The Five-Year Baby Secret
Liz Fielding
Married for a day…Fleur Gilbert and Matt Hanover married in secret, believing their love could end their bitter family feud. They were wrong.Six lonely years later, Fleur hardly ever dreams she'll see Matt again. But Matt has never forgotten Fleur–or forgiven her. And when he learns that their one-night marriage created a son he never knew he had, he's determined to claim back his child….And his wife…?
Harlequin Romance
is thrilled to present another wonderful book from award-winning author
Liz Fielding
Liz Fielding will keep you captivated for hours with her contemporary, witty and feel-good romances.
RITA
Award-winning author Liz Fielding “gets better and better with every book!”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub
Dear Reader,
Some books spring from our own experiences, needing nothing more than the well of memory and imagination to fill the pages. Others are driven by ideas that require much research: reading any number of fascinating books, delving about on the Internet, sending impertinent e-mails to total strangers who respond with amazing patience and kindness. Fleur Gilbert’s story falls into the second category.
Whilst I understood the basics of plant breeding, I am eternally grateful to Clare Green at the Royal Horticultural Society (www.rhs.org.uk), Derek Luther at the British Fuchsia Society (www.thebfs.org.uk) and Bob Hall at the Ammanford Fuchsia & Pot Plant Society for many of the details I used in this book. I am also indebted to the Web site of the Stroke Association (www.strokeassociation.org).
Any errors are my own.
With love,
Liz
The Five-Year Baby Secret
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. Now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes, and adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s Web site for news and extracts of upcoming books at www.lizfielding.com.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PROLOGUE
FLEUR GILBERT hesitated on the registry office steps. This was not how her wedding day was meant to be.
She should have spent the morning being fussed over by her mother, laughing and crying, remembering all the stupid things she’d ever done. Her friends should have been there, the girls she’d known all her life. She wanted Sarah, a posy of little bridesmaids in frilly frocks.
Bells should be ringing in the village church where her parents had been married, as had countless generations of Gilberts before them.
She should be dressed in white with her father at her side, squeezing her hand to give her courage, to tell her that she was the most beautiful bride ever; proud and happy and hiding a tear as he gave away his little girl to some man who couldn’t possibly be good enough for her.
But she was marrying Matthew Hanover and their wedding could never be like that. She knew Matt was right. This was the only way, but, locked inside their private world, insulated by a love so intense, so perfect that nothing and no one else had seemed to matter, she had overlooked the reality of what today would be like.
‘Not having second thoughts, are you?’ She looked up at the man she loved, for one blissful moment believing that he was seeing this from her point of view. Had, at the last minute, recognised how far from her dreams this day must be.
But he was smiling. Joking to cover his own nerves.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, of course not.’
His smile faltered. ‘I’d be happier if you sounded a little more confident.’
She shook her head, smiled and leaned against him.
Her first thought on meeting Matthew Hanover face to face, seeing beyond his name, had been that this was it. That he was the one. Nothing had changed that.
‘I’m not having second thoughts about you, Matt. I’m just not looking forward to telling either of our families what we’ve done.’
‘What can they do? A month from now we’ll be working far away from Longbourne.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Whatever happens we’ll be together, Fleur, man and wife.’ His hand closed protectively over hers. ‘Nothing our families do will ever be able to change that.’
CHAPTER ONE
‘HAS the post come?’
Fleur paused to scoop up the bills, catalogues and other mail scattered over the doormat, then called up the stairs, ‘Tom, if you’re not down here in two minutes I’m taking you to school just as you are.’
‘Slow down, girl. The world isn’t going to end if the boy is a minute or two late for school.’
She dumped the mail on the kitchen table beside her father. ‘Maybe not, but it’s a distinct possibility if I’m late for my appointment with the new bank manager. We need her on-side if we’re really going to take this stand at the Chelsea Flower Show.’
He must have caught the uncertainty in her voice, the un-asked question, because he stopped sorting through the mail and, with a certainty she hadn’t heard from him in a very long time, he said, ‘Yes, Fleur, we really are.’
Then, whatever it took, she’d have to make it happen. Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘Right.’
Which made today’s appointment even more important.
The retirement of a sympathetic bank manager couldn’t have come at a worse time for them. Brian had understood the difficulties of their business, had celebrated their successes with them and had patiently seen them through the last difficult six years, giving them breathing space, a chance to recover.
She wished she’d been able to do more than fill the bank’s window-boxes to reward his faith in them. Even with every single thing running on oiled wheels until Chelsea, it was going to be a huge gamble. She wasn’t convinced that her father’s health would stand up to the stress of producing show plants at the peak of condition on a given day in May, but nothing she could say or do to dissuade him had had any effect. All she could do was try and shield him from financial worries. Unfortunately, Ms Delia Johnson, the new person at the bank, had wasted precious little time in writing to invite them into the office for a ‘chat’.
It was concern that their luck was about to run out—actually a cast-iron certainty that the new manager planned to stamp her own mark on the branch by weeding out accounts that weren’t flourishing—that made her so snappy this morning.
She was going to have to be in top form to ‘sell’ the business, convince Ms Johnson that it would be in the bank’s interest to see them through the additional expense entailed in mounting an exhibit at the premier horticultural show of the season.
‘Don’t fret,’ her father said comfortingly, ‘you’ll be fine. You might have inherited my green fingers and your mother’s beauty, but thankfully you missed out on our business brains.’ He smiled as he took in the effort she’d made with her appearance. ‘You look lovely.’
She knew how she looked. She had to live with her reflection in the mirror; there was nothing she could do about that—although with no time and less money for visits to the hairdresser or expensive cosmetics, the likeness to her mother was less obvious than it might have been—but she’d had to learn to manage the business the hard way when she’d been tossed in at the deep end. Sink or swim. She was still floundering. It had never been possible to make up the ground lost during that terrible year when her world—all their worlds—had fallen apart.
Her father’s lack of interest in the finances of the company, and the discovery that her mother was in the habit of using their capital resources as her own personal piggy bank, had left her out of her depth and swimming against the current.
Even now her father, having said what he thought she wanted to hear, had lost interest, returning to the perusal of the mail. He’d picked up an envelope that, in her rush, she hadn’t noticed and her heart sank as she saw the Hanover logo on the envelope.
‘Don’t they ever give up?’ she demanded, glad of a legitimate focus for her anger.
Any other morning she’d have sorted through the post and weeded it out, protecting him from harassment by a hate-filled woman whose sole ambition appeared to be driving them out of business. Out of the village. Off the face of the earth.
‘I’d sell out to a developer, let someone build houses on this land, before I’d let Katherine Hanover have it,’ she said.
‘Chance would be a fine thing. With Katherine on the Parish Council no one is ever going to get planning permission to build on Gilbert land,’ her father replied, as calm as she was angry, but then he’d never once got angry.
She wished he would. Rage. Shout. Give vent to his feelings. But he never would say anything bad about the woman. If he still felt sorry for her, she thought, his feelings were seriously misplaced.
