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London was divided. Grand Final kind of division. Half the city had taken up arms in her defence and the other half were backing poor, beleaguered Dan. Hard to know which was worse: the flak he was copping for being the rejector or the abject pity she was fielding for being the rejectee.
Didn’t she know what a stupid thing it was to have done? some said.
Yes, thanks. She had a pretty good idea. But it wasn’t as if she just woke up one morning and wanted her face all over the papers. She’d thought he’d say yes, or she wouldn’t have asked. It just turned out her inside information was about as reliable as a racing tip from some random bag lady in an alleyway.
Why do it live on air? her detractors cried.
Because she woke up the morning after Kelly’s stunning pronouncement that her brother was ready for more and the ‘Give him a Nudge’ leap year promotion was all over the radio station she brushed her teeth to. And rode to work to. And did her work to. All day. The universe was practically screaming at her to throw her name into the hat.
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 stared down at her, his eyes creasing. ‘That’s you being blunt?’
She shifted uncomfortably. But stayed silent. Silence was her friend.
‘OK, let me get to the point...’ He started off again. ‘I’m here in an official capacity. There is a contract issue to discuss.’
She knew it.
‘He said no, Mr Rush. That makes the contract rather hard to fulfil, don’t you think? For both of us.’ She hated how raw her voice sounded.
‘I understand—’
‘Do you? How many different ways do you hear your personal business being discussed each day? On social media, on the radio, on the bus, at the sandwich shop? I can’t get away from it.’
‘Have you thought about using it, rather than avoiding it?’
Was he serious? ‘I don’t want to use it.’
‘You were happy enough to use it for an all-expenses-paid wedding.’
Of course that was what he thought. In some ways she’d prefer people thought she was doing it for the money. That was at least less pathetic than the truth. ‘You’re here for your pound of flesh—I get that. Why not just tell me what you want me to do?’
Not that she would automatically be saying yes. But it bought her time to think.
Grey eyes slid sideways as his gloveless hands slid into his pockets. ‘I have a proposition for you. A way of addressing the contract. One that will be...mutually beneficial.’
‘Does it involve a time machine so that I can go back a month and never sign the stupid thing?’
Never give in to her mother’s pressure. Or her own desperate need for security.
His head dropped. ‘No. It doesn’t change the past. But it could change your future.’
She lifted her curiosity to him. ‘What?’
He paused at an ornate timber bench and waited for her to sit. Old-school gallantry. Even Dan didn’t do old school.
She sat. Curious.
‘The media is hot for your story, Georgia. Your...situation has sparked something in them.’
‘My rejection, you mean?’
He tilted his head. ‘They’ll be interested in everything you do. And if they’re interested, then London will be interested. And if London is interested, then my network will want to exploit the existing contract however they can.’
Exploit? He was happy to use that word aloud? She tried not to let her surprise show.
‘Georgia, under its terms they could still require you to come back for follow-up interviews.’
Her stomach crimped. ‘To talk about how very much I’m not getting married? How I suddenly find myself alone with half my friends siding with my ex?’ And the other half so determinedly not talking about it. ‘Not exactly perky radio content.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s what they could ask. But I have a better idea. So that the benefit is not all one-way.’
She waited silently for his explanation. Mostly because she had no idea what to say.
‘If you agree to seeing the year out, EROS is willing to redirect the funds from the engagement, wedding, and honeymoon to a different project. One that you might even enjoy.’
She frowned. ‘What kind of project?’
He took a breath. ‘Our listeners have connected with you—’
‘You mean your listeners feel sorry for me.’ Pity everywhere she looked.
‘—and they want to see you bounce back from this disappointment. They want to follow you on your journey.’
She ignored that awful thought and glared at him. ‘Really? You see into each of their hearts?’
His scoff vibrated through his whole body. ‘We spend four million pounds a year on market research. We know how many sugars they each have in their coffee. Trust me. They want to know. You’re like...them...to them.’
‘And how is me working through my weekends in a lab going to make good radio? Because that’s how I planned to get through this next year. Low profile and lots of work.’
‘I’m asking you to flip that on its head. High profile and getting back out into the sunshine. Show them how you’re bouncing back.’
Honesty made her ask in a tiny voice, ‘What if I don’t—bounce back? What then?’
Something flooded his eyes. Was it...compassion? ‘We plan to keep you so busy you won’t have time to wallow.’
Wallow? Anger rushed up and billowed under her coat. But she didn’t let it out. Not directly. ‘Busy with what?’ she gritted.
‘Makeovers. New clothes. Access to all the top clubs... You name it, we’ll arrange it. EROS is making it our personal business to get you back on your feet. Total reinvention. And on your way to meeting Mr Right.’
