‘So we have about five weeks to get everything finished in the first cottage if we want to stick to schedule. Building finished, inside and out, gardens sorted, website up and running—’

‘And how are we supposed to do all that with absolutely no money?’ asked Maddie. ‘We can’t just ignore that fact.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that a little,’ put in Clara. ‘Seth, coming to work here has been the best thing I’ve ever done, but you know how reluctant I was in the first place. And because of that you went to great lengths to convince me how much you needed a gardener, which we both know you only did to ease my conscience so I wouldn’t feel like I was taking something in return for nothing. But the truth of it is that I have been. I have no ties and no dependents, and I’ve managed to save a bit. So I have no real need for the salary you pay me at the moment, not when right now, Joy’s Acre needs it more.’

She sat back, a defiant glint in her eye. ‘And don’t you dare bloody argue, because if you do I’ll withdraw my services.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Clara,’ said Seth, rolling his eyes. ‘What would be the point in that?’

‘Absolutely none,’ she replied. ‘So you had better agree with me, hadn’t you? Otherwise you’re going to lose the best gardener you’ve ever had.’

‘In that case, I make the same demands,’ said Maddie. ‘You can’t afford to employ me once my notice period is up with Agatha, so I shall work here as a volunteer. That’s non-negotiable by the way.’

Seth opened his mouth and then closed it again. ‘And what if I refuse?’

‘Then you’ll be doing everything yourself, which put bluntly you have neither the aptitude for, nor the time to accomplish it. Your dream for Joy’s Acre will wither and die like the uncared-for garden that will surround it.’

‘Jesus, Clara,’ flinched Seth. ‘And I thought you were nice,’ he said, weakly.

‘I am nice,’ she announced. ‘Which is precisely why I’ve just made you the offer I have.’

‘I wouldn’t mess with her, Seth, if I were you. In fact, I wouldn’t mess with either of us…’

‘No, I’m beginning to see that. I really don’t know what to say…’

‘You don’t need to say anything actually,’ said Clara. ‘And if you do it will only be taken down and used in evidence against you. We’re all grown adults here, we understand how it works, and I think it’s true to say that we are also very aware of what we’re about to get ourselves into.’

She gave Seth a rather fierce look. ‘This isn’t a time for pretending, or being anything less than honest with each other. It’s going to be hard work, and we will all need to be able to rely on each other one hundred per cent.’

Seth looked a little sheepish.

‘Trixie will be here shortly, and although I’ve briefed her a bit on the phone, things have changed rather substantially since she was offered a job. It’s only fair that we give her the option to change her mind, once we’ve made it clear how things could pan out. It might be some while before we can even think of paying her a proper salary, and I don’t want us to hide those possibilities from her. If, after all that, she still wants to stay, then I think we’ve found our perfect combination, don’t you?’

Maddie and Seth both nodded.

‘Right then. Maddie, you made a list of costings recently, didn’t you? Let’s have a look at those while we wait for Trixie and then we can think about how we’re going to slash our costs.’

Maddie gave Seth a cautious glance. ‘I never knew you were quite so bossy, Clara,’ she said, a small smile gathering at the corners of her mouth.

‘Oh, you’d better believe it,’ came the reply.

---

Trixie stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of the kitchen while three faces regarded her anxiously.

‘Bloody good job I couldn’t hear you properly on the phone yesterday,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’m sorry, it’s come as a bit of a shock, I know,’ replied Clara.

‘And that’s my fault, I’m afraid,’ said Maddie. ‘But now you know the whole story I hope you can see that this alteration in how we’re going to have to do things here has come a bit out of the blue for all of us.’

‘I didn’t say I was angry,’ said Trixie. Her face broke into a grin. ‘Story of my life actually…’ She looked between them. ‘There are a few things I want to check though,’ she added. ‘Just to be absolutely clear.’

‘Of course,’ said Seth. ‘Ask anything you want.’

‘So, even though you’re not actually gonna pay me anything, you are gonna let me live here for free? In this awesome house…’

Seth nodded.

‘And I get to cook whatever I want, and I won’t have to pay for anything I use?’

‘Yes… and no!’ Seth grinned.

‘And more than that, you’d like me to work on a list of menus I can create for guests, and also think about creative ways we can sell what we already produce… and that’s entirely up to me?’

