Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘What, nothing at all?’ Jazz coughed into his pint with shock. ‘Not a penny?’

‘She’s already had fifty grand,’ Katie pointed out. ‘So it’s not a bad return, really.’

‘Of which she gave over half to that wanker, Luke Fry. Why don’t you sue, Will? Take him to the cleaners.’

I refilled my wine glass. ‘Because, people.’ I took a drink. Once again I was enjoying being the centre of attention. ‘There would be no case to answer. I’ve been through it with Bree. Everything I gave him, I did of my own free will. He never coerced me or bullied me.’

‘He did tie you to the bed though,’ Jazz said, with his head down to avoid Katie clopping him around the ear.

‘As I said’ – I carefully ignored him – ‘of my own free will. And I bet all the other women he conned would say that he never directly asked for money. They were so terrified of losing him that they’d hand over whatever he told them he needed.’

‘But if they could afford it, then it’s their lookout. Ow! Fuck, Kate, that hurt.’

‘Good,’ Katie said tightly.

‘Stop victim blaming, Jazz. It’s the way he did it. Even if the women could afford it, even if they were fucking millionaires, no one deserves to be treated the way he treats women. Do you know, I don’t think he even likes women very much?’

‘Gift to Ash then.’ Jazz arched his eyebrows.

‘Ash has got more sense. Anyway, I didn’t mean he prefers men. I just think he sees women as glorified cashpoint machines.’

‘Holes in the wall.’ Jazz guffawed and then choked. His pint might have gone down the wrong way, or Katie might have grabbed him under the table. I couldn’t tell, but his face blanched and his voice was a little higher when he said, ‘Sorry.’

‘You do know’ – Katie laid a hand on my arm – ‘that it’s not your fault, don’t you?’

‘What, Jazz being a tactless prick? Yeah, I know. Twenty-three years I’ve been trying to civilise him, but he’s still convinced that being diplomatic is having a qualification in watch repair.’

‘Falling in love with Luke, you dipstick.’

‘Oh. Do you know, I’m not sure that I really did?’

‘But you were going to marry him.’ Both Katie and Jazz looked shocked.

‘Yeah, well, when I was twelve I was going to marry Simon Le Bon and look what happened there.’ I sighed, remembering my adolescent fixations for any man in eyeliner.

‘He had stupid hair,’ Katie said as she collected her things together and picked up her bag.

‘Yes, lucky escape for me.’

‘Anyway, guys, much as I’d love to sit around and discuss Will’s appalling taste in men, I must be off. The boys have gone to the park with Dan, so I’d better go home and tame the mess while they’re out.’ Katie got to her feet. ‘See you on Monday, Will. Later, Jazz.’

After she’d gone, Jazz and I stared into our respective drinks. ‘So, you’ll be up for singing on Sunday?’ Jazz said, continuing a conversation we’d started when I’d first arrived at the Grape and Sprout, as though the last ten minutes had never happened. ‘It’s kind of a one-off. A special. Just the band and us, down by the river, near the Millennium Bridge?’

‘Oh, right. Open-air thing? For passers-by?’ I didn’t mind that so much. Singing outdoors made everything a bit less intense and the weather at the moment was fabulous. ‘Yeah, why not. Count me in.’

‘Good.’

I sipped my wine and looked at him. Over the past few weeks, Jazz had changed enormously. Gone were the towering boots, the funereal clothing and the tatty goatee. Although his hair was still long, it had returned to its natural dirty blond colour. Jazz now wore smart casual clothes, jeans and T-shirts and trainers. From Goth to Gap in months. ‘You really like Bree, don’t you?’ I asked. It was the only reason I could think of for the radical self-redesign.

He nodded, almost miserably. ‘When Grace was born and I was there, it was …’ Horrifyingly, there were tears in his eyes. Jazz, who’d not even cried when he’d trodden on his signed Green Day album in stiletto-heeled boots. (It was a party and he’d not noticed, walked around with the CD spiked on his heel for three hours.)

