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?”
“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.