The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,43

a considered question, as though he’d thought about it rather than was just making conversation. I took a breath to answer, then realised I didn’t know what the answer really was. Was I waiting for it all to go wrong?

‘I only ask because you’ve got this kind of…’ He waved his hands, sketching the air around me.

‘Dressing gown?’ I tried to guess. ‘Bad haircut? Smell?’

‘Aura. Only it’s not an aura, that’s not my thing – if you want auras read then you have to ask Thea, she’s got friends who go in for that sort of thing, all candles and chanting and doing one another’s cards. I just mean…’ He dropped his hands and his glasses clattered against the dandy brush in his pocket. ‘You have this kind of thing like you need to hold everything close to you to keep it safe. And anything outside that little circle is a bit… dangerous? Am I making sense?’

‘Not really,’ I said, a bit stiffly.

‘It’s just that I see more than a lot of people.’ Gabriel went on, clearly taking no notice of my shivery discomfort. ‘I mean, not literally, but because I can’t see very well I tend to look more. Does that make sense? I dunno, maybe the bullying did me a favour in that way. I like to work people out, find out what their motives are before I get too close – saves me from getting my glasses nicked and stamped on too often.’ His tone was light, although the words were so horribly serious. ‘So, I wait. I watch. Blurrily, usually. It gives me an idea of how people are feeling. And then, if they’re feeling punchy, I can get out, because it’s not much fun always being the target.’ Tone still light, almost as though it were a big joke being picked on and beaten up.

I felt that twist of awkwardness in my chest. He was telling me so much about himself, trying to get me to open up and yet I just couldn’t. ‘Maybe I’m just starting to settle in to Harvest Cottage properly,’ I said, with a brightness so breezy that it almost flapped the curtains.

He took a step back. Put his glasses back on, turning away. ‘Yes. Maybe.’ The light tone was gone now, his voice was flat.

I wanted to say something. To tell him that I wasn’t knocking him back with his confidences and his confessions, but I just couldn’t – and then Patrick let out a squeal that made both of us jump towards the door. It was the high-pitched squeal of a horse who’s injured or trapped or just…

‘How’s my bonny boy, then?’

Granny Mary came up the steps into the van and caught us both in attitudes of arrested horror.

‘You’re…’ I started.

‘We heard Patrick,’ Gabriel said, no more fluently than me.

Granny Mary, looking a little bent, but about as frail as a Ford Transit, raised her eyebrows. I saw her take in my pyjamas under the double wrapping of my dressing gown and then rake on to find the large bulge in Gabriel’s coat, which I knew was the dandy brush but very much suspected that she thought was something else.

‘Well, I’m clearly interrupting something,’ she said. ‘But as this is my house, you’ll have to go and do it somewhere different. Any chance of a brew?’

Gabriel and I looked at one another.

‘And it’s me that’s had the stroke, so you needn’t look so wooden, the pair of you. Katie, your cottage seems to be full of men and they’re all sitting round the table, so now might be the time to go and get that tea made.’

Granny Mary bustled past us and began fiddling with things inside the van, opening cupboards and sniffing as though she thought we’d been about to steal her best china. Gabriel jerked his head towards the door, I nodded and we tried to slide out unobtrusively, past Patrick, who was beside himself with happiness and trying to climb the steps.

‘She seems well,’ Gabriel said, and it was his turn to sound more artificially bright than the stage lights that were currently illuminating my kitchen.

‘If by “well” you mean “horrible”, then yes,’ I half whispered.

‘She’s lovely really.’ He’d lowered his tone to match mine. ‘Just a bit… brusque.’

‘Brusque! She makes Severus Snape sound like the Queen.’ I was practically hissing now. ‘And she’s living in my orchard?’

Any reply that Gabriel might have been about to make was cut off by Keenan, who threw open the