I quickly looked around, in case I’d fallen into a parallel dimension. ‘I think she’s very fond of you, too. You’ve been terrific, helping out with the dogs and all that.’

‘Yeah. Mr Terrific, that’s me.’ It really wasn’t like Jazz to look glum. He looked as uneasy with the expression as Santa Claus would look with a machete. ‘Do you really think she likes me, Will? I mean, you know, like a proper bloke?’

Another crowd of people entered The Grape and the diverting noise prevented me from having to answer. There wasn’t much I could say, really. How should I know how Bree felt about Jazz? Her husband had only just dumped her and now she’d got a new baby. She did seem pretty smitten with him, and I’d babysat my niece on a couple of occasions when she and Jazz had gone out ‘to get her out of the house’, but I wasn’t privy to her inner thoughts about the boy she’d known almost as long as I had.

‘Jazz.’ I took his hand, charitably. ‘You are a fabulous man and any woman would be lucky to have you.’

Jazz looked me in the eyes, searching my face. ‘But maybe the one I want just doesn’t know she’s lucky yet,’ he said softly.

‘Oh, Jazz.’ My heart contorted a little and I squeezed his hand. ‘Honestly, everything will work out.’

Thwack.

My first thought was ‘gosh, exactly like in the comics’, as a fist shot out from behind my shoulder, catching Jazz a blow under his chin, in classic He-Man-punch style. My second thought, of course, was ‘what the hell?’ and I whipped around to find Luke standing there, with a gleam in his eye.

‘Was he trying to get you back?’

Would I be horribly shallow if I admitted to a moment’s quiet pride? No man had ever punched another guy for me. I was a fist-fight virgin! And now, here was Luke, defending my honour, or at least defending his woman from the predatory advances of her supposed ex-boyfriend.

‘No, we were talking.’

‘You were holding hands.’

Jazz began climbing to his feet, clutching his jaw. I made frantic keep-quiet signals with my eyebrows which he, perhaps understandably, chose to ignore. ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

‘You, schmoozing your way around my girlfriend! Can’t you get it into your head that it’s all over? Mind you, Willow, I didn’t exactly see you shoving him away.’

‘We were talking, Luke. That’s all. Jazz is going out with my sister.’ Jazz’s eyes went big and round at this flagrant exaggeration and he opened his mouth to contradict. I stood hard on his foot under the table. He winced, but at least closed his mouth. ‘Honestly.’ I put a pacifying hand on Luke’s arm. ‘We came out for a quiet drink. Katie was with us too, until a minute ago, and Jazz asked about Bree. She’s giving him a bit of a hard time at the moment.’

‘I came to find out how it went at the council today.’

Jazz opened his mouth again, and I had to get brutal. I drew back my arm and slapped him firmly round the face. ‘How dare you grab my hand anyway. Were you trying to make Luke jealous? If so, it won’t work.’ Then I turned my head to one side, pretending outrage, and mouthed ‘sorry’ hidden from Luke by my hair. Jazz obviously now saw the value in being silent.

‘Well, I dunno. Willow.’ Luke scratched at his stubble and rubbed his knuckles. ‘I mean, how do I know I can trust you? How do I know that you’re not going to go running off with psycho-killer boy here whenever my back is turned?’

I felt a sudden rush of indignation. Forgetting that the romance with Luke had been fake from the moment he’d pretended to knock into me in this very bar, I reacted like any girl would, being accused of infidelity. ‘I was not up to anything with Jazz. If I was, why the hell would I do it in here? Luke.’ I lowered my voice and moved closer to him. ‘You are the man I’m going to marry, you are the man I’m in love with. Not Jazz.’

I was slightly surprised that the bar didn’t fill with the smell of brimstone at the totality of the fib, or that Jazz didn’t burst out laughing. But it’s probably quite hard to laugh with a cracked jaw. Besides, I had to say something. The thought of Luke – filled with unnecessary hurt pride – dumping me just when I was sorting out the kind of revenge most women can only dream of, made me feel sick. Then I came up with something that would swing things my way completely. ‘Come on.’ I pulled at his arm. ‘Let’s go somewhere and buy a bottle of champagne.’