‘Not when she wants it for herself,’ Fleur said bitterly.
There was a wonderful old barn on the edge of their land that hadn’t been used for anything but storage in years. It was perfect for conversion into one of those upmarket country homes she’d seen featured in the glossy magazines; selling it would have solved a great many of their problems.
The Parish Council, egged on by Katherine Hanover, had decided it was a historic building. They’d not only refused planning permission for conversion, but had warned them that if they allowed it to fall into disrepair they could be fined.
‘Maybe I should get involved in local politics,’ Fleur said. ‘I could at least cancel out the Hanover vote.’
‘That would be in your spare time, I suppose,’ he said, with a rare smile.
‘I could give up doing the ironing,’ she said, glad to have amused him. ‘It would be a sacrifice, but I could do it.’
‘That’s better. I thought you were going wobbly on me there for a minute.’
‘Who, me? Never.’
As he returned to the letter he was holding, his smile faded as if he didn’t have the strength to sustain it. Like his body, it had been worn away under a continual onslaught of betrayal, grief and financial worries, giving her reason—if she needed it—to hate the Hanovers just that bit more.
‘Don’t open it,’ she said. ‘Throw it in the bin. I’ll shred it and add it to the compost with the rest of them.’
‘There have been others?’
Caught out, she shrugged. ‘A few. Nothing worth reading.’
‘I see. Well, you can do whatever you like with this one since it’s addressed to you,’ he said, offering her the envelope. ‘It appears to have been delivered by hand.’
‘By hand?’ She reached for it and then shivered, curling her fingers back before they came in contact with the paper. ‘Why would Katherine Hanover write to me?’
‘Maybe she thinks that you can persuade me to stop throwing her letters away. Maybe she’s lost trust in the Royal Mail and that’s why she pushed it through the letterbox herself.’ Her father seemed to find that as amusing as the thought of Fleur taking up politics. ‘It’s good to see that she can still get things wrong.’ Then he shrugged, dropping the envelope on the table beside her. ‘Or perhaps she’s offering you a job.’
‘Oh, right. That’s going to happen.’
‘If she’s expanding her business she’ll need more staff.’
‘She’s got no room to expand.’ With roads on three sides she needed the Gilbert land to extend her empire. ‘And why would she need me, anyway? I’m a horticulturist, not a lawn-mower salesman. Hanovers haven’t been cultivating their own stock since…since—’
Oh, damn!
‘Since your mother ran off with Phillip Hanover?’ he finished for her. ‘You can say it, Fleur. It happened. Nothing can change that.’
‘No.’
In truth, it wasn’t the adulterous father but the memory of his faithless son that had caught her unawares. Abandonment was apparently inherent in the Hanover genes, and for a split second she felt a kinship with Katherine.
That was enough to jolt her to her senses.
Katherine Hanover was a vindictive and hateful woman, something that, despite good reason, Fleur was determined not to become.
But it was far better that her father believed she was protecting his feelings than that he should suspect the truth.
‘Katherine Hanover would have no use for me, Dad. Not since she paved over her husband’s land and turned the business into a gardening hypermarket.’
‘True. But she has been advertising for weekend staff for the checkouts in the local newspaper. Maybe she thinks you could do with the money.’
‘Whatever would give her that idea?’ The grey suit she was wearing—again—that she’d bought for her mother’s funeral and had been pressed to within an inch of its life? Or perhaps her go-anywhere black court shoes that had only survived so long because she didn’t. Go anywhere, that was.
‘Maybe she wants you to see for yourself how much money she’s making.’
‘You think?’ she asked. The new Mercedes, designer clothes, the kind of shoes that provoked envy in every female bosom in the village weren’t demonstration enough?
‘No, Dad, she’s not that stupid,’ she said, reaching for the letter, irritated that she could be intimidated at long distance by the woman. ‘Just imagine the chaos I could cause in the middle of the weekend rush.’ Before she could open it, the clock in the hall began to chime the three-quarters. ‘Oh, good grief!’ she said, stuffing it into her jacket pocket. ‘Tom!’
A five-year-old bundle of energy bounded down the stairs, dog at his heels, and grinning hugely said, ‘I’m all ready!’
Her heart caught in her mouth at the sight of him. He’d brushed his hair flat, had tried to fix his tie, which was stuck up almost behind his ear, and his shoes, with their little Velcro tabs, were on the wrong feet.
‘I did it all myself,’ he said.
‘Great job, Tom,’ she said, her voice catching in her throat as she picked him up and, despite the need for haste, hugged him until he squeaked and wriggled to be set down. Her little boy was growing up much too fast.
One shoe fell off and, laughing, she picked it up, then sat him on the kitchen table while she straightened him out, scrunching her fingers through his hair to make the curls spring back.
‘Don’t, Mum!’ he said, jumping down, flattening it furiously with both hands. ‘Curls are stupid.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, covering her mouth with her hand, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. Then, ‘Have you got everything?’
‘Pencil case. Reading book. Indoor shoes. Lunch money.’ He went through the daily list, ticking the items off on his fingers.
‘What a genius. Do you want an apple for break?’ she asked, tucking one into his bag so that she could do a surreptitious check. ‘Quick now, give Granddad a hug while I get your coat.’
Matthew Hanover stood at his bedroom window, waiting for Fleur to appear. He hadn’t seen her in nearly six years. Not since their wedding night had been disturbed by the soft burble of her mobile phone.
He’d grabbed the wretched thing, determined to switch it off, shut out the world for as long as possible, but she’d seen the caller ID and they’d both known that a phone call from her father in the middle of the night could mean only one thing.
Trouble.
And trouble it had been.
He’d watched, helpless, as the joy, the laughter, had faded from her eyes at the news that her mother had been badly hurt in a road accident. That there was no time to waste.
He’d begged her to let him drive her to the hospital, to be with her, at her side. They were a couple now. Married. But she’d just clung to him for a moment before she’d stepped back and, unable to look at him, had turned away. ‘Please, Matt. Not now. My father has enough to cope with.’
And he’d let her go because she was hurting. Because, wrongly, he’d believed it wasn’t the moment to fight that battle. He’d let her go with a kiss, trying not to let it hurt that she’d slipped his ring from her finger, saying, ‘Call me. Let me know what’s happening.’
Then, as if in some dark recess of his mind he’d already sensed the cogs of fate slipping out of sync, he’d gone back to the warm space she’d vacated and had lain in the scent of her body, waiting for her to call.
When his phone had rung half an hour later, though, it hadn’t been Fleur. It had been his mother calling to tell him that his father was dead. That Jennifer Gilbert had killed him.
The front door of the Gilbert house opened and a dog, some kind of cross-breed leaning towards a border collie, bounded towards the Land Rover. Then, suddenly, Fleur was there, every inch the businesswoman in a tailored grey suit, her dark red hair swept up into a smooth coil at the base of her neck.
She stood there for a moment, battered briefcase in her hand, her shoulders slumped as if exhausted by the burden she was carrying, and he was glad. She deserved to suffer.
