since she’d lost weight, pulling taut as she bent and giving him a tempting view of the very part of her that was giving him so much trouble.
He yanked his eyes off her and concentrated on not dribbling the softly fried egg down his chest.
‘You around for a while?’ he asked Joe around a mouthful of sandwich.
‘Why?’
‘I need a shower.’
Joe arched a brow. ‘Long time since we shared a shower,’ he said dryly, and Mike felt himself colour.
‘I don’t want to share it with you, you jackass. I need someone to grab me when I fall over, and Fran’s too little. I’d squash her.’
Joe looked disbelieving, but he shrugged and nodded. ‘I can give you a hand. Be more fun with Fran, though.’
He felt himself colour again, his neck reddening, and his hands itched to strangle Joe. Not that his brother realised he was being tactless. How could he? Only they knew their marriage was in tatters.
‘Don’t tease him, Joe,’ their mother said gently, and Mike heard something else in her tone. A warning? A warning to tread softly?
So maybe their problems weren’t as private as he’d thought.
Damn.
He pushed the plate away. ‘That was lovely, Mum. Thanks. Right, Joe, are you ready? I don’t want to hold you up, I know you’ve got loads to do.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Joe said, dropping his mug into the sink and handing his brother the crutches. ‘Come on, then, Hopalong, let’s get you scrubbed. Pity we haven’t still got the sheep-dip.’
‘Ha-ha. I need a bin bag and some elastic bands,’ he said, and while Joe found those, he headed upstairs the same way he’d come down.
He turned the shower on, got the temperature right and then Joe trussed his leg up like a turkey and he swung round into the bath, getting awkwardly to his feet and pulling the shower curtain closed. ‘So how are we going to manage this, Joe?’ he asked.
‘Hell, you want me to wash you?’ Joe asked in disbelief.
‘Not the shower—the farm,’ Mike retorted, struggling with the soap and wondering if a little help wouldn’t go amiss.
There was a heavy sigh from Joe, and the curtain twitched back a little. ‘We’ll cope, bro. You get yourself right. Don’t worry about the farm. Dad’s quite enjoying having a bit to do with it again, and at least the weather’s nice.’
‘Yeah—and Mum was probably planning all sorts of work on their house in the next few weeks and it won’t get done.’
‘It doesn’t matter. There’s always another day. Want a hand with your hair?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ he lied, struggling to scrub it with one elbow propped against the tiles so he didn’t lose his balance. He rinsed it quickly, swilled the water over his body one last time and turned off the taps. ‘Might need a hand getting out,’ he confessed, and Joe steadied him while he sat on the edge and swivelled round, grunting with the pain in his side.
‘Your ribs OK?’ Joe asked, giving him a searching look.
‘Not really, but what are you going to do about it? What I could really do with is a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable last night.’
Except when I was snuggled up to Fran, he thought, but didn’t voice it. Too much information, and he didn’t want to think about it when he was stark naked. His body was all too keen to betray him at the moment.
Joe towelled off his back and leg, took the bin bag off his cast and washed his toes carefully with a flannel, then looked round. ‘Got any clean boxers?’
‘In the bedroom. It doesn’t matter, I’ll go like this.’
‘What, and shock Mum rigid? You’ve grown up a bit since she changed your last nappy.’
‘Well, then, hopefully she won’t be foolish enough to be in my bedroom.’
She wasn’t. Fran was, bending over the laundry basket, and he grabbed another pair of new boxers out of the drawer, struggled into them and then lay back under cover of the quilt to get his breath.
‘You OK now?’
He nodded. ‘Thanks, Joe. You go and get on. I’m sorry to hold you up—and I’m sorry about all this …’ He waved in the general direction of his leg, and Joe shot him a wry grin.
‘Could have been a whole lot worse, big bro,’ he said softly, and left them.
Alone.
Fran stood up, washing in her arms, and eyed him warily. ‘Are you OK? You have to go to the fracture clinic in a bit.’
He nodded. ‘Can you take me?’
‘Of course I can,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘I need to put the washing on. Can you manage to dress yourself?’
He nodded again, not wanting to make her do anything intimate for him—not if it was so repugnant to her—and her recoil in the night couldn’t have been clearer. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll come down in a little while,’ he said.
‘Take your painkillers first,’ she advised, and left the room as if it was on fire.
The fracture clinic seemed happy with him.
He told them he was having trouble getting comfortable, and they gave him some advice for propping up his leg in the night—advice which Fran was relieved to know would make it impossible for her to end up snuggled on his lap, thank goodness, because he’d have to lie on his back. At least it didn’t seem to be swelling, so long as he kept it propped up, and that seemed to be what worried them most.
She drove him home, and when they were almost there, he asked her to drive down to the river. ‘I want to see it,’ he said.
‘What, the tree?’ she asked, a cold shiver of dread running over her. ‘Whatever for?’
‘To know how big an idiot I was?’
She gave a strangled little laugh. ‘Oh, I can tell you that.’
‘I thought you had,’ he pointed out. ‘But I want to see for myself.’
So she detoured, turning left instead of right and running down past Tregorran House to the gate at the bottom of the hill, opening it and driving along the river until they reached the fallen tree.
‘Here you go,’ she said. ‘The crime scene.’
He opened the door, got out with difficulty and swung himself over to the tree on his crutches, standing there and staring down at it for an age.
He could see the depression where Joe had dug away the ground under his leg. It was about five feet from where the tree had ended up—which would put it right across the back of his shoulders, maybe
