The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,57

buy a house in this part of the world. She wouldn’t want to move in with me, would she? Or Gabriel? I thought about Thea’s flat, with those steep stairs, and dismissed it.

‘I’ll die in this van,’ she said, with a slight note of satisfaction. ‘I’ve done my time living in houses and I prefer to be here, where I can open the door and smell nature.’

I bit my lip so as not to point out that I could open my door and smell nature, if, by nature, you meant a wet horse and a lot of mud.

‘So you wouldn’t sell?’ I relaxed a bit.

‘Course not.’ Mary resettled her arms and watched me getting dripped on by the van roof. ‘You ought to go and check that young Gabriel hasn’t got out of bed and run off, y’know. He’s a patient lad, but he won’t wait forever.’

I wanted to retort that she could stuff her old-person-wisdom, and I didn’t care whether Gabriel ran off or not, it was nothing to me one way or the other. But then I thought of that concentrated dark gaze and those long fingers, and kept my mouth shut. I turned away, hearing another of her snorted laughs behind me, and went over to Keenan.

‘We’re done for the day, I think,’ he said. ‘Not much more to do up here actually. Maybe a few pick-up shots when we get Peter back after the documentary, but we’re pretty well finished, I think. You’ll come down and see us in Steepleton?’ He sounded rather forlorn. ‘We’ll have a wrap party when we finish filming this series, and everyone’s invited. Plus, Larch quite likes you and that’s rare enough to go down in the annals, so if you wanted to come over and just hang out, chat, eat in the catering van…? To be honest, I’d be grateful to anyone who could keep Larch happy and from murdering Davin, so we’d be absolutely delighted to see you on set.’

He took off the flat cap he was wearing, which was doing nothing to keep the rain off his head, and ran his hands through his hair again.

I quite liked Larch. She was dippy and wafty and a bit given to patronising comments, but she was innocently sweet and reminded me of Poppy rather a lot. ‘Of course, I will.’ I patted his arm reassuringly. ‘I’m at quite a loose end myself until I get another teaching job. The money you’ve paid to film here has been keeping us afloat this long though.’

Keenan shuddered. ‘Don’t mention anything floating, please. We’ve had some shockers of storms while we’ve been here. The other Christmas Davin and Tansy got washed into the sea! Don’t want that again.’

I made a mental note to keep Poppy at home when the storm struck. Tansy and Davin might have survived, but… I shuddered. I might have to make arrangements to barricade her in her room though.

I left them packing up their gear and went back inside. ‘The crew are just leaving,’ I said up the stairs, ‘if you need to go with them.’

Gabriel appeared on the landing again, half in shadow. ‘I’ve just about cracked this first pumpkin.’ He leaned down. ‘So if it’s okay with you I’ll stay a bit longer. I can always walk down later – it’s really not that far if you go over the fields.’

‘I’ll drive you back,’ I found myself offering. ‘It’ll be getting dark and it’s raining. Plus, you’re doing me a favour by covering up my lack of artistic ability.’

Gabriel came down the first two stairs. ‘I’m quite used to the dark and I haven’t dissolved up to now,’ he said, reasonably.

That made me go quiet.

‘But I’ll take another tea, if you’re making,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘And I might just bring these downstairs now, if the crew don’t need the living room.’

‘Of course.’

I dashed into the living room, where the damp atmosphere was making the walls shine, and lit the log-burner. I’d taken to cleaning it out and re-laying it every morning after Poppy went to school, then leaving it unlit until the evening when she came back. There were logs in the little shed, where I kept Patrick’s hay, but not nearly enough to see us through a winter. I’d been trying to eke them out, and leaving the fire unlit during the day had seemed a good option.

When Gabriel came in, carrying two pumpkins, a wad of newspaper and a cutlery-inspired arsenal, the flames were