Then she turned as a sturdy little boy raced past her and instinctively his hands went to the window, pressing against the glass as if he could somehow reach out and touch the boy.
How could she have kept that from him?
Denied him his son?
If some anonymous soul hadn’t sent him a cutting from the local newspaper with a photograph taken at a performance of the school Christmas Nativity play he might never have known.
One look was all it had taken for him to know that Thomas Gilbert was his son, but to see him in the flesh was something else and pain burned through him like acid as Fleur opened the Land Rover door, her hand hovering at the child’s back to give him a boost if he faltered, laughing as he said something to her.
She couldn’t have read his letter yet, or nothing on earth would have brought a smile to her lips.
If he’d come home just once. If he hadn’t changed the subject whenever his mother had begun her customary whine against the Gilberts…
If, if, if…
There was no point in dwelling on the past. It had taken time to extricate himself from his commitments in Hungary, to transfer the day-to-day running of the agri-business he’d founded there to his deputy. Every day of it had seemed like a year.
The temptation to simply walk away, catch the first flight back to England, had been almost unbearable, but everything had to be properly settled. He’d been determined that no urgent calls for help would distract him from what he had to do, drag him back.
He was here now and ready to make her pay for every one of those five years he’d missed.
She closed the Land Rover door, checking that it was securely shut, sent the dog back inside and shut the door. Then, as she walked round to the driver’s side, she paused, turned, as if some faint sound had caught her attention and, spotlit by a weak ray of watery sunlight, she lifted her head and looked up across the boundary fence that divided Gilbert and Hanover land to the window where he was standing. And for a heartbeat he thought she could see him, feel him there, watching her.
But after a moment she turned away and lifted her close-fitting skirt, exposing a yard of leg as she hauled herself up behind the wheel.
‘Now, Fleur,’ he said softly. ‘Now.’
Fleur dropped Tom off at the school gates just as the bell rang, and he tore off without a backward glance to join his classmates, pushing and giggling as they lined up to go in. Then, as he reached the door, he stopped, turned, looked back and her heart turned over as she caught a reminder of his father. It was in the turn of his head, the lift of his hand, as if he’d been going to wave, but stopped himself just in time in case anyone should see.
She saw it more and more, sometimes held her breath as some old village biddy would look thoughtfully at the boy with a frown, sifting through her memory, trying to recall where she’d seen just that look before. Fortunately, he’d got the distinctive Gilbert colouring, pale red hair that would darken as he grew older, green eyes, rather than the cool grey of his father. So far no one had made the connection, but as the softness faded from the childish cheeks the likeness would become more obvious.
If Katherine Hanover ever suspected…
If only she would move!
Fleur glared at the glossy blue and gold sign that had been erected at the far end of the village where it could be seen from the main road.
Hanovers—Everything For Your Garden.
Fine. She had no quarrel with that, but why here? It would have made so much more sense to have moved to the business park on the other side of Maybridge where they’d fit right in with the Sunday-shopping-as-entertainment venue with its DIY superstores, flat-pack furniture warehouses and giant supermarkets. Where there was plenty of room for expansion. It could only feed the woman’s bitterness to live and work next door to a family she seemed to blame for every ill that had ever befallen her.
But then sense had nothing to do with it.
When two families had been rivals in business, and in love, for nearly two centuries, hurting the opposition would always take priority, although it seemed to her that in recent years the Hanovers had caused her family enough grief to satisfy even their capacity for inflicting pain.
She managed to squeeze the Land Rover into a space directly opposite the bank—a good omen, surely—and, having checked her lipstick and tucked a strand of hair in place, she opened the door and crossed the street.
‘Goodness, Fleur, I scarcely recognised you,’ the receptionist said, buzzing her through.
‘Really? Is that good or bad?’ she asked.
She rarely applied anything more exciting than the essential sunblock to her skin, but today she’d made the supreme sacrifice in an attempt to impress the new manager with her businesslike image—had put up her hair, added a little style to the hated grey suit with an old silk scarf.
She fiddled self-consciously with one of her earrings, a small swirl of silver studded with a tiny amethyst—her birthstone. Matt Hanover had given them to her instead of a ring the first time he’d asked her to marry him. The first time she’d said, ‘Wait. Not now.’ Well, she’d been eighteen with three years of college ahead of her. He’d just graduated and was going to the other end of the country to work. Waiting had been the only option. But she’d taken the earrings as a token of his commitment, her promise. And they’d been cheap enough, simple enough to wear openly without her mother cross-questioning her on where they’d come from.
One day, he’d promised her, he’d give her diamonds. She’d laughed, told him she had no need of diamonds when she had him and she’d worn the earrings day and night, certain of his love.
The box, buried in the back of her drawer, had surfaced as she’d searched for a scarf and, unable to help herself, she’d opened it. The stones had perfectly matched the rich purple streaks in the silk and, in a gesture of pure defiance, a promise to herself that neither Hanover—mother or son—had the power to hurt her, she’d fastened them to her ears.
Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure.
‘You look great,’ the receptionist assured her in a whisper as she opened the door. Then, brightly, ‘Miss Gilbert to see you, Ms Johnson.’
‘Miss Gilbert?’ Delia Johnson glanced up from the file in front of her and looked past her to the door. ‘Are you alone? I was expecting to see your father.’
Fleur had understood that she wasn’t going to be talking to someone who’d known her since she was a baby, someone who knew their history, understood their business. She knew that she’d have to work hard to build a relationship with the new manager.
Ms Johnson, it appeared, wasn’t so keen to build a relationship with her.
‘He’s on file as the sole proprietor,’ she prompted.
‘That’s no longer the case,’ Fleur said quickly, ignoring the seat that the woman had waved her towards. ‘Our accountant advised creating a formal partnership since my father already leaves most of the business side of things to me these days. He hasn’t been terribly well since my mother was killed in a car crash,’ she explained.
‘Not well? What’s the matter with him?’
What could she say? His world had fallen apart, crashed around his ears, and he’d had a breakdown. Had never fully recovered. ‘Low grade depression. He copes, but he doesn’t go out much. Prefers to concentrate on plant breeding.’ Well, it wasn’t exactly a secret. ‘Brian—Mr Batley,’ she corrected, realising that suggesting they were friends might do more harm than good, ‘was aware of the situation and was always happy to discuss the account with me.’
‘Brian Batley has retired,’ Ms Johnson declared, adding something under her breath that sounded like ‘and not before time.’
She clearly disapproved of her predecessor’s admittedly relaxed attitude and was, no doubt, hell-bent on proving her own management abilities by clearing out businesses which weren’t earning their keep.
Gilberts’ lack of growth in everything but the size of their overdraft in recent years had probably put them right at the top of her list.
