Osian reaches over and catches it between thumb and forefinger to push it back from my face. “Evie…” His voice has gone rough.
I wait for him to continue, but he seems to be struggling with something. At last, he says, “Talking about this… I don’t know how but you’re glowing like a fire. This really is your dream job, isn’t it?”
“I told you.” I have to drag in a breath because he’s giving me a very intense look.
“I shouldn’t have doubted you. No one can fake this much passion about a flowerbed. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you the other day.” He folds his arms tight over his chest, and I think he’s doing that to stop himself touching my hair again.
My heart suddenly wakes up and thumps hard in my chest. I want to hug him. And I suspect he would hug me, too.
But he’s right. This is my dream job – my future – and I’m not going to risk it by falling in love with him. Not again.
Chapter Seventeen
We’ve reinstated the morning coffee hour now that we’ve made a proper peace. With some additional features. We take it in turns making coffee either on my machine or his cafetière, and one of us runs down to Leonie’s café for bread. We have breakfast on our balcony and discuss plans and work progress.
The progress of my work is slow and backbreaking. I’m trying to discover the design made with those slates, bending down to cut around the border so I can see it more clearly. Ricky, who is proving himself eager and helpful, has another pair of cutters. He works alongside me, so there’s a clear foot-wide line. He also collects the cut twigs and briars into the wheelbarrow. We follow the slates as the line goes north for ten meters then bends west for three then south for another ten. Back and forth, back and forth. Ricky gets very excited at one point. “It’s like a map or something. Do you think there’s a buried treasure of some kind? Like old crossbows or old guns – they used to call them muskets. You can sell them for—”
“I don’t think this garden is old enough for crossbows or muskets,” I say, yanking out a stubborn root. “Think 19thcentury.”
“Yeah, but if they buried it and made a secret map an’ clues… maybe they found it in an old grave or something and hid it here for later.”
The idea appeals to him so much, he goes forward cutting like a demon, confident that we’ll find it soon.
After two days, the only ‘map’ we can see is a meaningless scrawl in the way someone runs a pen back and forth across a page to check ink flow.
We have a sequence of long wedges with rounded tops and bottoms, all side by side. Then nothing. No more slates.
I thought it was finished and was about to go back and tell Osian we’re ready to call in the bulldozers, when Ricky called me back. “There’s another.”
A new set of lines a little farther. So the whole bending and cutting starts again.
And again.
And again.
By the end of the week, I’m a bundle of aches and sore joints.
The only good thing is the arrival of the rest of my stuff: clothes, books and, of course, all my large gardening tools. This morning, I was able to give Ricky his own set of gardening gloves and a tool belt.
“Do you think there are more of these bundles of lines?” He straps it on with the swagger of Butch Cassidy tying on a gun holster. “And this will be a great help.” He strokes the small electric saw.
My heart goes out to him. Poor lad must be sick to death of cutting weeds and dead bushes.
“You can stop if you like. Why don’t you go back inside and do something on the computer?”
Ricky looks longingly towards the house. “No,” he says. “Evan said bein’ reliable means not givin’ up when it gets annoying. Also, he promised to teach me coding if I help you finish this lot.”
“Coding?” I ask, to encourage him to talk about himself.
“I want to develop apps and websites. You know, gamin’ and AI an’ stuff like that. If we find a treasure map here, I can make a online game. No one at school can learn this.”
Didn’t Rhian say something about him being expelled from school? Poor boy. “You’ll end up more successful than all your classmates.”
“Who cares ‘bout them?” he says with exaggerated defiance, following it with a string of expletives that shows me the side of him that got him kicked out of school. But behind the bravado, the earnest hope in the smile he tries to hide also shows me why Evan is helping him.
I want to reach over and ruffle his hair but stop myself because the last thing he wants is to be treated like a little boy.
“I think we’re almost there,” I say instead. “One more set of lines.”