Luke was still looking stern, but his face softened. ‘You mean?’

‘They’ve paid up.’ I put a little wobble of excitement into my voice. ‘The council did a financial transfer to my account this afternoon for four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. But, of course,’ I let my voice drop, cast my eyes repentantly downward, ‘if you don’t want to, I’ll understand.’

‘I’m not sure.’ Luke ran his hands through his hair. ‘Can you really promise me, Willow, that nothing is going on between you and him?’

Jazz had regained his seat and his pint and was looking at me with the hurt air of a dog which has had its tail trodden on. But at least he was quiet. I beamed good thoughts at him. ‘I can totally promise you that.’

Luke still looked stern, his mouth tight and his eyes narrow. Would he dump the prospect of nearly half a million pounds? Had we all underestimated him? Did he really have a sense of pride, of love for me, was I the woman he wanted for herself not her wallet?

‘Well, all right. I do believe you.’

Obviously not, then.

‘I’m sorry, Willow. I’m under a lot of pressure at the showroom. The thought that you might be fooling around was unbearable.’ Luke smiled at me. ‘We’ll say no more about it.’

Hang on. Did that still make it sound as though I had been in the wrong? And with a daggy guy like Jazz? At least if he’d caught me with my hand in Cal’s jeans I could have gone out with a sense of pride at my good taste. ‘We really weren’t …’

Luke put his hand in the small of my back to guide me out of the Grape. ‘I believe you,’ he said, in a tone which made it clear that he didn’t, but was being tolerant. We got to the Pitcher and Piano, and ordered a bottle of the finest champagne (£140, I was beginning to regret my lie about the money, I hoped he wasn’t going to suggest we went on somewhere equally pricey for dinner) before I realised what he was doing. Making me feel guilty, unsettling me, forcing me to try to buy him back with grand gestures. He was bloody good at it, I had to admit, generosity itself with his ‘I really don’t mind that you met up with your ex without telling me,’ and yet just the tiniest bit withdrawn. No handholding under the table, no suggestive winks or casual remarks about our future. Cool enough that, had our relationship been for real, I would have been more than a little bit panicky by now. Smooth. You had to admire it.

So, since I was pretending that our love affair was real, I also had to pretend that I wanted his approval again. I told jokes and took him to dinner (although it wasn’t the hugely expensive one he’d clearly set his heart on, it wasn’t exactly cod and chips twice). We ended the evening with many references to my condition ‘down there’ and an encounter which, although not the full back against the wall shag, wasn’t exactly cod and chips twice, if you get my drift. He dropped me at my door after an ‘I’ve forgiven you’ snog and I dashed straight in to phone Jazz and apologise.

First thing on Saturday morning, I cadged a lift up to the farm on the back of Ash’s bike. We were both glad to get away from home, where Grace had discovered the joys of colic and had therefore kept us all awake most of the night.

‘It’s not that I mind, as such, but it’s not even my fucking baby.’ Ash pulled the bike up onto its stand and leaned against it in the lay-by.

‘Ooh, not getting broody now, are you?’ I nudged him and after a moment he nudged back.

‘Not for kids, no. But, don’t you ever think you’re getting old, Will? With nothing to show for it?’ He pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his spiky brush of hair, making it stand on end and himself, in consequence, look about twelve.

‘We’re thirty-two, Ash. It’s not exactly cardigan-time.’

‘Yeah, but, I was clubbing last night and, know something? For the first time I felt old. There’s loads of guys there, all about nineteen, all totally fuckable, but it’s like there’s nothing going on apart from clubs, drugs and sex.’ There was a pause.

‘I’m still looking for the bad in that statement.’

‘Well, there is more to life than that, isn’t there? I want to buy a house, Will. I want to live with someone, eat breakfast with them, get a dog. Be real. Don’t you ever feel that you want to be real?’

I inhaled heftily. ‘I think it’s called growing up.’

