She rubbed her throbbing temples.
Their names.
Dan was in it up to his neck, too, but because she wasn’t about to out her best friend—for Dan’s sake and for his sister’s—she was still struggling with exactly what her answer would be when he eventually turned those all-seeing eyes to her and asked, ‘Why, George?’
She loaded another dish of carefully laid-out seeds into the holder and slid it into the irradiator, then secured it and moved to her computer monitor to start the X-ray. It took just moments to get a clear image. Not a bad batch; a few incompetents, like all batches, but otherwise a pretty good sample.
She typed a quick summary report of her findings, noted the low unviable percentage, and attached it to the computerised sample scan to go back to the seed checkers.
Incompetents. It was hard not to empathise with them, the pods that had rotten-out interiors or the husks that formed absent of the seeds they were supposed to protect. Incompetent seeds disappeared amongst the thousands of others on the plant and just never came to fruition. Their very specific genetic line simply...vanished when they failed to reproduce.
In nature, that was the end of it for them.
Incompetent seeds didn’t have to justify themselves and their failure to thrive constantly to their competent mothers. Didn’t have to watch their competent friends’ competent families take shape and help them move out to their competent outer-city suburbs.
‘Ugh...’ Georgia retrieved the small sample from the irradiator, repackaged it to quarantine standards and placed it back in its storage unit. Then she reached for the next one.
Twenty-five-thousand seed species in the bank and someone had to test samples of each for viability. Lucky for the National Trust she had weeks and even months of hiding out ahead of her. Looked as if they were going to be the immediate beneficiaries of her weekends and evenings in exile.
Across the desk, her phone rang.
‘Georgia Stone,’ she answered, before remembering what day it was. Why was someone calling her on a weekend?
‘Ms Stone, it’s Tyrone at Security. I have a visitor here for you.’
No. He really didn’t. ‘I’m not expecting anyone. I would have left a name.’
‘That’s what I told him, but he insisted.’
Him. Was it Daniel? Immediately, new guilt piled on top of the old that she’d not been brave enough to face him personally yet. ‘Wh...who is it?’ she risked.
Pause.
‘Alekzander Rush. With a K and a Z, he says.’
As if that helped her in the slightest; although some neuron deep in her mind started firing.
‘Now he says he’s not a journalist.’ Tyrone sounded annoyed at being forced into the role of interpreter. His job was just to check the ID of visitors passing through his station, not deal with presumptuous callers.
‘OK, send him through. I’ll meet him in the visitor centre. Thank you, Tyrone,’ she added before he disconnected.
It took her about seven minutes to finish what she was doing, sanitise, and work her way through three buildings to the public visitor centre. It was teeming with weekend visitors to Wakehurst all checking out the work of her department while they were here seeing the main house and gardens.
She glanced around and saw him. Tall, dark, and casually but warmly dressed, with something draped over his arm. The guy from the elevator at the radio station. Possibly the last person in the world she expected to see. Relief that he wasn’t some crazy out to find The Valentine’s Girl crashed into curiosity about why he would be here. She ignored two speculative glances sent her way by total strangers. Probably trying to work out why she looked familiar. Hopefully, she’d be back in her office by the time the light bulb blinked on over their heads and they remembered whatever social media site they’d seen her on.
She walked up next to him as he stared into one of the public displays reading the labels and spoke quietly. ‘Alekzander with a K and a Z, I assume?’
He turned. His eyes widened as he took in her labcoat and jeans. That was OK; he looked pretty different without his pinstripe on, too.
‘Zander,’ he said, thrusting his free hand forward. She took it on instinct; it was warm and strong and certain. Everything hers wasn’t. ‘Zander Rush. Station Manager for Radio EROS.’
Oh. That wasn’t good.
He lifted his arm with something familiar and beige draped across it. ‘You left your coat in the studio.’
The manager of one of London’s top radio stations drove fifty kilometres to bring her a coat? No way.
‘I considered that a small price to pay for getting the heck out of there,’ she hedged. She hadn’t really let herself think about the signed document on radio network letterhead sitting on her desk at home, but she was thinking about it now. And, she guessed, so was he.
The couple standing nearby suddenly twigged as to who she was. Their eyes lit up with recognition and the girl turned to the man and whispered.
Zander didn’t miss it. ‘Is there somewhere more private we can speak?’
‘You have more to say?’ It was worth a try.
His eyes shot around the room. ‘I do. It won’t take long.’
‘This is a secure building. I can’t take you inside. Let’s walk.’
Conveniently, she had a coat. She shrugged into it and caught him as he was about to head back out through the giant open doors of the visitor centre.
‘Back door,’ she simply said.
Her ID opened the secure rear entrance and deposited them just a brisk walk from Bethlehem Wood. About as private as they were going to get out here on a Saturday. It got weekend traffic, too, but nothing like the rest of Wakehurst. Anyone else might have worried about setting off into a secluded wood with a stranger, but all Georgia could see was the strong, steady shape of his back as he’d sheltered her from prying eyes back in the elevator as her world imploded.
He wasn’t here to hurt her.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
‘Your work number was amongst the other contacts on our files. I called yesterday and realised where it was.’
‘You were taking a chance, coming here on a Saturday.’
‘I went to your apartment, first. You weren’t there.’
So he drove all this way on a chance? He was certainly going to a lot of trouble to find her. ‘A phone call wouldn’t suffice?’
‘I’ve left three messages.’
Oh.
‘Yes, I...’ What could she say that wouldn’t sound pathetic? Nothing. ‘I’m working my way up to my phone messages.’
He grunted. ‘I figured the personal approach would serve me better.’
Maybe so; she was here, wasn’t she? But her patience wasn’t good at the best of times. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Rush?’
‘Zander.’ He glanced at her sideways. Then, ‘How are you doing, anyway?’
What a question. Rejected. Humiliated. Talked about by eight million strangers. ‘I’m great. Never been better.’
His neat five o’clock shadow twisted with his lips. ‘That’s the spirit.’
Well, wasn’t this nice? A walk in the forest with a total stranger, making small talk. Her feet pressed to a halt. ‘I’m so sorry to be blunt, Mr Rush, but what do you want?’
He stopped and