The rangers handle everything past the formal-garden boundaries: the woodland, parkland and everything in between, including the lake.
‘Two. You’ll meet them later. I’ve invited everyone for a few beers and a barbie. A little party to welcome our new arrival.’
‘Aw.’ I smile at him, feeling both touched and slightly nervous at the prospect of getting to know so many new people.
Bethan and Siân are who I most want to meet, but Siân is away on holiday until the end of the month. In some ways it’s not a bad thing: I’ll have almost two weeks to settle in and make the cottage my home before she returns.
I’m a bit apprehensive about living with someone I’ve never met, but at least I’m used to sharing other people’s spaces – I’ve done it my whole life.
‘Does Bethan live on-site?’ I ask.
‘Nope, she commutes in from Wrexham.’ That’s where we’ve just come from, about half an hour away. ‘But she’s been staying here a lot lately as she and Harri recently started seeing each other.’
He gives me a knowing look and gets out of the car, walking around to the boot.
‘Leave them,’ he says when I try to help with one of my suitcases.
He carries them both to the middle cottage with the baby-pink door and sets them down by the porch. There are so many bees buzzing around the climbing roses.
‘Right, here are your keys.’ He pulls a set of keys on a black leather keyring out of his pocket and hands it over. ‘The square one’s for the front door, round one’s for the back, and the skeleton key accesses the walled garden. Use it any time.’
‘Seriously?’
‘It’s the one place staff have unrestricted access to,’ he says, gripping the posts on either side of the porch, his posture casual and easy as he rests his body weight against the frame. ‘We tend to avoid the formal gardens outside working hours, but no one will mind if you go for a wander further afield. I’ll be amazed if you have the stamina for it, though. We’re going to work you hard.’
Did he mean that to sound sexy? It gives me a thrill anyway.
He grins and rakes his hand through his dark hair, ruffling it up a little as he backs away.
‘I’ll let you settle in. Gwen has stocked up the fridge to get you started, and she’s also left some shirts and fleeces for you to try on for size. You have black shorts?’
‘Yep.’ He sent me the uniform requirements a couple of weeks ago, so I’m all sorted.
‘Great. Come over at around six thirty? Use the back door as we’ll be outside.’
‘Thanks so much for collecting me from the station.’
‘No worries. See you later,’ he replies with a grin.
The cottage is small and cosy with a living room off the front door and a kitchen at the back. The living room has matching faded blue two-seater sofas that have seen better days, a rectangular white coffee table and a TV. In the kitchen there’s a small round dining table with a yellow tablecloth and four wooden chairs. Fresh flowers sit in a vase on the top, a mixture of irises: violet, mauve and butter yellow. I wonder, warmly, if my new boss’s wife, Gwen, put them there.
It takes some manoeuvring to get my bulky suitcases up the narrow staircase, but finally I make it into my bedroom. There’s a neat pile of dark green polo shirts, long-sleeved shirts and fleeces on the bed, which is a small double with a Cath Kidston-style bedspread: white with tiny red roses.
I pick up a polo shirt and study the Berkeley family crest embroidered in white in the top right corner. It looks like a shield with feathers spilling out the top. I noticed the same crest printed on the black leather keyring Evan gave me.
I don’t love that I couldn’t stick to my principles when it came to working here. But the pay is decent and hopefullyI’ll get the experience to one day work for an organisation I believe in, like the National Trust. That’s the plan, anyway. For now, I’m doing what’s necessary.
Throwing the T-shirt back on the bed, I walk to the window. It faces onto the walled garden and the house beyond, so I’m guessing Siân’s view is of the Victorian outbuildings and fields at the back. A shared bathroom divides our bedrooms.
Pulling up the sash window, I prop my elbows on the windowsill, unable to keep from smiling. The walled garden is by far the largest I’ve seen and it’s bursting with life and colour. Victorian lean-to greenhouses line the south-facing wall on the right, and parallel to them is a large vegetable patch and rows of espalier fruit trees, trained against horizontal wires. The middle of the garden comprises mostly round and crescent-shaped beds set amongst lawn, and on the far left is an arch of laburnums in full bloom, yellow flowers raining down. Beyond the stretch of wall closest to the cottages is an orchard of apple trees, but there must be other beds at the base of the wall that I can’t see – an abundance of purple wisteria spills over the top.
Gardening is everything I dreamed it would be and so much more. I love what I do now and I have never felt more comfortable in my own skin.
I breathe in deeply and want to pinch myself. I can’t believe I get to live and work here.
Music starts playing through the walls of the neighbouring cottage a good twenty minutes before Evan said to come over,but I wait until just after six thirty before venturing outside, opening the back door to the smell of barbecue coals.
The five dwellings share a communal garden: a long stretch of lawn bordered by lavender that hasn’t yet come into bloom. A patchwork of farmers’ fields leads to hilly woodland on the far left, and the land is basking in a warm glow from the early-evening sunshine.