‘I assumed that he would have briefed you,’ Fleur said. ‘Made a note in the file?’ Then, realising that might have sounded like a criticism, she quickly added, ‘If you’d like to talk to him—my father, that is—you would be welcome to visit the nursery. You could see for yourself what we’re doing, although—’ she put the briefcase on the chair and extracted a folder ‘—I have brought along a detailed plan of what we hope to achieve this year.’ She placed the folder on the desk. ‘You’ll see that our major sales drive will be centred around the Chelsea Flower Show,’ she began, reconciled to having to educate the woman from scratch about what their business entailed. The time involved in breeding new cultivars, the effort that went into showing—enthused, somehow, with the anticipation, the excitement when there was a major break-through. Always assuming that the hard climb up the corporate pole hadn’t crushed everything but caution from Ms Johnson’s spirit. ‘It’s been a while since we’ve shown at Chelsea, but we’ve been lucky enough to have been offered a stand this year, and we—’
‘Later, Miss Gilbert.’ Ms Johnson put the folder to one side and opened the file in front of her. ‘Please sit down.’
The ‘please’ was a marginal improvement on her welcome so far, even if it had been less invitation than command. She put her briefcase on the floor, sat down, and when Ms Johnson was sure she had her full attention, she said, ‘From the records, Miss Gilbert, it would seem that Brian Batley had a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to your account.’
Fleur, with difficulty, kept quiet. The woman was confusing Brian’s understanding of the long-term planning involved in plant breeding, his support during a difficult period, with inactivity. But telling her so was unlikely to win her any Brownie points.
‘The whole thing,’ Delia Johnson went on, well into her stride now, ‘reeks of…’ she seemed to have difficulty locating exactly the right word ‘…cosiness.’
‘On the contrary.’ So much for keeping quiet. ‘Brian knew how difficult things have been in the last few years. He took the long-term view, well aware of just what we’ve achieved in the past, knowing that given time, support, we’d come through again.’
‘On what evidence? Your business is growing plants. How can your father do that if he can’t leave the house?’
‘I didn’t say he can’t leave the house,’ she said protectively. ‘And besides, we specialise in fuchsias, Ms Johnson, and, as I’m sure you know, they’re grown under glass.’
She tried not to sound smug, but it was an unanswerable comeback.
‘If that’s the case, why have you taken charge of the business?’
Unanswerable, apparently, was not a concept Delia Johnson understood.
‘Because it was my destiny from the moment I was born,’ Fleur offered. ‘And because I have a degree in horticultural management.’
‘You need more than a degree, you need experience.’
There was just no stopping this woman, and it was true that Fleur hadn’t anticipated having to take it all on quite so soon. The idea had been for her to work for other growers, widen her knowledge, as Matt had been doing. She’d been about to start working alongside him at one of the major growers—one of the advantages about the fact that their parents didn’t speak to each other had been that neither family had realised that they were working for the same company—when her world had imploded.
But that was life for you. The first thing to go was the plan…
‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she said. Just. ‘And I’ve been working in this business since I was old enough to pot a cutting.’
Too late she wondered if that would provoke an inquisition about the use of child labour, but Ms Johnson had enough sense not to take her literally. She had a more pressing row to hoe.
‘So your father does what exactly?’ she asked. She glanced at the file in front of her. ‘He still draws a salary from the company.’
‘My father is fully occupied in the breeding of new plant varieties. He rarely leaves his private boiler.’
‘Boiler?’
‘Glasshouse. They were originally heated by steam from coal-fired boilers and they were known as boilers. Ours have been in continuous use for six generations and the name seems to have stuck despite the fact that we no longer have to shovel coal to keep up the heat.’ She tried a smile but, getting no encouragement from Delia Johnson, abandoned it. ‘Heat, light, water…it’s all electronically controlled these days.’
They had been amongst the first growers to install the new technology, borrowing deep, beating Hanovers to it by a whisker; at the time that had seemed like a coup, but the Hanovers had changed direction. All it meant now was that it was long past the time when it should have been ripped out and replaced.
‘Six generations?’
‘Seven with me. On that site, anyway. Bartholomew Gilbert and James Hanover formed a partnership to buy the land and build the glasshouses in 1829.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that the two companies had once been in partnership.’
‘It was a very short-lived alliance. When James caught his pretty young wife in flagrante with Bart in one of the boilers, the land and the plant stock were divided, fences erected and the Gilberts and Hanovers have not spoken since.’
‘Never?’
Never say never…
‘But you live and work right next door to each other. How can you possibly sustain a grudge for that long?’
‘I think “grudge” is putting it rather lightly. They fought over the division of the land, each believing the other had come off best. The same with the stock. Bart produced a new cultivar that year which James swore was his work.’
‘I see.’
‘The children took in the bad feeling with their mother’s milk. The fact that they were in direct competition, vying for the position of premier fuchsia growers, did nothing to lessen the animosity. There were instances of sabotage, industrial espionage—’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Workers bribed to steal precious new cultivars. To introduce vine weevils into the stock.’
‘Good grief.’
And, of course, what was forbidden was always going to tempt the reckless. Who was it who said that those who did not learn from history were doomed to repeat it?’
‘Has anyone attempted to mediate, heal the rift?’ asked Ms Johnson.
‘Not with any success. On the last occasion half the village ended up in court on a charge of breaching the peace.’
Only the boundless optimism of youth had convinced her and Matt that they could finally reunite the families, heal a hundred and seventy years of discord with the power of their love.
Unfortunately, her mother and his father had been way ahead of them.
‘I do see that to the outsider it must seem a bit like a cross between the plot of a Catherine Cookson saga and a James Bond movie,’ Fleur said, rather fearing that, instead of involving the woman with company history, she’d just made things worse.
‘Yes. Well, family feuds are no concern of mine. Your business account is another matter. Given the fact that you’ve been trading, in one way or another, for a hundred and seventy-five years, you’ve had more than enough time to get it right. The Hanovers, despite the distractions, appear to have managed their affairs somewhat more successfully.’
On safer ground, Fleur said, ‘The Hanovers gave up plant production six years ago when Phillip Hanover died. They leave other people to take the risks these days.’
‘Maybe you should consider following their example.’
‘I doubt there’s room for two gardening hypermarkets in Longbourne. Besides, if everyone did that, there would be no plants for Hanovers to sell. And fewer jobs to help support the local economy.’
Ms Johnson gave a shrug, apparently prepared to admit that she might have a point—albeit a very small one. Encouraged, Fleur went on, ‘Any business that is at the mercy of weather and fashion is never going to be a smooth ride. In that we’re no different from the High Street chain stores.’
‘There are fashions in plants?’
‘Television make-over programmes have raised the profile of gardening, but they do need a continuous supply of something new to offer the viewer. It takes the novel, the unexpected, to make an impact.’ It was Fleur’s turn to give a little shrug, implying that a woman with her finger on the pulse of business would know all about that. ‘Unfortunately, breeding plants is a bit like steering one of those supertankers—it takes a long time before anything happens. It’s just as well that plant breeders are a passionate bunch.’
‘Sustaining a feud for the best part of two centuries would seem to require a certain amount of passion,’ Ms Johnson agreed drily.
Refusing to rise to this, Fleur said, ‘I had in mind the men and women who strive for years, generations, centuries to produce the impossible. The perfect black tulip, true blue rose, red daffodil.’