‘I guess. Right, I’m going, leave you here with Gorgeous Boy.’ Ash threw a derisive look at the Micra, slewed into its parking space in the worst example of parallel parking since the Exxon Valdez. ‘I’ll see you back at the ranch house.’ Helmet on and engine started, he threw up the visor to yell, ‘Give him one from me,’ and roared off into the scenery, which briefly became less scenic with the addition of a Yamaha 750 and concomitant exhaust fumes.

As I crossed down over the field, I could see that the door to the barn was open a touch. Nothing visible inside, of course, he was too careful for that. All the machines were tucked away in the far, dark corner, ticking and flickering and purring to themselves out of sight of any casual passers-by.

‘Hello?’ Forgetting exactly who I was dealing with, I tugged at the slightly open door. The resulting noise drove me to my knees, both hands clamped over my ears. The noise was so big it had character.

‘Er, sorry, Will.’ Gradually I became aware that the sound had stopped and opened my eyes, to stare into the knees of Cal. ‘Wasn’t expecting anyone, so the alarms were enabled.’ He helped me to my feet. ‘I should know better, really. Last time I was working with the doors open, the bloody goat got loose. I’m in the middle of a really tricky piece of analysis and suddenly it sounds like a buffalo mating with an elephant seal. I go outside to shoo her off, forgetting I’ve got my headset on and all the team can hear me shouting “fuck off and leave me alone you evil bitch” with the full-scale racket going on in the background.’

‘Sounds nasty.’

‘It was. They thought I’d been raided. All shut their systems down, all off-line, couldn’t reach anyone for a week.’ I was upright but he hadn’t let go of my hand. ‘So. You came back.’

‘No. I’m a hologram.’

‘Won’t bother offering you a drink then. Don’t tell me, you’re deeply in love with my goat and you’ve come to ask for her hoof in marriage?’

‘I wouldn’t take that thing’s hoof in anything less than a curry.’ He was smiling down at me in a way that made me itch inside. ‘Cal, I think someone’s calling you.’

‘What? Oh, yeah, right.’ He flipped the headset back up from around his neck, but even his voice was smiling as he spoke into it, ‘Yo, Zak! What’s the news? What? Yes, Willow’s here, how could you … oh, did I? Shit. Hey, down boy, that’s for me to know and you to forever speculate on. Now …’ Turning away from me he walked back into the barn but I didn’t follow. I wanted five minutes.

I walked behind the barn and leaned on the paddock gate looking up the hill towards the moor. Winnie stopped scratching her bum on one of the fence posts and eyeballed me balefully. ‘I’ll even miss you, you evil-smelling lawn mower,’ I whispered. As philosophical as I’d been about the lack of council funding coming my way, the thing I was really regretting was the loss of this place. Ever since the notion of buying it had come to me, the farm had felt like home. The smells, the dust, the dry rot and peeling paintwork, all had got under my skin and had become part of me, as much as I felt I had become part of them. And now, although Luke’s treachery had allowed the desire for score settling to fill me, the inability to buy the farm made me far sadder. ‘I wonder if that makes me really deep or incredibly shallow?’ I closed my eyes and let my chin rest on the gate, the smell of pine resin trickled up my nose and made me think of forests and clean toilets.

‘Penny for them.’

I jumped.

‘Sorry. You looked completely lost there. Making plans for turning all this into an herb nursery? Or just herself into goat-burgers and a bedside rug?’

I looked up at him, leaning beside me companionably. Those eyes were like a total eclipse. ‘I can’t buy the farm.’

His shoulders tensed, drew away from me. ‘Oh. Right.’ Our thighs had been touching, now there was a handspan between them. ‘Okay. Thanks for letting me know.’ And then he was turning, turning away from me and setting himself to limp back towards the barn. He looked beaten, defeated.

‘I would if I could,’ I half-called after him.

A shrug. ‘Doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Cal.’ I caught him up in the middle of the yard. ‘Look, I really am sorry.’

