yours, but I assumed some milk and sugar wouldn’t go amiss in this atmosphere. It’s like camping, indoors.’
I almost dropped the mug in surprise. How long had it been since someone made me a cup of tea? Luc would never have thought of it, and he despised ordinary tea. If it wasn’t coffee strong enough to keep the shape of the cup as you drank it, or one of the million different forms of Earl Grey that Harrods Food Hall sold, he wasn’t interested. Poppy would sometimes offer, but usually forget and go off to do something more interesting than pander to her aged parent’s tea urge. Work then, probably. Basia would sometimes make a cup for both of us, if I was deep in conversation with the department head, but we usually made our own in the staffroom.
Even though I usually took my tea with a tiny splash of milk and no sugar, I drank Gabriel’s tea as though it were the nectar of the gods. And he was right: the touch of sugar helped my mood to lift beyond the heavy clouds and persistent rain.
‘Next week all right?’ Keenan looked at me over the rim of his mug. The steam from the tea had made his glasses steam up, and I noticed that Gabriel had taken his off, probably for just that reason. ‘Weather forecast is better for next week. We’ll do Larch’s scenes first. We’ll carry her in in a sedan chair if we have to, but we’ll never get her down here if it’s raining. We’ve got to make the most of Peter while we’ve got him too. He’s off doing a Broadchurch docu soon, so we have to fit his scenes in.’
I had no idea who ‘Peter’ was, and probably didn’t need to know. ‘Do you need me to be around?’ I asked.
Keenan and Gabriel exchanged a look. ‘We-e-e-e-e-elll…’ Keenan pushed at his glasses. ‘If you promise not to be one of those home-owners who say, “Mind the china!” and, “You can’t go in there!” as we try to set up shots…’
‘I haven’t got any china except these mugs and a couple of plates,’ I said, waving a hand to indicate the kitchen. ‘And you’ve got free run of the place – you’re paying for it, after all. You are still paying, aren’t you?’ I added, with an anxious look at the electricity meter on the wall, which was ticking away the fact that I’d put all the lights on to make the place look more inviting. It actually just made it look like a well-illuminated serial-killer hideout, evidently.
‘Yeah, course. Finance will be on it now.’
I tried to hide my relief, but I think Gabriel noticed. He must have been really good at reading big-picture body language, because my face wasn’t close enough for him to see my expression, even though he’d put his glasses back on. After our disturbingly uncomfortable parting the other night, I didn’t want to stand too close to him. He probably winced as an automatic reaction whenever I approached anyway.
‘I’m going to take a look outside.’ Keenan pulled his macintosh from the back of the chair, where it had dripped little puddles onto the floor. ‘I want to get a proper vision of the front, maybe go down to the ford and see what it’s like down there.’
‘Knock yourself out.’ Gabriel perched on the corner of the kitchen table. ‘I’m staying in the dry. Well, dryish,’ he corrected, looking at the wall near the pantry, where a now-visible skin of damp was forming. ‘This is only not outdoors because convention dictates.’
I gave him a probably wasted stern look. ‘We can’t all afford double-glazed centrally heated comfort, you know,’ I said. ‘Poppy and I have a roof over our heads and we’re grateful for that. Well, I’m grateful, she complains constantly, but that’s pretty much standard for fourteen. If you don’t live in a palace with servants to clean, pick up after you and do your homework for you, then life isn’t, apparently, worth living.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Actually, even if you have all those things, life is pretty shit when you’re fourteen.’
‘Didn’t you say you were a pony-mad girl? Fourteen is about prime age for spending every possible moment in the stable, if I remember Thea at that age.’ Gabriel sipped more tea. ‘I was more about swimming when I was fourteen. School had a swimming team.’ His expression went a bit misty. ‘Wasn’t bad at it either.’
‘Yes, well.’ I put my mug down so firmly onto the marble slab of the worktop that there was an ominous cracking noise. ‘Let’s not start wandering down memory lane just now. Patrick needs water.’
The big piebald head had vanished from the window, but there was a heavy squelching sort of noise from outside, which indicated that he was walking round the cottage.
‘Water? He’s practically swimming out there.’
‘But he can’t drink it, can he?’ I fetched the multi-purpose bucket from the corner, where washing down the paintwork had become a little superfluous – it was currently washing itself down perfectly adequately – and tipped it into the sink.
‘Would you like to come and meet Granny Mary?’ Gabriel asked suddenly. ‘I feel she’s slightly become the spectre at the feast here, and I know she’d like to meet the person who’s taking care of her beloved. You could come with me when I go in tomorrow.’
I hesitated, bucket under the tap.
‘It’s okay, she doesn’t eat people.’ Gabriel saw my hesitation. ‘At least, not any more.’
And it suddenly came home to me how isolated I’d become. Apart from Gabriel and Keenan and, of course, Poppy, the only conversation I’d really had in the last week had been with the girl behind the till in the equestrian supply shop, who’d sold me the hay net. And that had been about the weather. What was happening to me? In London I’d been sociable. I’d talked all day at work, to my students, to my friends, to other staff members. And, of course, to Poppy, although, now I came to think of it, a lot of that talk had been me nagging her to do things.
Was I in danger of becoming a recluse? Tucked away in my little cottage halfway down this hillside, no passing traffic and no drop-in visitors? Well, that was an alarming thought, and it made me answer Gabriel a little reflexively.
‘I’d love to meet her. Of course.’
He hesitated. ‘We’d need to get the early bus – would that be all right? After ten it’s full of bus pass people and you can’t always get on.’
I stared at him. ‘I can drive, you know.’
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t like to assume that you—’
‘When’s visiting time?’
He rubbed a hand through his hair. It seemed to be something he did when he was thinking, I noticed, distracted by how long his hair was. It nearly brushed his collarbone, and I wondered why he’d grown it. ‘Eleven, tomorrow.’
‘I’ll pick you up in the village, then. Half past ten?’ Again the hesitancy. Surely he didn’t have a thing about women driving? Okay, this was rural Dorset, but it wasn’t backwoods America, and he looked fairly evolved.
‘Are you sure it’s no trouble?’ He’d taken the glasses off again now, and was looking at me with that curiously exposed look that glasses wearers often have when they have their barrier against the world removed.
‘Compared to finding a bus stop, waiting, missing the bus, bus running late, getting to the other end and having to find the location whilst not knowing where to get the bus back from? I’d say driving was the least of it.’
Gabriel tilted
