Chapter 13
PRESENT DAY
Crossing the farmyard at six o’clock the following morning, I spotted a bicycle resting against the wall of one of the barns and smiled to myself. I was finally going to meet Willow and hopefully fill in my information gaps.
The lights were on in the stables and the door to one of the storage rooms was open with some clattering coming from inside.
‘Hello?’ I called, not wanting to scare Willow by creeping up on her. ‘Is that you, Willow?’
A pretty, petite girl with plaited auburn hair appeared in the doorway and smiled at me.
‘Yes. Are you Mrs Coates?’
My heart sank. Mrs? Not anymore.
‘Call me Grace,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’m so glad I’ve caught you. We weren’t told what hours you work.’
‘I usually start at six and do about two hours but I only managed an hour from five till six the past two days cos I had something else on. I hope that was okay.’
‘Of course! And that explains why my mam missed you. She moved in on Monday, but I just got here yesterday with my daughter, Maddie.’
‘I spotted someone had moved in but there weren’t any lights on and I didn’t want to scare them by knocking so early. I brought a note with me to put through the letterbox if I didn’t see anyone today.’
She removed a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her fleecy jacket and handed it to me. Her full name, contact details and usual working hours were written on it.
‘That’s really helpful, thank you. Great minds think alike.’ I handed her a piece of paper containing my name and contact details.
‘Mrs Garstang said you’d want to know more about what I do here. Do you want to do that now or after I’ve finished my work?’
‘I’ve got stacks of questions so, if you’re okay with it, I’d love you to follow your usual morning routine but tell me what you’re doing and why. We can talk around that.’
‘Okay. So today I’m doing a poo-pick. I’ve got a wheelbarrow and rake ready. You’ve got to do it at least twice a week but I do it most days.’
‘Grab me a rake too and I’ll help.’
As Willow pushed the wheelbarrow to the first pasture at the front of the farm, she explained that all the fields had names.
‘None of them are imaginative,’ she said.
‘This is Big Field because it’s the biggest. Tall Stone is opposite because it has a tall stone by the gate and the one at the end of the track is called Lane End.
At the back, there’s Barn View, Far Field and Boggy End, all named for obvious reasons.
We rotate the horses round those six pastures because they’re nearest the stables but there are plenty of others you could use if you prefer. ’
Listening to Willow walk me through her routine and the reasons behind it, I was impressed with her knowledge around animal and pasture care.
Her passion for horses also came across in abundance.
Once we’d finished clearing Big Field, she led me back through the gate and to a large compost heap beside a stone barn.
‘What do you do with this?’ I asked as she emptied the wheelbarrow onto the pile.
‘A few people collect it for their gardens and allotments,’ she said, ‘but most don’t have vans or trailers so they can’t move it.
Nobody wants a pile of manure in their boot.
Shelley wanted to grow vegetables on the farm but she never had the time to dig a patch and Anna and Doug were too—’ She stopped abruptly, her cheeks colouring.
‘Anna and Doug were too what?’ I prompted.
She winced. ‘Are you friends with them?’
As I shook my head, she put the rakes back in the wheelbarrow, picked up the handles and we set off again.
‘I was going to say too lazy to help. It drove Shelley mad. I’m not surprised she left.’
‘Shelley was their daughter, yes? Anna never mentioned her leaving.’
She stopped and stared at me, eyes wide. ‘You don’t know the story?’
‘What story?’
‘I can’t believe they didn’t tell you. Well, I can, but it’s bad that they didn’t.
’ She picked up the barrow once more and began walking.
‘I’d better start from the beginning. So, Anna was a chef in a café and her big dream was to own her own café.
Doug worked on a farm and his dream was to have a farm of his own.
They were those if I won the lottery kind of conversations people have and guess what? They won the lottery.’
‘No! How much?’
‘Nobody knows for sure but the guess is around two million. So they bought the farm and spent a fortune doing up the farmhouse. Then they set up the café – spent a fortune on that too – but nobody came. Why would they? There were already cafés in Rowanbridge, Mapleton and Birchwood Rigg and all those villages have something else to pull in the visitors like the railway and the castle. The farm had nothing.’
We’d reached the top of the pastures at the front of the farm and Willow paused to unfasten the gate to Tall Stone. As I followed her across the pasture, she resumed her story.
‘Around the time her parents won the lottery, Shelley split up with her boyfriend so she moved into the farmhouse. She was horse mad and worked at one of the local riding stables but her big passion was heavy horses, especially the rare breeds. She thought that having heavy horses here might attract visitors to the farm and those visitors would use the café. Anna and Doug agreed and they invested in it at first – stables, fencing, equipment and the horses themselves. Shelley set up an education programme with local schools and clubs and did some stuff with YGT.’
