The Forever Garden by Rosanna Ley

Author:Rosanna Ley [Ley, Rosanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2023-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Now, Bea held back the tears that were threatening. She couldn’t cry on a train on her first day in Dorset. In the past two weeks since that conversation with Matteo, she’d shed enough tears already.

Bea hadn’t told her family how Matteo had reacted to the news that she was going away for a while. She didn’t want them to think badly of him and she didn’t want Nonna to have second thoughts about asking Bea to go. In fact, Bea hadn’t seen Matteo since that afternoon on the restaurant terrace. She’d texted a few times, tried to explain, but it hadn’t gone well, although neither of them had acknowledged that it might be over between them. She supposed, then, that it wasn’t . . . But his pride had been hurt and that meant a lot to a man like Matteo. As for Bea, she knew she’d made the right decision – for now. This time away, this space was exactly what she needed.

Bea gazed out of the window at trees, fields and villages as the train passed by. She spotted horse chestnut, apple trees, elderflower and blackthorn. It was a bright early summer’s day and the sky was a clear and silvery blue. But as she’d stood on the railway platform earlier, the chilly breeze had made Bea shiver. This was England, she reminded herself.

The truth was that being here on this train, coming to Dorset, felt right in a way that the restaurant in Polignano did not. This was something she had to do for herself, for Nonna, for her family, which was, in its way, just as important as what Matteo had to do for his family back in Puglia. Bea might only be gone for a month – she hadn’t bought a return ticket; she’d wait until she’d taken stock of what needed to be done. And in a month, she’d know, wouldn’t she, which pathway she should take?

Nonna seemed to think so. ‘Things have a way of working out for the best, my dear,’ she’d said when Bea was leaving. ‘One step at a time. Everything will become clear.’

Bea hoped that this would be the case. Although if things became clear and she realised that she did want to marry Matteo, would he still be there for her? Allora . . . She supposed that if Matteo couldn’t wait a month or two, then he wasn’t the right man for her after all.

With a jolt, Bea heard the guard announce that they were approaching Crewkerne, a station in Somerset, but nonetheless the place where she needed to get off. She jumped to her feet and pulled her case from where she’d stuffed it in the luggage hold almost three hours ago.

The station was quiet. From the platform, she followed a few other travellers through a gap in the fence to the car park on the other side; clearly, they didn’t bother with ticket barriers here. Fortunately, though, there were a few taxis parked by the station entrance and she got in the first one and told the driver where she would like to go.

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