Lorna knew he remembered because when the Osbornes reached them in the line, Sam had leaned forward to kiss her cheek, London-style, and he’d whispered, ‘Don’t shoot me this time, obviously.’ It had made her laugh on a day when she’d felt completely blank with grief. Only Sam could do that.
If only that had been the last time she’d met him. Lorna winced. It still made her cringe, thinking about it, so she pushed the memory away before it could start rolling out in her head.
A herd of cows crossing the road ahead made her slow down, and finally stop. They were fine-looking beasts, small and black with a thick white stripe down their bellies, like a football top. The man driving them across into the field opposite was assisted by a collie but they didn’t seem to need much intervention as they ambled over into the next field, tails swishing and flicking. Their peaceful expressions made Lorna feel irrationally envious.
She swivelled in her seat, already anticipating Rudy’s aggressive fear-response to the herd but he was sitting up, watching them with curiosity, not fear.
‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘So you’re fine with cows but not Labradors? Where is the logic in that?’
Rudy wagged his tail and farted happily.
‘Are you absolutely sure that the countryside is appropriate for that dog?’ Joyce Rothery gave Lorna a suspicious look from just around the doorframe. ‘I can see three pot holes from here in which you could quite easily lose the poor little bugger.’
At least they weren’t conducting the conversation through the letterbox this time. Joyce had opened the door far enough to pin Lorna to the doorstep with a look, while keeping Bernard, who was also peering round inquisitively, penned back with one leg.
From the way Bernard’s ears were vibrating, he seemed to be wagging his tail hard behind the door at the prospect of another trip out. Lorna hoped he was transmitting positive dog vibes to Rudy who didn’t look quite so keen. But so far, Border terriers seemed to be on Rudy’s short list of acceptable dogs. She had a small bag of cheese pieces to encourage positive associations, if necessary.
‘I can’t walk him in town,’ she said truthfully. ‘Rudy’s scared of pretty much everything. His first owner was an old lady with a terminal heart condition so she didn’t get out with him much. Rudy misses her, and the countryside’s very new to him – it’s set him back a bit.’
Joyce’s pursed lips relaxed slightly. ‘Poor chap. What a big change.’
‘We’re doing our best, aren’t we?’ Rudy looked up from under his smooth eyebrows. His coat had started to shine again, and Lorna hoped it wouldn’t rain. ‘Shall I take Bernard out then?’
Joyce seemed less sure about entrusting Bernard to Lorna than she had been a few days ago. ‘Whatever that interfering fusspot Keir might have told you,’ she said, ‘I am perfectly capable of walking my own dog.’
‘Of course you are.’ Lorna tried to sound positive and non-patronising. ‘But it’s best to give bruises a chance to heal. It would be a shame if Bernard was bouncing off the walls and got under your feet again. How are you feeling, by the way?’
‘Don’t start, please. I’m fine .’
Bored with the human chat, Bernard had spotted a blackbird in the hedge opposite, and lunged forward with a joyous bark, wriggling past Joyce’s leg. If Lorna hadn’t managed to get one fingertip under his collar, he’d have been across the road and away. She looked up, and Joyce was gripping the doorframe, shaken, and suddenly vulnerable, despite her proud attitude.
‘Let me run some of this energy off?’ Lorna suggested. ‘Do you have a lead? Or maybe a lasso?’
Joyce regarded her for a second, then said, ‘I’ll get it.’
She was gone a moment, during which time Bernard and Rudy sniffed each other in wide circles, and when Joyce returned, holding an extending lead designed for a much bigger dog, she said, with a cynical arch of her eyebrow, ‘It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? You running the gallery where I used to exhibit my paintings, and being Keir’s Cinnamon Trust volunteer.’
Ah ha! So Keir thought she was a Cinnamon Trust volunteer. Lorna knew what they did – walk dogs for older people – from her hospice work. Plus, Joyce had hopefully read the letter she’d sent. Two interesting facts.
‘Isn’t it?’ Lorna smiled; then she mentally warned herself not to tell any outright lies, just to make things easier. She pulled the draft programme she’d prepared out of her bag. ‘I thought you might like to read this – it’s about the programme of events I’m planning this spring to bring the Maiden Gallery right back into the heart of town life. Including the Art Week exhibitions? I thought we could—’
Joyce took the paper from her, and handed her the lead. ‘Don’t let Bernard get into any foxes’ you-know-what,’ she said, and closed the door.
