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this old garden as it must have been a hundred years ago – a secret garden … a rose-filled bower … a place of peace and quiet and secret thoughts – and she was excited by the notion of trying to restore it … return it to its former glory … replant it …
    It was late when she realized the time, the air cool as the sun began to go down – a large bundle of roof slates moved and some ground cleared already …
    Inside, she switched on the radio and caught the tail end of the news and the weather forecast for tomorrow, which was dry with sunny spells.
    ‘Perfect!’ she shouted aloud as she began to prepare some pasta for herself. Pasta in a cheesy sauce – the single diner’s friend!
    Soon she was curled up barefoot on the kitchen couch, eating, browsing a garden catalogue, searching the rose section with a notepad on her lap as she jotted down names and varieties, doodling a rough outline of a new garden.
    The original house and garden plans were kept in a leather folder in David’s study in the old library. Surely the walled garden would be somewhere in those? Somewhere there were also photos and some drawings and designs that she should root out, see if she could discover what the original garden looked like.
    She was trawling through the old books and files, trying to find what she needed, when Emma phoned. They talked to each otherevery second day. She loved to hear stories of Emma’s student life in Galway, which lately seemed more and more to involve her daughter’s new boyfriend, Jake.
    She found herself telling Emma about the old garden. ‘It’s in such a terrible state!’
    ‘Mum, it sounds like one of your projects!’ warned her elder daughter.
    ‘My projects?’
    ‘Yeah, like when you re-did our two bedrooms and you sourced the original wallpaper designs and stencils, and when you and Dad got the new wooden bridge built over the pond when the old one broke, and remember you got them to get all the old pieces of wood from the old bridge and got a guy to copy and re-make a new version of it.’
    ‘That was fun!’ Molly admitted. ‘It was based on a Japanese design.’
    ‘See what I mean?’ teased Emma.
    ‘But don’t you think it would be lovely to see it restored and for Mossbawn to have a rose garden again?’
    Sitting up in bed later, with books and papers spread out everywhere, Molly studied the old sepia photo she’d found in a box in the library. She recognized the gate and a section of wall. There was something scribbled in faded pencil on the back: ‘
The Rose Garden
’.
    An old man was in the picture, leant on a spade, in an overall and rolled-up shirtsleeves and boots, squinting into the sun … A gardener! She wished there were more photos of the garden so she could get some real idea of the way it was originally laid out. She yawned; she’d search again tomorrow, she promised herself as she laid everything carefully on the top of the silk-padded ottoman at the end of the bed. She usually hated night-time – being on her own, sleeping in their bed – but tonight she was so exhausted she just wanted to lie down, pull up the quilt and sleep. No dreams … no worries … just good old-fashioned sleep.

Chapter 9
    KIM SAT IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE SENIOR EXECUTIVES IN JAVELIN Jobs. Liz had suggested she give the recruitment firms another call and set up a few meetings: ‘You met with most of them months ago. They have so many people on their books you need to jog their memories.’
    ‘I’ll be honest,’ Brian Jennings said. ‘Except for banking experience, what you’re offering is very limited in terms of other employers. They are looking for a range of skill sets – technical ability, financial acumen, and exceptional experience in terms of client interface.’
    ‘But I’ve worked in banking for six years. That must count for something,’ she said doggedly. ‘I was part of the Finance team.’
    ‘A junior member,’ he said softly.
    ‘Since I left Irish Bank Group