Joe

The farm was never entirely quiet. At night, the horses called to each other, and the foxes screamed in the fields. Sometimes, I blocked it out and slept like a baby. Others, I lay awake all night, staring at the living room ceiling, but tonight turned out to be one of the nights when I didn’t even make it to my makeshift bed on the couch.

Instead I walked our newest arrival around the yard, watching like a hawk for any signs of colic.

“Why?” Harry asked me from his perch on the doorstep—apparently he didn’t sleep much either. “Stress?”

“Nah. Some tourists on the beach gave him their posh picnic—as in, all of it. Greedy fella’s necked half of Waitrose.”

“How did he end up on the beach in the first place?”

Now that was something I didn’t know. The young male was in good nick—healthy and clean. Well fed. How he’d wound up galloping around Crantock Beach was a mystery, so I didn’t answer Harry’s question. His gaze on me as I looped the yard was unnerving, and I wished he’d fuck off already. I was tired and had less patience than usual for nosy questions.

The front door opened and closed, signalling that perhaps Harry had taken the hint. I sighed and knocked my head lightly on the gelding’s rump. He snorted cheerfully, like he had done since we’d caught him, and I scowled at him. “What are you laughing at, eh? We’re gonna be up all night hiking round this shithole. Couldn’t leave the sausage rolls alone, could ya?”

My grumbling earned me another good-natured grunt, and we set off round the yard again. Half my mind was on the dinner I’d abandoned in favour of ranting at the cats about broken tack, but the other treacherous half drifted to the stranger sleeping in my grandfather’s bed. Despite poking around his blog, the dude who’d rocked up was nothing like I’d thought he’d be. For starters, I’d expected him to drive a wankmobile—a white Range Rover or a scraping-the-ground-lowered Subaru. Not a navy-blue Ford Focus. And his face didn’t fit my assumptions either. His cut body had prompted me to picture some slick twat with a Peaky Blinders hairdo, not the rugged—he even had a beard—dark-eyed bear who apparently didn’t like my mum’s cooking.

And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

The gelding and I had done another three laps of the yard when the front door opened again. I’d successfully ignored Harry when he’d first appeared around midnight, but as luck would have it—or not—this time, I was passing the steps as he was descending.

He was clutching a plate with a sandwich on and a chipped mug—my chipped mug—of coffee. “To keep you going,” he said. “You seem like you’re in for the long haul, and you didn’t finish your dinner.”

“Neither did you.”

Shadows flickered in Harry’s warm brown eyes, but he blinked them away so fast I wondered if I’d imagined them. Then I wondered why it mattered. Or if it mattered.

For some reason it did. “Sorry,” I said. “I mean . . . thank you. I’ll eat in a bit. Just got to get this idiot settled.”

Harry nodded, his small smile as open as the rest of his features. “Are you going to be okay?”

Are you? “Of course. This ain’t the first horse to do the overnight yard marathon, and sure as fuck won’t be the last. Go to bed, mate. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Harry disappeared inside without another word, and I continued on my way with the gelding. My imagination tracked Harry’s footsteps up the rickety stairs even as I turned my back on the front door and slipped back into the soothing pulse of hooves on the cobbled ground. I’d been alone in the house for so long it was hard not to see him as an intruder, but the arrival of his rent in the farm’s bank account had swallowed most of my resentment.

His shy smile had swallowed the rest.

* * *

Harry wasn’t in the kitchen when I wandered in from the fields the next morning, looking for breakfast and a couple of hours kip before morning muck outs began. His car was gone too.

Emma glared at me from the stove. “Scared him off already?”

“Would it matter? Got his money, haven’t we?” I opened the fridge and retrieved the milk. “Where’s Mum?”

“At the market, probably. It’s Monday.”

I frowned. “She didn’t take the van.”

“Maybe she walked.”

It was possible, but Sal’s favourite market was four miles away, and the skies had darkened overnight, eclipsing the sunshine we’d had the day before.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and thumbed my phone to life. I’d tapped out half a text when a car pulled up in the yard.

Harry’s car.

Harry and Sal got out, laughing like they’d known each other twenty-four years, not hours. Emma appeared at my shoulder and peered out of the window with me.

“That’s cute,” she said. “I think she has a crush on him.”

I elbowed her in the ribs. “Not funny.”