‘Are you going to make my day and tell me you’re planning to exhibit one of those at Chelsea this year?’
‘No, but then, as you already know, we grow fuchsias.’
‘So you do. And what is the Grail of the fuchsia grower?’
‘A full double in buttercup-yellow.’ She shrugged. ‘A bit blowsy for the purists, but it would make the cover of all the gardening magazines.’
‘Really. Wouldn’t it be simpler, if you want bright yellow, to plant buttercups?’
‘We’re talking about the rare, Ms Johnson. Not garden weeds.’
Unperturbed, she responded, ‘Is that what your father is spending his time working on?’
‘He’s been working on it all his life.’
‘May I suggest that he’d be more productively occupied searching for a way to reduce your overdraft?’ She sat back in her chair. ‘My predecessor held you on a very loose rein, but I’m going to be frank with you, Miss Gilbert. I cannot allow the present situation to continue.’
Fleur’s stomach clenched. ‘The overdraft is secured on our land,’ she said, praying that the internal wobbles hadn’t migrated to her voice. ‘The risk, surely, is all ours?’
‘It’s agricultural land and the equity is becoming perilously small, which is why I’ve instructed a surveyor to carry out a current valuation. He’ll be getting in touch with you some time this week to arrange a convenient time.’
‘And no doubt you’ll be adding his fees to our overdraft?’ Fleur did her best to stifle her outrage, but it was beyond disguising. ‘That’s no way to reduce it.’
‘My duty is to protect the bank,’ Delia Johnson said, getting to her feet, signalling that the meeting was at an end.
‘We need two months,’ Fleur said, not moving. She hadn’t been given a chance to make her pitch. ‘We need Chelsea to showcase our new varieties.’
‘Isn’t that a massive expense?’
‘The RHS does not charge for space, but of course there are costs. Transport, accommodation, the catalogue. You’ll find them itemised in the folder I’ve given you. It’s a very small outlay in return for the publicity on the television, radio, in the print media. For the sales we’ll make from the stand.’
‘Right now the only plans I’m interested in concern the reduction of your overdraft.’ She crossed to the door and opened it. ‘I need something on my desk a week from today. When I’ve had time to look at it I’ll come out to the nursery and talk to your father.’
Fleur considered standing her ground, insisting on making her pitch. Realising it would be to deaf ears, she saved her breath, picked up her briefcase and headed for the door. This was no longer a request for backing until May, it was a fight to stay in business.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE should have held out for the diamonds, Fleur thought as she climbed aboard the Land Rover. They’d have come in handy right now.
She reached up and took the tiny jewels from her ears that Matt had given her, cupping them in the palm of her hand. When he’d given them to her they’d seemed the most precious things in the world, but they were no more than pretty trinkets, worth as little as the till-death-us-do-part promise that went with them.
She tightened her hand around them, held them for a moment before dropping them in her pocket beside the letter from his mother.
They’d be in good company, she thought, reaching forward to turn the key in the ignition, before slumping back in the seat as the sting of tears caught her out.
She closed her eyes to trap them, refusing to let them fall. There wasn’t a Hanover in the world worth a single one of her tears. If she needed reminding of that, she need look no further than the latest diatribe from Katherine Hanover.
She took out the crumpled envelope, determined to rip it in two, but as she grasped it, something, no more than a prickle of unease, stopped her.
Maybe it was the fact that it was addressed to her, maybe it was the wake-up call from the bank, but some basic instinct warned her not to ignore this letter. That somehow it was different. And pushing her thumb beneath the flap, she tore it open.
The note inside was short.
Fleur, she read.
She almost laughed at that. If there was one thing to admire about Katherine Hanover, it was her total lack of hypocrisy. No mushy, insincere ‘Dear’ for her. And the formality of ‘Miss Gilbert’ would have given her too much importance.
As she began to read, however, all inclination to smile left her.
As a matter of courtesy I’m writing to let you know that I will be instructing my solicitor to apply to the Family Court for a blood test in order to establish that I am the father of Thomas Gilbert. Should you choose to fight me, despite the fact that simple arithmetic would seem to make the outcome a foregone conclusion, you will be held responsible for all the costs involved.
Once paternity has been established, be assured that I will vigorously pursue a claim for custody of my son.
Matt
For a split second the name overrode every other emotion.
Matt?
Matt was home?
There was a moment of confused hope before reality brought her crashing back to earth.
The Family Court. Blood tests. Custody…
Then she was tearing at her scarf, clawing it from about her throat, gasping for breath as the contents of the letter, rather than its author, struck home, driving the air from her body. The coldness of the words chilled her to the bone.
Matt had written this? Her Matt had applied these foul words to paper?
She stared at the letter, lying where it had fallen at her feet, scarcely able, even now, to believe him capable of such cruelty.
He hadn’t even troubled himself to pick up a pen. He’d typed it, sitting in front of a PC as he’d put those knife-edged words together before sending it, with the impersonal click of a mouse, to print. Only his name had been written in the bold cursive that she’d once known as well as her own hand.
Just the one word. Matt.
None of the words, full of love, that he’d once used to close his notes to her. No little drawings of flowers. No kisses.
Only the words Hanovers—Everything For Your Garden, embossed in blue and gold on the pale grey paper, to mock her.
He hadn’t even bothered to use personal notepaper, but had written to her on the company letterhead.
Then what?
Had he stuffed it into an envelope before, too impatient to wait for the mail to take its time about delivering his bombshell, he’d walked the hundred yards from his front gate to hers, to push it through her letterbox?
Had he been that close and she hadn’t felt his presence? Hadn’t known that he was just feet away?
She covered her mouth with her hand, as if to hold in the pain.
Would he have taken the risk of being seen by his mother? Did she know?
Her head began to swim at the thought.
No.
She clutched at the steering wheel, as if to a lifeline, forcing herself to swallow down the rising tide of panic.
No.
If Katherine Hanover had even suspected that Tom was her grandson there would have been no warning. The first she’d have known about it would have been a letter from the woman’s lawyer. There had been enough of those in the last few years.
A sagging fence. The branch of a tree daring to intrude over Hanover land. The slightest excuse to make their lives difficult had brought the threat of the law down on them.
No. She knew nothing about this.
But the cold reference to blood tests, the Family Court, costs, that was pure Hanover. This man whom she’d loved at first sight, had deceived her parents to meet, had married in secret, who had declared he would love her until death, had written this unfeeling note with as little compassion as if she were a bug, something to be squashed between his fingers.
And suddenly it was anger, rather than fear, surging through her veins.
How dared he turn up now, out of the blue, after all these years and demand his rights? He had no rights. Not morally, anyway.
Not that the morality of the case would matter a damn when it came to the law. She knew that his lawyers would obtain a court order if she refused to allow the blood test.
At least he hadn’t added insult to injury by suggesting the result was in doubt.
But that was small comfort. Once the blood test proved his claim, the Family Court would probably decide that she was the one at fault for depriving a man of his son and he would be occupying the moral high ground.
But that wasn’t how it had been.
