Phillipa Ashley - Spring on the Little Cornish Isles - The Flower Farm

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,’ she replied, trying to refocus and not think too much about the shivery feeling that Adam’s text had given her. ‘Apparently when my grandparents started the farm in the 1950s, there were ninety flower farms on St Mary’s alone. Now that people buy so many imported flowers from abroad, there are only a handful.’

‘St Saviour’s survived though,’ said Gaby. ‘And this set-up is very impressive.’

‘Thanks. We try to have as many varieties and markets as we can. We also sometimes work with other farms at busy periods. They supply us with flowers to supplement what we can’t grow, or sell ours when we have a glut. It’s a fine art, trying not to have too few or too many flowers – that’s the tricky part. Too much warmth or too much cold can spell disaster or not being able to get the flowers to market. It’s taken years to get the balance right and we’re still experimenting and keeping our fingers crossed.’

Jess looked around her at the green shoots starting to appear in the brown earth of the outdoor fields, ready for the new season’s harvest. Hard to believe that the first tight buds of the earliest types would be ready to pick in a few weeks’ time. These days, sixteen types of narcissi were produced through autumn and winter, far more than in her father’s time. It had been Jess’s idea to expand their range shortly after he’d left.

Gaby crouched low to touch one of the emerging shoots. She had a dreamy look on her face. ‘Do you think the legend is true?’ she asked.

‘Which legend would that be? Scilly has quite a few,’ said Jess, amused.

‘The one about how the narcissi first came to Scilly on a Dutch ship.’

‘Ah. The onion story.’ Jess had heard the tale many times. Supposedly, the first bulbs were given to the Governor of Scilly’s wife by the captain of a Dutch merchant ship. She mistook them for onions but threw them out of the window of her castle because they tasted so horrible. The bulbs bloomed in the moat and that’s how the islands’ flower industry began. ‘It’s a great story and there may be some truth in it, but we’re not so concerned with the past,’ said Jess wryly. ‘It’s the present and the future we want to secure, which is why you’ll find plenty to keep you occupied,’ she added with a smile.

Gaby nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh. Absolutely. I came here to help you do just that.’

‘Glad to hear it. I’m sure my brother will be too. Hold on. There’s Len,’ said Jess, spotting a middle-aged man striding over the yard through the open door. ‘He might have seen Will. Do you want to wait here?’

Leaving Gaby looking at the farm set-up, Jess caught up with Len as he headed into the packing sheds.

‘Hi Len. Have you seen Will? I want him to meet Gaby, our new worker.’

Len Scarrock’s forehead, already as lined as a contour map of the Himalayas, wrinkled even further. ‘That kid over there?’

‘She’s not a kid. She’s twenty-seven and she’s had plenty of experience.’

Len snorted. ‘As what? A pixie in fairyland?’

Jess clung onto her patience. Len had worked as field supervisor with the Godrevys for years and what he didn’t know about flower farming on the isles wasn’t worth knowing. But he was as spiky as a whole field of thistles. ‘Have you seen Will?’ she repeated.

He sucked on his teeth and shrugged. ‘Might be in the fields. It’s been a good hour since I saw him.’

Jess’s heart sank; she was beginning to think Will really had forgotten Gaby was coming and gone to visit his rowing mates. ‘OK. Thanks.’

Just then, Adam walked across the yard and joined Jess on the edge of the top field. ‘The gig’s coming along. Where’s Will?’

Jess rolled her eyes. ‘This is turning into a game. I should produce a book: Where’s Will? ’

‘Hold on, that sounds like him,’ said Adam, pointing towards a figure marching from the rear of the equipment storage shed. A familiar voice carried on the air to them.