The Secrets of Ivy Garden: A heartwarming tale perfect for relaxing on the grass

Retreating slowly inside, I pick up the phone to call Vicki, and amazingly, I get a signal first time. She’s getting ready to go out with Beth and some other friends.

‘Why not come and stay for the weekend, Vick?’ I say it nonchalantly, as if I’ve only just thought of it, when what I really want to do is throw myself to the floor, weep copiously and plead with her to please, please, please come and rescue me.

‘A whole weekend? In the country?’ She laughs. ‘Love, you know me. I’d totally die of boredom. Come back to Manchester. We miss you so much. Please, Holly!’

‘You miss me?’ Tears well up.

‘Of course we do. When are you coming back?’

I can hear her rushing around getting ready as she talks into her phone, excited about her forthcoming night out with the girls.

‘I can’t yet. I’m doing up the cottage, and Ivy Garden’s in a hell of a state.’

I pause then try again. ‘Why don’t you just come down for the day?’

She sighs. ‘But you know I absolutely hate sheep, right? It’s definitely a phobia.’

‘So I’ll give Shaun his marching orders. I promise, you’ll have the bedroom all to yourself.’

‘Shaun?’ She perks up. ‘Have you got yourself a new man already?’

‘No. I mean Shaun the sheep …’

‘Oh … Tell you what, Hols, I’ll get myself some wellies then we’ll see …’

My heart dives into my slippers.

Message understood.

No-one wants to visit me in the back of beyond. And seriously, who can blame them?

‘But listen,’ she says, ‘I was talking to Beth yesterday and we decided that when you get back, we’re going to have this amazing—’

The phone goes dead.

The stupid phone has actually cut me off!

I slam around crossly in the kitchen, making tea. Honestly, I’d probably get better reception if I moved to Mars! I carry my tea upstairs along with one of Ivy’s weightier gardening encyclopaedias, deciding to bury myself in wildflowers to take my mind off everything.

I snuggle under the duvet for a minute, giving in to gloomy thoughts, then I glance at my phone which I’ve thrown onto the pillow on the other side of the bed. I grab it and find Ivy’s number in my contacts. Then I click and wait, with a lump in my throat ,for her familiar message to begin.

I know I probably shouldn’t do it, but it makes me smile every time.

I toss the phone back on the pillow and start flicking through the huge hardback encyclopaedia. It has a musty smell and the pages are stuck together in places.

Something slips out.

It’s an old blue exercise book, like the sort we used at school. There’s nothing on the cover, but when I open it at the first page, I see the familiar handwriting and my heart lurches. Ivy must have written it a long time ago because the ink has faded. With hands that are trembling slightly, I flick through the pages. About a dozen have been written on and the rest is blank.

It looks as if it might be a diary of some sort.

Heart pounding, I begin to read.

NINE

21st September 1965

I escaped to Ivy Garden again today.

Peter’s foul mood was casting a black shadow over the house, making me so on edge, I couldn’t settle to anything. I had to get out, otherwise in trying my best to placate him, I might have unwittingly said something wrong and made him even angrier. And his temper is starting to really scare me. It used to happen only when he’d had too much to drink, but since he lost his most important client, the moods have become darker and more prolonged. I try to say the right thing, so as not to upset him, but when he’s in that mood, nothing I say is right.

As I was putting on my shoes, I heard the study door open and held my breath. But luckily, he didn’t object to me going. Just demanded to know when dinner would be ready, then retreated into his study and slammed the door. I found myself remembering what it was like between us when we were first married three years ago. If only it could be like that still.

But I know we can never reclaim that all-too-brief happiness. I’ve spent the past two years walking on eggshells, doing everything I can to make Peter happy, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I do, it’s never enough. Being childless doesn’t help, of course. We never talk about it, but it can’t have been easy for Peter to find out that the problem lay solely with him; that it was highly unlikely he would ever be able to father a child. The news must have been devastating, his pride crushed. It was hard enough for me to accept the fact that I’d never have the child I so longed for. The consequences for our already shaky marriage didn’t bear thinking about …

Stunned, I put down the notebook.

Why didn’t I know about all this? It’s as if I’m reading a diary written by a complete stranger. Not the person closest to me for most of my life.

Granddad’s moods scared Ivy? But she always spoke warmly of him; never in any great detail, but the impression I’d got was of a happy marriage. She never told me they had trouble conceiving …

It must have seemed like a precious gift when my mum was finally born in September 1967. My granddad had been warned he was never likely to be a father and yet the miracle had happened! Had it made a difference to their marriage? Made things better between them perhaps?

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