no idea, Will. It must have been dreadful for you all. Why didn’t Rob tell me? I can’t believe it—I’m so sorry I brought it up like that, spoiling the party.’
He laughed, a rough, scratchy sound even to his ears, and met her anguished eyes with a smile. ‘You haven’t spoilt the party. I hate parties anyway, and besides, mentioning Julia doesn’t change anything. We talk about her all the time. Her death is just a fact of life.’
He wanted to talk to her, to share the huge number of things that had happened for both of them in that time, but people were coming through the hall, heading for the cloakroom or the kitchen, and they all paused for a chat.
He felt the evening ebbing away, and panic rose again in his chest. He couldn’t let her go again without talking to her, properly, without constant interruptions. There was so much to say—too much, and most of it best left unsaid, but still—
‘Look, it would be really nice to catch up with you—I don’t suppose you’ve got any time tomorrow, have you?’ he suggested, wondering as he said the words whether he himself could find any time in the middle of what was bound to be a ridiculously hectic schedule.
‘I’m staying at the White Hart for the night,’ she said. ‘I was going to head back some time tomorrow, but I don’t have any definite plans. What did you have in mind?’
He crossed his fingers behind his back and hoped his father could help out with the children. ‘Come for lunch,’ he suggested. ‘You’ll know how to find the farmhouse—it hasn’t moved.’
His smile was wry, and she answered with a soft laugh. ‘That would be lovely. I’ll look forward to it.’
They fell silent, the sounds of the party scarcely able to intrude on the tension between them, but then the door opened behind him yet again and Rob came out, punching him lightly on the arm.
‘Here you both are! Come and circulate—you can’t hog each other, it’s not on. Everyone wants to talk to you both.’
And without ceremony he dragged them back into the party and forced them to mingle. They were separated from each other within moments, and when Will’s phone rang to call him back to a difficult lambing, she was nowhere to be found. Still, he’d see her in the morning.
He shrugged his coat on, said goodbye to Rob and Emma and went back to the farm. It was only later, as he crawled into bed at three o’clock with the lambs safely delivered, that he realised they hadn’t discussed a time.
Izzy pulled up outside the farmhouse and stared around her in astonishment.
Well, it was certainly different! The house looked pretty much the same, and the barns behind it, but beyond the mellow old brick wall dividing the house from the other side of the farmyard there had been some huge changes.
The weatherboarding on the old farm buildings was all new and freshly stained black, sharp against the soft red of the tiled roofs, and on the front of one was a sign saying, ‘The Old Crock’s Café’. There was a low fence around an area of tables and chairs, and though it was still only April, there were people sitting outside enjoying the glorious sunshine.
There were other changes, too, beyond the café. The farm shop beside it seemed to be doing a brisk trade, and on the other side of what was now a car park the big building that she was sure had once been the milking parlour now housed an enterprise called Valley Timber Products. She could see chunky wooden playground toys and what looked like garden furniture in a small lawned area beside it.
There was a basket shop, as well, selling all sorts of things like willow wreaths and planters and wigwams for runner beans, as well as the more traditional baskets, and she could see that, at a quarter to eleven on a Saturday morning, the whole place was buzzing.
A thriving cottage industry, she thought, and wondered who ran all the various bits and pieces of this little complex and how much of it was down to Will. He probably let all the units to enterprising individuals, she reasoned. There wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to do anything else.
She turned back to the house, conscious of the fact that it was still not eleven o’clock and she was probably rather early for lunch, but she’d been asked to vacate her room by ten, and after driving somewhat aimlessly around for half an hour, she’d decided to get it over with and come straight here.
Get it over with, she thought. Like going to the dentist. How strange, to be so nervous with Will, of all people, but her heart was pounding and her palms were damp and she hadn’t been so edgy since she’d held her first board meeting.
At least then she’d had an agenda. Now she was meeting the widowed husband of her old schoolfriend, father of the child whose conception had been the kiss of death for their relationship.
Bizarre.
‘If you’re looking for Will, he’s in with the lambs,’ a woman called, pointing round the back of the house, and with a smile of thanks, she headed round towards the barns.
‘Will?’ she called. ‘Are you there?’
A dog came running up, a black and white collie, grinning from ear to ear and wagging at her hopefully, then it ran back again, hopping over a gate and heading into a barn.
She eyed the mud thoughtfully, glanced down at her Gucci boots with regret and picked her way over to the gate.
‘Will?’
‘In here,’ a disembodied voice yelled, and she wrestled with the gate—why did farm gates never swing true on their hinges?—and went through into the barn. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, and when they had, she spotted him crouched down on the far side of the little barn with a sheep. It was bleating pitifully, and as she picked her way across the straw bedding, Will grunted and glanced up, then rolled his eyes and gave a wry smile.
‘Hi,’ he said softly. ‘Sorry, didn’t realise it was you. Welcome to the mad house. You’re early.’
‘I know. I’m sorry—do you want me to go away?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Can you give me a minute? I’m a little tied up.’
She suddenly realised what he was doing, and for a moment considered escaping back to the café to give him time to finish, but then the ewe tried to struggle to her feet, and with his other hand—the one that wasn’t buried up to the elbow in her back end—he grabbed her and wrestled her back down to the straw.
‘Anything I can do to help?’ she found herself asking, and he gave her a slightly incredulous look and ran his eyes over her assessingly.
‘If you really mean that, you could kneel on her neck,’ he said, and she could tell he expected her to turn tail.
She did, too, but then, to her own amazement as much as his, she gave a little shrug, dropped her Louis Vuitton bag into the soiled straw and knelt down in her Versace jeans and Gucci boots and put her knee gently on the ewe’s neck.
‘By the way, good morning,’ she said, and smiled.
Will was stunned.
If the paparazzi who hounded her for the glossy society mags could see her now, he thought with an inward chuckle, they’d never believe it.
‘Morning,’