With Rudy and Bernard racing ahead of her on leads like a small husky team, Lorna set off up the lane from Rooks Hall towards the public footpath.
Bernard seemed to know where he was going, and Lorna soon realised why Joyce had given her a lead suitable for a small horse: he had the pulling power of a dog ten times his size. After a tentative sniff or two of his new friend, Rudy kept up with more gusto than she’d expected, and she found herself lengthening her own stride to stay with the two dogs. When Bernard stormed down a gravelled siding, she and Rudy followed, and after a few hundred metres of high hedgerows, the path turned again and they were walking alongside a field, edged along the horizon with a perfect line of trees rising like harp strings against the pale blue sky.
This is beautiful, thought Lorna, struck with the cleanness of the light, and got her phone out to take a photograph. It was a chilly day, and she had to peel off one glove to touch the phone screen, then juggle both extending leads in one hand, while holding the glove. It was only a matter of time before a hard tug on one lead made her lose her balance.
Rudy’s sniffy circling and Bernard’s exuberant wandering had tangled up their leads and now Bernard was yanking Rudy around on his harness in a way that he clearly didn’t like. Bernard carried on bouncing, but Rudy’s ears flattened as a growl came from him. She’d never heard that .
‘Hey, hey, lads.’ Lorna shoved her phone back in her pocket. The leads had retracted now, leaving the tangle even harder to sort out. There was no alternative; she’d have to unclip them. ‘Don’t you two move while I do this, please …’
Even before the words had left her mouth, Bernard spotted movement in the field and he lunged at it, pulling Lorna’s fingers straight out of the loop on his collar. Without a backward glance, he was pelting across the pasture in hot pursuit of something … Lorna squinted: a brown rabbit. Even though he looked like a teddy bear with his funny stiff-legged gait, there was a murderous purpose about the way Bernard was fixed on the bunny, and Lorna’s heart sank. ‘Bernard!’ she howled.
The rabbit was quick, zigzagging from one side to another, but the Border terrier was determined and stir-crazy and had pest control in his blood. When the rabbit made a dash for the hedge, so did Bernard, and then both were out of sight.
‘Bernard! Come back here right now!’ she yelled, pointlessly, clipping Rudy on to his lead. She set off at a trot but she was no match for them, and after a few minutes of running and yelling Lorna came to a breathless stop at the place in the hedge where they’d vanished, put her hands on her hips and tried to work out what to do next.
The field looked empty, but it dipped and hollowed out near a small wood, so there could be sheep somewhere around. They clumped together, Lorna knew that, so it didn’t mean she mightn’t run into a whole flock of them any moment. She started walking briskly towards the wood. The rabbit had probably headed home, with Bernard in hot pursuit.
‘Bernard? Bernard!’ she called, and then stumbled in shock as a gunshot ripped across the still morning air. Then another. Then a third. She’d never heard a real gun before. It sounded harsher than on television, brutal and metallic.
Lorna froze where she was, and a hot acid rose up her thr
oat. She could smell the cordite. Something had died.
Two pheasants rattled up from the trees ahead, and a man strode out of the woodland, a shotgun on his shoulder. Lorna assumed he was a gamekeeper or a farmer from the dark green jacket and boots, and the furious expression.
‘Was that your dog?’ he yelled, jerking his thumb behind him. ‘Loose in the field?’
Was that?
‘No! I mean, yes – have you shot him?’ She felt sick. Oh my God. What was she going to tell Joyce? ‘You shot him? He was only chasing a rabbit!’
‘In a field of pregnant ewes? Yes, I bloody did shoot at him, you stupid bitch.’
Rudy was trembling by her feet and now he started barking fearfully as the man advanced on Lorna. She picked the little dog up and shoved him into her jacket for safety, feeling his panic blending with her own.
‘Where is he?’ Lorna’s legs trembled with adrenalin, but she made herself walk towards the man. ‘There aren’t any sheep in this field. You’re lying.’
