that the insurance wouldn’t be resolved quickly enough to cover the arrears on my rent, but he saw it anyway.
‘Oh, Laura.’ He pulled me into a hug. ‘I can promise you I will do my absolute best for you and your daughter.’
His arm encircling my waist. The feel of him. The smell of him. I shivered.
Oddly, even then, something pulled me towards him. The only way I can explain it was that I’d spent weeks dealing with death and all its aftermath. Somewhere, inside my core, I wanted to feel alive.
Alex was magnetic but it wasn’t only me he was attracting. I wasn’t the one willing to kill for him.
Willing to die for him.
TILLY
I had thought Saffron was wearing white because she was funky enough to carry it off, but in the kitchen were two other women also dressed in white. Honestly it felt a bit weird, it was winter after all, but I tried not to stare.
‘This is Tilly,’ Saffron said. ‘And this is Daisy. She’s the youngest here at twenty-three, as she keeps reminding me, because I’m so ancient at twenty-seven.’
‘Not at twenty-seven,’ Daisy said. ‘But just wait until you get to twenty-eight! Hi, Tilly.’ She gave a little wave. I mumbled ‘hello’. She didn’t look much older than me with her hair hanging in two long dark plaits either side of her heart-shaped face. She reminded me of Tiger Lily in Peter Pan. As an only child I was always envious of the Darling family. Siblings. I used to beg Mum for a brother or sister. She always laughed and said she had her hands full with just me, but her eyes would cloud and I wondered if she meant I was too much.
‘Croeso, Tilly. Welcome.’ Hazel had the biggest smile and rosy red cheeks. Grey hair bobbed to her shoulders but her face only had the odd line. She didn’t look properly old and I wondered why she didn’t dye her hair.
‘And Hazel is—’ Saffron began.
‘Saffron, don’t tell her how old I am!’
‘What’s it worth?’ Saffron held out her hand. ‘I was just going to say a fabulous cook.’ She blew a kiss.
‘You can see how much I love my food.’ Hazel patted her rounded stomach and there was something so cuddly about her I wanted to see if my arms would fit around her waist and hug her.
‘We all live in this house, along with Dafydd who owns the farm, because we’re special.’ Saffron fluffed her hair. ‘And there are eight others who bunk down in the stables across the way.’
‘In a stable?’ I couldn’t help blurting out.
‘It’s not a stable in the traditional sense. It’s huge and it’s been converted into dorms. They’ve a kitchen and bathroom too. They don’t always eat with us, unsociable bunch. Speaking of eating…’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘I’ll start preparing lunch. Do you like soup, Tilly?’ Hazel asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Vegetable okay?’
‘Can I help?’ I asked.
‘If you want to wash the soil off the veg,’ Hazel said.
I must have looked confused because Daisy said, ‘We grow our own produce here which reduces our carbon footprint.’
‘Mum shops at a greengrocer sometimes.’ I didn’t know how, but I was sure that must be better than buying everything from a supermarket chain. Supporting local business.
‘And where do they get their stock from? It’s still a huge amount of fossil fuel to transport food to a local business. On average about one and a half thousand miles is travelled before the food is consumed,’ she said, but she wasn’t patronising.
‘Daisy’s our resident environmentalist. Diolch. Thank you,’ Hazel said as I took the carrots she was holding out towards me. After rinsing them clean, I began to chop. There was something almost therapeutic about the process. Before long, herby soup simmered on the Aga which was nothing like the gas hob we had at home.
‘Farmers often put weak lambs in the top oven if their mothers have died,’ Saffron told me as I stirred the pot. I must have looked horrified as she quickly added, ‘To keep them warm and give them a chance of survival’. She squirted washing-up liquid into running water. Hazel clanked a lid on the soup. I sat at the table listening to the gentle sloshing of water, the rain pattering against the window. The warm, safe feeling weighted my eyelids until they began to droop, only opening properly when Saffron spoke again.
‘Here’s Alex,’ she said, pulling her hands out of the bowl, suds floating to the floor as she dried her hands. Her face brightened, ‘Typically he’s just in time for lunch.’
Daisy smoothed her hair.
I turned towards the door as it opened. The room disappeared around me. I barely threw a cursory glance over Mum, her hair dripping wet. I didn’t register anything but Alex. He was beautiful in a way I never knew boys could be. Once, in biology, we had learned about processing. It takes on average fifty milliseconds for the retina to send visual information to the brain, but those fifty milliseconds were all I needed. The instant I saw Alex, I knew.
I wanted to be in his orbit.
ALEX
Alex had known as soon as he laid eyes on her that she was the one, the one who would save him. Save them all. As he kicked off his muddy boots he breathed in the soup and he knew home was more than a building. It was a smell, a feeling. The people you surrounded yourself with.
Her.
The bread timer dinged. He crossed to the sink to wash his hands so he could cut the loaf while it was still warm.
As he scrubbed his fingernails, outside the window a crow swooped – the crow swooped – ink-stained wings stretched like a malevolent angel. It perched on the tree stump, claws spiking the rotting wood, head tilted as it appraised him.
Alex tried to look away, but the beady eyes of the bird bored into his. It cawed, the sound sudden and sharp, its head tilted in judgement.
I know. It seemed to say. I know what you did.
It was the same crow, Alex knew, that had watched him that day, but this wasn’t the same situation. He turned away, facing her instead, and although he could no longer see the bird he could feel it screeching in his head, scratching and pecking behind his eyes, clambering to be free.
She looked at him, already adoring, and the gentleness in her eyes made him want to weep.
He smiled at her but it was forced and tight while, inside, a longing unfurled. More than anything he wanted to drop to his knees, bury his face in her lap and allow her to soothe