“I wasn’t being funny. Mum deserves a bit of jam in her life. Why can’t she have a toy boy?”

I suppressed a growl as Sal and Harry came inside carrying boxes of weird green shit that looked suspiciously like cabbage.

“Kale,” Sal said when she caught my bemusement. “Harry said it’s good for us.”

I switched my glare to him, but he wasn’t looking at me, his attention snatched away by one of the farm’s semi-feral cats. “Don’t be nice to them,” I snapped. “We’ll have them all in the house then.”

Harry stopped petting the cat like he’d been burned.

Emma thumped my arm. “Right. Like you don’t sleep every night on the couch with a dozen of them. Besides, they keep the rats away.”

Harry finally met my gaze. “You sleep on the couch? Why?”

They were all staring at me, even Sal who’d given up on this conversation with me years ago. And Harry aside, they knew the answer, which should’ve made what I had to say easy.

But it didn’t. I could ignore Mum and Emma for the rest of my life, but Harry’s earnest gaze cut right through me. He didn’t know why I’d slept on the couch every night since I’d moved back into the house five years ago, but he knew—somehow—how it made me feel.

Really? Telepathic now, are you?

But I was right. Every instinct that hadn’t burned away in a life of disappointed cynicism sensed it down to the bone. And it infuriated me. Who the fuck does he think he is?

Irrational rage was a Carter trait and it flowed through my veins, bubbling out of me in moments when it was least helpful. Like now. I dropped my bowl on the table, splashing the damn-fucking-cat, and picked up the van keys. “It’s not fucking rocket science that I don’t want to sleep in a dead bloke’s bed. I’m going into town to get that head collar fixed. Don’t call me unless someone else dies.”

I stomped out of the kitchen and out to my van. It was low on diesel, but for once, there was money in the accounts—Harry’s money—to fund a trip to the petrol station. The irony wasn’t lost on me as I crunched the gearbox and rumbled out of the yard, and the faint shame crawling in my belly only irritated me more. The nervous horses in their stalls kept me from tearing off with screeching tyres, but I did it in my head.

It took a mile and a half for me to pull my head out of my arse, which wasn’t bad as Carter tantrums went. My grandma would throw things at Grandpa for days when he got on the wrong side of her. I wasn’t that bad—these days, at least—and damn if I didn’t feel bad for growling at Harry.

I turned into town, avoiding eye contact with the bazillion out-of-town V-Dub drivers clogging up the roads. I told myself it was because tourists got on my tits, but truthfully, I was jealous. It had been a long time since I’d last chucked a sleeping bag in my van and headed to the beach without a care in the world, save where to buy bangers for the barbecue. My teenage dreams were long dead, and seeing yuppies from the city playing at a life that should’ve been mine pissed me off.

Filling the tank felt like sin, but I did it anyway. Who knew when the money would next be there? My phone rang when I got back in the van—it was the farm. I toyed with not answering, given the conditions I’d set out about calling me before I’d flounced off, but responsibility haunted me. “What?”

“Elaine just called,” Sal said. “Dad’s asleep in the street again.”

“So?”

“So she wants someone to go and get him before opening hours.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“Joe.”

Only my mum could lecture me with a single word. I put the phone on speaker and started the van. “What? You think I should peel him off the pavement and bring him home for lunch?”

“No. But I do think it’s better if one of us does it rather than the police. We’ve had enough dealings with them this week, don’t you think?”

I’d seen both sides of the rozzers this week, but I took her point. They’d only bring him back to the farm anyway if I didn’t get there first.

“I’d go myself,” Sal said when I didn’t answer. “But you have the van.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” I was done with my mum dealing with his shit. “Besides, I need to talk to him about Dicky McGee.”

Mum exhaled, years of heartache and trouble lacing her sigh. “Please don’t antagonise him. Or anyone else, for that matter. We’ve worked too hard to escape your father’s messes to get dragged into his squabbles with Dicky McGee.”

“Why am I traipsing down the Legion to pick him up then?”

“You know why, Joe.”

Because whatever he’s done, he’s family.

Right. And I had a smile as sweet as Harry’s.

Sal hung up, and I set off in the opposite direction to the tack shop. The Legion was on the other side of town, away from the tourist traps, and was rundown enough to constitute a proper shithole. Across the road was the cafe Sal’s mate Elaine owned. She met me at the van.