‘So? He shouldn’t be loose.’ The man’s eyes were narrow, and a cold anger tightened his face. ‘It’s townie morons like you who cause thousands of pounds’ worth of damage to—’
‘It was an accident! He wasn’t off the lead on purpose, I’m not stupid .’ Lorna scanned the field, trying not to cry with shock. Poor Bernard – hyper and daft and sweet, he couldn’t be dead . ‘Where is he? You just shot him and left him to die?’
The man’s lip curled contemptuously.
‘Simon! Oi, Simon!’ The blart of an engine made them both turn round. ‘I’ve got him.’
Someone was coming up from the other side of the field, bouncing over the tuffets on a quad bike. The driver was steering with one hand, because the other hand was gripping the scruff of a very much alive Bernard. Relief flooded Lorna’s body, and she ran towards the bike.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she cried. ‘I’m walking him for someone and he got away from me, and I know it’s dangerous to let dogs off their lead …’
‘Yeah, yeah. You’re lucky – the sheep are in the upper field. This one nearly got himself stuck down a rabbit hole, though. Didn’t you?’ He gave him a shake, but Bernard wriggled round to try to lick him.
The quad-bike driver was younger than the other man – he had a beard but a thick, trendy one, and he was dressed in the padded gilet, checked shirt and jeans uniform of every Young Farmer Lorna had ever met, male or female. The only concession to the bitter wind was a navy trapper hat, rammed down over his dark hair, and when he pushed the brim back with a strong hand, revealing wind-reddened cheekbones above the beard, Lorna squinted in surprise.
A rush of recognition, orange and red-gold like lava, coursed through her, sending her centre a little off-balance, just as it always had done. That a face could feel so familiar, and so full of possibilities at the same time, as if she and he had known each other over and over in previous lives but not quite this one yet.
‘Ozzy?’ she said.
He pulled off his hat, and there he was. That specific arrangement of thick straight eyebrows over long-lashed brown eyes that had always struck Lorna as being the perfect balance between strong and pretty for a handsome man’s face. But now there was that distracting beard, and a roughness there hadn’t been before, and, in the second he recognised her, just a fleeting recoil that made her think that maybe he was feeling as awkward about this unexpected meeting as she was.
‘Sam,’ he said impatiently. ‘If you don’t mind, Lorna.’
The beard was a half-decent disguise but Lorna would have known it was Ozzy just from the way he walked over to her once he’d jumped off the quad bike. He was smaller and finer-featured than his older brother Gabriel, but he had a physical presence – not defiant, exactly, but definite. Sam was a man who occupied his own space like a boy standing on a wall, challenging anyone to knock him off it. Little Brother Syndrome, he’d once called it, and asked her if Little Sister Syndrome was the same.
Lorna had told him it wasn’t. She’d positively benefited from Jess’s make-up and wardrobe, although obviously Jess hadn’t always been aware of it at the time.
‘Hello, Sam ,’ she said, and for a moment, she nearly hugged him. Just in time she held out her hand. Then she pulled off her glove and reoffered her bare hand. There was formal, and there was formal between old friends. ‘Hello, there.’
He smiled, just, and when their skin touched Lorna felt the old warmth spread through her; she knew she wasn’t thinking straight from the shock Bernard had just given her, but she couldn’t recall any – any – of the witty things she’d planned to spit out, were she and Sam Osborne ever to meet again. Instead, her stupid mouth was smiling. Why? Why was she smiling when his mate had pretended to shoot Bernard? Why was she smiling when the last time they’d met, she’d promised herself that was the last time ever ?
Ozzy – Sam – scratched his beard and forced out a better smile. It was crooked, as if he was trying too hard to make it look natural. His hand was warm, and he held hers for a second too long before shaking it and letting go.
‘Remind me. What did we say about finding each other back here?’ he said.
Damn. She should have been quicker off the mark; she could have got in with that. ‘I could say the same.’ Lorna shaded her eyes against the sunshine. That was a good point … what was he doing here? With a beard? On a quad bike ? ‘I really am sorry about the dog. It was an accident; he slipped off.’
Bernard was looking annoyingly docile under Sam’s arm, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his shaggy face.
