a couple?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit like befriending a wild animal,’ Tansy said. ‘But he’s okay really. If your daughter wants to spend some time on set…’
‘She will, if we film at the cottage.’ Keenan, who was short, plump, balding and almost the exact antithesis of what I’d previously thought TV directors would look like, said, over his gin.
‘Oh, yes, I suppose she will. But I’m handing this one over to Gabriel. I need to take more of a back seat this year, and managing the café is a bit less pressurised and has less of Davin shouting in it.’
‘Tansy’s part-owner of the café,’ Keenan mock-whispered, hooking a slice of lime over his glass rim. ‘And Gabriel is cheap and local. He’s told us a bit about your place. It sounds… well, it sounds horrible, but I expect you like it. Got any pictures?’
I pulled out my phone and showed them the estate agent’s pictures that had made me fall in love with Harvest Cottage in the first place. We discussed access and, when Gabriel finally fought his way through the crush at the bar and brought my drink over, we talked about layout and, finally, money.
Keenan named a figure that would help get us through the winter. Logs were expensive and we still needed carpet and curtains and fewer woodlice. After Christmas I would start looking for local teaching jobs again or apply to be in the bank of teachers to cover absences, but in the meantime payment for use of the cottage would get us through. It would be a squeak, but I was damned if I’d ask Luc for additional money.
We arranged a day for Keenan to come with some of the team to make sure that technicalities I didn’t really grasp would work, and then he and Tansy went off back to Steepleton, leaving me with Gabriel.
‘So, when is Patrick going?’ I felt a bit awkward. I mean, obviously this wasn’t a date, more of a business meeting, but it had been a long time since I’d been alone in a pub with a man. In fact, had I ever? I’d met Luc when I was nineteen, there had only been brief passing boyfriends before that, and Luc would have died rather than hang around in village pubs drinking cider and playing darts like this crowd.
Gabriel pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Um. Yes. Bit of a tricky one there,’ he said, staring down into his pint glass of yellow bubbles. ‘I don’t know if Kee mentioned it…’
Actually Keenan had talked about a lot of stuff, but I’d mostly been focused on the money, so he could have mentioned anything and I might not have noticed.
‘… and it was originally a pig,’ Gabriel was continuing. ‘But I was talking about Patrick being in the orchard and he thinks a horse might work better. I mean, obviously he won’t be coming in the house, but, well. They might work Granny Mary’s van in too. So, if he could stay, just until filming finishes?’
I thought of the stomped-mud path. Of the retreating grass and the patch on the largest apple tree where Patrick rubbed his tail. Of the big face that would appear at the window and gaze balefully at me from time to time. Of the fact that Poppy kept on about riding lessons.
‘I don’t know.’ I put my glass down firmly. ‘There’s not really enough grass now. He’s going to need hay and – does your granny give him hard feed? It must take some energy to pull that van and he’s not getting that from just grass, not in winter. Does he need a rug? And a farrier will have to take his shoes off if he’s not going to be working for a while.’
Gabriel blinked at me over his drink. His glasses magnified his eyes so much that it looked like a special effect. ‘She’s not actually my granny,’ he said, and it sounded as though he’d picked on the least actionable of my statements. ‘It’s just that everyone calls her Granny Mary. She’s just been around the place ever since I was young, sort of a ubiquitous granny rather than a specific one. Sorry.’
My face had clearly fallen. I’d thought he was more intimately connected to the life of Patrick, now he was just a passer-by? ‘I see,’ I said, tightly.
‘Oh, but you’re right about him needing food, of course. I’ll… I’ll ask Granny… I mean, I’ll ask Mary about it. But, will he