‘Help often comes with strings attached,’ Fran said. ‘If you help me I’ll be indebted to you. I won’t like that. And nor will Amy.’
Antony didn’t answer immediately. ‘I get that. I wouldn’t like that either if I was you, but I’m finding it really hard watching you struggle when I could help you so easily.’
‘We all have our crosses to bear.’ She smiled at him.
‘You’re not helping.’
‘Nor are you.’
‘I am at least trying to! More wine?’ He got up and came back with the bottle and put some in her glass. ‘I was going to do Dry January but now I’ve decided Dry February is better.’
‘Oh, me too! Only I might take the weekends off.’
‘Sowe’re not going to drink during the week for four weeks at most,’ said Antony. ‘Not very taxing.’
‘And less taxing for me. I haven’t got a cellar full of delicious wine to tempt me.’
‘I’ll leave bottles of it on your doorstep so we’re both tempted.’
She laughed. ‘I could save the bottles up until Friday night.’
‘We’re going off the point,’ said Antony, suddenly serious. ‘If I could think of a way you could pay me back for my help would you let me?’
‘What do you want to do to help?’
‘I want to have your track done.’
‘So, in your mind, when I sell the farm to you there’ll be one less job to do.’
‘True. I also want to help you have a building converted into somewhere you could make cheese that is hygienic, so you could sell it.’ He raised his eyebrow at her. ‘You can’t say I’d do that so I’d have somewhere to make cheese when I buy the farm.’
‘All right, but I expect a nicely done-up building would be useful for something.’
He sighed. ‘You are exasperating! If I did those things for you, you’d at least be in with a chance of making that farm profitable.’
‘I agree, and it would be really, really kind of you—’
‘Ipromise you I can afford it. I wouldn’t have to go without a single new car or foreign holiday or anything else people spend their money on.’
‘You could have your house remodelled?’
‘Well, I’m not going to. What do you say? Will you let me do that?’
‘Only if you can think of some way, or something – or many things – that I could do to pay you back.’
‘You won’t be able to pay me back financially, even if Amy has an undiscovered insurance policy lying in a drawer.’
As Fran was fairly sure Amy hadn’t got an undiscovered anything in that line, she nodded. ‘I accept that. So, what can I do? Or do you need time to think about it?’
‘Actually, I think I know. Have you finished eating?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Come with me for a minute. We’ll have some cheese with the rest of the wine later, if you can face it, of course. But I think you could be the one to solve a problem I’ve had for months.’
She followed him through the kitchen (massive, not her taste at all) into an equally vast integral garage. ‘Here,’ he said, gesturing to a vast chest freezer.
‘What about it? It doesn’t look problematic to me.’
