Chapter 8 Wild Rose

Wild Rose
Chapter Eight – Paper Ghosts

The box was cold in her hands. She turned it over, testing the weight. Small enough to hide under a coat, heavy enough to feel like it mattered.

Rust flaked under her nails as she tried the catch. It didn’t budge.

Rose glanced around the dusty room, found an old chisel on the floor, and wedged it into the seam. The lock gave a reluctant groan before snapping.

Inside were old papers wrapped in a mildewed scrap of cloth. The smell hit her first , damp attics, rain on stone, the faint sting of iron. She carried them to the kitchen table, poured herself a glass of wine, and began to sort.

The first was a yellowed birth certificate. Baby boy. No father listed. Mother: E. Davies. Place of birth, St Teilo’s Maternity, Pontypool. The year jabbed her. Nineteen fifty-seven.

Rose froze. Edith had never married , which meant she’d given the child her own name. In 1957, that would have been enough to feed gossip for years.

Tucked behind the certificate was an adoption record. The boy, Edmund Davies, had been taken in by a local farmer, Bledwyn Thomas, and his wife Elsie. Rose knew the surname,  the Thomases still farmed near Llanwenarth.

There was also a placement sheet from St Non’s Children’s Home in Tenby. Edmund Davies. Fostered twice, returned once. A black-and-white photo was clipped to the top: a boy with solemn eyes and a badly hacked fringe. On the back, one word: Ned.

Rose swallowed and reached for the next bundle.

It was a solicitor’s folder. Letters on paper so thin it was almost transparent. Receipts. And a hand-drawn map of Bryn Glas. The orchard stretched across the back field, and in the far corner, an X was marked beside the ash tree — the one that stood like a sentry at the edge of the property.

Beneath the map was a typed memorandum. A narrow strip of land had been quietly transferred into a trust. The beneficiary’s name had been scrubbed from the public copy, but in the margin someone had pencilled one letter: E.

Her phone buzzed, making her jump.

It was him, the man with the crooked smile. She’d met him three weeks ago in Waitrose when she’d stolen his parking space without even noticing. He’d rolled down his window, teased her about it, and she’d grinned back, offering him the last punnet of strawberries as peace. They’d run into each other every week since, their chats by the fruit aisle stretching longer, until last night when they’d finally crossed into flirtation over text.

Still alive, Rose? Or did that pink bathroom finally do you in?

She smiled despite herself. Alive. Investigating ancient crimes in my kitchen. The bathroom will have to wait.

Do I need to bring cake, or bail money?

Cake first. Bail money later.

The typing dots appeared, paused, then returned. Tell me when you want company.

She stared at the dots longer than she meant to, then set the phone face down and reached for the final item from the box — a small wooden case within the bundle.

Inside was a silver ring engraved with a crest she didn’t recognise, a faded blue ribbon tied to an old key, and a folded note.

My boy, it began. If this ever finds you, know I watched from the lane and the back pew. I sent money when I could. Forgive me. The key fits the bottom drawer of the desk in the blue room. There is more there. If I never wrote the rest, forgive that too. Your mother, E.

Rose closed her hand around the key. The blue room. The desk she’d cursed last week when the drawer refused to open.

But her eyes kept drifting back to the orchard map. The neat X beside the ash tree. A secret strip of land, a son given away, and a ghost who wouldn’t stay gone.

Outside, the wind moved through the garden, rattling the branches of the ash as if it knew she was looking.

She had the sudden, sharp feeling that she wasn’t the only one who knew what lay beneath that tree.