that a woman should hoover or iron – that was what staff were for.
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘About the sewing machine. No ponies though.’
Granny Mary caught my eye again. She had a particularly intense stare, as though behind those blue eyes was an awful lot of brain activity. I stared back, daring her to say anything, but she just finished the last biscuit off the plate, and turned the laser-stare out of the window.
Gabriel tied a knot and bit the end of the thread. ‘There. That’s as much as I can do now. You can finish the rest off – you’ve got a fortnight.’
Poppy gave a little squeak. ‘Thanks, Gabe! It’s amazing!’
Gabe? I thought.
‘No problem.’ He smiled, that wide, eye-crinkling smile, and his face fell into the easy handsomeness that his glasses only accentuated. ‘And tell Rory that if he’s got any problems with his costume, he can run it over to me next week and I’ll see what I can do.’
Poppy blinked at him. She looked as though she was caught between kissing him as a child would, or giving him a coquettish look from under her lashes, but she came down on the side of youth and flung her arms around his neck. ‘You’re brilliant,’ she said, seized the dress and dashed out of the van with it bundled up under her jacket against the rain, presumably to phone Rory.
‘I’m brilliant,’ Gabriel said, slightly smugly.
‘You burn with the light of a thousand suns, m’dear.’ Granny Mary began fussing the mugs together. ‘But don’t take it to heart.’
‘Well, nobody is usually that impressed with my sewing. It’s nice to be appreciated without someone saying, “It’s not bad, for a bloke,” like having a pe… I mean, like being male means I should do huge stitches like something from an autopsy.’
‘Most of the top fashion designers are men,’ I said, wishing I’d brought the biscuit packet with me from the kitchen.
‘Most top chefs are men, but I can’t do much fancy stuff,’ he replied, reasonably enough. ‘Although I did once make a decent chocolate cake from a Nigella cookbook.’
‘And anyway, I’m impressed with your sewing. It’s amazing. That quilt that Thea showed me, I’d have no idea even where to start with something like that.’
Granny Mary fumbled behind her for a moment and pulled something off the bed. ‘This is one of his,’ she said, spreading it across the part of the table that wasn’t occupied by mugs. ‘An early one, I think, Gabe?’
He acknowledged it with a tilt of his head. ‘I’m a bit more even with the stitching now. And I use an extra layer of wadding, makes it a bit fuller.’
This quilt was, in keeping with the rest of the inside of the van, multicoloured. Reds and oranges competed with browns and greens, like a forest fire in fabric. Unlike the shades-of-blue one I’d seen at Thea’s, there was nothing subtle about this; it glowed as though it had its own, internal light source.
‘It’s glorious,’ I said.
‘Better be, it was bloody expensive.’ Mary sniffed and poked it back onto the bed. ‘You must be making a fortune on those things.’
‘Well, they take a long time to make, and the fabric can be pricey, so not as much as you’d think.’
‘But you’ve got a house.’
Gabriel frowned. ‘Well, yes, but with a mortgage. It’s not like quilting is going to make me a millionaire, Mary, and you can’t crochet property.’
She sniffed again. ‘Houses are overrated.’
My eyes met his and I had to stifle the urge to giggle. We shared a complicit eye-roll. ‘Right, well, now I’ve checked that you’re all right, I ought to get back to Steepleton. They aren’t filming today but Keenan wants a meeting to check up on some timings and I’ve said I’ll be there.’ Gabriel stood up and the van instantly looked smaller.
‘Off you toddle,’ Mary said, equably.
‘And I need to go and light the log-burner.’ I turned to follow him out of the door. ‘The cottage is starting to feel the autumn coming in.’
‘Just you wait a minute,’ Mary said, and her voice was suddenly stronger. ‘I want a quick word.’
It was like being addressed by the head, being back at work. I wondered what I’d done. Mary sat quietly for a while; we heard Gabriel saying goodbye to Patrick and then the sound of him climbing over the gate. Gabriel, obviously. Patrick wouldn’t have needed to climb the gate; he’d go straight through it like a tank.
‘You need to tell him,’ Mary