She stared at him, aghast. ‘Mr Right?’
‘This is an opportunity to reinvent yourself and to find a new man to love.’
She just stared. There were no words.
It was only then he seemed to hesitate. ‘I know it feels soon.’
She blinked.
He frowned. Scowled. ‘OK, I can see that you’re not understanding—’
‘I understand perfectly well. But I refuse. I have no interest in reinvention.’ That wasn’t entirely true—she’d often dreamed about the sorts of things she might have done if she’d grown up with money—but she certainly had no interest in a manufactured man-hunt.
‘Why not?’
‘Because there’s nothing wrong with me, for a start.’ Hmm...defensive much? ‘I’m not in a hurry to have you tally up my apparently numerous deficiencies and broadcast them to the world.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re not deficient, Georgia. That’s not the point of this.’
‘Really? What is the point? Other than to tell women everywhere that being yourself is not sufficient to catch a good man.’
Something her gran had raised her never to believe. Something that was starting to look dangerously possible.
‘OK, look... The point of this is ratings. That’s all the network cares about. This promotion was mine and it went arse-up and so it’s my mess to tidy. I just thought that we could spin it so that you can get something decent out of it. Something meaningful.’ Sincerity blazed warm and intense from his eyes. ‘This is an opportunity, Georgia. Fully paid. To do anything you want. For a year.’
She couldn’t even be offended at having her life so summarily dismissed. Arse-up was a pretty apt description. She sighed. ‘Why would you even care? I’m nobody to you.’
He glanced away. When he came back to her his eyes were carefully schooled. ‘I feel a certain amount of responsibility. It was my promotion that ended your relationship. The least I can do is help you build a new one.’
‘I ended my relationship,’ she pressed. ‘My decisions. I’m not looking to shift blame.’
‘And so...?’
‘I don’t want to find someone to replace Dan. He wasn’t just someone I picked up out of convenience.’ Though, to her everlasting shame, she realised that maybe he was. And she’d almost made him her husband.
‘So you’re just going to hide out here for the next twelve months?’
Yes.
‘No. I’m going to take a year off life to just get back to who I really am. To avoid men altogether and just remember what I liked about being by myself.’ The idea blew across her mind like the leaves on the gravel path ahead of them. But it felt very right. ‘It will be the year of Georgia.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The year of Georgia?’
‘To please no one but me.’ To find herself again. And see how she felt about herself when left alone in a room with no one else to fill the space.
‘Well, then, think about how much you could do for yourself with a blank cheque behind you.’
It was a seductive image. All those things she’d always wanted to do—secretly—and never had the courage or the money to do. She could do them. At least some of them.
‘What would you do,’ he went on, sensing the shift in his fortune, ‘if money was no object?’
Build that time machine... ‘I don’t know. Self-improvement, learn a language, swim the English Channel?’
That got his attention. ‘The Channel, really?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I’d have to learn how to swim first...’
Suddenly he was laughing. ‘The Year of Georgia. We could mix it up. Get a couple of experts to help us out with some ideas.’ Grey eyes blazed into hers. ‘Fifty thousand pounds, Georgia. All for you.’
She stared at him. For an age. ‘Actually, I really just want all of this to go away. Can fifty grand buy that?’
The compassion returned. It flickered across his eyes and then disappeared. ‘Not literally, but there’s an extra-special level of feeding-frenzy that the public reserves for those not wanting the attention. Maybe fronting up to it will be a way to help end it?’
That made some sense. There was a seedy kind of fervour to the interest of the English public specifically because she and Dan were both trying so hard to avoid it. Maybe it tapped into the ancient predator parts of mankind, as if they were scenting a kill.
‘You were willing to sell us your marriage before,’ he summed up. ‘Why not sell us your recovery? How is it different?’
‘Sharing the happiest time of my life with the world would have been infinitely different.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you thought? That marrying him would make you happy?’
‘Of course.’ But then she stumbled. ‘Happier. You know, still happy.’
It sounded lame even to her own ears.
‘Clearly Bradford thought otherwise.’ Then he took a breath. ‘Why did you ask him if you weren’t certain of his answer?’
Her brow folded. ‘Because we’d been together for a year.’
‘A year in which he thought you were both just enjoying each other’s company.’
For a moment she’d forgotten—again—how very public her proposal was. And Dan’s decline. Three million listeners had heard every excruciating word. She hid her shame by dropping her gaze to the path ahead of them.
‘So...what? His twelve-month expiry date was approaching?’
She lifted her eyes again. ‘It was your promotion, Mr Rush. “Give him a leap year nudge,” you said in all your advertising.’
His eyes flicked away briefly. ‘We didn’t imagine anyone would take us literally.’