A beat. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me back against the wall of the barn, leaning his full weight into me, catching my hair in his hands and using it to tip my head back and up. I had time for a tiny whimper before his mouth came down hard on mine, kisses like bruises, tongue teasing, reckless, shuddering, wild.

‘What the hell was that?’ I asked, when he let me go, my face flaming flamingo-pink and my mouth doubling in size with the ferocity of the kiss.

‘That, Willow’ – Cal moved back lazily – ‘was clearly “goodbye”.’

‘Goodbye?’ Confusion was streaming from every pore. ‘Why? What have I done?’

‘I could live with you fooling with Luke, setting him up, maybe even one quick last fuck to keep him onside until the denouement, but I can’t live with you deciding to write it all off. Or, rather, I’m going to have to, aren’t I, but … well. Goodbye, Willow.’

‘But I haven’t.’

His eyes flared. ‘So, you’ve decided off your own bat that you don’t want the place? Oh, come on. Give me some credit. I’ve seen the way you’ve been around here – you love it. You kind of belong here, somehow. I mean, even that fucking goat behaves for you. And now, suddenly, you don’t want it? Yeah, right, there’s a man behind a decision like that, and I can only think of one who’d let you pass up on your own happiness for the sake of his.’

‘Listen, you arrogant, sexist shit, not every decision I make revolves around men. You’re so self-obsessed, what, you think I’ve got a brain that doesn’t work unless some guy’s swinging his dick at me?’

On adrenaline-fired legs, I wobbled off across the yard, attaining a decent march by the time I reached the paddock. Winnie gave me an ‘oh God, it’s you again’ stare and clambered into the far corner, from where she watched me turn up the lane and head towards the hill with my fists clenched and my jaw rigid. How dare he? Was that what he really thought of me, that I was so gullible and trusting that I’d get back with Luke, after everything he’d done? I power-walked up the track, not acknowledging the nettle stings peppering the backs of my legs, or the tiny flag-wavings of butterflies celebrating the thistle flowers. Bastard. Did he see me as some weak-willed, pathetic little woman, having to have a big, strong man at her side in order to feel vindicated? Even if that big, strong man was a double-dealing fraud? That even Luke was better than nothing?

Halfway up the hill my anger and I ran out of steam and I sat down on the sandy bank overlooking the farm. I couldn’t see Cal, no movement apart from the goat shuffling around her drinking trough and some bumblebees lazily torpedoing the gorse blossoms. Maybe he’d gone inside the barn and plugged himself in to his machines, called up the team and told them to stop their work on my behalf. Not needed any more. With that scared, tortured look back on his face, the look he’d lost come to think of it, since I’d told him I loved him.

And then, with the perfect clarity of hindsight and the additional focus of the microscope of guilt, I realised.

This wasn’t about me. It was about him.

Cal, with his fear of being rejected again. He’d let down his guard, let me in, showed me who he truly was. He’d told me things, trusted me, and I’d done the metaphorical equivalent of kneeing him in the nuts. He didn’t think Luke was better than nothing, he thought Luke was better than him! His worst nightmare had come true, he’d been living in dread of this moment, and I’d done nothing to reassure him. Cal wasn’t like Luke, wasn’t tough, uncompassionate. He was scared, fragile, damaged.

And here was me, bringing my flamethrower approach to relationships.

I got up, dusted down my backside and left the hillside, cantering down the slope and arriving in the yard with a kind of braced-knee sliding stop. I’d been wrong. Cal hadn’t gone into the barn. He was sitting on the edge of an old churn-stand, his weaker leg drawn up under his chin and his hair hiding his face. ‘Cal.’

He jumped. ‘Oh, yeah, you’ll be needing a lift back, won’t you?’

‘Um, no. Actually. I need to explain to you … stuff.’

‘There really isn’t any need. You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Willow.’

But now I knew what he was doing. Not pushing me away, not withdrawing, he was performing damage limitation.