“Sorry, luv. I just can’t have my customers watching over a vagrant while they eat their butties. Business is bad enough as it is.”

I understood. If the horses that came through the farm brought rent payments with them, we’d be laughing, but life didn’t work like that. We were full to bursting, with less resources to go round than ever.

With a heavy sigh, I refused Elaine’s offer of breakfast and crossed the road to the heap of stained wool and corduroy that constituted my father. He was snoring, a pile of empty Tennant’s cans next to him and an unlit roll-up dangling from his cracked lips.

I plucked it from his mouth and lit it, savouring the sticky loose tobacco that Grandpa had smoked too. Smoking was a filthy habit, but god, I loved it, even if stealing Jonah’s leftovers made me feel dirty inside.

Loser.

I stuck the fag in my mouth and kicked out, my boot connecting with Jonah’s shin. “Wakey, wakey.”

He grunted and scratched his nose.

I kicked him again. “Oi. Wake up.”

Slowly, Jonah opened his eyes, revealing clouding irises that had once been a startling shade of blue. “Joe? Son?”

I hated it when he called me son. I hated him. “Just get up, will you? Elaine’s doing her nut.”

My father rose from the ground like an animated bag of shit. He glanced around and then up at the sky, gauging the time by the sun. “It’s early.”

“Yep. Did you go home last night?”

“Home?”

“Yeah. To the flat. Whatever. Please tell me you didn’t sleep out here all night?”

Jonah shrugged. An admission, perhaps? Or maybe he simply didn’t know. Either way, my patience with him was running thin. “Get in the van. I’ll run you up the road.”

I stomped back across the road without checking to see if he was following me. Chances were, he’d stay behind. Prop himself up on a bench until the Legion opened at lunchtime.

But the passenger door opened a minute after I’d got in the driver’s side, and Jonah heaved himself into the van. “How’s your mother?”

“Like you care.”

“Come on now, son. There’s no need to be like that.”

I gritted my teeth and gunned the engine, tearing away like I’d wanted to when I’d left the farm with nothing but a flea in my ear. But I meant it this time. I’d had a dream once where I’d driven myself and my father off a cliff, to save everyone else from the both of us. Some days, that dream came back to me, especially first thing in the morning when I’d drive past the derelict shell of the old stud stables.

The drive to the bedsit where my father now lived was utterly silent . . . on my part, at least. He jabbered on like we were off down the beach to catch the waves, and I hated him a little bit more.

“How are you getting on with Shadow?”

I pulled up outside the bedsit. “Why are you asking me that?”

Jonah shrugged. “That horse needs a lot of work.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Got a saddle on him yet?”

“As if.” I stared at the betting shop across the road—my father’s regular haunt when he wasn't pissing it up in the Legion. “He hasn’t had a saddle on him in years, and I doubt he will again.”

“Because you don’t have time to work with him?”

“No—I get on him bareback when I can—but he doesn’t want to be ridden by anyone who ain’t Grandpa or you, and that isn’t going to happen, is it?”

Jonah said nothing. Shadow had been Grandpa’s horse, but his brother, Dorn, had belonged to my father. The stallions had been like night and day—one black, one dappled grey. Their personalities too. Dorn would let anyone ride him, would eat apples from children’s hands, and kiss their cheeks with his rubbery pink lips. We’d loved him like we’d loved Grandpa, but they were both gone, and we were stuck with Shadow who hated the whole world . . . except my useless drunk of a dad.

“You could always come by and pitch in,” I said when the silence made my teeth itch. “With Shadow, I mean. It’s all I can do to lead him down from the field these days.”

“Thought I was banished?”

“You are when you’re bladdered. Have a day off, mate.”

“A day means nothing when the years are so long. You know that better than I do. Take care of the horses, son. They’re blessed to have you.”

My father’s hand was warm on my arm, and then he got out of the van. I didn’t watch him shuffle up to his scuffed front door, never did, but another sliver of my heart went with him with every doddery step. And that was why I hated him so much. Because as hard as I tried not to love him, in moments like these, I still fucking did.

I pictured Dicky McGee and wished I’d killed him.

And then I put the van in gear with a heavy sigh. I’d forgotten to grill my father about his latest fuck up, but there was a dozen Dicky McGees in this town. I couldn’t kill them all.

