‘I’m sure I will.’
‘I wish you’d come in and rescued us.’
‘I thought about it. But Beth said it would only get Ambrose’s back up more. And I didn’t want to see you for the first time with him there.’
‘No,’ Iris agreed, realising, now he’d said it, that she wouldn’t have wanted that either.
It struck her how glad she was that they hadn’t had any audience at all.
‘Beth told me you should be done with Ambrose by eleven,’ Robbie went on, ‘so I went back then, but you were still in there.’
‘He didn’t let us out until twelve.’
‘I went back again just after, but you were already gone.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘It was extremely frustrating.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I went looking for you … ’
‘I was desperate for the loo.’
‘Well, I didn’t go looking for you there. But I tried everywhere else.’
‘I looked for you everywhere too,’ she said. ‘I met Jacob … ’
‘That must have cheered you up.’
‘He introduced me to Piper.’
‘I think he might be making her depressed.’
‘Then I gave up and came here.’
‘Snap,’ he said. ‘I come here most days, actually. It’s felt very quiet, until now.’
‘How long have you been back?’ she asked, at once saddened by the idea of his lone visits, and moved, beyond words, that he’d kept coming.
‘Five weeks,’ he said. ‘We were one of the first crews to arrive.’
‘Have you been into Heaton?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your house? Father Bannister told me it’s been turned into a pub.’
‘The Heaton Arms,’ he said. ‘And yes, I’ve been. I couldn’t avoid it. Everyone goes.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Better with beer.’
‘I’m dreading going back,’ she confessed. ‘It’s been so long.’ She looked into the fire, thinking of her old cottage.
‘It hasn’t changed,’ he said, reading her mind.
He’d always been good at that.
‘Does anyone live there?’ she asked.
