Excerpt of The Five-Year Baby Secret by Liz Fielding

"HAS the post come?"

Fleur paused to scoop up the bills, catalogues and other mail scattered over the doormat, then called up the stairs, "Tom, if you're not down here in two minutes I'm taking you to school just as you are."

"Slow down, girl. The world isn't going to end if the boy is a minute or two late for school."

She dumped the mail on the kitchen table beside her father. "Maybe not, but it's a distinct possibility if I'm late for my appointment with the new bank manager. We need her on-side if we're really going to take this stand at the Chelsea Flower Show."

He must have caught the uncertainty in her voice, the un- asked question, because he stopped sorting through the mail and, with a certainty she hadn't heard from him in a very long time, he said, "Yes, Fleur, we really are."

Then, whatever it took, she'd have to make it happen. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Right."

Which made today's appointment even more important. The retirement of a sympathetic bank manager couldn't have come at a worse time for them. Brian had understood the difficulties of their business, had celebrated their successes with them and had patiently seen them through the last difficult six years, giving them breathing space, a chance to recover.

She wished she'd been able to do more than fill the bank's window-boxes to reward his faith in them. Even with every single thing running on oiled wheels until Chelsea, it was going to be a huge gamble. She wasn't convinced that her father's health would stand up to the stress of producing show plants at the peak of condition on a given day in May, but nothing she could say or do to dissuade him had had any effect. All she could do was try and shield him from financial worries. Unfortunately, Ms Delia Johnson, the new person at the bank, had wasted precious little time in writing to invite them into the office for a 'chat'.

It was concern that their luck was about to run out — actually a cast-iron certainty that the new manager planned to stamp her own mark on the branch by weeding out accounts that weren't flourishing — that made her so snappy this morning.

She was going to have to be in top form to 'sell' the business, convince Ms Johnson that it would be in the bank's interest to see them through the additional expense entailed in mounting an exhibit at the premier horticultural show of the season.

"Don't fret," her father said comfortingly, "you'll be fine. You might have inherited my green fingers and your mother's beauty, but thankfully you missed out on our business brains." He smiled as he took in the effort she'd made with her appearance. "You look lovely."

She knew how she looked. She had to live with her reflection in the mirror; there was nothing she could do about that — although with no time and less money for visits to the hairdresser or expensive cosmetics, the likeness to her mother was less obvious than it might have been — but she'd had to learn to manage the business the hard way when she'd been tossed in at the deep end. Sink or swim. She was still floundering. It had never been possible to make up the ground lost during that terrible year when her world — all their worlds — had fallen apart.

Her father's lack of interest in the finances of the company, and the discovery that her mother was in the habit of using their capital resources as her own personal piggy bank, had left her out of her depth and swimming against the current.

Even now her father, having said what he thought she wanted to hear, had lost interest, returning to the perusal of the mail. He'd picked up an envelope that, in her rush, she hadn't noticed and her heart sank as she saw the Hanover logo on the envelope.

"Don't they ever give up?" she demanded, glad of a legitimate focus for her anger.

Any other morning she'd have sorted through the post and weeded it out, protecting him from harassment by a hate- filled woman whose sole ambition appeared to be driving them out of business. Out of the village. Off the face of the earth.

"I'd sell out to a developer, let someone build houses on this land, before I'd let Katherine Hanover have it," she said.

"Chance would be a fine thing. With Katherine on the Parish Council no one is ever going to get planning permission to build on Gilbert land," her father replied, as calm as she was angry, but then he'd never once got angry.

She wished he would. Rage. Shout. Give vent to his feelings. But he never would say anything bad about the woman. If he still felt sorry for her, she thought, his feelings were seriously misplaced.

"Not when she wants it for herself," Fleur said bitterly. There was a wonderful old barn on the edge of their land that hadn't been used for anything but storage in years. It was perfect for conversion into one of those upmarket country homes she'd seen featured in the glossy magazines; selling it would have solved a great many of their problems.

The Parish Council, egged on by Katherine Hanover, had decided it was a historic building. They'd not only refused planning permission for conversion, but had warned them that if they allowed it to fall into disrepair they could be fined.

"Maybe I should get involved in local politics," Fleur said. "I could at least cancel out the Hanover vote."

"That would be in your spare time, I suppose,'he said, with a rare smile.

"I could give up doing the ironing," she said, glad to have amused him. "It would be a sacrifice, but I could do it."

"That's better. I thought you were going wobbly on me there for a minute."

"Who, me? Never."

As he returned to the letter he was holding, his smile faded as if he didn't have the strength to sustain it. Like his body, it had been worn away under a continual onslaught of betrayal, grief and financial worries, giving her reason — if she needed it — to hate the Hanovers just that bit more.

"Don't open it," she said. "Throw it in the bin. I'll shred it and add it to the compost with the rest of them."

"There have been others?"

Caught out, she shrugged. "A few. Nothing worth reading." 'I see. Well, you can do whatever you like with this one since it's addressed to you,'he said, offering her the envelope. "It appears to have been delivered by hand."

