I sat behind the driver, trying not to catch his eye in the mirror, and stared out of the window as the bus ground its way out of Exeter towards the countryside, passing places I’d known so well seventeen years ago. The seedy newsagent’s shop was still there, on the corner by the roundabout, where I’d first met Alasdair. Over there was the restaurant he’d taken me to on our first date. He’d walked me back to my tiny room, tried to kiss me goodnight and I’d got the impression that my response had somewhat taken him by surprise. He hadn’t left until the next morning. From the continued apologising, I gathered that nicely brought up, young Scots boys didn’t do what we’d spent the night doing without some kind of formal agreement signed in triplicate.
I deliberately turned my head away and focussed on the image of the bus driver’s reflection. He had a bead of dried snot stuck to the edge of one nostril and the disgust which this engendered in me managed to carry me past most of my one-time haunts, past all the memories which I so reluctantly bore. There was only one time I looked. Deliberately I forced my eyes across the crowded buildings towards the site which, in my time, had been a rough plot of land, vaguely green with nettles and goose grass and strewn with various impermanent forms of dwelling. These, and the scabby thorny hedging, had now been replaced by an expanse of tarmac ramping into a multistorey car park.
I knew I shouldn’t have come back. Some memories were too fragile, too delicate, for return visits. My remembrance of the last night I’d spent here was gone, crushed beneath a casually parked black Mercedes.
As we got farther out of town, the memories dried up. Down lanes which grew narrower and narrower, we chugged, like that last drop of cholesterol down a clogged artery, until we pulled up finally in a tiny hamlet. “This is you, love.” The bus driver flicked his head at me and I disembarked, pleased to note that this civic act had finally dislodged the excrescence from his nose.
I slumped down on a convenient bank beside the road and rummaged through my bag, unearthing Theo in the process. I resisted the urge to clasp him to my sweaty bosom, laying him down on the grass instead. As I did so I noticed a protruding edge of card which I’d been using as a bookmark. It was Isabelle Logan’s card, the one she’d handed me back in Webbe’s. I grovelled once more in my bag and found Simon’s mobile, which he’d lent me under protest, and dialled Isabelle Logan.
“I think you’re about a mile and a half from Charlton. If you walk on into the town, I can pick you up from there. There’s a little tea shop in the marketplace, if you go in I’ll come and find you. Oh, and Mrs. Hunter—”
“Ms.,” I said wearily.
“Thank you so much for bringing the book. You could have posted it.”
“Don’t mention it.” I resolved to hide Simon’s HobNobs when I got back.
“Well, you must come for dinner. I would invite you to stay overnight but we’ve a full house at the moment.”
“It’s okay. I’ll stay in town. Don’t worry.” I hung up and hauled myself to my feet, feeling unpleasantly clammy.
Charlton Hawsell was surprisingly pleasant. In the marketplace, the one tea shop was easy to find. I sat down at a window seat with a cup of coffee and a scone, and wondered how Florence was getting on. It was the French exam this afternoon. I hoped she’d revised. Apart from singing Frère Jacques at primary school, I’d never heard Florrie utter a word of the language.
The street was busy. As I stared aimlessly ahead, a maroon Land Rover jerked to a halt in front of the tea shop and a man got out, leaping lightly down onto the cobbles before dashing across the road into a shop opposite.
I nearly dropped my cup, all thoughts of exams gone. Surely…
Leaving my scone untouched, I hastily shoved a fiver under my saucer and fled for the door. I would probably have been more circumspect if the fiver hadn’t been part of my expenses. Once out on the pavement, I pretended to look in shop windows, keeping the reflection of the Land Rover in sight until I saw the man returning, carrying a heavy sack hoisted up on one shoulder. I watched as he opened the back of the Land Rover and threw the sack inside.
I moved in, turning so that I could see him properly as he got into the driver’s seat. His eyes travelled around, checking the road behind him. Then, with the merest flick of his indicator, he was gone, leaving me standing breathless, pink in the face again.
Theo Wood.
