Phoebe has a fall and is taken to hospital, and Ann goes to see her. Even though Phoebe is not welccoming, she convinces her to let her stay with her while she recovers. Ann also says that she has to consider selling the property and find some place where she can be more comfortable. Phoebe is reluctant, but when Ann tells her how much she an get, Phoebe starts to think about it.
After a few months they put the place in the market, but the estate agent tells them that they may not have many offers until spring. Then they get a possible seller, a youngish man called Connor, and from the first moment Ann realises that he is not interested in the house. Then Connor explains that he is a horticulturist, and the reason why he is interested in the place is because his family used to live here once. His grandmotehr, Ivy, and he were trying to reconstruct history. Ivy's mother, Violet, who was the dauaghter of the head gardener, had Ivy out of wedlock, but nobody knows who Ivy's father was. Ivy then was adopted by Hester, who was the heir of the property. Ivy and Connor were trying to find out more about the history of the family. In a chapter happening in 2013 we discover that Ivy was checking old photographs, and she found a note from William, her uncle, and after reading the note, she was shocked and in pain, and she got so angry that she started to burn everything. Then the flames spread and Ivy fell. Thankfully, she managed to throw water on the flames, but she died of smoke inhalation. Connor does not know what happened to make her grandmother to want to burn so much of the past, but he wants to keep investigating.
The mystery fascinates both Phoebe and Anna. Then some weeks later Connor makes an offer for the house, and Phoebe accepts. Ann is shocked, thinking that they had more time before the sale, and Phoebe makes her admit that she doesn't want to sell. So Phoebe refuses the offer. Ann phones Connor to tell him, and he asks her if he could work on the garden as he wants to launch his own gardening business, and this project could be ideal for publicity, and he wouldn't charge them. Ann accepts.
Shortly after Connor starts, one night there are very strong winds, which knock down a beech, and that is how the seed packets are found. When she and Connor open them, they realise they are love letters to Hester from someone who signs with the letter W. Then they start reading the diary, and Hester writes about being proposed to by Walter, a nice, young man who she likes but doesn't love. At first, they think that Walter wrote the love letters, but as they keep reading, Hester says that she was forced to accept Walter's proposal, and she was so sad that she cried in the garden. William, the gardener's son and Violet's brother, found them, and she told him about how fond she was of flowers and trees, and William told her that he would lend her a book. His sister would take it to her. Hester loves the book and dreams of being able to work on the garden. Then one day she goes to a meeting of the suffragists with a friend and the friends's brother, and Violet and William are there and they sit together and start to talk.
I am sure that W in the letters is William, and I have the hunch that maybe Ivy was Hester's birth mother, but as she was a woman of a high social standing, they hid the fact by passing the baby off as Violet's illegitimate daughter. Maybe that is what the note that Ivy found said.
No comments:
Post a Comment