Page 69 of The Twilight Garden

Leo put down his mug. Willow leaned forward and Rowan uncrossed his legs. ‘And?’ he said.

‘I think we should throw open the gates. Fill Thistledown with as many people as we can…’

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‘You see, the biggest problem you have is time,’ continued Gemma, taking a moment to look at the faces around her. Willow and Rowan both still looked relatively calm – surprised, but not horrified – and they hadn’t rebuffed her idea. She licked her lips.

‘You have a large area of ground which needs repairing from the damage done by the cows if you want to use it any time soon. You have a large number of plants which might need some TLC if they’re ever going to survive. And you have some produce which will spoil very quickly unless you get it off the ground – far more than you can use yourselves. And all of those things need to happen quickly. There’s no way we can do all that on our own though, not in the time available, and so I started to think about how we might get more time. If there was a way we could manipulate it to work for us. And the thing about time is that if you don’t have enough of your own, you can always borrow someone else’s. More people, more time. It expands, infinitely… If you invite everyone in, then time is no longer a problem.’

Rowan nodded, pushing his glasses further up his nose. ‘So what exactly are you saying?’ he asked.

‘I’m saying we should have an open day. Throw open the doors of Thistledown to whoever wants to come and help, and in return they get a share of whatever’s going – all the produce that would otherwise go to waste. I saw a Pick Your Own fruit farm on the drive back here and it reminded me how popular they are. I know it’s not the same thing, but think about it. If you had twenty people here all helping put right what the cows destroyed, how much could be accomplished? I reckon it’s quite a lot.’ Gemma paused, wrinkling her nose. ‘And then, as an added bonus, an incentive to pitch in, whatever you want to call it, you could also offer them a space for use longer-term, a bit like an allotment scheme. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but there are all sorts of groups you might be able to approach – the local food bank, for one.’

Willow tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘You know, that could really work. We said when we first bought the place that it might be nice to approach the local primary school. A lot of them don’t have outside space any longer, and would love the opportunity to have their own garden.’

Gemma nodded. ‘Yes, that’s exactly it. You’d be putting Thistledown right at the heart of the local community, and I know that isn’t what you wanted, but it might just be the thing which saves you.’

‘But we’d still need enough space to grow food for ourselves,’ put in Rowan. ‘And we’d also need to grow sufficient quantities to enable some of it to be sold. There’s an ongoing cost involved in running Thistledown.’

‘I know. But you have said you might not need to sell so much, and perhaps if you offered the plots for free, on the basis that the resulting produce is shared, there would be enough for everyone’s needs.’

‘Like a cooperative,’ said Willow.

‘Exactly.’

Rowan was staring across the room, eyes fixed at the wall opposite although Gemma knew that wasn’t what he was seeing. She waited, through seconds heavy with expectancy, but eventually the beginnings of a smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

‘You know, I think Edmund and Flora would heartily approve. And maybe that’s as good a reason as any to do this.’

‘Are you sure?’ pressed Gemma. ‘It’s a pretty radical suggestion.’

Willow and Rowan shared a look, and she was pleased to see excitement there, their eyes beginning to gleam with the possibilities which lay ahead.

‘I think,’ said Willow, ‘that we need to trust the process. There will always be people in this world like Ashley, who are dishonest and manipulative, but the vast majority of people aren’t. I mean, look at you and Leo. What would we do without you? You’re two of the best things to have happened here.’ She gave a firm nod. ‘I think we should absolutely do this.’ She paused. ‘And I think it’s time we accepted that keeping ourselves locked away up here may have been our downfall. We kept what we were doing something of a secret because we didn’t want to hear the views of other people. We thought they would all be negative, that we knew best and that no one else had anything valid to say. But we never gave people a chance, and by doing that we made ourselves seem mysterious. It’s no wonder people were wary of us.’

Rowan raised his hand in the air. ‘Not wishing to blame anyone, but that was definitely me.’

Willow pulled down his arm with a gentle smile and slid her fingers through his. ‘Do you think we’ve heard the last of Ashley?’ she asked.

Gemma raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, I did a little digging of my own yesterday afternoon, and I’m hopeful she won’t trouble us again. I emailed Hannah at the library to ask her whether what she told me about Ashley and her husband’s property dealings was just hearsay, or whether it might have any basis in truth. She asked me to leave it with her for a few hours, and when she contacted me again it was to tell me that a friend of hers is one of Ashley’s tenants.

‘They live in a newly built property just on the outskirts of town. This friend had mentioned something to Hannah some while ago, but at the time she didn’t realise the importance of it. It seems that her friend knows the retired couple who owned the house, the garden of which is where these new houses were built. The couple moved to a much smaller bungalow when they sold up, saying they wanted to use the money they’d made to provide for their retirement and hopefully leave a nice little nest egg for their grandchildren as well. They were originally pleased when the estate agent offered to buy the house personally because it made their move so much quicker, but they weren’t so happy when he subsequently started building houses on the land. He never told them about the site’s possibilities, and if he had, then they might not have made the same decision. They could have made a lot more money if they’d known.’

‘But isn’t that illegal?’ asked Leo.

‘Well, if it isn’t, it ought to be,’ said Gemma. ‘It’s downright immoral at any rate, and importantly, I think it’s enough to threaten Ashley with. To ensure that she keeps her eyes firmly away from Thistledown. Because you can bet that if they pulled that trick once, they’ve done it time and time again.’

‘And if we get the community on our side, it makes the farm far less vulnerable,’ added Leo. ‘I don’t think she’ll bother us again.’

Willow glanced at the clock. ‘Right, what do we need to do?’

So while Rowan and Leo went to look over the kitchen garden and come up with a plan of work, Willow and Gemma went their separate ways – each with a list of people to contact. And first on Gemma’s list was Hannah at the library.

‘Blimey, you’re so much better than Google,’ she exclaimed, smiling at Hannah. In fact, she was having trouble keeping up with the flow of information the librarian was providing, scribbling it all down in a notebook so she could follow it up.

Hannah sighed. ‘If only more people realised that, then maybe libraries wouldn’t be collecting quite as much dust as they are.’ She gave a frustrated tut. ‘Still, at least while I’m here I can be of use. What else do you need?’

Gemma looked down at the page of notes she’d produced. ‘What did you say the name of the chap at the food bank was again?’