‘Wow.’
Jess hid a smile as Gaby gazed at the five-bar gate set in a high hedgerow. A wooden sign was fixed on the front of the bars.
St Saviour’s Flower Farm
A, J & W Godrevy
The sign had been replaced once already since Jess’s father, Roger, had left the family home to live with a younger woman, fifteen years previously. Their mother, Anna, had insisted on having his initials erased and a fresh plaque put up showing her children as joint owners. However, the ‘new’ one needed repainting again, as the names were fading under the onslaught of wind, rain and salt. Olive lichen had started to crawl slowly over the ragged edges of the wood, but it was so familiar that Jess didn’t even see it these days. It was only because Gaby paused to examine it that Jess noticed it at all. One more job to add to the maintenance list, though being non-urgent, it probably wouldn’t get done at all until it dropped off.
‘Come on,’ said Jess, smiling inwardly at the impact her home and business was having on Gaby.
She pushed open the gate, letting Gaby go ahead of her. Adam closed it behind them and followed them both in while Gaby scanned the house, outbuildings and fields with sharp-eyed wonder.
The rambling farmhouse where Jess and Will lived with Anna was set back from the road behind a large concrete yard. Jess and Will had no choice but to take over the running of the place while they were still barely out of their teens. Their father had left the farm’s finances in a perilous state, but gradually Jess and Will had pulled it back from the brink and developed it into the thriving business that Gaby was now taking in.
‘The high hedges are there to protect the flowers, aren’t they?’ she asked Jess.
‘Yes, they spare the crops from the worst of the winds we get in the winter. The office is over here. You never know, Will might even be in there.’
‘While you introduce Gaby to Will, do you mind if I check out the Athene?’ said Adam. ‘I want to see how the renovation’s coming along. I reckon it’ll be ready for some trials after Christmas if we all pull our fingers out.’
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘That’s optimistic. It still needs a lot of work.’
He smiled. ‘We’ll get there. I won’t be long.’
‘OK,’ said Jess, amused at his enthusiasm for a half-built boat.
After Adam had left, she led the way to the office, chatting to Gaby along the way. ‘The Athene’s a vintage rowing boat – though we actually call them gigs. Will and Adam are hoping to restore it to its full glory,’ she explained.
‘Sounds exciting. Do you row?’
‘I’ve no choice,’ Jess laughed. ‘Most of us do. I’m in the St Saviour’s Women’s crew, but we don’t take it as seriously as some. What about you?’ She eyed the diminutive figure of Gaby.
‘No way. I did try out for cox once and crashed the Third Eight into the bank. Did a lot of damage. They haven’t asked me back again.’ She grinned. ‘Worked a treat.’
Jess laughed.
As she guided Gaby towards the office, Jess’s thoughts were on her new employee but also partly on the sign at the gate. Even fifteen years on, Jess had mixed feelings about their father: she still loved him, as did Will, even though they hadn’t seen him for several years and their brief phone conversations with him were usually tense.
She and Will were twins, and having grown up so closely, they had a strong bond even if they didn’t always see eye to eye about the farm. Jess was the steady hand on the tiller: calm, practical and ready to pour oil on troubled waters. She oversaw the business side of things, dealing with suppliers and the bigger customer accounts that required tact and diplomacy.
Will worked every bit as hard as her but his forte lay with the horticultural side of the business. He knew everything about coaxing the different varieties into bloom at exactly the right moment. Storms, fog and even the occasional frost didn’t faze him, but he could be impatient and prone to gloomy moods.
One thing they both agreed on, and would have sealed in blood, was their loyalty to their mother and the farm. They’d sided firmly with Anna as the innocent party, but that hadn’t stopped them missing their dad in private. They’d felt hurt at being abandoned and angry at having to set aside any of their other hopes and dreams to stay and run the farm. Jess had settled down more quickly to her life as boss, but Will had wanted to go to university and for a long time resented being thrown in at the deep end.
However, this was all now in the past and everyone had moved on: they’d had no choice or the farm would have gone under faster than the Titanic.
One sign of the twins’ success after fifteen years of hard work was that the business had long outgrown the original small office attached to the farmhouse. Jess opened the door of the new admin block, a large timber-clad building off the centre of the yard. The room was filled with workstations, each with phones and computer screens. The silence hit Jess as she showed Gaby inside.
‘This is our admin area and sales office,’ she said to Gaby. ‘It seems funny to see it empty like this. Normally it’s mayhem in here.’
Gaby walked into the middle of the room and took in the blank screens.
‘We process the bulk orders from supermarkets and the wholesale market here and take orders from individual customers,’ Jess explained. ‘I keep an eye on the admin and sales, though Lawrence, our general manager, is in charge of operations. Will’s more likely to be found out in the fields or the packing shed. Or the gig sheds,’ she added after a pause. ‘He’s also a stalwart of the St Saviour’s rowing club, but he won’t be there today. He’ll be around here somewhere. He knows you were coming and he’s looking forward to meeting you,’ she added, hoping that Will would turn out to be more enthusiastic about their new recruit than she feared.
Jess moved on from the office to the packing sheds, which would also normally have been buzzing with workers.
‘This is where we grade and arrange the flowers into bunches or ship them out in bulk to wholesalers. You’ll be alternating between here and the fields, depending on demand. We all muck in together wherever we’re needed.’
Gaby’s gaze swept the building, which was open to the rafters. Jess saw her eyes flick from the carpet-topped arranging tables to the floor, where rejected narcissi lay scattered on the concrete. Jess knew that if it wasn’t a bank holiday, the place would have Radio Scilly blaring out and be full of people hurrying into the chiller with huge plastic boxes of flowers from the fields or to the quay, or carrying cardboard boxes and tissue paper to and from the arranging tables. It was eerily quiet – and there was still no sign of her brother.
‘Will’s probably outside,’ she said with a tight smile that hid her growing disquiet over Will’s absence. They walked back out into the sunlight. Jess wondered whether to try his phone, not that he’d always answer. ‘Let’s try the bottom field. This way, across the yard.’
The goats spared them a fleeting glance as she and Gaby walked past their pen, before going back to their dinner. Jess also pointed out the beef cattle who were grazing on the heathland next to the farm. She saw Gaby taking in the small rectangular fields where the flowers were grown. Each one was protected from the wind by thick hedges and the green shoots of the first narcissi were just showing, even though it wasn’t quite September.
‘How long have the Godrevys been farming here?’ Gaby asked as Jess pulled her phone from her pocket.
Adam had sent her a text: ‘Any sign of the Man yet? Any chance of getting away If You Know What I Mean? Got a surprise for you …’
Jess felt her cheeks heat up and pushed her phone back into her jeans.
‘Three generations now,’