It wasn’t a question, and she was on the money. I put my head in my hands. “God, I fucking hate myself for making him feel that way.”
“I’d imagine there’s more to it, if he’s struggling with other things.”
“He probably wouldn’t tell me if he was. He’s so easygoing, Ma, but he doesn’t talk . . . he’s like, I don’t know, a perfect contradiction.”
Laura smiled. “All the best men are, dear. They’d be boring if you always knew what they were thinking.”
“What should I do?”
“Whatever feels right, and no one knows that but you.”
If only it were that easy. I drank the rest of my tea, only half listening to Laura talk about how her unconventional relationship with my father had made Belly Acre Farm the gossip of Porthkennack when I’d been born. I envied her, I truly did. She’d always been so sure of her path, so sure that her soul told her the truth—that no matter what, or who, crossed into her life, my father’s heart was hers.
On cue, my dad came in from the barn, paint splattered all over him, a crate of potatoes in his arms. “Okay, son?”
I nodded. I loved him dearly, but I couldn’t talk to him like I could Laura, and he respected that, trusting that I would come to him if I needed him.
I rarely did.
Still, his hand on my arm as he passed was comforting, though the smell of freshly dug potatoes reminded me that, in a fit of Kim-fuelled madness, I’d agreed to help Nicky at the imminent autumn country craft fair.Great.Kim’s workshop had a stall not far from ours. Whether he wanted to see me or not, he’d be spending most of that day staring right at me. Could I wait that long?
My heart said no.
My heart said no . . .
But Laura said yes. “He wasn’t home an hour ago, Jasper, and it won’t do you any harm to get a square meal in you before you go charging off.”
Stupidly, I let her force me to stay for dinner—a rowdy family meal that was only bearable by numbing my eardrums with a couple of glasses of my dad’s homemade wine. I was half-pissed before it belatedly occurred to me that my car was the only way I had of getting my sorry arse to the commune.
Shit.I stood in the yard, glaring at the car, the realisation that I was over the drink-drive limit sinking in, thick and fast. The knobhead in me wanted to blame Laura for making me stay, but she hadn’t passed me the wine—Gaz had, andhehadn’t forced me to drink it. Fuck no. That shit was all mine.
Gaz appeared at my side. “I’d drive you home myself, but I’ve had a skinful. Tell you what: you can borrow my old BMX if you like.”
He said it like it was the funniest thing in the world, and drifted back inside, his laughter ringing out in the quiet yard, but the idea had legs. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years, but as I dragged the cobweb-covered bicycle out of the shed and poked at the half-flat tyres, it didn’t seem to matter. You never forgot, right?
Wrong. Turned out wobble-cycling, fuelled by too much wine, wasn’t as much fun as I might’ve imagined if I’d been sober enough to imagine anything. And Blackbeard’s Junkyard was further away than I’d thought. My legs were like fragile new wheat fronds by the time it came into view.
I clumsily ditched the bike and scaled the wooden fence. No one seemed to be around, but there was soft acoustic music in the air, and the scent of gently spiced cooking. I followed the path to the orchard, sobering up with every step as the prospect of seeing Kim—in any context—warmed my bones, and my legs carried me to the door of his trailer of their own volition.
The door was ajar with a haze of heady incense smoke drifting out to greet me. I considered knocking, but something—likely my dad’s dodgy wine—gave me some brash courage.
I nudged the door all the way open.
I couldn’t say if I’d imagined that I’d find Kim alone, or if I’d expected him to be home at all, because my trip to the commune had passed in a blur of looming ditches and precarious peddling. And the scene I stumbled into didn’t shock me or even surprise me. Why would it, when I’d pictured it—or tried to—near enough every day since I’d met Kim?
Red noticed me first, from her position stretched out like a cat on the very rug Kim had fucked me on all those weeks ago. Her smile was softly dazzling, and she poked Kim, rousing him from his apparent fixation with the log burner.
He blinked. “Jas.”
“Hey.” I took a step forward, then stopped, the fact that Red was dressed only in Kim’s T-shirt finally sinking in. “Um . . . sorry, I don’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not.” Red held out her hand, beckoning me closer. “Kim was just showing me all the yummy jams and stuff your family have on their website. I think I’ll have to raid their stock before I go home.”
“When are you going home?”
I was genuinely curious, but my tone must’ve suggested otherwise, because Red let her hand drop and got gracefully to her feet, revealing that she was, actually, wearing shorts beneath Kim’s T-shirt. “I’ll be gone before you know it, sweetheart. I can leave right now, if you like.”
“Why would I like that?”