‘Is that the manor house in Rowanbridge?’ I asked. ‘Mam and I saw the sign but we didn’t know what it was.’
‘It stands for You’ve Got This and it’s a residential activity centre. It’s mainly for schools and clubs but they do a locals day each year and it’s awesome – so many activities to try.’
I was about to say it sounded like something Maddie would enjoy and had to remind myself that the old Maddie would have but I had no idea what the replacement version enjoyed anymore as she never talked to me.
‘So, I came here when I was in Guides when I was twelve,’ Willow said, bringing my attention back to the farm.
‘I’d always liked horses, although I’d never ridden one, and I fell completely in love with the heavies.
They’re huge and I can see why people might find them intimidating but there’s no need. They’re so gentle and friendly.
‘I came back the next day after school and asked Shelley for a job but she said she couldn’t take anyone on.
I found out later it was cos Anna and Doug refused to give her any money for staff.
I asked if I could volunteer instead. She didn’t think that was fair but my mam says I’m like a dog with a bone when there’s something I want, so I came back every day for a fortnight until she gave in.
She said I could volunteer in exchange for riding lessons and I’ve been here ever since. ’
We’d reached the end of Tall Stone and Willow lowered the wheelbarrow and faced me, her expression serious.
‘You are going to keep the horses, aren’t you?’
‘Of course! They’re the reason we bought the farm.’
‘Awesome. Can I still help? Anna said you only wanted me for two weeks but I love the horses and I’m such a hard worker.’
The desperate expression on her face was gut-wrenching. I liked her and she seemed knowledgeable and competent, but I didn’t want to make any major decisions this early on.
‘I agreed to the handover because Anna hadn’t provided me with all the information she promised and I was hoping you’d be able to fill in the blanks, but I have been really impressed with you this morning.
I know it’s a big ask, but can you give us a few days to settle in and process everything and I’ll come back to you on that? ’
‘Okay.’ Willow nodded vigorously. ‘So, there’s a reason Anna didn’t give you any info – she doesn’t know it. She liked the goats but she wasn’t interested in the horses.’
‘What about Doug? You said he was a farmer.’
‘Was. Shelley said he managed one month then decided that lottery millionaires don’t work. He got a manager to run the farm and spent every day fishing or playing golf.’
‘Oh! Anna never told me that.’
Willow started poo-picking and I followed suit with an increasing feeling of unease that Anna had painted a very different picture of the farm to the one I was hearing from Willow.
‘What happened to the manager?’ I asked.
‘He walked out. There used to be other animals – sheep and pigs – and the farm could have done well but Doug refused to invest any money to make it self-sustaining. There wasn’t enough money coming in from visitors either cos there weren’t enough of them.
Shelley had loads of brilliant ideas but she needed help and they wouldn’t let her have any staff so she did what she could but it wasn’t enough. ’
‘When did she leave?’
‘Around Christmas. Her fiancé, Adam, was worried about the hours she was working and thought her parents were taking advantage. She begged them to let her take on some help so she could turn the business around and that’s when…’
My stomach lurched as she hung her head and focused on her work.
‘You can’t leave it there, Willow,’ I said, gently. ‘What happened next?’
‘They admitted the money had run out and they were going to have to sell the farm before they went into administration.’
This was bad. As I continued to help Willow to clear the field, my heart pounded as I replayed in my head what she’d revealed and compared it to what Anna had said when she showed Mam and me around.
Although she hadn’t said that much, had she?
Claiming she was cold, she’d returned to the farmhouse and we’d wandered round the farm on our own.
‘Have I said too much?’ Willow asked after she’d tipped out the second pile of manure. ‘Mam’s always saying I’m too honest for my own good.’
‘I like people to be honest,’ I said. ‘Keep being you. But as you’ve probably sussed from my silence, it’s not exactly what I expected. Can I ask for a bit more of that honesty?’
‘Sure.’
‘How many visitors come here each week?’
Willow’s cheeks reddened again. ‘Not many. Sometimes none.’
A wave of panic crashed over me and I had to grab onto a nearby pillar to steady myself.
‘None? You can’t be serious.’
‘Without Shelley here, there was nobody to talk to visitors about the horses. And after Anna stopped baking, there was no café either and—’
‘What? Wait! The café closed too? When?’
‘She never reopened after winter. Are you okay? You don’t look so good.’
I didn’t feel it. I sank down the pillar and dipped my head between my legs. They’d made it all up. The visitor numbers, the turnover, the projected figures for the summer were all fake. What had I done?
‘Grace? Mrs Coates? Are you okay? Do you want some water?’
I glanced up at Willow but she was all blurry. I was hot, so very hot, and I tried to waft my T-shirt but my arms felt heavy and I was struggling to catch my breath. The ground seemed to be rising and falling like waves on the sea. And then it all went black.