‘It is,’ said Clara. ‘You can really go to town… cakes, pies, preserves, anything we have in abundance and can add value to.’

Trixie’s eyes were shining. ‘Would I be able to help in the garden too?’

‘I’ll bite your arm off.’

‘And lastly. Do you all promise not to grope my bum at every available opportunity?’

Clara giggled. ‘Well I do,’ she said. ‘I can’t speak for the others of course.’

Maddie held her hand over her heart. ‘I solemnly swear…’

Seth grimaced. ‘Bugger… and it was all going so well…’

‘Yes or no?’

He held up his hands. ‘Okay, okay, I promise…’

The four of them grinned at one another.

‘In that case, you’ve just knocked spots off my last job, money or no money. I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Start as I mean to go and all that.’

---

An hour later and they were still sitting around the table, looking at the long list that Maddie had produced. What had started off as a typed sheet was now adorned with crossings-out, notations and quite a few doodles. They had begun by striking from the list anything that was not an absolute necessity to get them up and running. All of the swanky extras (as Maddie had put it) had been removed, as had things which could be considered a little further down the line. What they were left with was still a rather daunting and expensive-looking piece of paper.

‘So, first things first, we need to get on to sorting the website,’ said Maddie. ‘We really can’t afford to leave this any longer or we run the risk of being ready for nothing. We need immediate occupancy and, if possible, a run of bookings.’

Clara frowned. ‘But is that even possible? I thought you said it could take several weeks, and come at quite a price.’

‘Ordinarily yes, if we outsourced as I’d first intended. The original brief for the site would have been for something very flash, but I can put us together something more in keeping with what we’re trying to achieve here at very little cost by using a free service to create our own site, and then just paying for our own domain name. It’ll cost about twenty quid, that’s all.’

‘Won’t that still take ages though?’

Maddie shook her head. ‘I can sort out the website in a day or two once I know what I’m putting up there. But that’s the tricky bit. I want us to look different from all the traditional holiday cottages you can see online. You know the sort of thing I mean: rows and rows of photos which all look pretty much the same. I want our website to draw people in and make them want to stay… So, we need a brand or a concept; anything we can hang a hook on to say this is Joy’s Acre and this is what we’re all about.’

‘You said before that we should use Joy and Edwin’s story, so why not?’ interrupted Seth, running a hand through his hair. ‘It’s a great love story…’

Clara shot him a look. ‘But that’s not what—’ She broke off suddenly, a guilty look on her face. ‘Sorry,’ she added.

Seth gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. ‘When Maddie mentioned it before I wasn’t sure it was right, but I’ve had some time to think about it…’ He nodded at Clara. ‘And now I think it makes more sense than anything else.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Clara, eyebrows raised.

‘I’m sure,’ he replied, giving her a very pointed look.

Inexplicably, Clara broke into a broad grin. ‘He’s right… I think it’s a brilliant idea.’

Maddie gave them both a wary look. ‘Well in that case I think I do too… if you’re definitely happy?’ she finished.

She received two firm nods in reply.

‘Okay… Now that would work as an overall theme of the site, like the blurb for a book if you like, but now we need the individual cottages to be like chapters of the book, so that they each tell their own story while at the same time contributing to the overarching theme of the book.’

‘Go on,’ said Seth. ‘I think I see where you’re going with this.’

‘Well, this first cottage, the gardener’s one, what’s different about that for example?’

‘What did you call it?’ Clara looked up from the table where she’d been toying with the edge of a place mat. ‘The gardener’s cottage?’

Maddie looked at Seth, confused, trying to recall what she’d said. ‘Well yes, but I didn’t mean that’s what it should be called, only that it’s how I think of it in my head. Probably because you were going to move in, but also because of where it sits; after all, it’s practically in the garden.’

Clara sat up a little straighter. ‘No, wait a minute, I think you’ve got something here… Going back to Joy’s Acre for a minute, which was a Victorian farm, wouldn’t it make sense to have the cottages echo their past rather than try and be something they’re not? So you could have a gardener’s cottage, and a… blacksmith’s cottage.’ She held her hands up, inviting comment. ‘I’m thinking of traditional craftsmen and the like, what every respectable Victorian farmer would have on his payroll…’

‘Well, a thatcher, obviously,’ added Seth, grinning.

