The Five-Year Baby Secret

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.’