The man in the green jacket butted in, before the conversation could get going. He pointed his finger at Lorna. ‘Next time we see a dog in this field … bang.’ He made a gun-cocking gesture and stormed off towards the woods.
‘Yeah, OK, Simon, she’s got the message,’ called Sam, and turned back to Lorna with a shrug. ‘We’ve had a few dogs loose and it’s coming up to lambing. Simon’s had a run-in with a couple of owners already.’
‘You’re … working for him?’ Lorna hazarded.
‘No! He’s one of the farm managers.’
‘And you’re … managing property round here? Your boss bought a country estate?’
‘No. Are we playing Twenty Questions? You can just ask me.’
Rudy wriggled inside Lorna’s jacket, and she extracted him, setting him on the ground and making a big show of attaching him to his lead. ‘Why aren’t you in London, telling flaky people like me how to run their businesses?’
Nuts. She hadn’t meant to say that, and she certainly hadn’t meant it to sound so snippy. But out it had come, on a little gust of bitterness. The exact words.
‘Whoa.’ Sam stepped back, raising his hands. ‘I take it you’re not still in the urban art game?’
‘Nope,’ said Lorna. ‘That ship has sailed. Like the Titanic .’
He smiled, then looked uncomfortable.
‘You were right.’ Lorna forced herself to sound blasé. ‘If it makes you feel better. The overheads were ridiculous, and maybe I did make a few …’ Quite a lot. ‘… bad choices. But you live and learn. It was an … experience.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m a numbers man. That’s all. I wasn’t judging anything else …’
Bad idea to mix business and pleasure . The memory flared in Lorna’s mind like a bee sting. His tone, the flush, the awkwardness, the pure ugh of the whole thing.
They looked at each other, surrounded by fields and birds and open sky. It was so surreally different to the last time they’d met that Lorna made herself revisit that last conversation: then, they’d been surrounded by artisan gins, tattooed hipsters and loud music. She’d initiated the meeting, ostensibly to ask Sam’s advice about her business plan – a pop-up gallery for graffiti-inspired urban art in an East London arch – but also because she wanted to see him, as an adult, with her new adult confidence. His business advice had been blunt, but then … Lorna squirmed away from the emotions that oozed through the memories. She?
??d held it together until he’d left the restaurant, discreetly paying the bill on his way out, and she’d gone home determined to prove him wrong, even though in her heart of hearts, she suspected Sam knew what he was talking about. On every level.
‘If it makes you feel better,’ he said, ‘I’m not pleased to be right. Anyway, no need to keep guessing, I’m back here. It’s our farm,’ he added, jerking his head towards the hill when she looked confused. ‘Hello? How much of your early life have you blanked out? You don’t even remember where we live?’
‘No!’ Lorna looked in the direction and could just make out the tips of brick buildings on the horizon, a spire in an animal shape, probably a cow. ‘I never went to your farm.’
‘You did! You went to at least one ploughing match in our upper field.’
‘Was it your upper field? They all look the same to me. Are you confusing me with my big sister? She often pretended to be interested in ploughing matches.’
‘Nope,’ said Sam, deadpan. ‘I can honestly say I’ve never confused you with Jess.’
‘But why are you back? I’m assuming it’s just a holiday – if you’re really back then obviously hell has …’ Lorna stopped, the laugh stuck in her throat. Frozen over.
Maybe something hellish had happened. It would take a disaster to prise Sam’s Oyster card from his hands.
‘Hell has frozen over, were you going to say?’ He met her eye unflinchingly.
‘Yes.’ She faltered. ‘Yes, I guess so. I’m sorry, Sam, is everything all right?’
Sam held her gaze for a moment longer, then glanced down at his boots. ‘Dad’s not been well for a while. Gabe had taken over the farm, then the daft beggar got in the way of a baler last summer. He was in hospital for two months, told he wouldn’t be able to work full time again, so Dad phoned me. Basically, come back or he puts the farm up for sale. It’s been in the family for four generations so …’ His accent had slid back into the local patterns, Lorna noticed. Curvier and softer, but with a trace of apology, as if he knew she knew it wasn’t really how he spoke. Sam had never had as much of a local accent as Ryan or his brother, even before he moved to Fulham.