The Butterfly Garden by Rachel Burton

The Butterfly Garden by Rachel Burton

Author:Rachel Burton [Burton, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2024-06-28T00:00:00+00:00


13

LONDON AND SUFFOLK, JUNE 2018

Meredith stood on the concourse at Liverpool Street station waiting for the train from the airport to arrive, one hand wrapped around the locket that she wore around her neck. She had found that she didn’t want to be parted from it as though if she stared at it for long enough, it would answer all her questions.

She was early, of course; she was nearly always early for everything. Everything except returning the hire car the evening before. She’d procrastinated for so long at Butterfly Cottage – lingering in the dappled shade of the garden, sitting in the bedroom that may once have been her great-aunt’s – that the hire car office had been closed when she’d got back to London. She had posted the keys through the letterbox and hoped that they wouldn’t charge her for another day.

What had made her so reluctant to leave Carybrook and come back to London? She loved London, had lived there all her life and had never been able to imagine herself anywhere else.

But Carybrook hadn’t felt like that at all, not after the initial shock of it had settled over her. When she’d first arrived and met Zach, she’d wanted to hotfoot it straight back to the city, to run from a situation she hadn’t been expecting. But once she’d spoken to Zach, eaten in the pub, and met some of the people who had known of her great-aunt (nobody other than Zach, it seemed, had actually known her), she’d begun to feel oddly at home. And as she’d walked back from Delia Cheggers’ house the afternoon before, she had felt as though she had been in Carybrook for months, not days, and as though she never wanted to leave.

Driving back on Sunday evening, she had felt more and more anxious the closer she’d got to London. Everything had started to feel heavy again as the buildings grew closer together, the road signs became more familiar and she drove past shops and tube stations that she knew. It hadn’t felt like coming home at all.

‘Perhaps it’s just the novelty of it all,’ her mother had said when she’d phoned this morning before setting off for the airport. ‘The newness of the countryside, a home of your own – well, half of one anyway – and an escape from the drudgery. Because you know daily life can be a drudge sometimes.’

Bernice had managed to escape her drudgery to Spain – or at least that was always the impression she gave – and so Meredith had agreed with her, even though she’d known there was more to it than novelty. More to it even than solving the mystery of Clara Samuels, and certainly a lot more to it than Zach’s smile and the way he had hugged her. She shivered slightly at the memory of it.

Someone was calling her name and waving madly at her. Bernice’s grinning head appeared from the crowd followed by the rest of her, dragging two huge pink suitcases.



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