"By hand?" She reached for it and then shivered, curling her fingers back before they came in contact with the paper. "Why would Katherine Hanover write to me?" 'Maybe she thinks that you can persuade me to stop throwing her letters away. Maybe she's lost trust in the Royal Mail and that's why she pushed it through the letterbox herself." Her father seemed to find that as amusing as the thought of Fleur taking up politics. "It's good to see that she can still get things wrong." Then he shrugged, dropping the envelope on the table beside her. "Or perhaps she's offering you a job."

"Oh, right. That's going to happen." 'If she's expanding her business she'll need more staff." 'She's got no room to expand." With roads on three sides she needed the Gilbert land to extend her empire. "And why would she need me, anyway? I'm a horticulturist, not a lawn-mower salesman. Hanovers haven't been cultivating their own stock since...since —"

Oh, damn! "Since your mother ran off with Phillip Hanover?" he finished for her. "You can say it, Fleur. It happened. Nothing can change that."

"No."

In truth, it wasn't the adulterous father but the memory of his faithless son that had caught her unawares. Abandonment was apparently inherent in the Hanover genes, and for a split second she felt a kinship with Katherine.

That was enough to jolt her to her senses.

Katherine Hanover was a vindictive and hateful woman, something that, despite good reason, Fleur was determined not to become.

But it was far better that her father believed she was protecting his feelings than that he should suspect the truth.

"Katherine Hanover would have no use for me, Dad. Not since she paved over her husband's land and turned the business into a gardening hypermarket." 'True. But she has been advertising for weekend staff for the checkouts in the local newspaper. Maybe she thinks you could do with the money."

"Whatever would give her that idea?'The grey suit she was wearing — again — that she'd bought for her mother's funeral and had been pressed to within an inch of its life? Or perhaps her go-anywhere black court shoes that had only survived so long because she didn't. Go anywhere, that was.

"Maybe she wants you to see for yourself how much money she's making."

"You think?" she asked. The new Mercedes, designer clothes, the kind of shoes that provoked envy in every female bosom in the village weren't demonstration enough?

"No, Dad, she's not that stupid," she said, reaching for the letter, irritated that she could be intimidated at long distance by the woman. "Just imagine the chaos I could cause in the middle of the weekend rush." Before she could open it, the clock in the hall began to chime the three-quarters. "Oh, good grief!" she said, stuffing it into her jacket pocket. "Tom!"

A five-year-old bundle of energy bounded down the stairs, dog at his heels, and grinning hugely said, "I'm all ready!"

Her heart caught in her mouth at the sight of him. He'd brushed his hair flat, had tried to fix his tie, which was stuck up almost behind his ear, and his shoes, with their little Velcro tabs, were on the wrong feet.

"I did it all myself," he said. "Great job, Tom," she said, her voice catching in her throat as she picked him up and, despite the need for haste, hugged him until he squeaked and wriggled to be set down. Her little boy was growing up much too fast.

One shoe fell off and, laughing, she picked it up, then sat him on the kitchen table while she straightened him out, scrunching her fingers through his hair to make the curls spring back.

"Don't, Mum!" he said, jumping down, flattening it furiously with both hands. "Curls are stupid."

"Sorry," she said, covering her mouth with her hand, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. Then, "Have you got everything?"

"Pencil case. Reading book. Indoor shoes. Lunch money." He went through the daily list, ticking the items off on his fingers.

"What a genius. Do you want an apple for break?" she asked, tucking one into his bag so that she could do a surreptitious check. "Quick now, give Granddad a hug while I get your coat."

Matthew Hanover stood at his bedroom window, waiting for Fleur to appear. He hadn't seen her in nearly six years. Not since their wedding night had been disturbed by the soft burble of her mobile phone.

He'd grabbed the wretched thing, determined to switch it off, shut out the world for as long as possible, but she'd seen the caller ID and they'd both known that a phone call from her father in the middle of the night could mean only one thing.

Trouble.

And trouble it had been.

He'd watched, helpless, as the joy, the laughter, had faded from her eyes at the news that her mother had been badly hurt in a road accident. That there was no time to waste.

He'd begged her to let him drive her to the hospital, to be with her, at her side. They were a couple now. Married. But she'd just clung to him for a moment before she'd stepped back and, unable to look at him, had turned away. "Please, Matt. Not now. My father has enough to cope with."

And he'd let her go because she was hurting. Because, wrongly, he'd believed it wasn't the moment to fight that battle. He'd let her go with a kiss, trying not to let it hurt that she'd slipped his ring from her finger, saying, "Call me. Let me know what's happening."

Then, as if in some dark recess of his mind he'd already sensed the cogs of fate slipping out of sync, he'd gone back to the warm space she'd vacated and had lain in the scent of her body, waiting for her to call.

When his phone had rung half an hour later, though, it hadn't been Fleur. It had been his mother calling to tell him that his father was dead. That Jennifer Gilbert had killed him.

The front door of the Gilbert house opened and a dog, some kind of cross-breed leaning towards a border collie, bounded towards the Land Rover. Then, suddenly, Fleur was there, every inch the businesswoman in a tailored grey suit, her dark red hair swept up into a smooth coil at the base of her neck.