Free The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley

sedatives.
    I rummaged in my handbag on the floor beside the chair to find the sleeping pills I’d been prescribed, and entering the name on the computer searched for side-effects. Yes, there it was—right there in black and white: Hallucinations .
    I could feel myself relax. I wasn’t going mad at all, I thought, relieved. It was the pills and nothing more. And if I didn’t take them anymore then that would be the end of it, because the detailed article explained hallucinations always stopped when one removed their cause.
    Outside the office in the corridor I heard the back door open and the stamp of boots and scrabbling feet of dogs. I just had time to drop the pills back in my handbag and close down my search screens, returning to the colorful display of website templates I’d been looking at before, as Mark came in and asked me, ‘Any joy?’
    ‘I don’t know. Which one do you like?’
    He arched an eyebrow warily. ‘I thought you said the website was for Susan.’
    ‘Well, she’ll be maintaining it,’ I said, ‘but it’s Trelowarth’s image that we’re putting out here, and you’ll want to have some say in that. Besides,’ I pointed out, ‘your blog will be from the same template.’
    ‘ My blog?’
    ‘You’re the expert on Old Garden roses. Oh, come on.’ I smiled at his expression. ‘You’ll have fun. You’ll get to interact with all your customers.’
    ‘I do that now. They email me their orders and I fill them.’
    ‘Mr. Sociable.’
    ‘And what exactly am I meant to blog about?’
    I gave a shrug. ‘Whatever you get up to in the garden. Or the history of the roses. Or whatever strikes your fancy. It’s your blog.’
    ‘All right then, mastermind.’ He hitched a chair close to my own and sat. ‘You win.’ He scanned the templates. ‘That one’s not too bad.’
    ‘Good. That’s the one that Susan liked, as well. Now, let’s talk colors…’
    Mark had always been a good sport. He endured another half an hour of website-planning torture with me before he began to fidget.
    ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ve got enough to start with. I can have this up and running for you in a week.’
    ‘A week.’ From the way he looked around I could tell that the prospect of having me taking up half his home office for that length of time gave him pause.
    I reassured him, ‘I don’t have to work in here, if it’s a problem. I can use your extra printer and the laptop, on the kitchen table.’
    ‘No need for that. I tell you what,’ he said, ‘why don’t you use my dad’s old study? Set the printer and the laptop up in there, and you can work in peace. You won’t be tripping over all my mess.’
    A good solution, really. Uncle George’s study was conveniently close to my own bedroom, and well across the landing from both Mark’s and Susan’s rooms, so I could work late if I wanted without worrying I’d keep them up. And working late was how I got myself through those first nights without the sleeping pills, which I had safely buried at the bottom of a drawer.
    I was, if nothing else, productive in my work. I had the website done within a week, as promised, and when Wednesday rolled around again I’d finished with the final bits of testing and was drifting off to sleep at night without the aid of anything, and feeling more myself.
    And very ready for a change of scene. It had been raining off and on for the past week, and so I hadn’t really minded being cloistered in the study, but stepping out the back door now I found the morning bright and fresh and sunny, with a clean wind off the sea that swept the calling gulls along with it and cleared my cobwebbed mind.
    The dogs came bounding up to greet me and raced off again to be with Mark, wherever he was working in the gardens. I considered going after them, but knew I wouldn’t be much help to Mark, I’d only slow him down. Besides, now that I had the website done, I needed to discuss the next steps in our new promotion plan, and