* * *

Shadow danced around the apple trees in the corner of the top field. I watched his elegant footwork as I hammered the final nails into the patched fence. In another lifetime, he could’ve been a show horse. Shame he was too good at shagging for us to geld him and sell him on to someone with the time and inclination to train him.

“As if you could ever sell him.” Emma’s scoffing from the last time I’d mooted the idea echoed in my head as I chucked my tools in the box. She was right, but that wasn’t the point. Shadow was fit as a fiddle and relatively young. With Grandpa gone, he had no real place on Whisper Farm. Apart from the shagging, of course. His stud income had paid the hay bill last winter. What more do you want from him? His leg to fall off?

I leant on the fence and rubbed my face, pressing the heels of my grimy hands against my temples, like I could silence the conflict in my brain by pressure alone. As if I could ever sell him. But that didn’t make me feel any less guilty about keeping a healthy horse in a stable that had been built for animals in need.

“All right, mate?”

I jumped and spun around, my hands falling from my face. Harry was behind me dressed in running gear, his broad shoulders wrapped in a pristine white T-shirt, his muscular calves a devilish vision in skin-tight black Lycra. “What are you doing up here?”

“Running. Emma said there was a good route through the fields now most of the horses are in.”

“Don’t go in this field.” I jerked my head at Shadow. “He’ll charge you.”

Harry grinned. “She told me that too.”

I nodded and waited for him to jog on, but he came to the fence and rested his cut forearms on the newly mended post. “He was your grandfather’s horse?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t imagine an old man riding him. He looks wild.”

“He can be, but Grandpa and my dad had a way with stallions. They bred them for a while.”

Harry’s gaze flickered to the wreckage of the old stud farm in the distance. Did he know that Jonah had razed it in a botched insurance scam? Had Emma told him that too? Jesus. The bloke had only been here twenty-four hours.

Lacking the words to match Harry’s friendly curiosity, I whistled through my teeth. Across the field, Shadow stopped his prancing and looked at me. He wouldn’t come—he rarely did—but the acknowledgement was progress, and Lord knew we needed some of that around here.

“He’s beautiful,” Harry said. “I’ve never seen a horse like him.”

“Get many horses in London?”

Harry chuckled. “No. The closest I’ve ever been is Ascot, but I wouldn’t go to something like that now. I can’t deal with using animals for sport.”

“Vegan, are ya?”

“No.”

“Then you’re a hypocrite,” I said. “Just like the rest of us. There ain’t no point bitching about the races when we’re all eating bacon butties and swanning around in leather.”

“I take it you’re not a vegan either, then?”

“No. And I don’t like racing—horses, dogs, whatever—so I’m lumping myself in that boat too.”

“You can paddle. I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“That’s ’cause you weren’t born by the sea. Newquay babies are born on surfboards.”

Harry’s tentative grin brightened a notch. “You surf?”

I shrugged. “It’s not a world away from riding a horse.”

“I can’t do that either.”

“Well, that we can help you with. Sold my boards on eBay, but we’ve got plenty of horses.”

“You don’t surf anymore?”

“No.”

I braced myself for Harry to ask me why, but he didn’t. He merely straightened up and fixed me with one of those piercing gazes that made me feel stark naked. “I’d like to ride. Emma said she’d teach me, but I won’t hold her to it.”

“You should. She’s a good teacher. We had a slapdash riding school once, before, well . . . before things changed.”

Harry nodded. “Then maybe you will again. Nothing stays the same forever, does it?”

I had no reply to that, but it turned out that I didn’t need one. Harry touched his fist gently to my shoulder and moved on, jogging into the sunset and leaving a strange fire in his wake. It started where he had touched me and crept slowly through my veins, lighting up my nerves. The sensation reminded me of Deep Heat ointment, but better—fuck, this was better. And terrifying, because it had been a long time since a bloke had last made me feel like the world was on fire, and I didn’t have time to nurture an unrequited crush on my houseguest.

I tore my gaze from Harry’s retreating figure and rubbed my shoulder, staring hard at Shadow, like the big black horse could gift me my focus back. But even when he did, I didn’t feel any better. Shadow had been Grandpa’s horse, but he remained on the farm because of Jonah.

Because as long as Shadow was here, there was still a chance that my father would come back and be the horseman I saw in my dreams and the father he’d been before he’d burned our lives to the ground.