her torn dungarees.
He couldn’t quite believe that she was playing mother hen to this whole brood. She only looked about eighteen herself, which had been giving him some major fits of the guilts since he’d arrived. The minute he’d seen her leaning over that broken lav, pert butt in the air, he’d noticed the fact she wore nothing but a tatty hot-pink t-shirt beneath those dungarees. He’d been working very hard not to notice how tight it was – or the fact that she didn’t have a bra on – ever since. It had been difficult to know where to look. He had enough self-loathing going on as it was, without adding perving over a teenager to the list. And now it seemed he’d been wrong – she must be a bit older than that, surely, to have all this responsibility resting on those slender shoulders?
“Yes, Mr Retallick,” she said firmly, drawing herself up to her full height – which had to be all of five foot three in her ancient Hunter wellies – and fixing him with kind of withering look clearly intended to make parts of him shrivel up and die. “I do indeed look after all of…these. We live together in an old shoe on top of the hill. Now, thanks for your help, and feel free to take yourself right back to Honeysuckle and settle in.”
Her tone had changed – the easy humour and casual flirtation of earlier had disappeared – and instead she sounded wary, formal. Mightily huffy, in fact. He’d upset her without even trying – a specialist subject of his. He felt a shiver run through him: not fear, not quite, but a spark of something…admiration, he thought. That was it. This tiny woman, almost a child from the looks of it, was swollen up with pride and fury and protective instinct. He’d poked a stick at her family, and now she was preparing to shove it right where the sun doesn’t shine. Which, he thought, looking around him at the familiar farmyard, was pretty much everywhere in Cornwall right now.
“Right. I’ll do just that,” he said. “See you around, Pippa. Daisy. Lily. Scotty. Ben Ten. Phineas and Ferb. Give my regards to Madame SpongeBob.”
He nodded at each of them individually as he turned to walk away, and Pippa felt her anger soften down to mild irritation. He’d remembered all of their names. Even the animals. That was pretty much a first in her experience; even she forgot them sometimes, resorting to “You, there, with the feathers!”, or “Oi! Boy child!”
Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all, she thought. Possibly he was just one of those unintentionally rude people who doesn’t realise they’re being offensive. Or possibly, she admitted, she was just one of those unintentionally prickly people who don’t realise they’re being defensive. She’d had a lot to defend over the years, and when it came to the kids and her ability to care for them, defensive was her default setting. None of which was tall, dark and cow-handy’s fault.
She chased after him as he strode away, wellies squelching in the mud.
“Wait!” she shouted, tugging hold of his arm to stop him. “Where do I know you from, really? You’re so familiar…” she said, realising as she touched it that his arm was solid as the oaks shading the side of the farm driveway. He looked city, but he felt country. He felt good.
The shutters went down again and he glanced at her clinging hand, raising his eyebrow eloquently: Back Off, Broomstick, clear as day.
Ben sighed, watched as her hand peeled away from his arm. She was the same as all the rest. Just another stranger who felt she knew him. Not quite there yet, still piecing it together, but give it a few minutes – she’d match the face with the name, with the story, with the legend. And she’d assume she knew him inside out. They all did.
He felt the familiar sense of frustration rise within him. It had been over a year since his release from prison, but still people stopped him. Still people chatted to him, touched him without permission, slapped him on the back and tried to shake his hand. Congratulated him, told him well done, like he was a hero for having survived eight months in HMP Scorton. He hated it. The lack of privacy, the pictures in the paper, the feeling of having his whole life played out in public. In fact, he’d come here to try and escape exactly that – back here to this isolated stretch of Cornish coastline, where the cows outnumbered the people and the internet was patchy at best. He’d hoped to have a week of solitude, without any prying eyes or being expected to bare his soul to complete strangers. Which showed what he knew – even here, his face was known.
Pippa stared at him intently, rubbing her cheeks and smudging that oil patch even harder into the milky-smooth velvet of her skin. Huge, cornflower-blue eyes. English rose all the way, if English roses had taken to abandoning the need for underwear and had just trodden in a cow pat.
He waited the few beats he knew it would take, saw the confusion in her eyes clear as she finally recognised him. Never mind, he thought. He could leave in the night; find somewhere even more deserted. Somewhere his face wouldn’t be known. Somewhere they wouldn’t have him pegged as the UK’s most popular jailbird. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to face someone who thought they knew him, thought they understood his story.
She pointed one grimy finger at him, and said, triumphantly: “You! I’ve figured it out! I know who you are! You’re that bastard who threw me in the duckpond when I was seven!”
Ben stared back at her, wondering if he’d fallen into some kind of wormhole and landed in an alternative reality. Okay. She did recognise him – but not for the reasons he’d assumed. She hadn’t got a clue who Ben Retallick really was, had never heard of his case, never heard of Darren McConnell, and clearly hadn’t got any idea that he was one of the most famous criminals in the country. He’d assumed she would be like all the rest – about to quiz him, prod him, look at him with that familiar mix of admiration and fear.
Well…she hadn’t. She seemed to have him pegged for a far more historic crime – one he couldn’t even remember. Maybe he’d started to believe his own hype…
“It was a long time ago – fourteen years or something like it – but I know it was you, there’s no point denying it!” she said, almost jumping up and down in her excitement. Again, he studiously avoided looking at her upper half. She might be twenty-one, if he had the maths right there, but it was still a decade or so younger than him. It was still…wrong. And he’d worked very hard at avoiding women altogether since he’d been released. Since Johanna and her family made it clear they wanted nothing to do with a common-or-garden ex-con, no matter how justified his actions had been. Johanna – his fiancée when the incident that changed his life forever had occurred – had disappeared as fast as his career. She was engaged again now, he heard, to some corporate lawyer in Abu Dhabi. Good luck to her. And him, poor bastard – he’d need it.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about,” he replied, ragging himself back to the here, the now, and to Pippa – wondering if she’d accidentally sniffed some adhesive while she was fixing the loo.
She poked him in the chest with one finger – hard enough that it made him take a step back.
“You remember! Of course you do! It was ages ago, and you were here with your…grandfather, I think? Is that right? He was talking to my dad about some business thing or another, and you stayed here for a couple of nights. I was seven, so Patrick would have been, well, about three, and the twins and Scotty didn’t even exist then. You seemed really glamorous, all the way from London – don’t you remember, really?”
She gazed up at him expectantly, eyes huge and sparkling, and he realised he didn’t want to disappoint her, didn’t want to dismiss
