days. Still, she knew she was incredibly lucky to have a place to stay at all. Jess had explained that staff houses were as rare as hen’s teeth and not everyone who worked at the farm got to live there. Some of the temporary workers had to rent out-of-season holiday lets or get rooms in guesthouses, while the younger permanent staff still lived with their families.
Like most people her age, she couldn’t envisage ever being able to afford a place of her own and definitely not on a poetry expert and flower picker’s wage. But she wasn’t here for the money: she was here to enjoy the view, smell the sea and the scents – and have some solitude.
Not that there would be much of that. The sound of people arguing about a football match was clear and the thick partition walls shook when a door slammed. Jess had shown her the shared shower rooms and the communal staffroom/kitchen area with a large TV where most people congregated after work.
The communal room had been furnished with cast-offs too, probably from the Godrevy farmhouse. The stuffing was escaping from a mismatched sofa. The dining table was surrounded by an eclectic mix of chairs ranging from an oak carver to a deckchair. It was a far cry from the MCR at her college, but actually, Gaby thought with a smile, it wasn’t that different to home: her parents’ place, a ramshackle thatched cottage in a village on the unfashionable side of the city. Hardly anything got thrown out there either.
She unpacked the one small case that she’d been allowed to take on the tiny plane here. If she wanted any more of her stuff, it would have to be shipped over on the ferry. For now, her clothes took all of five minutes to put away and she’d miraculously managed to compress a whole cupboard’s worth of make-up and toiletries into one bag. Judging by the state of Len’s fingernails, she thought the varnish was going to be superfluous, but even if there were no clubs, there had to be some opportunity for glamming up, even if it was only to watch an episode of Countryfile.
At the bottom of the case, wrapped inside a jumper, she found her two most precious treasures. She set one on the table: it was a photo of her with her parents, her older sister Carly and Steven – Stevie – her younger brother. The three siblings had all squeezed onto an old garden swing behind the cottage, with their parents piled in behind. A friend of Gaby’s had taken the photo on Stevie’s twenty-first birthday not long after he’d taken delivery of his motorbike. He’d always been a daredevil, spending all his spare time climbing, or mountain biking, surfing and trying out extreme sports. He was working as a courier while he saved enough to travel the world, and unlike Gaby had no desire to go to uni or to join the rat race like Carly. He lived for the moment …
Since his death, every photo with the bike in had been deleted or destroyed, but the memory of his special birthday would be treasured forever. Besides, everyone had been smiling in the photo, no one had their eyes closed or ‘looked fat’, so it had been deemed a suitable memento of the occasion, printed off multiple times and framed before being given as gifts to numerous members of the Carter clan.
Shortly after that photo took place, Stevie had taken a corner too fast, been thrown off the bike and struck an oak tree at the entrance to the village. He’d survived, technically, but the brain damage had been so extensive that he hadn’t been able to breathe on his own. Even worse, all the tests had shown no brain activity at all and they had been told there was no prospect of recovery. A month after the accident, the Carters had made the most heartbreaking decision any family could ever face and in March, Stevie was taken off life support.
Gaby stared at the photo. That dreadful moment had been almost half a year ago now. How could that be? How fast time flew, even though recently, some days had felt as if she was walking uphill in the darkness against a wind so strong and merciless she thought she might be blown off her feet and never get up again.
The late afternoon sun streamed through her window. Gaby pushed it open and let the cool breeze air the room. Could she smell the sea on it? Possibly not but she could imagine it. She’d made it here and Stevie would be proud of her. He’d be cheering now, just as he would have at her PhD graduation in June.
Gaby had managed to fund her doctorate with the help of several jobs, and scrimping and saving, plus being fed by her parents from time to time. She’d completed her thesis even during the darkest hours. She’d written up the last few pages, sitting by Stevie’s hospital bed.
Shortly after he’d died a minor miracle had happened – her college had offered her a junior fellowship that enabled her to teach the undergraduates and would have covered some of her accommodation and living expenses. The opportunity was as rare as rocking horse poo, and there were very few jobs that required a PhD in poetry, but it wasn’t the miracle Gaby had really wished for. She wasn’t going to get her brother back. And so, with him in mind, she had turned down the offer to pursue a job that combined the two passions in her life – poetry and flowers – and decided she would work on a flower farm.
She’d been in academia – at school, at university – for almost all of her twenty-seven years. She couldn’t see herself in another twenty-seven, a crusty academic, rarely having been outside Cambridge. She’d thought long and hard about her future as she sat by her brother’s side. He’d never be able to pursue all the things he wanted to do: travel the world, work abroad, enjoy life to the full but she could.
When she’d told Carly her plans to work at the farm she’d gasped in exasperation. ‘But a flower farm? On the Scillies? You may as well lock yourself away in Cambridge!’
‘It’s Scilly or the Isles of Scilly. Never the Scillies,’ Gaby had corrected, trying not to rise to the bait. Carly genuinely meant well, but for her, achieving a dream meant getting a flat in a smart postcode with a car and salary to match.
‘I don’t care if it’s Timbuc-bloody-tu. You’re out of your mind.’
‘I rather fancy it. I love flowers.’
‘OK. I can just about get that, but why there? Can’t you go somewhere … oh I don’t know. Exciting? Exotic? Like the Caribbean. They have lots of flowers there.’
Gaby had suppressed a sigh. ‘But I love narcissi and Tresco Abbey Gardens is on Scilly – that’s one of the most famous gardens in the world.’
‘Really? Oh Gaby, I despair.’
That made two of them, thought Gaby, knowing her sister would never understand her obsession with flowers and poetry. She didn’t even bother explaining why she’d chosen Scilly specifically because Carly would have been incredulous and disapproving to hear that Gaby had fed her addiction to gardening and countryside programmes during the long hours at the hospital. The TV had been on in Stevie’s room for some company and normality mainly, and she’d sat through endless episodes of Gardener’s World, Countryfile, Countrywise and their lookalikes.
One programme had stuck in her mind. Ironically it had been at her lowest ebb, after a moment when she’d thought she’d seen Stevie show the flicker of an eyelid, the twitch of a finger. She’d imagined the movement of course, but luckily, she’d never told her parents about it. The consultant had come and done thorough tests and said there was absolutely no brain reaction recorded at all, they were incredibly sorry … she must have dreamed it … maybe she might want to go home for some rest?
A few hours later, after Gaby had finished crying, she was half-dozing in her chair and woke to find the TV on. She saw a smiley presenter in a wax jacket tell the audience about the tiny islands where the Gulf Stream ensured the climate was so mild in the winter that subtropical plants thrived all year round and daffodils bloomed in September. The sea had been azure, the flowers and plants dazzlingly bright and the people cheerful and resilient. It felt so removed from the dim hospital room, even though it
