Chapter 13
I froze and listened in, as Dylan promised he wouldn’t let this person down, until he hung up and rubbed his chin with a deflated sigh.
I assumed he’d been talking to his brother.
He looked worried and I wondered how much was riding on him getting us to sell.
For a second, it made me falter. But I knew I didn’t owe him anything.
He was a stranger who had picked our farm and showed up out of nowhere to try to take it from us.
Even if his brother was giving him a hard time about getting us to accept their offer, it wasn’t my problem.
This was my home.
Our family business.
My future.
Pushing back my shoulders, I carried on walking to the car and opened up the passenger side. ‘Ready?’ I asked as I slid in.
He jumped a little bit but nodded, closing the car window and setting off down our driveway.
‘Where are we headed?’ he asked, nodding at the screen in front of us.
I gave him the postcode of the jeweller’s and he typed it into the satnav, and then we left the farm.
‘Jewellery?’ Dylan asked, glancing across at me quickly before returning his eyes to the road.
I decided it was best to be honest about what I was doing.
‘I’m going to sell a necklace my mum passed down to me.
I need money to make this pumpkin patch happen, and I’ve resisted for a long time using what she left me, but this is a last-ditch effort.
And Dad agreed she would want me to do this.
’ I looked out of the window but the sight of the leaves on the birch trees fading into yellow didn’t raise the smile they usually did.
‘It doesn’t make it any easier, though.’
Dylan was quiet for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t let my brother and my dad clear my mother’s things for a long time. It made me so angry to think of them even touching any of her possessions, let alone getting rid of them. So, I understand more than most.’
I looked over and saw his knuckles were stretched white on the steering wheel. ‘Did you eventually clear them?’ I asked curiously.
‘Yeah. My grandmother persuaded me to. She said they were just things; they weren’t memories.
I’d always have memories of my mother. She advised me to keep just a couple of things that meant the most then let the rest go.
And I did feel a little bit better once I’d done that.
But what made me feel the best was…’ He pushed back the sleeve of his jacket and tilted his wrist so I could see a tattoo there.
It was a black outline of a robin. ‘My mum’s name, and her favourite bird.
’ He quickly covered it again and I saw him swallow hard.
I pulled my own jacket sleeve up and held my wrist out to show my black outline tattoo of a tree with the bark and bare branches.
‘My mum’s name was Hazel. She called me Willow.
My dog is Maple. A tree just seemed fitting,’ I explained as Dylan glanced at it, his eyes widening in surprise.
I shook my head. It was another strange coincidence.
We had lost our mothers and both had tattoos.
‘The exact same place as yours,’ I added softly as I pulled my wrist back and covered it again.
‘Crazy,’ he muttered. He cleared his throat. ‘So, the money you make from the necklace, have you thought how you will use it?’
‘I’ve been looking at farms in the surrounding areas that might sell me pumpkins in bulk, but I need to know exactly how much I will have first. I will also need hay.
I might need to hire a marquee and I need to buy props so people can take photos.
I’ve been trying to think about how I can do it all as cheaply as possible but good enough that people enjoy it, spread the word, come back again…
’ I trailed off. It was a lot to work out.
There was no point in spending a fortune if I couldn’t make a profit out of it all, but it also needed to be a place people wanted to visit.
‘Are you going to charge an entry fee?’
‘We don’t for pick-your-own season; we just charge a small fee that people can use towards the fruit and veg, then they usually spend more anyway.’
‘This is more of an event though, isn’t it? It’s not just about people buying a pumpkin, so you could charge an entry fee.’
‘If I can make it worth people spending the money,’ I said.
I leaned back against the leather car seat.
There was a lot to think about. ‘I learned about business plans at uni but I suppose I’ve left all the business and money side to my dad over the years.
And it took him a long time to tell me just how tough things had become. ’
‘We can make a spreadsheet. Once you know how much you can spend, you can talk to suppliers and put the costs in,’ Dylan stated matter-of-factly.
‘And see what profit you could turn with or without an entry fee but personally, I think you need to charge something. It sounds like you have grand plans for it all. People will want to come along, I’m sure. ’
I looked over at him. ‘You’d help me do that?’ I asked, thinking this was more than I had expected him to do.
‘I said I’d help,’ Dylan replied with a shrug. ‘And once the spreadsheet is done and you realise you can’t turn a profit, then you know you have another option.’
I let out a puff of air and folded my arms across my chest. ‘Right.’ I was determined to make that bloody spreadsheet show a profit.
We managed to make our summer season profitable, although that wasn’t enough now with the cost of everything to keep us afloat, so if I could do the same for the autumn season, we might be okay.
And then I could throw Dylan’s offer back in his face.
I thought back to what I’d overheard earlier.
‘How much of an impact would buying my farm have on your brother’s business? ’
‘Well, as I said, it would give us a foothold in this area, which we’ve never have before, and Birchbrook is really sought after.
You have good land that we can build on, and we’ve been given an unofficial nod that we’d get planning permission.
So, it would be great for the company, and my brother really wants to expand and…
’ Dylan stopped for a moment and glanced at me as if unsure whether to keep going.
But I had a feeling what he was going to say. ‘Your brother would be grateful to you for securing our land.’
Dylan looked away and gave one nod. ‘I want to make him proud,’ he said quietly.
I sensed his family put a lot of pressure on him and as he felt he’d let them down leaving university like he did, this was a chance to show them they could be proud of him.
God, we had a lot of weight on our shoulders.
I was desperate to do the same for my dad too.
‘You could find somewhere else that would work just as well,’ I said quietly, looking out of the window again.
‘Don’t forget that. This is business for you.
But it’s personal for me. You could find other ways to make your family proud. This is my last shot.’
Dylan didn’t answer me and we spent the rest of the car journey in silence.
I gripped the box I’d put my mother’s necklace in tightly on my lap and wished things hadn’t come to this.