Spring Blossoms at Mill Grange

she liked him, she knew he liked her. They were like a couple of teenagers who weren’t quite brave enough to make the first move.
When he’d climbed up the servant stairs at just gone eleven the previous evening, Tom had been tempted to knock on Helen’s door, but his hand hadn’t quite connected with the wood. She’d probably have been asleep anyway.
‘And what would I have said if she’d opened the door?’ he muttered into his pillow. ‘Hi, Helen, I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you, but I’m bad news on that front, but I’d love to sleep with you, so may I come in? Hardly!’
Daydreaming about Helen was one thing, and fantasising about someone you fancy was normal, but today he decided he was going to be sensible about the situation that was building between them. Unless Helen had plans for the day, he’d ask her if she’d like to take a walk across Exmoor. They could discuss whatever it was she’d wanted to talk about last night, and he could tell her about having Dylan part time.
He’d been so thrilled at the thought of sharing parenting with Sue that the practicalities of achieving that had escaped him at first. That elation had died by the time he and Sue were eating the final mouthfuls of naan bread, and now they crowded in on him again. How could he fit work around Dylan? What about school pick-up? Where would Dylan sleep?
Leaving the warmth of his bed, which had once been used by one of the Victorian serving maids that had worked at Mill Grange, Tom flung opened the curtains. One glimpse of the view and his optimism returned. He would shower, dress and then see if Helen would like to walk over to the Tarr Steps. If she didn’t, then he’d walk anyway, and try to work out how to fit his life at Mill Grange around Dylan. Then he’d start enquiring into how much it would be to rent a place with two bedrooms in or around the village.
As he grabbed a towel, Tom’s insides clenched with nerves. After years of living in a self-imposed emotional wilderness he was contemplating a life with his own home, his son with him half the time and a proper girlfriend. ‘I swear fighting the IRA was less frightening than this!’
*
Tina placed the empty notebook on the picnic bench outside the kitchen door and opened the first crisp page. Smoothing her palm across the cool lined paper she wrote, ‘Guest List’, at the top.
A smile crossed her face as she wrote down her friends’ names. She knew she didn’t need to add Thea, Shaun, Helena and Tom, but she did anyway. They might be automatic invitees, but apart from Sam, they were the most important people in her life.
Next to Thea’s name, Tina added – ‘ask to be bridesmaid’.
Since they’d first met at Durham University as archaeology students, Tina and Thea had been firm friends. While Thea had been a born archaeologist, Tina had enjoyed every second of her degree, but hadn’t the love for the subject required to stay in the field. Instead she’d moved towards her own passion; heritage work. It was that, combined with her skill with numbers, which had led her to a career with the Exmoor Heritage Trust as their financial advisor and restoration co-ordinator – until Sam had come along just as the trust decided to sell Mill Grange. After that, everything had changed.
She hadn’t asked Sam who he’d like to be best man, but assumed Shaun would be offered the role. Unless there was someone from his time in the forces that he hadn’t mentioned before, that he’d like to perform the task.
A cloud blew in front of the sun, and with it, Tina’s spirits dipped as she considered who would give her away. She’d been a teenager about to head to university when a car crash had taken her parents from her. It had been a long haul to get where she was now without them, but she’d done it. However, that didn’t stop her wishing they were here. An image of her father walking down the aisle she and Sam intended to make with chairs and bands of willow, sent tears to the corner of her eyes. Pushing them away, Tina got up, clutched the notebook and pen to her chest and headed to the walled garden.
Gertrude and Mavis were strutting around the chicken coop with their usual air of nonchalance. Every now and then one of them would tilt their heads in the direction of Tony Stark, the cockerel, making sure they still held his affections.
‘Good morning, ladies.’ Tina leaned on the fence which Sam had built around the hen house. ‘I’m in need of some chicken wisdom.’
As if on cue, Betty and a few more of the White Sussex hens popped their heads out of their house, and strolled across the coop towards Tina.
‘I’m trying to organise mine and Sam’s wedding. We want to marry here, but his parents want us to marry at Malvern House. What do you think?’
Gertrude gave Tina such an old-fashioned stare that she could help but laugh. ‘You have strong views about us staying here, then?’ Sitting down on a bench that overlooked the coop, Tina wondered why she was still debating the location of the wedding. It had to be at Mill Grange.
‘But perhaps not in the main garden as we thought. Maybe in here.’
There was a general clucking of agreement from her feather companions.
Tina’s gaze fell on the ruined Victorian greenhouse. Its spooky, almost gothic, splendour was something Sam had wanted to restore since he’d first purchased the manor. Although cost and time had prevented them doing anything more than a tidy up of the site, it still exuded a timeless beauty.
Putting down her notebook, Tina moved forward to stand on the square of grass between the chickens, and the vegetable garden beyond, and tried to work out how much space