No, of course it wasn’t, not Theo Wood, but someone who looked very, very much like him. Raggier haired and more stubbled than Theo, and wearing glasses, but still very, very much like him. So much like him that my heart had risen into my throat. Perhaps this was one of those places where incest and inbreeding meant that the locals only had three faces to go around. I hazarded a quick look up and down the street to check, but there seemed to be the normal mix of dumpy and dull, hawk nosed and handsome. Then—he must be some kind of throwback, great-grandson or some such?
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so reckless. Sweeping my rucksack off my back, I galloped across the road and dived through the dark, narrow doorway he’d entered without even noticing the kind of merchandise on display.
“Can I help you, m’dear?” A friendly voice in the gloom, and a man popped up from behind a counter, carrying what appeared to be a saddle. In fact, my surroundings indicated that this was a shop which sold saddles. They festooned the walls like large fungi, assorted leather straps hung from brackets and large paper sacks of horse feed were piled high in all visible corners. The shopkeeper turned and hung his burden up on another wall-mounting.
“The man who came in here just now. He bought a big sack of something.”
“Oh ah.” Unmoved the man polished idly at some leather with his sleeve.
“Do you know who he is?”
“Ah.”
“Well, could you tell me?” Strain made my voice a little shrill. The man looked at me suspiciously.
“Ah. That’s Mr. Forrester. Charlton Hawsell stud.”
Well, I knew he was good looking but— “Is he?”
“No, m’dear. He owns Charlton Hawsell Stud. Got the best Welsh stallions this side of the Brecon Beacons, so they say.”
Horses. I might have known there would be horses involved somewhere. Ever since Florrie had learned to ride aged seven, my life had been blighted by the damn things. Then Alasdair had bought her a pony of her own, a terrifying orange thing which hurtled around seemingly uncontrollably. Happily, since she’d outgrown Dylan and sold him to a friend’s younger sister, she had discovered the delights of manipulating boys instead. My weekends had been a lot more peaceful as a result. Or at least, differently worrying.
“Ms. Hunter! Alys!” It was Isabelle Logan, waving at me from the driver’s seat of a Volvo Estate.
Chapter Eight
Beercroft Farmhouse proved rather disappointing. No whitewashed cob walls, no roses around doors overlooking a yard full of cackling hens, just a concrete cube at the end of a muddy lane. It looked like a council house on an exchange visit. The kitchen in which we sat contained not much more than a balding carpet, an enormous Aga which made curious bubbling sounds, and a bench table and chairs which seemed to have been appropriated from a local picnic spot.
“Would you like some tea?”
“No thanks. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Logan, I could have handed you the book and gone, you really didn’t have to give me dinner.” To tell even more of the truth, I would rather have stayed in Charlton Hawsell and tried to catch another glimpse of the Stallion Man.
“No, I wouldn’t hear of it! You’ve come all this way, the least I can do is feed you. I’ll run you back to your hotel later. Have you booked in anywhere yet?”
“No. Didn’t have time.”
“Well. The Star should have a room. I’ll give them a ring in a bit, if you like.”
The door opened and two men came in, identical except for years. Both square, sandy and freckled, both similarly booted and both smelling like pickled manure. They stumped across the kitchen with
out acknowledging either Isabelle or me and vanished through the opposite door, muttering darkly about “the AI man”. It was like living through an episode of League of Gentlemen.
“My husband and son,” Isabelle explained.
I refrained from saying, “Who’s the other man?” because I was afraid she wouldn’t see the joke. “Here. Before I forget.” I held Theo out. “It must be awful to find you’ve inherited something and then found it’s been sold by mistake.”
“Inherited?” she said. Simultaneously the door opened again, and the man I’d seen that afternoon walked into the kitchen. He muttered, “Little buggers jumped out,” and walked through, taking the same path as the other two men.
I stared after him, mouth open.
“Ah,” said Isabelle Logan, the woman with the corridor house. “Um.”
“That’s—” I started, still staring at the far door. “It is, isn’t it? He’s considerably less dead than he should be.”