‘And a woodsman… woodcutter, something like that…?’ suggested Trixie.

‘Yes, brilliant! This could work perfectly. We could even…’ She trailed off, looking between Clara and Seth excitedly. ‘Oh God, I’ve just had the most brilliant idea, at least I think I have. Come with me a minute.’

Maddie jumped up from her chair. ‘I’ve just remembered something I found a while ago—’ She stopped suddenly. ‘No, it wasn’t. It was only yesterday afternoon…! It was what I was doing when Agatha first hammered on the door, but it feels like it was ages ago. I’ll show you.’

She led them down the hallway to the room she had been trying to sort out ready for Trixie’s arrival. The boxes and piles of magazines were exactly where she had left them.

‘Had you any idea what was in here, Seth?’

‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘Most of it was here when I moved in, up in the attic. I brought it all down because I was worried it was a fire hazard. I’ve been meaning to go through it all one day but… well, you know how it is.’

Maddie knelt on the floor, picking up some of the catalogues and holding them up for the others to see. ‘Because I found these, and it rather got me thinking. See for yourselves.’

She waited while they all looked at what she had passed them – Seth almost in awe, but Clara and Trixie with a growing excitement.

‘They’re amazing!’ Clara exclaimed. ‘So beautiful.’ She turned one of the seed catalogues over in her hand, opening it carefully and peering inside. ‘Are they authentic?’

‘Well I’ve no reason to doubt it,’ Maddie replied. ‘Yesterday I thought they might come in useful. Today I’m thinking they might be just what we’re looking for.’

She had Seth’s interest, she could tell, but as yet he couldn’t see how they might be useful.

‘Originally we thought the cottages would be furnished sympathetically, but essentially still with top-of-the-range, brand-new fixtures and fittings. Is that right?’ At Seth’s nod she continued. ‘And all that would have come at a price, which thanks to me, we no longer have the money for.’

She held up her hand. ‘No, let me finish. I’m not being a martyr, or trying to elicit sympathy, what I’m trying to be is a realist. And the simple fact of the matter is that while the type of furnishings we had in mind for the cottages might have brought in top money in terms of rental value, it would have cost a fortune in the first place. Now we have to find a much, much, cheaper option.’

She held up a catalogue. ‘Why don’t we go for a complete about-face? The covers on these are stunning and we could use them in a variety of ways, but what they’ve made me think is whether we could make a feature of the real heritage of each of these cottages. Furnish them completely with salvaged items that fit the themes we’ve come up with, and make them a Victorian home-from-home if you like. We’d need to be very resourceful, not to mention creative, but I reckon we’ve got the right combination of people here that could make this work. What do you think?’

Clara was still marvelling at the artwork on the seed catalogues. Bright floral combinations, enchanting scripts, swirls and scrolls. Just the sort of thing that was fashionable in vintage stores up and down the land. Except these were the real deal.

‘These would be perfect for the gardener’s cottage and look stunning against the whitewashed walls. Or we could even use them to cover furniture, like decoupage, then they could go on any old mangy chest of drawers for example. No one would be any the wiser and they’d look beautiful.’

‘Or we could sell them,’ said Seth. ‘They must be worth a bit.’

The three women turned to him, horrified.

‘No!’ they chorused.

He grinned. ‘Only kidding. I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you, Maddie. Miss, I want everything ultra sleek and covered in glass, Porter.’ He winked at her. ‘I’m incredibly pleased though. Joy’s Acre has worked its magic after all, and I love the thought of what you’ve described. I think it would be absolutely perfect here.’

He looked about him. ‘I suggest before we go much further that we look through the rest of this stuff with a fine-tooth comb. It’s got to be done anyway, let’s see if we can turn up any other gems, particularly ones we might use in the other cottages. We’re going to need to come up with some similarly brilliant ideas for those as we go along.’

Maddie slowly unclenched her muscles. She hadn’t realised how tense she’d been until she’d heard Seth’s final words, but now she could feel the relief flowing through her. However generous he and Clara had been about the situation with Agatha, and the loss of their funding, she still felt an enormous responsibility to put things right. They had to succeed here. Whatever happened from this point forward there would be no second chances, no room for mistakes. They simply couldn’t afford to get it wrong.