whole National Trust building was so light and bright and...optimistic. None of which she could stomach right now. Her little X-ray lab had adjustable lighting so it was dim and gloomy and could look as if she were out even when she wasn’t.
Perfect.
She’d called in sick the day after Valentine’s—unable to crawl out of bed was a kind of sick, right?—but she’d gone tiptoeing back to work, her Thursday and Friday an awful trial in carefully neutral smiles and colleagues avoiding eye contact and a very necessary and very belated inter-departmental email to Kew’s carnivorous-plant department.
It was also very short.
I’m so very sorry, Daniel. I’ll miss you.
She knew they were done. Even if Dan hadn’t concurred—which he had, once he’d cooled down enough to speak to her—she couldn’t spend another moment in a relationship that just drifted in small, endless circles. Not after what she’d done. Conveniently, it also meant she didn’t have to explain herself, explain something she barely understood—at least not for a while. And she was nothing if not a master procrastinator. She’d see Dan eventually, apologise in person, pick up her few things from his place. But this way they were both out of their misery.
Relationship euthanasia.
You know, except for the whole intensive public interest thing...
And now it was Saturday afternoon. And work was as good a place as any to hide out from all those messages and emails from astounded friends and family. Better, probably, because there were so few staff here with her and because she worked alone in her little X-ray lab behind two levels of carded access restrictions. The world wasn’t exactly interested enough in her botched proposal to have teams of paparazzi on her trail but it was certainly interested enough to still be talking about it—everywhere—a few days later. She didn’t dare check her social media accounts or listen to the radio or pick up a paper in case The Valentine’s Girl was still the topic de jour.
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