“Oh dear.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Oh God. Come into the study.” Isabelle opened another door and led me into a tiny book-lined room. “I don’t want him to overhear us. He gets very sensitive about things.” Sensitive? Looking like that and sensitive? Bloody hell. She poured two glasses of whisky and handed me one. “That man—Theo Wood. His name is really Leo. He’s my brother. Are you sure you want to hear this?”
It was a little like being told that Johnny Depp was moving in next door and was notorious for running out of sugar. My dream man was no longer a dream but a real, striding-about-in-my-vicinity human being. “Yes please.” I took a mouthful of alcohol against it being a story I wasn’t going to like.
“It was Leo’s thirty-fifth. He’d had a rough year, what with his wife…” She tailed off.
Of course there’d have to be a bloody wife in there somewhere.
“…and he’s just so frustrating. Always scribble scribble at those damn poems, never letting anyone see or read them. Always like it, even as a child. He’s got books full of them at home you know. So, I sort of crept into his attic and chose a selection, and got them privately published at a little place in Exeter. Of course, knowing how shy Leo is, I thought if I made up this dead poet and pretended that he’d written the poems only his family would know who he really was, you see.”
Leo Forrester. Theo Wood. Dear God, did this woman have no imagination?
“I gave one copy to our parents, and one to our uncle who lived over in Topsham, then one copy to Leo for his birthday. Well, he—”
I had a brief, scary flash into the mind of a shy, poetic type forced to face the realities of his words becoming public property. “He wasn’t very happy?”
“Er. No. He didn’t mind too much about the copies I’d given away, but he made me give him the other hundred. I was going to give them to the bookshop in Charlton, but Leo didn’t want—anyway. Our uncle died six months ago. I just didn’t think, got a house-clearance firm in to get rid of everything, but Leo asked me what had happened to the book. He made such a fuss, I had to get it back.”
“Okay.” I slowly drained my glass. “So I guess it’s probably best if I don’t mention that I’ve read it.”
Isabelle’s eyes widened. “Hell, I’d never thought of that. Look, if he asks, well, not that he’s likely to but, you know. Can we say you’re an old schoolfriend who’s popped in on her way past?”
Past? From where to where? On a tour of obscure backwaters which haven’t featured anywhere since the Domesday Book writers rode through and thought, Oh, go on then, might as well use up this ink?
“How are you going to explain the return of the book?” She’d got up and was heading back into the kitchen. I followed, my Sex God readiness switched up to red alert just in case he turned out to be spread-eagled over the table, panting with insatiable lust.
“Oh, I’d already told him I’d got it back, said that I’d destroyed it, so—” As she spoke she thrust the book into the Aga and slammed the door on it; I shivered as though watching my best friend burn. “Leo’s not had an easy time.” The door opposite opened and she smoothly changed tack. “But farming in general is having a really bad few years.” I nodded slowly, trying to keep my eyes from shooting to the doorway, but anyway my nose had let me know who the incomers were. “Josh, Ivan, this is Alys. She’s come by to visit me, we were at school together, you know.”
“Oh, aye.” The two men nodded in my general direction, then leaned their ample bottoms against the Aga rail. “Leo having his dinner with us? We could have a word with him about those fences.”
“Yes, what a good idea,” Isabelle said brightly. “Go and ask him, Josh. We can introduce him to Alys.”
Oh God. Here I was wearing my least flattering jeans, the ones that made my bum jut out sideways. I was caught between desperately wanting to meet my idol and not wanting to be seen looking like a shelving unit. “Isabelle, is there anywhere I could change? Maybe get a wash?” I asked.
I was directed to an upstairs room, where I waited until she’d shown me how to work the shower and gone back downstairs, then hoiked the mobile out of my bag.
“Jace? It’s me,” I hissed into it.
“Of course it’s you.” Jacinta’s reply was loud and clear. “Who else would be ringing me?”
“I need help. I’ve got to have dinner with this gorgeous man, and I’ve only got my jeans and that white T-shirt to change into.”
