The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,23

by the window. She was not at all what I’d been expecting, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I had been expecting. A little old lady, possibly, hunched, grey hair, bed jacket, a bit Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma, pre wolf-ingestion. This lady had streaked auburn and blonde hair, an AC/DC T-shirt, and was typing furiously on her mobile phone.

‘Oh, hi, Gabe,’ she said, giving me a mother-in-law of a look. ‘I’d forgotten you were coming. Well, how’s my beast doing?’

As this was addressed to me, I assumed she meant Patrick. If she meant Gabriel, then I really did not know how to answer, so I took the path of least resistance. ‘Patrick’s fine. I’ve got some hay in for him because there’s not a lot of grass left in the orchard. But he’s really going to have to go somewhere else, I’m afraid.’ I tried to inject the right amount of urgency without upsetting her. ‘My daughter was sitting on him today, and I really can’t let that happen.’

‘Gabe, pop down to the shop and get me a magazine, would you?’ Granny Mary moved her acid blue eyes to Gabriel, without acknowledging me. ‘A proper one, I mean, not one of those with celebrity boobs on. I’ve seen enough tits over my lifetime to last me.’

Gabriel gave me a kind of sideways smile and a half-wink, and headed off out of the ward, leaving me with the frankly terrifying prospect of Granny Mary, who turned her eyes onto me with a force that obliterated everything else in the ward. I’d never been frightened of an eyeball before – well, all right, maybe once, in dissection class in Year Ten when Andrew Waites had done the whole ‘look at this’ routine – but Granny Mary had eyes that could cut metal.

I shifted about a bit. I didn’t want to sit on the bed, she was in the only chair, and standing in front of her was like being confronted by the worst headmistress in the world. I put my hands in my pockets, then took them out again, while those blue lenses gave me the disconcerting feeling that she was looking into my soul. ‘Er,’ I said.

‘You were Katherine Bryant,’ Granny Mary said eventually. ‘I know about what happened.’

Even though the ward was warm, a current of cold air hit me somewhere around the back of my neck. It didn’t just come from the fact that she’d picked up on my past life, but the feeling that she’d somehow managed to look inside my head, pick out my worst secrets using some kind of magic. It was creepy and, coming from a lady who looked less gypsy and more like a particularly stringent auditor, oddly disconnected.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then, eventually, because I had to ask, ‘Do you have a crystal ball?’

She tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘No.’ She lifted her phone and shook it at me. ‘Google.’

‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

‘When Gabe told me about you looking after Patrick, he sent me some pictures. You were in one, and, whatever you think of me, I won’t just leave my pony with anyone, so I looked you up.’ She gave me another appraising look. ‘You’ve put on weight.’

‘Okay.’ The insult made me feel better. ‘Yes, all right, that’s who I was, but it’s not who I am now, and I’d appreciate you keeping it to yourself.’

Those eyes were like a laser, I was surprised she hadn’t scorched her eyebrows off. ‘Would you, now? And why would that be? Got yourself set on our Gabe, have you, and worried that he might be put off?’

This was so far from the truth that it made me take a step back, where I connected with the metal frame of the bed. ‘What? No! Of course not.’

She sniffed and turned her glare away from me and out of the window again. ‘Don’t know why not. He’s a nice boy. Only one to turn out and help me in my hour of need.’ She shook the phone again. ‘I’ve got most of Steepleton in here, and it’s only really him and his sister that bother with me.’

I caught myself before I said, ‘How surprising, what with you being the very embodiment of charm and pleasantness.’ I’d trained up on my mother, and knew how pointless it would be.

‘Mind you, Thea’s got a brain that’s ninety per cent wool.’

‘Anyway.’ I tried to get us back on