He was the one who’d left.
She hadn’t had that luxury. She hadn’t been able to pack her bags, leave the country, start a new life, not with her mother in intensive care, her father in the throes of a breakdown.
There had been no way to hide the fact that she was expecting a baby from the speculative stares of the village gossips. She’d had to stay and face down the sudden silences whenever she’d gone into the village shop. As if she didn’t know exactly what they’d been saying. That she was no better than her mother.
Even the women who took their wages every week from her hand, who’d known her all her life, had thrilled themselves with whispers that the only reason she wouldn’t tell the father’s name was because she couldn’t. That she didn’t know.
She knew. That was the reason she’d kept silent.
There had only ever been one man in her life and she had both dreamed of and dreaded this moment.
Had dreamed of Matt bursting into the house, gathering them both up in his arms and begging her to forgive him.
Had dreaded having to admit what she’d done to her father. The lies, the deceit.
Exactly like her mother.
And, like an asthmatic grabbing for an inhaler, she flung open the Land Rover door to suck the chill air deep into her lungs.
An angry blast from a passing motorist who’d been forced to swerve out of the way brought her back to her senses. She banged the door shut and sat there for a moment, trying to block out the panic, the pain. She had no right to think of herself, indulge in self-pity, misery, waste energy raging against fate.
Only Tom mattered. His world, until now, had consisted of her, his grandfather, his life in the village. All that was about to change and she was going to have to make what was about to happen as simple, as straightforward, as painless for him as she could.
She didn’t have the luxury of time to formulate a strategy. She had to react to the situation as it had been presented to her and her first task was to put a stop to the blood test. Now.
She picked up the letter, dug out her mobile phone and, without stopping to think about what she was going to say, punched in the number. It rang only once before a familiar voice said, ‘Matthew Hanover.’
She nearly dropped the phone. She’d been prepared for a receptionist, a secretary, even for Katherine Hanover to answer the telephone, although if it had been Katherine she’d have hung up.
And she discovered that his voice, even now, went straight to her heart’s core, leaving her feeling bone weak.
After a moment she lifted the phone back to her ear. There was no prompt, no puzzled ‘Hello.’ He’d been waiting for her to ring. Knew it was her. Let the cruel silence stretch on for what seemed like minutes as he waited for her to speak, as she tried to find some word to break the silence.
How are you? What have you been doing for the last six years? I missed you…
In her dreams words hadn’t been necessary, but this wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.
‘I—I received your letter,’ she said finally. Then, quickly, before she fell apart, ‘There’s no need for a blood test. I don’t want Tom to go through that.’
‘I’m not particularly interested in what you want, Fleur,’ he replied, like her ignoring the niceties and going straight to the heart of the thing. ‘I just want the truth.’
Straight to the point, his mother’s son.
‘You know the truth.’
‘Maybe I do, but I have a right to have it confirmed. Apparently the gossip in the village is that you don’t know who Tom’s father is.’
‘You know better than to listen to gossip.’ Then, because this wasn’t about her, ‘He’s so little, Matt. He won’t understand. I don’t want him to be frightened.’
‘You should have thought of that before. You’ve had it your way for five years. Now I’m dictating the terms.’
‘Please…’ She heard herself begging and didn’t care. ‘I’ll do anything.’
There was another seemingly endless silence before he said, very softly, ‘Anything?’
It was just as well that Matt gave her no chance to confirm or deny it.
‘Very well. Meet me tonight at the barn,’ he said briskly, as businesslike as if he were making an appointment to clear up some unfinished business—and maybe he did see it that way. ‘We can discuss exactly what “anything” means then.’
The barn? She covered her mouth with her hand, shutting in the cry of pain. Had he chosen the location, their special place, deliberately to hurt her?
But then, where else would they meet? In the village pub? That would certainly give the gossips a field day. The alternative was driving halfway across the county to find somewhere where there was no risk of them being recognised. If he’d been making enquiries about them, he must know that she didn’t have the time for that.
She breathed in and out once, very slowly, then said, ‘I won’t be able to get out until late.’
‘Nothing has changed, then.’ There was the faintest sound, a sigh of resignation perhaps. ‘Come when you can. I’ll wait.’
Matt pressed the disconnect button.
Please…
If he closed his eyes he could still see her, eighteen years old, lying back on a bed of straw in the old hayloft, her green eyes soft, her mouth warm and inviting. ‘Please…’
Even now, after all that had happened, he still responded like a horny teenager to the sound of her voice. Had to work to remember his anger.
‘Did I hear the phone?’
His mother paused in the doorway as if careful of invading his space, apparently unaware that checking up on his phone calls was even more intrusive.
‘Yes,’ he said and, taking that as an invitation, she joined him, setting her bag down on what she was already referring to as ‘his’ desk, and he glanced up. ‘I’ve been offered a cottage in Upper Haughton,’ he said. True enough. But not the answer to her question. Nothing, it seemed, had changed.
He and Fleur were both still locked in by nearly two centuries of hatred. They were both still lying to their parents, creeping out to meet in secret. But, while playing Romeo and Juliet had had a certain illicit appeal when they’d been too young to recognise the dangers, he’d had his fill of subterfuge.
‘You’re not staying here?’ she asked, trying hard to disguise her disappointment.
‘I’ve arranged to pick up the keys from the owner this evening.’
‘Renting a cottage in Upper Haughton will cost a pretty penny.’
‘It’s just as well I’ve inherited your business acumen, then.’
The compliment brought a smile to her face, as he’d known it would. But she wasn’t happy and, unable to stop herself, she said, ‘Why on earth waste good money, when there’s all the room you need here? You’ve been away for so long. I’d like the chance to spend some time with you. Cosset you a little.’
Yes, well, he’d been angry with her too, and cruel, as only the young, with time on their side, can be. He regretted that, but not enough to live under the same roof as her. But he reached out, briefly touching her arm, to soften the rejection as he said, ‘It isn’t far.’ Just far enough to avoid prying eyes. ‘If I decide to stay, I’ll look around for somewhere permanent to buy.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed, immediately retreating, as if walking on eggs. ‘I still can’t quite think of you as…well, an adult. Clearly the last thing a grown man of means wants is to live at home with his mother.’ Then, ‘What about the office?’ She did a good job of keeping the need, the fear that he’d leave again, from her voice as she gestured around her at the office she’d placed at his disposal. ‘Will this do you for the moment, or will you need more room?’ she asked, quickly recovering and giving him the opportunity for a graceful exit. Demonstrating that, no matter how desperate she was to cling to him, she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself.
He hadn’t discussed his plans with her, but only because he didn’t yet know what they were. He could work from the cottage, but an office at Hanovers gave him an excuse to come into the village whenever he wanted, so he said, ‘The use of a spare desk is welcome until I decide what I’m going to do.’
‘For as long as you like.’
‘No, for as long as you don’t try to drag me into your war with the Gilberts.’ If it hadn’t been for that nonsense…
‘I’m not at war with them, Matt,’ she said, and laughed as if the very idea were ridiculous. ‘I’m just doing my best to make a living.’