“Hmm. Which jeans? The ones that are making your bottom veeeeerrrry wide?”
“No, those others, the pale blue ones.”
“You have no worry. They is good. Anyways, men are never seeing what women is wearing, they are too busy thinking what she is looking like not wearing clothes.”
“I don’t think this man is quite like that, Jace.” I heard her snort of disbelief. “But how do I look alluring, sexy and available yet classy, in jeans and T-shirt?”
“You must make shorter the straps on your bra. Is simple. Lift up your bosom further and make it look out.”
I peered down my front. “Hair up or down?”
“You have hair on your bosom?” Jacinta sounded confused and I could hear Simon’s voice asking if there was a problem.
“On my head! Up or down?”
“Up. But not too far, you are not wanting to look like a dog. I must go now, Simon is fitting with me.”
“Having a fit,” I corrected, but she’d already gone.
I washed and changed, pausing midway to ring Florence. “Hello, darling. How did the exam go?”
Florence grunted. “Okay, I suppose.”
“Was it easy or hard, or what?”
Another grunt. “Okay. Look, I’ve got to go. Piers is taking me out.”
“Out? You’ve got Maths tomorrow!” But I was talking to myself and I felt the tiny sting of memory, how she’d wanted to tell me everything about the SAT exams she’d taken, aged ten. Now I was lucky if she’d tell me it was raining.
I made the necessary adjustments to my undergarments, then went downstairs. Approximately halfway it occurred to me that I’d shortened my straps too far. Although this gave me a cleavage which looked as though I was peering out from behind a couple of boulders, it meant that if I raised my arms higher than my waist, my bra would forcibly propel itself upwards and out through my neckline.
“Go and sit in the dining room, Alys. Help yourself to some wine, we won’t be long.” I went through the indicated door and found myself in what would have been a nice room if every wall hadn’t been groaning under the weight of photographs, each one featuring a small, fat pony.
I poured myself some wine from the open bottle on the table. A reflection caught my eye in the glass frame of one of the photographs. I’d not quite got my hair right and without thinking I raised my hands to the back of my head to tweak down some curling tendrils around my face. My bra was thereby freed from its supporting position at the top of my rib cage and relocated halfway up my chest. “Oh shit!” Crouching to see my reflection more cle
arly, I shoved my hand up my T-shirt and tried to yank my underwear into a more serviceable position.
“Charlton Thistle.”
I froze guiltily. “I beg your pardon?”
“Charlton Thistle. The stallion in the picture you’re looking at. He was my first success.”
I forced my eyes to refocus, away from my reflection and onto the picture itself whilst furtively tugging under my shirt. “He’s very handsome.”
Bugger me, you can say that again, I thought as I turned around and saw Theo Wood—Leo Forrester, glass of wine in hand, only inches away from me. Close enough for me to see that his eyes weren’t the deep brown I’d assumed, but a clear green, and that he had a tiny scar running from his nose to the corner of his mouth. It made his face slightly flawed, more perfect.
“Mmmm. He was a little long in the back for me, but the judges seemed to like him.”
A pause followed. He carried on scrutinising the photographs while I tried to think of something intelligent to say, staring at him fixedly all the time. Without the flattening effect of the camera lens, his face was thinner, bones more prominent. The whole thing added up to a look which could have made a career out of fronting aftershave adverts. The pair of rimless, angular glasses he wore only added to the lust factor, emphasising those green eyes.
Come on, Alys, make a move. I’d confronted him so many times in fantasies over the past couple of weeks that I should have a line ready. But that had been when I thought he was dead. Safe. “I’m…” I started, but he’d already begun to speak.
“He only died last year you know. Thirty-three, bloody good age for a stallion. Mind you, his dam lived to be twenty-eight.”
Now I’d have to wind my introduction back up again. “Yes,” I agreed without having much of an idea what I was agreeing to. “By the way…”
“Leo. Leo Forrester.” He whipped around suddenly and grabbed my hand. “Izzie’s brother. You’re Alys, I understand? At Blandburgh with Izzie?”
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