The Five-Year Baby Secret

‘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…’