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 his head. ‘Some of us don’t have a choice,’ he said gently.
‘Sorry, no. Of course. But I don’t mind driving and the car could do with being out a bit more often. It’s starting to look like the world’s most expensive garden gnome out there.’
I didn’t know whether it was my apology or my lightening of the tone, but his face lightened too. ‘Tomorrow at ten thirty. I’ll be outside Thea’s shop waiting. You can’t miss it – it’s the one with all the knitted monstrosities in the window. Now I’d better go and syphon Kee back into the car. We’ve got to see a couple more locations this afternoon before it gets dark.’
We stood together in the doorway. Keenan was a dark smear beyond the window; he’d wound his coat around his upper body and head like a shroud and was walking up and down the front path, glazed with rain and muttering.
‘Looks like Davin’s family banshee on holiday,’ Gabriel observed. ‘Let me get him out of here.’
We stared at one another for a moment. ‘Let’s agree on a handshake,’ I said.
‘I was going to go for cheek kiss?’
‘I’m just going to gently pat your arm. It’s safer.’
There was a bit of a moment of confusion when we both raised our right hands, but because