re staying in,” her mother said, her tone shifting to cheerfulness now that she’d gotten her shots in.
“And the garden, too!” her father shouted in the background.
“I will,” she promised. She hung up and turned back to her groceries, trying to shake off the creeping doubt that Mum was right.
• VENETIA •
TUESDAY, 5 FEBRUARY 1907
Highbury House
Sunny; winds out of the east
Each new garden is like an unread book, its pages brimming with possibility. This morning, as I stood on the step to Highbury House, I nearly trembled with excitement. Every garden—every hard-fought commission—feels like a triumph, and I am determined that Highbury House shall be my greatest effort yet.
But I am rushing my story.
I rang the bell, setting a dog off barking somewhere in the house, and waited, tugging at the lapels of my navy wool coat that looked so smart against the white of my shirt. Adam had approved of my appearance before sending me off on the train with a promise that he would look after the house and garden while I was in Warwickshire.
I glanced around, wondering at how stark Highbury House looked stripped of the wreaths and garlands that had merrily hung on doors and windows when I visited in December. Mrs. Melcourt, the lady of the house, was out visiting that day, but Mr. Melcourt spoke to me at length before letting me walk the long lawn and tired beds of a garden so lacking in imagination it saddened me. He purchased the house three years ago and now, having done over all the rooms, he’s turned his attention outside. He commissioned me on the recommendation of several of my past clients whom he no doubt wishes to impress. He wants a garden imbued with elegance and ambition, one that will look as though it has been in the family for years rather than being a new acquisition funded by the recent inheritance of his soap fortune.
The huge front door groaned open, revealing a housekeeper starched into a somber uniform of high-necked black with a chain of keys hanging off her like a medieval chatelaine.
“Good morning,” she intoned, her measured voice laced with Birmingham.
I gripped the cardboard tube of papers I’d carried up from London a little tighter. “Good morning. I am Miss Venetia Smith. I have an appointment with Mr. Melcourt.”
The housekeeper assessed me from the brim of my hat to the toe of my boot. Her mouth thinned sharp as a reed when she spotted the mud I’d acquired performing one last check of my roses that morning.
“I can remove them if you like,” I said archly.
The housekeeper’s back stiffened as though I’d poked her with a hatpin. “That will not be necessary, Miss Smith.”
The woman led me to a double drawing room and gestured to me to wait just outside the door. I could see that the room was undeniably grand, with a half-open set of pocket doors that could divide the hand-tooled wood-paneled walls. At one end, a carved marble fire surround stood watch over a roaring blaze. Overhead, a large chandelier glinted with electric lights in dozens of glass cups, illuminating tapestries and paintings. Yet the grandest ornament of all sat at the center of the room: a tiny blond woman in a white wool day dress belted with a slash of black. Across from her were three children, sitting in a row, their nanny watching over the eldest girl as she read out, “Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing!’ ”