‘Yes, but it did sound like he’d been having an affair with that woman in the first paternity case, even if the baby turned out not to be his, so he doesn’t come out of this entirely white as the driven snow, does he?’ I shuddered. ‘Just imagine if I’d suddenly discovered who he was and popped out of the woodwork with a paternity claim too! But he doesn’t know about Rosie, and he never is going to know about Rosie – and nor is the press, so that’s that!’
‘Yes, but what if Plas Gwyn does get chosen for the programme?’ Nia asked. ‘Don’t you think he might recognise you?’
I pondered. ‘I don’t think so, do you? One night, one woman among many – probably one in every place he stopped! And I’ve altered a lot after all these years. I think women change much more than men do.’
They looked at me consideringly.
‘He can’t have met many girls with long hair the colour of faded candyfloss,’ Nia said.
‘But even my hair is much less strawberry and more just dark blonde now that I’m older, and it’s a whole lot shorter.’
‘I still don’t think you do look much different from how you used to,’ Nia said obstinately. ‘Your face is a bit plumper, but still heart-shaped—’
‘A fatty little heart.’
She gave me a repressive look. ‘And now you regularly have your eyelashes dyed you don’t have that startled-rabbit look you used to have when you forgot to put your mascara on, but that’s about all that’s changed.’
The eyelash tint is my one beauty extravagance, but very effective. I have smallish, neat features otherwise, nothing remarkable.
‘You have very lovely big grey eyes,’ Carrie said kindly.
‘With lovely big crow’s feet. No, I can’t believe I’m so memorable he will recognise me, but if Plas Gwyn wins the makeover, I’ll make sure I’ve got my head covered at all times and wear dark glasses, OK?
‘The whole village will think Mal’s been beating you up,’ Nia objected.
‘They certainly will. Well, this is really fascinating,’ Carrie said, ‘but I’ll have to go. Shall I leave all the stuff for you to have another look through?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said, bundling it back into its bag, ‘I think I’ve got it all by heart.’ Then I hesitated. ‘Perhaps I could borrow the book for a couple of days, though?’
‘OK,’ she agreed, ‘if I can have the DVD in exchange?’
She went off home – she gets up early most mornings to bake – and later Rhodri came in. Even though he was wearing cord trousers and a battered lumberjack shirt, the landlord fawned over him like he was royalty; he simply can’t understand why the local gentry should want to hang out in the back parlour with us peasants.
His old jacket smelled foul; I don’t know what they do to them, but on rainy days the entire waxed Barbour jacket brigade stink like wet tents whole flocks have lambed in.
I have been dipping into Carrie’s book, and Gabe Weston sounds more like a psychic gardener than a restoration one to me. Cop a load of this:
Old gardens, no matter how big or small, from the overgrown parterres of the great estates to the seemingly aimless dips and hollows of long-vanished cottage gardens, all have a history. The ghost of what once was still lingers on the air like the faint fragrance of old potpourri.
He seems to be able to dowse for long-buried garden features like other people can find water with a bit of twig, although he seems happy to use modern technology like geophysical surveying too.
Walking over what was once a garden I can feel the resonances of time as though I were a human echo-finder tuned to every nuance of the old pathways, walls, trees and even the more transient plantings of the past.
Can this be true? Or is it just how they sell the series? Not, of course, that he wouldn’t be a big success without an angle like that, because any even halfway decent man who can talk gardening is terribly seductive, and he is much more than that.
Ma came down for the weekend and we did a bit of sorting out and cleaning ready for any viewings, while the dogs contributed a fresh silting of hair, and Ivy sicked up half a rubber ball on the Chinese rug.
I frantically felt her little fat furry stomach for signs of the other half blocking something vital, while she wriggled ecstatically and tried to lick my face, but then Ma found Holly chewing it behind the sofa.
After that excitement I flicked a feather duster over the magpie litter of Ma’s sitting room, where every surface is encrusted with shells, pebbles, sea-washed glass, bits of mirror and those plastic things they used to put in cereal packets. Ma sat in her favourite chair in the window, smoking and crocheting simultaneously.
‘You look a bit peaky, my love,’ she commented when I started to flag.
‘I do feel a bit off lately – but I’ve been dieting, so that probably isn’t helping.’ In fact, pottering about the studio playing with my ideas and wandering the garden looking for something to prune followed by a trio of hopeful hens is about all I’ve got the energy for lately.
‘Dieting’s unhealthy, Fran. I hope you’re eating a balanced diet.’
‘I’ve tried those meal-replacement things – they’re supposed to have all the vitamins and minerals you need. But I only survived a week on the Shaker diet before going totally off the rails.’
‘Shaker?’
‘Yes, though I don’t know if it’s called that because it’s all milkshakes, or for the way it makes you shaky after the second day – or even because it’s dead simple. But after a week I found myself in the kitchen at two in the morning eating a big slab of that disgusting chocolate cake topping, and I realised my mouth had got totally out of control.’
‘I’m not surprised!’
‘So then I tried diet bars, but that was just as bad … all I could think about was food! Bacon and eggs, fish and chips eaten from newspaper on the harbour front at Conwy, those fresh shrimps we used to get at Parkgate when I was a little girl … ’ I sighed. ‘Oh, yum! I’m starting to feel ravenous all over again.’
‘I’ll take you to the Druid’s Rest for a bar meal, Frannie. You need feeding up.’
‘I don’t know about feeding up, but it’s clear that a starve-binge cycle isn’t going to make me thinner,’ I said, and she certainly didn’t have to twist my arm to get me to eat real food at the pub.
I’m going to have to think about this dieting business a bit more unless Mal can just learn to love me the way I am, as I love him, fossicky little ways, undiscriminating friendships and expensive habits included. Do I have to keep young and beautiful? Why can’t I be plump, middle-aged and beautiful?
Come to that, why aren’t the women’s magazines full of articles on ‘The Beauty of the Wrinkle and How to Enhance Them’? Or ‘How to Successfully Put on Weight in Middle Age’, instead of featuring those Petra Pans of the celebrity circuit who are holding time at bay with applications of ground-up sea slugs at a hundred pounds a dab?
Nia says she hasn’t put on any weight since she read Fat Is a Feminist Issue and stopped worrying about it; in fact, she has lost a bit, but I think that is partly because of all the work she is doing with Rhodri transforming Plas Gwyn. She seems to have more or less taken charge of the renovations and innovations (and of Rhodri), so it’s just as well it’s a very bijou stately home and not a Chatsworth.
They have now furnished each