‘Oh…Annie…Annie…’
Her eyes filled with tears, the breath caught in her throat, and she heard Matt saying urgently, ‘What is it, Saffi? What’s wrong? Have you remembered something?’
She was shaking. ‘My aunt…it was just as though she was here…I could feel her…But she’s gone, and I don’t think I can bear it…’
He hesitated momentarily, and then wrapped his arms around her. ‘It’s all right, Saffi. I know it’s hard, but it’s good that you remember her.’
She didn’t move for several minutes, overtaken by grief, but secure in his embrace, glad of the fact that he was holding her, because but for that she might have fallen. Her legs were giving way as emotion wreaked havoc with her body, leaving her fragile, helpless.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a while, ashamed of her weakness and brushing away her tears with her fingers. ‘The memory of her just came flooding back. I wasn’t expecting it.’
‘Do you remember anything else?’ he asked cautiously. ‘About the house, your work…your friends?’ He was looking at her intently, and perhaps he was asking if she had begun to remember anything at all about him and the way they’d known one another.
She shook her head. ‘All I know is that I was happy here. I felt safe. This is home.’
He let out a long breath, and then straightened up, as though in that moment he’d come to some sort of decision. ‘Well, that’s good. That’s a start.’ He didn’t add anything more, didn’t try to tell her about the past, or give any hint as to what their relationship might have been. Instead, he seemed to make an effort to pull himself together, reluctantly releasing her when she felt ready to turn back towards the door.
‘I should go in,’ she said.
‘Do you want me to go in with you? You might still be a bit shaky…and perhaps I ought to show you around and explain what needs to be done with the animals. I mean, I can look after them till you find your feet, but maybe you’ll want to take over at some point.’
She stared at him. ‘Animals?’
‘You don’t know about them?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s news to me.’ She frowned. ‘You’re right. Perhaps you’d better come in and explain things to me.’
They went into the house, and Saffi walked slowly along the hallway, waiting in vain for more memories to come back to her. Matt showed her into the kitchen and she looked around, pleased with the homely yet modern look of the room. The units were cream coloured and there were open shelves and glass-fronted cabinets on the walls. A smart black cooker was fitted into the newly painted fireplace recess, and an oak table stood in the centre of the room.
‘I bought some food for you and stocked the refrigerator when I heard you were coming over here,’ Matt said. ‘Your solicitor said you might need time to settle in before you started to get organised.’
She smiled. ‘Thanks. That was thoughtful of you.’ She checked the fridge and some of the cupboards and chuckled. ‘This is better stocked than my kitchen back in Hampshire. We were always running out of stuff over there these last few months. I had to write notes to remind myself to shop, because my flatmate was worse than me at organisation.’
‘I can see I’ll need to keep an eye on you,’ he murmured. ‘We can’t have you wasting away.’ His glance ran over her and a flush of heat swept along her cheekbones. She was wearing jeans that moulded themselves to her hips and a camisole top that outlined her feminine curves, and she suddenly felt self-conscious under that scorching gaze.
‘I…uh…I’ll show you the rest of the house if you like,’ he said, walking towards a door at the side of the room. ‘Unless it’s all coming back to you?’
She shook her head. ‘It isn’t, I’m afraid.’ She followed him into the dining room, where the furniture followed the design of the kitchen. There was a cream wood Welsh dresser displaying patterned plates, cups and saucers, and a matching table and upholstered chairs.
‘The sitting room’s through here,’ Matt said, leading the way into a sunlit room where wide patio doors led on to a paved terrace.
She glanced around. It was a lovely room, with accents of warm colour and a sofa that looked soft and comfortable.
‘I think you’ll find it’s cosy of an evening with the log-burning stove,’ he murmured.
‘Yes.’ She had a fleeting image of a woman adding logs to the stove, and a lump formed in her throat.
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded. ‘I guess I’ll need a plentiful supply of wood, then,’ she said, getting a grip on herself. ‘Where did my aunt get her logs from, do you know?’
‘There’s a copse on the land—your land. It should supply plenty of fuel for some time to come, but your aunt did a lot of replanting. Anyway, I’ve filled up the log store for you, so you won’t need to worry about that for quite a while.’
‘It sounds as though I owe you an awful lot,’ she said with a frown. ‘What with the groceries, the wood and…you mentioned there were animals. I don’t think I’ve ever had any experience looking after pets—none that I recall, anyway.’ Yet no dog or cat had come running to greet them when they’d first entered the house. It was very puzzling.
‘Ah…yes. We’ll do a quick tour upstairs and then I’ll take you to see them.’
There were two bedrooms upstairs, one with an en suite bathroom, and along the corridor was the main bathroom. Saffi couldn’t quite work out the layout up here. There were fewer rooms than she’d expected, as though something was missing, but perhaps her senses were off somehow.
‘Okay, shall we go and solve the mystery of these pets?’ she murmured. Maybe her aunt had a small aviary outside. She’d heard quite a bit of birdsong when they’d arrived, but there were a good many trees around the house that would have accounted for that.
They went outside to the garden, and Saffi caught her breath as she looked out at the extent of her property. It wasn’t just a garden, there was also a paddock and a stable block nearby.
‘Oh, no. Tell me it’s not horses,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t know anything about looking after them.’
‘Just a couple.’ He saw her look of dismay and relented. ‘No, actually, Annie mainly used the stable block as a store for the fruit harvest.’
She breathed a small sigh of relief.
Fruit harvest, he’d said. Saffi made a mental note of that. On the south side of the garden she’d noticed an archway in a stone wall, and something flickered in her faulty memory banks. Could it be a walled garden? From somewhere in the depths of her mind she recalled images of fruit trees and glasshouses with grapes, melons and peaches.
They walked by the stable block and came to a fenced-off area that contained a hen hut complete with a large covered wire run. Half a dozen hens wandered about in there , pecking the ground for morsels of food.
‘Oh, my…’ Saffi’s eyes widened. ‘Was there anything else my aunt was into? Anything I should know about? I mean, should I ever want to go back to medicine, I don’t know how I’ll find the time to fit it in, what with fruit picking, egg gathering and keeping track of this huge garden.’
He laughed. ‘She was quite keen on beekeeping. There are three hives in the walled garden.’
Saffi rolled her eyes. ‘Maybe I should turn around right now and head back for Hampshire.’
‘I don’t think so. I hope you won’t do that.’ He gave her a long look. ‘I don’t see you as a quitter. Anyway, it’s not that difficult. I’ll show you. Let’s go and make a start with the hens.’
He led the