The Five-Year Baby Secret

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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