Were all roses the same colour? Are they the five colours of hope?
An arcade of roses – a long arcade – would need benches along the way, maybe little nooks where people could sit and enjoy the view. Maybe at the point where two colours meet? A mini fountain, a statue, a picnic table?
Throwing my arms up in the air, I laugh out loud. This is why my other plans didn’t fit. I should have known! “Okay, okay, you stubborn land, you’ve been leading me here to show me the roses.” My heart sings and dances. I can’t wait to start.
I shade my eyes with a hand and scan the grounds. There’s a couple of acres between the roses and the house. What about them? If I want to work on the rose arcade, then I can’t have two acres of dead wilderness in front of it. That would be an eyesore.
Unless I have turfed. Plain green grass would be the perfect temporary solution.
Best of all, my inspiration has found me. I doubt I’ll even have a minute to see Osian, let alone chat with him.
Tomorrow I’ll order the tractor and clear everything between the roses and the terrace; we could start laying turf by next week and then the real work can start. I turn to go back home.
Except the land, it seems, hasn’t finished with me.
As I push my way back, thorny brambles snag on my clothes and one of them whips across my face then gets tangled in my hair and won’t come free.
Tugging my head gently only makes things worse, and the thorns pull on my hair painfully. I reach for the clippers in my pocket, but as I try to cut blindly behind my head, they fall out of my hand.
They’re somewhere behind me but it’s impossible to see because turning my head pulls on my hair. I take a step back,hoping to get behind where I dropped the cutters. My foot lands in a tangle of briars, like barbed wire. Shit. Trying to pull it out seems to drag some of the prickly vines with it. They scratch my skin painfully and, I suspect, draw blood. Every move tangles me even more. I can’t bend to free my feet without losing a chunk of hair and probably scalp too.
A further ten minutes of trying to extract myself either by tiny tugs or sideways twists, and it all ends with getting my linen dungarees caught on more thorns.
“Hello?” I call out.
Nothing.
“Can anyone hear me?”
I take a deeper breath and call again, as loud as possible
“Hello. Hellooooo.”
Nothing.
The house is too far away for anyone to hear me. Does anyone even know I’m here? In my determination to avoid Osian I had slipped down the back stairs early in the morning and didn’t see anyone.
I’m going to be here for ages. And even if they thought to look for me, they’d never think to look this deep. The path I cut earlier ended at the start of the rose arcade. A football field away.
I’m going to be here until old age gets me. An old skeleton imprisoned in the wilderness.
I let out a piercing scream like I’m being attacked. “HELLO,” I shriek. “HELP ME.”
A woman comes out on the terrace and looks out. I scream again and wave. “Help me!”
She disappears inside. Did she see me?
A few minutes later, a window opens on the first floor of the south wing, the wing closest to me. The woman is Leonie.
“Are you all right?” she shouts.
Why do people ask this?
“I’m stuck and can’t free myself,” I call at a more manageable volume because my throat is hurting now. “Go to my apartment and get the shears.”
“What are they?”
“Gardening tools; they look like big scissors. In the long holdall on the floor.”