‘Cal, listen. I didn’t get the council money, all right? That is why I can’t buy the farm. Nothing to do with anyone else.’ The quick hope on his face left me weak. ‘So, now you know. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s because I can’t.’

‘Oh.’ Cal wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. There was blood on it. It had been quite a goodbye kiss. ‘Oh, fuck. I’m sorry, Willow.’

I did a shrug very similar to his.

‘No, really. Oh, God. What have I done? I only wanted … look, I … shit.’ He lopsidedly jumped down from the stone platform and ran his hands through his hair. ‘What can I do to make it up to you?’

My smile started slow and I watched the answering fire spark in his eyes. ‘Are you kidding?’ My voice was slow, too. ‘That kiss was the most erotic thing I have ever had done to me.’

His mouth twitched. ‘You really had me going there, you cowbag.’

‘Well, you’ve got me going here, bastard.’

‘Then come into my tent and let me attend to you. I have scented unguents and liquors with which to pander to your every whim.’ He led me into the barn, one hand clamped around my wrist as though afraid I’d suddenly change my mind and run.

‘Why the hell would you want to panda to me? Don’t they sort of mate once every twenty years or something?’

‘Ah, but they know the value of foreplay.’

And with that, he proceeded to show me the value of foreplay, until I was drunk and drugged and intoxicated with it, and each time I threatened to crash he’d catch me up and lift me again until he finally whispered me into making love so completely that only the feel of the straw around me kept me earthbound.

We only realised how uninhibited we’d been when a distant and tinny round of applause broke out from the computer speakers and a voice said breathlessly, ‘Sandman, whatever it is you’re on, get me some.’

‘Shit, Fortune, you could have turned your headphones off,’ Cal said languidly, lying beside me with his fingers tracing my ribs.

‘What, and miss fifty quid’s worth of entertainment? You should webcam, man. You’d make a killing.’

‘Ha fucking ha.’ Leaning across me, Cal flipped the switch that sent the machine into deaf-blindness. ‘Sorry. Forgot to turn the boys off.’

‘I think quite the opposite was true.’

‘Hmm, yes. Look, Will, I’ve been thinking.’

‘What about?’ I pushed his hair off his face.

‘Well, I need a new car, that one’s on its last wheels, whether that new James Bond film is worth seeing, should I try that recipe for lamb tagine when I don’t have any couscous, you know, lots of stuff. Oh, and that I love you. And, instead of giving up on the idea of this place, why don’t we both move in here.’

‘What?’ I propped myself up on my elbows.

‘I don’t want to sell, but I can’t keep the place on because of the legwork, ha. You love it here. You could turn it into a going concern. I could drop the consultancy work and increase the, ahem, other stuff. What do you think? Between us, it shouldn’t be too much of a job making the place habitable. I’ll get a lift put in so that I can get all the way up to the attics, make some extra space that way.’

I looked at the rough, whitewashed walls of the barn and out of the doorway into the yard. Tiny plants had forced their way up between the cobbles and down between the stones of the walls and were now blooming in random spurts of yellow in unlikely sites all around the enclosed space. It looked like an explosion in a sun factory. I loved every last weed-infested inch of the place.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Of course, there’s a downside.’ Cal shook his shirt out and began putting it back on. ‘There’s the fact that you’ll be stuck with me, dragging myself around the place like a sexually obsessed Quasimodo.’

‘Quasimodo was sex obsessed.’

‘Was he? I thought he was just misunderstood and lonely.’

‘Yes, well, I used to think that about you.’

‘Ha. Fine, all right, dragging myself around exactly like Quasimodo.’

‘Except for the hump.’

‘Willow, will you please shut up? Thank you. Right, okay, so there’s me, and then there’s the winters up here.’

I gave a little shiver. ‘Mmm. Snowed in with nothing but a bottle of whisky, and staying in bed until the snowplough gets through, wasn’t it?’

‘Disadvantages rapidly turning into an upside, and there’s the goat.’

‘Just needs a firm hand.’

Cal groaned. ‘Oh, stop. But you know what I’m saying? It’ll be tough. And there may be winters so bad that you lose all the herbs.’