She stared at him as a small cluster of walkers passed by. Her friend’s illness was none of his business. Nor was Kelly’s eagerness to see a happy ever after for two people she loved. ‘I misunderstood something someone close to him said,’ she murmured.
Actually her mistake was in hearing what she wanted to hear. And letting her mother’s expectations get to her. Her desperate desire to fill the void in her life with grandchildren. And then she’d awoken to EROS’ promotion and decided it was some kind of sign.
And when she’d been shortlisted and then selected...well...
Clearly it was meant to be.
And exactly none of those was even close to being a good excuse.
‘I accept full responsibility for my mistake, Mr Rush—’
‘Zander.’
‘—and I’ll need to seek some legal advice before answering you about the contract.’
‘Of course.’ He fished a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘You’d be foolish not to.’
Which was a polite, corporate way of suggesting she’d been pretty foolish already.
It was hard to argue.
* * *
‘I think you should do it,’ Kelly said, distracted enough that Georgia could well imagine her stirring a pot full of alphabet spaghetti in one hand, ironing a small school uniform with the other, and with the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder.
A normal day in her household.
‘I thought for sure you’d tell me where he could stick his offer,’ she said.
Kelly laughed. ‘If not for those magic words...’
Fifty thousand pounds.
‘You say magic words and I hear magic beans. I think this has the potential to grow into something really all-consuming.’
‘So? Did you have any other plans for the next twelve months?’
The fact it was true—and that Kelly didn’t mean to be unkind—didn’t stop it hurting all the same. No, she had no particular plans that twelve months of fully paid stuff would interrupt. Which was a bit sad.
‘George, listen. I don’t want to bore you again with my life-is-for-the-living speech, but I would take this in a heartbeat if someone offered it to me.’
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with you. You don’t need reinvention.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you. This doesn’t have to be about that. This is an opportunity to do all the things you’ve put aside your whole life while you’ve been working and saving so hard. To live a little.’
‘You know why I work as hard as I do.’
‘I know. The whole “as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again” thing. But you are not your mother, George. You are more financially secure than most people your age. Isn’t there any room in your grand plan for some fun?’
She blinked, wounded both by Kelly’s too-accurate summation of her entire life’s purpose and by the implication of her words. ‘I’m fun.’
Kelly’s gentle laugh only scored deeper. ‘Oh, love. No, you’re not. You’re amazing and smart and very interesting to be around, but you’re about as much fun as Dan is. That’s what made you two so—’
Kelly sucked her careless words back in. ‘What I’m saying is, you have nothing to lose. Take this man’s fifty grand and spoil yourself. Consider it a consolation prize for not getting to marry my stupid brother.’
‘He’s not stupid, Kel,’ she whispered. ‘He just doesn’t love me.’
In the silence that followed, two little boys shrieked and carried on in the background. ‘Well, I love you, George, and as your friend I’m telling you to take the money and run. You won’t get a chance like this again.’
Kelly dragged her mouth away from the phone but not well enough to save Georgia’s ears as she bellowed at one of her boys. ‘Cal, enough!’ She came back to their conversation. ‘I’m going to have to go. World War Three is erupting. Let me know what you decide.’
Moments later, Georgia thumbed the disconnect button on her mobile and dropped it onto her plump sofa.
No surprises there, really. Of course Kelly would take the money. And the opportunity. She’d come so close to being robbed of life—and her boys of a mother—she was fully in marrow-sucking mode. And she was right—there really was nothing else going on in Georgia’s life that a bunch of new activities would interrupt.
Her objections lay, not with the time commitment, but with the implication that she was broken. Deficient.
About as much fun as Dan. Did Kelly know what an indictment that really was? Mr Serious?
So that was three for three in favour. Kelly and her gran both thought it would be good for her and her mother...well, what else would a woman incapable of managing her money or her impulses say?
Which was part of the problem. Truth be told, Georgia had nothing against the idea of a bit of self-development of the social kind. She wanted to be a well-rounded person and maybe she had gone a bit too hard down the other path these past years. But the pitch of her mother’s excited squeal was directly and strikingly proportional to her level of discomfort at the idea of frittering away fifty thousand perfectly good pounds—no matter how free—on meaningless, fluffy activity.
Her mother would have spent it in a week. Just as she spent every penny they ever had. They’d bounced through seven public houses before her gran called a halt and took a thirteen-year-old Georgia in with her.
And then it would be gone, with nothing to show for it but a fuller wardrobe, a liver in need of detox and a sleep debt the size of Wales.
She stretched out and pulled the well-thumbed EROS contract into her lap. It had her lawyer’s recommendation paper-clipped to the front.
Sign, he said. And attached his invoice.
So that was four for four. Five if you counted the handsome and persuasive Zander Rush.
And only one against.