The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,16

be all right to stay until we finish filming? It sounds as though he’s going to be an integral part of the storyline.’

Oh, bugger. I was firmly painted into a corner here. Say no to Patrick and it might risk the cottage not being used as a location, and we needed the money. Say yes, and I was stuck with a grazing machine with soup-bowl feet and a penchant for watching me boil the kettle. Plus Poppy’s growing attachment to him, which I wasn’t keen on.

Gabriel was watching me. I looked at him sideways as we sat amid the fug and chatter. There was a curious kind of stillness about him; he didn’t swivel all the time to watch the darts match or people coming and going. He just sat, hands around his pint of cider, as though life was going on around him without touching him at all. My mind briefly contrasted him with Luc, whose sociability and high-functioning boredom meant that he would have joined the darts game, bought a round for everyone in here and started at least three conversations with random strangers before we’d even sat down.

If he’d ever been so pleb as to go into a country pub, of course. Wine bars were more his thing.

I smiled. It felt stretched, as though I was forcing my face. ‘This is a nice place.’

He jerked his head in a sideways nod, but it stopped him from looking at me in that curiously concentrated way. ‘Noisy. Nearest pub to Steepleton and Landle, so it’s usually busy, but the cider is good and local.’ Then he swept a hand up and pushed his hair from his face. ‘Sorry. Am I staring?’

‘No. Well, yes, a bit.’

He gave a rueful smile and looked back down into his drink. ‘Sorry. It’s…’ He took the glasses off and laid them on the table. Without them his face looked less defensive, more classically good-looking, with the curve of cheekbones more pronounced and his eyes a more realistic size. ‘Sight’s degenerating. Even with these it’s not great, and I can’t wear them any thicker or I’ll topple over.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I just sipped my orange juice.

‘The location job is a pity posting, y’see.’ He picked up his glasses and turned them over between his fingers. ‘I’m going to be functionally blind in a few years.’ The words were matter-of-fact, but there was emotion quivering behind them. ‘So I’ve got to earn while I can.’

I had no idea what to say to that. Part of me wanted to do what I would have done with Poppy, thrown out ideas, things to be looked into and researched. But the rest of me knew that wasn’t what he wanted or needed. This wasn’t a problem to be solved, it was a life-altering reality.

‘It must be hard.’ I hoped I’d injected enough sympathy into my voice.

‘Pretty shit, yes,’ and the half-laugh in his tone told me I’d done the right thing. ‘And I’m telling you just so you know that I’m not being a total bastard about Patrick and the van. I’d help you out with him only, well, I don’t know much about horses and I can’t see well enough to pick it up on the fly.’

‘He needs some hay and a hay net, at the least. Otherwise he’s going to start losing condition, and it will be hard to tell under that winter coat he’s growing.’ I sipped down the last of the orange juice.

‘Were you one of those pony-mad children?’ He’d left his glasses off, and it was interesting watching eyes that weren’t intently fixed on something. He was looking at me directly, yet from what he’d said he couldn’t really see my face that well.

‘Something like that.’ I put my glass down firmly. ‘Well, I ought to get back. Poppy is fine left alone for a while, but she’s still a bit nervous of the quiet.’

‘Poppy’s your daughter?’

‘Yep. Fourteen and city born and bred. Although I don’t much think it matters where they are from, fourteen-year-olds have “attitude” fitted as standard.’

Gabriel smiled. It was a nice smile; it crinkled up those impeccable cheekbones and made him look more approachable. ‘There’s going to be a fair bit of noise and disruption when we film at your place. How will she cope with that?’

‘She will be in her element. Noise and disruption are what she’s all about. On her own terms, naturally.’

‘Naturally. We were all fourteen once, weren’t we?’ He put his glass