‘I’ll make things with them. Candles, soap, that sort of thing. When the herbs themselves are out of season. That way there’ll be back up.’

Cal looked impressed at my forward planning. He would have been even more impressed if he’d seen the pile of magazines in my room. Shut up, not the bridal ones. I suspect he would have made rude remarks about grown women dressed as toilet-roll covers if he’d seen those. I mean the rural-small-business ones, the start-your-own-smallholding ones, the North York Moors’ publications of rules, regulations and grants for new businesses within the National Park. Ever since the thought of buying this place had crossed my mind, I’d been researching.

I’m not stupid, you know.

Except, possibly, about violet-eyed, tight-trousered science graduates. Which really wasn’t my fault. Besides which, I wasn’t alone in that particular stupidity. Which reminded me.

‘How’s the planning going for next weekend?’

‘Mmm? Oh, not bad. Ratboy’s had a few bites. We’re taking it from there. You found a hotel yet?’

‘I’ve booked the honeymoon suite at the Bismarck in York. It’s absolutely fabulous. Katie came to look at it with me. There’s a whirlpool bath in the middle of the floor and this huge four-poster all done up in silver gilt. It looks like the Beckhams’ spare room.’

‘I find a perverted pleasure in hearing about the scene of your seduction of another man.’

‘You find a perverted pleasure in everything.’

‘True.’

‘Cal, look, I’ve still got around twenty grand left in the bank. We could make a start on getting this place fit to live in before the winter, couldn’t we?’

He gave a peculiar chuckling laugh. ‘Um. Willow. Have you been listening to me? I head up the best-selling anti-hack business in the world. Me and the boys, we save companies billions of dollars, not to say the world from nuclear meltdown and Doctor Who from the Daleks.’

‘So?’

‘Do you have any idea how much they pay me? On average? I know things that could bring whole continents to their knees, ways to bring down the yen, the pound, how to transfer the funds of multimillion corporations into a Swiss bank account with my number on it. Believe me, they pay to keep me sweet.’

‘But …’ I looked around me at the crumbling plaster and the spongy beams. ‘Why do you live in a flat in York instead of some gorgeous mansion? And drive such a horrible car? And surely you could afford someone to come and help keep this place up, someone you don’t mind knowing about what you do?’

Cal looked into my face, hooked my hair behind my ears. ‘Because, Willow, I don’t care. Didn’t care. When Hannah left me all the pleasure in it went fooof. The money was coming in and what could I do with it? I bought a flat with fewer stairs, but what’s the point of a mansion? Just more space to rattle round in. I like being in York. Love the place. And same with my car, you think this one is horrible, you should have seen the one I had before. After that, what was there to spend it on? And if I’d found someone on the strength of how much I earned, what kind of relationship would that be? Money is not important, Will. I’ve grown up without … well, you can see what I grew up with, can’t you? And Mary wouldn’t take any. I paid to re-fence the field down by the river, but she’d had her stroke by then and she couldn’t complain fast enough to stop me, so.’

‘So it never was about the money. Selling this place to me.’

‘No! I’d have given it to you, if I thought you’d take it. But if I had, how would you have run it, mmm? You would have had to carry on working at the paper for at least a couple of seasons just to fund your startup, and you’d probably have come to resent it, having to travel out here to dig and plant and stuff and then spend all week working to spend your weekends doing the same again, no. If you’d taken this place on your own, you would have come to hate it. But together …’

‘Big finish music, maestro.’

‘What?’

‘You’re starting to sound like a romance novel.’

‘Sorry. All right then. But together, we can spend all our spare time arguing over where to plant parsley. Better?’

‘There’s no point arguing with you. It’s like trying to juggle jelly.’

‘Ha. Come on. Let’s go and walk the acres and you can tell me about your plans. And don’t try telling me that you haven’t made any. I know what you’re like, Willow. You’ll have been drawing up little planting maps since the first time you saw the place.’

Maybe Ash had told him about the magazines.