on a tatty green sofa someone had left out in the open air. Over his coat, he was wearing a long spindly scarf that Sarah had knitted, and he was frowning over his correspondence. He always had a knack of making sure that his post would be waiting for him, wherever they landed.
Olive lowered herself into a discarded rocking chair, hesitating for fear damp had weakened the glue, woodworm seeing to the joints. Her father lit a cigarette and placed his silver box on the flaking veranda floor. He sucked on the tobacco leaf, and Olive heard the satisfying crackle as his breath intensified the heat.
‘How long do you think we’ll be here?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.
He looked up from his letters. A thin line of smoke rose straight from the cigarette tip, no breeze up here to shift its journey. The column of ash accumulated, curving downwards and scattering onto the peeling boards. ‘Don’t tell me you already want to leave.’ He raised his dark brows. ‘Are you – ’ here, he sought the particularly English word – ‘pining? Is there someone we left behind in London?’
Olive stared listlessly at the January-thin orchard, briefly wishing that there was some chinless Geoffrey, with a white stucco house in South Kensington and a job at the Foreign Office as an under-secretary. But there was no one, and there never had been. She closed her eyes and could almost see the dull metal wink of imaginary cufflinks. ‘No. It’s just – we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
He laid the letter down and regarded her. ‘Livvi, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t leave you on your own. Your mother—’
‘I could have been left on my own. Or with a friend.’
‘You always tell me you don’t have any friends.’
‘There’s – things I want to do.’
‘Like what?’
She touched her pyjama pocket. ‘Nothing. Nothing important.’
‘You never made much of London anyway.’
Olive did not reply, for her eye had been caught by two people standing in the orchard, waiting at the fountain that lay beyond the immediate ribbon of grass that surrounded the house. It was a man and a woman, and they made no effort to hide themselves. The woman was wearing a satchel against her body, and she seemed at one in this garden, the canes in the parched earth the only remnant of the tomatoes, aubergines and lettuces that must have thrived here once, when someone cared.
The man had both his hands stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, chin down, but the woman stared up at the muscular satyr in the fountain, poised with his empty canton. She closed her eyes, breathing in the air. Olive breathed too, the faint wafts of charcoal fire and fields of sage, the emptiness of this place, its sense of desolation. She wondered if there was a means to get that water flowing.
The couple began to approach the house, both of them with a pace as sure as the mountain goats, avoiding rabbit holes and minor rocks in their seemingly inexorable desire to approach. It jolted Olive, this confidence. She and her father watched them come near, their progress punctuated by the light snap of bracken beneath their feet.
The woman was younger than Olive had thought. Her eyes were dark, her satchel bulky and intriguing. She had a small nose and a little mouth and her skin was burnished like a nut. Her dress was plain black, with long sleeves that buttoned at the wrist. Her hair was also dark, thick and braided into a long plait, but as she turned to look at Harold, strands within it glinted redly in the morning sun.
The man had almost black hair, and was older, probably in his mid-twenties. Olive wondered if they were married. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. His face was that of a Tuscan noble, his body a sinewy featherweight boxer’s. He was dressed in pressed blue trousers, and an open-necked shirt like those Olive had seen on the men in the fields, although his was pristine and theirs were threadbare. His face was fine-boned, his mouth had an agile facility. His eyes were dark brown, and they grazed Olive’s body like a small electrical current. Were these two together? Olive was probably gawping, but she could not look away.
‘We bring bread,’ the man said in accented English, as his companion fumbled in her satchel and raised a loaf aloft.
Harold clapped his hands with delight. ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘I’m starving.