of thirty-four. About my ultimately unsuccessful marriage, the lack of local jobs, the crumbliness of the cottage and the fourteen-plus hands of piebald squatter in the orchard. But not me. And the gap between the relationship I wanted with my mother and the one I had, and the currently strained relationship I had with my daughter, made me sit for longer than I should have done under that bare, swinging bulb.
I was eventually brought out of my dark thoughts by the fact that my phone was buzzing an incoming text against the palm of my hand. Maybe my mother had thought of something to add? I was about to lay it down without looking, when I saw the name on the screen.
G Hunter:
Sorry I’ve not been in touch. We’ve had a meeting and I’d like another chat about using your place as a location. Any chance we could meet up? There’s a really nice pub just outside Steepleton if you’re free this evening…
I didn’t even think twice. I texted back.
What time and what’s the name of the pub?
PS Patrick is fine, but needs to move.
G Hunter:
It’s The Grapes, up on the Bridport road. Eight o clock?
We can talk about Patrick too.
I’d been hoping for plans to move the pony, even the promise of an immediate single-horse trailer on the road. As it was, Patrick was running out of grazing in the orchard, and some recent rain had caused him to form a mud trail from the back of the field to the kitchen door, where he often stood disconcertingly staring in at me through the rattling glazing.
‘I’m going out for a while later,’ I called up the stairs, although Poppy probably had her earphones in and music blasting from her phone.
There was a moment of quiet and then her door opened a crack. ‘What?’
I repeated myself. It wasn’t an unusual experience. ‘I’m going to meet up with the man who might use the cottage for a location.’ Why I had to justify myself, I wasn’t sure.
‘Oh. Oh! Is this the bloke that knows Davin? Only, this boy on my bus, Rory, he’s in Year Twelve, he’s a bit of an idiot with a stupid haircut but he talks to me so there’s that, well, he says his mum runs this café, right, and he knows Davin, and his mum’s boyfriend, who I think is called Neil but that might be this other guy, he does sound on the new series! Probably a load of bollocks and he’s just trying to impress me.’
Well, at least she was still talking to me. I wasn’t sure if the stream of consciousness was better than the grunty silences; it took more processing but if you could winnow the sense out of it, there was often a giveaway or two to be gleaned. In this case, the name Rory. It sounded as though Poppy might have made a friend.
‘Yes, we’re going to have a chat about the cottage. And Patrick.’
‘You can’t send Patrick away, Mum. You can’t.’ The door closed again. It didn’t slam, but that was probably only due to the amount of stuff on the floor preventing it. The bulb swung as Poppy walked across the floor above, throwing weird shadows across the room.
I still hadn’t quite got used to the darkness out here; the way it came creeping in so early, like a lodger returning before the landlady had got the hoovering done and hoping not to be noticed. September had settled firmly over Dorset with cool nights giving way to warm days and the leaves beginning to brittle and brown on the trees. There was a smell in the air of ripe blackberries and burning and I had an almost atavistic urge to make jam, even though I’d never made jam in my life and hadn’t even read the ingredients on the side of the jars that we always bought in Waitrose.
It was nearly seven o’clock. If I was going to meet Gabriel, then I had to get a move on. I was still wearing the clothes I’d, quite frankly, been wearing for two weeks. Washing down walls was as far as I’d got with the whole ‘redecorating’ thing, but it wasn’t an activity that lent itself to designer clothing, so it was still jeans and an oversized shirt. The rubber gloves came and went, particularly when I was cleaning floors and picking up Patrick’s poo from the orchard. The bucket had gone on timeshare.
Showering was probably optimistic. The electric shower