‘And your best is very good indeed,’ he said, not convinced by her swift denial but, having made his point, happy to change the subject. He got up, crossing to the window. ‘You’ve made an extraordinary success of this. Dad wouldn’t recognise the place.’
‘No.’ There was just a hint of self-satisfaction in her voice, Matt thought, turning to look at her. His father wouldn’t have recognised her, either.
She’d been one of those dull, practically invisible women, never getting involved in the business. Always ready to give a helping hand at village functions, but never, like some mothers—like Fleur’s mother—drawing attention to herself with her clothes or her make-up, something for which he’d been deeply grateful as a boy. Seeing her now, every inch the stylish and successful businesswoman, he wondered about that. About how unhappy she must have been.
‘What made you change your mind about selling up, moving away?’ he asked, keeping his own voice even, emotionless.
‘Time, maybe. I spent the best part of a year trying to sell it, hating every minute that I was forced to stay here. Unfortunately, the only people who showed an interest were housing developers but, much as I’d have enjoyed seeing a rash of nasty little houses on Hanover land, I couldn’t get planning permission.’
He didn’t bother to remind her that he’d pleaded with her to let him run the place for her. That she could have left, settled in comfort wherever she liked on the pension his father had provided. He was sure she’d thought about it many times during the last six years.
‘You must have really hated him.’
‘I wasn’t thinking straight at the time. If I had been, I would have realised that I wasn’t the only person hurting.’
It was as near to an apology as he was going to get, he thought and shrugged. ‘You did me a favour. Prised me out of a rut I’d been stuck in since I was old enough to know that my life was all laid out for me.’
She glanced at him, a frown creasing her forehead, and for a moment he suspected she hadn’t been thinking about him at all. Then she smiled and said, ‘That’s generous of you.’ She turned back to the window. ‘The truth is that I was pretty much at rock bottom when two men turned up full of plans for turning the place into a low-cost pile-’em-high-and-sell-’em-cheap garden centre. They were talking about finance, turnover, suppliers, as if I wasn’t there and I realised that I’d been invisible for most of my life.’
This was so close to what he’d just been thinking that Matt felt more than a touch uncomfortable. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you got your own back on them by nicking all their ideas?’
‘Far from it. Their ideas were rubbish. They were missing the whole point. This business isn’t just about dumping everything in a warehouse and selling the basics at the cheapest price. You have to sell gardening, the garden, as you would an expensive kitchen or good furniture. It’s got to be desirable, a lifestyle.’ And finally she smiled. ‘You’ve got to appeal to the women.’
‘Did you tell them that?’
‘I thought about it.’ She shrugged. ‘They’d have just looked at me in that puzzled way that men do and then carry on as if I hadn’t spoken, but after they’d gone I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’
‘You had no trouble with planning permission? Change of use?’
‘I’d learned my lesson. I had my hair cut, bought a decent suit, turned myself into someone men would take seriously. I put it to the planners that I simply wanted to change the emphasis from growing to selling. Then I went to the bank and showed them my figures, my business plan.’
‘There were no objections from the neighbours?’ he asked, looking across at the solid stone house, the roofs of the Gilbert glasshouses just visible above the fence. ‘Not even from Seth Gilbert?’
‘Not even from him. Maybe he felt sorry for me.’
‘His mistake.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Then, almost to herself, ‘Not his first.’
Even on a Monday morning the car park was busy with people loading trays of plants, bags of compost, all the attractive garden hardware his mother stocked. ‘You could do with more space,’ he said.
‘I’ll have all the space I need soon,’ she said, joining him at the window. ‘You could have the Gilbert house if you wait a few months. It’ll need a lot of work, but it’ll make a lovely family home.’
‘It will?’ He frowned. ‘You’ve been inside? When?’
She started as if caught out in something illicit. ‘Oh, not in decades,’ she said. ‘But Seth’s mother used to throw wonderful parties.’ She flapped her hand across her face as if brushing away a memory that clung like a cobweb.
‘And you were invited to these parties?’ he persisted.
‘I wasn’t always a Hanover.’ Then she arranged her face into a smile and said, ‘Think about the house. It’s time you settled down, thought about getting married. Is there anyone?’ She didn’t wait for his answer, but said, ‘I’m getting broody for grandchildren.’
He’d assumed that the newspaper cutting had been sent by his mother, that she’d seen the photograph and, spotting some resemblance to him as a child, the kind of thing that only she would notice, she’d suspected the truth, had used it as a lure to bring him home. Nothing in her manner suggested it, however, and her face gave nothing away. But then, it occurred to him, it never had. She’d been not so much dull as blank.
‘I’d rather have the barn,’ he replied.
‘The barn?’
‘I’ve always thought it would make a lovely home. I’ve seen some stunning conversions.’
She turned away abruptly. ‘Sorry, Matt, but I’ve already got the plans drawn up to turn that into a restaurant.’
‘A restaurant?’
‘Customers expect more than a cup of coffee and a bun at garden centres these days,’ she said and opened a cabinet, using the desk to lay out a bundle of drawings, an architect’s sketch of how it would look.
‘Seth Gilbert’s agreed to sell?’ he asked, surprised. His agent hadn’t reported that.
‘I’ve put in a fair offer for the whole site, including the barn and house. I’m still waiting for him to come to his senses and accept.’
Satisfied, he said, ‘Maybe he doesn’t consider your offer as fair as you do.’
‘I’m not a charity,’ she replied, ‘but if he chooses to go bankrupt then there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Is that inevitable?’ he asked, as if he didn’t already know to the last penny how much Seth Gilbert owed to the bank. He hadn’t wasted the weeks he’d been forced to delay in Hungary. He’d put the time to good use, acquiring documents, information, legal advice, everything he needed to ensure he got exactly what he wanted.
And it was working.
He’d been home less than twenty-four hours and already Fleur had picked up the telephone and called him. And, in her panic, had told him everything he needed to know.
She’d do anything…
He closed his hand to stop it from shaking and made an effort to tune back in to what his mother was saying.
‘…sooner rather than later. You need to have something no one else has, or be able to work on a much bigger scale these days. No matter. I’ll sit him out and buy from the bank when he goes under.’
‘But in the meantime you’ve somehow managed to obtain a set of drawings of the barn.’
She shrugged. ‘A local builder submitted plans to the local council for converting it into holiday cottages. He was happy to sell them to me when he was turned down.’
‘I’ll bet. So that’s Plan A. What’s Plan B?’
‘Plan B?’
‘The fallback plan. I can see that the semi-rural location has a certain charm, but have you considered that you might do a great deal better if you moved the whole operation to the business park?’
‘I don’t want to move. And to have a fallback plan suggests that I’m prepared to lose.’
So much for her denial that she was at war.
‘Well?’ Her father glanced up from the standard fuchsia he was working on as Fleur placed a cup of tea beside him on the staging.
‘What?’
‘What did this new woman at the bank have to say for herself?’
