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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.’
