Free The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne Page A

me everything.
    We drove on in silence for a few minutes. Then he said, in an entirely different voice, “We need to think of how else we’re going to do this honey project, if Grace decides we’re too incompetent to recommend to Richard. Maybe we should just buy some space? Rent some gardens? I could probably get some cash off my mum. How about you? Can you get your folks to invest?”
    I felt myself snap shut like a Venus flytrap, as every defensive muscle in my body twitched.
    Maybe I should explain a bit about our Great Plan. And my parents. The two are sort of linked.
    Okay, the Great Plan. Ted and I were going to make local honey in each of the postcodes we worked in, by planting as many large-scale wildflower borders and containers as we could, then either setting up our own hives or doing a deal with local beekeepers. The more local the honey was, the more effective it would be for hay fever sufferers in that area—I knew it worked because Mum had always dished out honey sandwiches to ward off the red eyes and sneezing Kelly and I both suffered from as kids.
    Dad had kept hives in the rambling gardens of our old house in Hadley Green, before we had to move to Rothery where there was just a small yard. The beautiful flower gardens there were balanced with a big wildflower meadow, and you could taste the lavender and cornflowers and daisies in the honey. My clearest childhood memories were of watching the bees flit around the hives in the summer sun, me with an ice cream, Dad with a beer—I was never scared of them, just a bit spooked by their extraterrestrial communication abilities.
    So I knew Dad could hook me up with some beekeeping equipment , and Jo knew the right sorts of deli owners who’d pay a fortune for our local honey. But ideally, we needed a big development like Palace View to plant proper swaths of wildflowers on the roof as well as hives.
    And that was the second thing: start-up money. I had very little left after my monthly outgo, and though I knew Dad would help me with the bee element, he and Mum had no spare money either, and I didn’t want him to think I needed it.
    “I’d rather we got it going ourselves.” I could hear my voice had gone tight and northern, like Mum’s when she was in one of her moods, and I wished it wouldn’t. “Leave Grace to me. I know she’ll help us out if she can.”
    Ted mumbled something, but we’d worked together long enough to know—just about—when to leave a grumble before it flared up into a row. So we said nothing while we hauled all the wood cuttings into the council composter, and nothing while we drove home, and he said nothing when I asked him to drop me off at the park so I could give Badger a lunchtime run before I went over to my afternoon job in Pimlico.
    We were both
thinking
plenty, though. I could almost hear the gears in Ted’s brain grinding with the effort of not saying it aloud.
    *
    B adger and I had a power walk round the park, and by the time I decided to head home to make a sandwich (in the interest of my new economy drive), we were pleasantly breathless and spattered with mud.
    I was thinking about the different bedding plants I could try this spring in the rather gloomy Pimlico garden, but when we turned down the street, my concentration was jolted—there was something on our front step.
    That in itself wasn’t unusual—Jo regularly got flowers from grateful clients—but this didn’t look like the usual florist’s bunch. I sped up, as did Badger, eager to sniff out what had appeared on his territory.
    There was no one around, so I jogged awkwardly toward the front step, shoving wispy curls out of my eyes. To my surprise, it was a row of terra-cotta pots, each with a little plant sticking out. There was no note attached to any of them, or stuck under them, or left in the letter box.
    Who could have left these?
I wondered, only to rock backward in shock when Badger started barking as if the house was on fire. At the same