‘Oh…’
The letter, her brief conversation with Matt, an insidious fear that once Katherine Hanover was involved she’d use her money, influence, the power base she’d built up in the community to snatch her son away from her, had driven everything else from her mind.
She couldn’t even remember the journey home.
‘I, um, left the Chelsea stuff with her to look at in detail.’
‘You didn’t discuss it with her?’
Concentrate, concentrate…
‘She’s more concerned about the overdraft. She wants to talk again next week. To both of us.’ Then, because there was no way to shield him from reality, ‘After we’ve come up with a plan to reduce it.’
‘Tell her she’ll have to wait until the third week in May,’ he said, returning to the task in hand, grooming the plant with the tip of a razor-sharp knife before, satisfied, he offered the pot to her for her to look at. ‘Then she’ll see for herself.’
‘Will she?’ The label bore only a number and a date. ‘Is this it?’
‘It’ll be a show-stopper,’ he said. ‘A Gold Medal certainty.’
‘Always assuming that we’re still in business come the end of May.’
Always assuming her father wasn’t living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
‘There’ll be people who’ll turn their noses up at it, no doubt,’ he said.
‘The ones who think that if you want buttercup-yellow you should grow buttercups?’ she said, thinking of the bank manager. ‘We’d still be picking wild grasses to make flour for bread if they had their way.’
‘It’s going to be primrose, not buttercup.’ He rubbed at one of his eyes, blinked as if to clear his vision. ‘Give me another year…’
‘We can’t wait another year.’ She offered him back the plant but, as he reached for it, he pulled back, shook his hand, flexing it.
‘Are you all right, Dad?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said a touch irritably. ‘Don’t fuss, just put that on the bench.’
She watched him for a moment, concerned that he was overdoing it, but after a moment he reached for another plant and carried on working, leaving her to ponder the more urgent question of finances.
The fact of the matter was that they needed a true yellow to make the breakthrough. Primrose was a lot closer to cream. And cream wouldn’t do.
If he was just fooling himself…
Pushing the uncertainties to the back of her mind she said, ‘Ms Johnson said she would come out to the nursery and have a look around next week.’ She looked along the ranks of fuchsias that had been planted at weekly intervals, staggering the peak of flowering over a three-week period in order to guarantee perfection for a single week in May. Would she be impressed? Or simply see a glasshouse packed with plants that were all outlay, no income? ‘I’m going to have to tell her what we’ve got.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he declared roundly.
The vehemence of his reply took her by surprise. ‘Dad, I don’t think you understand—’
‘I understand perfectly. Do you want to see someone else inviting the press to look at their stunning breakthrough a week before Chelsea? Years of work with someone else’s name on it?’ He seemed a little—hectic, she thought as he gestured at the bench in front of them. Too keyed-up. It wasn’t good for his blood pressure. ‘We can’t afford the kind of security that would be needed if so much as a hint gets out that I’ve made the breakthrough.’ Then, without warning, his face creased in a wicked grin that reminded her of the way he used to be. ‘That’s one of the advantages of everyone thinking you’re past it, my girl. You can stop worrying about who’s going to steal your new cultivars.’
She laughed to cover her sigh. Security. Just one more thing to worry about. ‘At least this is one thing we’ve got that Katherine Hanover isn’t interested in.’
‘Katherine Hanover would kill to have her name instead of ours on this.’
She frowned. ‘Why? No one would believe she’d bred it.’
‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law in this game, but this isn’t just about pride, or about putting the Gilbert name back at the forefront of plant breeding. This is to secure Tom’s future.’
‘I don’t think you understand, Dad. Ms Johnson needs something to justify supporting us.’
‘Exactly. She’ll tell her head office, some bright spark there will ask around to see if she knows what the devil she’s talking about and once she’s done that it won’t be a secret any more.’
‘But—’
‘No buts.’
‘Won’t the fact that we’re making the effort to go to Chelsea this year, after such a long break, have already aroused some speculation?’
‘If anyone asks, we’re relaunching Gilberts, and if they snigger, think I’m fooling myself, you let them.’
That was so close to what she had been thinking that she almost cringed with guilt, but facts had to be faced.
A major grower would have used the latest cell propagation technology to produce thousands of plants in the first year. Because of her father’s secrecy they’d had no choice but to propagate the old-fashioned way. Amongst the hundreds of plants being prepared for the show, only a small proportion were cuttings from the precious plant her father claimed to have produced the previous year.
If only he’d shown her, allowed her to photograph the blooms so that they had something to show for all his work, but he hadn’t said a word until the RHS had offered them space at Chelsea and she’d demanded to know what on earth he thought he was going to put in it.
It was such a very fragile thing, a plant. A single mishap could wipe them all out, at least for this year, and next year would be too late.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, doing her best to look cheerful, ‘we’ll be packing the second crop of plugs for despatch next week. At least we’ll look industrious if Ms Johnson does decide to come and take a look around.’
‘Just keep her out of here,’ he said, his attention already back on his work.
‘Dad?’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll have to slip out later this evening for an hour or so. I promised I’d give Sarah Carter a hand with the arrangements for the village Easter egg hunt next week.’
The lie stuck in her throat. Had her mother made excuses like that to cover her illicit meetings with Phillip Hanover? Afterwards, she’d tried to remember, but she’d been too busy inventing her own reasons to escape the house to take much notice what her mother was doing—after all, parents weren’t expected to have a life. They certainly weren’t supposed to be indulging in the same thrillingly illicit passion that had become the centre of her own secret world.
Feeling slightly sick, she said, ‘Can you keep an eye on Tom for me?’
‘I won’t be going anywhere,’ he said, not looking up from what he was doing.
What did you wear to meet a man you’d once thought the world well lost for? A man who, when it had come to making a stand, a choice, hadn’t loved her enough?
A man you wanted to impress, even while you wanted him to see that you didn’t care a hoot for his opinion?
Making an effort for the bank manager had been child’s play in comparison. A tidy suit, shoes brightly polished, neat hair.
A no-brainer.
But that had been business.
What did you wear when you were going to be begging a man not to destroy the one infinitely precious part of your life to have emerged from the wreckage? All that remained of the bright future they had planned together, the single joy that gave a point to getting out of bed each morning.
In the event, it was the weather—the damp chill rain of a spring slow to get started—and her destination, an ancient barn at the end of a muddy, little-used footpath, which decided the matter for her, saving her from any pathetic attempt to look alluring. To turn his head. Remind him that he’d loved her once.
As if she could.
Six hard years had knocked the bloom from her appearance. Warm trousers, sturdy ankle boots, an old soft shirt worn under a roomy sweater would do the job. And the clothes dictated the rest of her appearance. The minimum of make-up, her hair tied back in a plait. That was who she was now. A young village matron, more concerned with school, church, keeping her business ticking over, her son’s welfare, than her own appearance.
She tied the laces in her boots and straightened her back, doing her best to ignore the ache. She’d spent the afternoon on her knees fixing the pump that drove the mist sprays. Her back hurt, her fingers were sore and bruised where she’d knocked them against unforgiving metal.
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