Joe studied me, his eyebrows back in their rightful place. “You look hungry.”
Even though we’d spent the majority of the last five minutes bickering about food, it was the last thing I expected him to say. “What?”
“Stop saying what. You’re making me feel like I’m jabbering nonsense like my grandparents did.” Joe released my wrist. “Just come home and have your lunch, will you? Ma’s starting to think she can’t cook, and that shit ain’t right.”
He got in the van and drove away. It seemed like he’d left in slow motion, but when I looked up from checking my arm for finger-shaped sear marks, it felt like I’d blinked and come awake to find myself in the strangest of places.
I started running again, instinct drawing me in the general direction of the farm. I’d intended to find a robust tree to use as a chin-up bar on my way back, but I got sucked into the hypnotic rhythm of my feet slapping the ground and was at the farm gate before I knew it.
It was too early for whatever Joe had planned for lunch, so I dodged the kitchen and found some trees by the donkey paddock. One of the donkeys—Reggie, I think—wandered over to stare at me while I completed six-dozen reps of chin-ups. My biceps were burning by the time I’d finished, and hunger rumbled in my gut. I’d learned not to ignore it in recent years, but I didn’t fancy facing Joe again just yet. His moods—and mine—were giving me whiplash.
Lacking any brighter ideas, I shinned up the tree and picked an apple. I dropped out of the branches to find Toby waiting for me, apparently unconcerned with the houseguest climbing the trees. “Joe wants you.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Just said to fetch you in.”
Brilliant. I trailed Toby to the house, cringing when he veered off in the yard and ducked into the feed store, leaving me to face Joe alone.
With a sigh, I went inside. Joe was in the kitchen, hacking up sausages at the table, an unlit cigarette dangling between his pillowy lips. “You rang?” I said.
“Your mum did, actually. She stayed on the line for a bit, but you took the scenic route to get here from monkeying around in the trees.”
The fact that he’d been watching made me warm all over, almost eclipsing the guilt at pushing my mum’s weekly email to the bottom of my to-do list. “Was she okay?”
“Aye. Seemed to be. I did check that it wasn’t urgent, and I told her that your phone was probably dipping in and out of service. She said to check your email, eat your greens, and call her back when you can.”
Joe kept his eyes on his sausages. Anyone else, I’d have pondered if they were taking the piss, but if there was one thing I knew about Joe, it was that he was an even bigger mummy’s boy than I had once been.
“Thanks,” I said. “My phone is playing up, and I keep forgetting to email her. I gave her the farm number for emergencies. Hope that’s okay.”
“’Course it is. Living here, aren’t you?”
“I s’pose.”
Joe leaned back in his chair and retrieved a net of onions from the vegetable rack behind him. “You’re lucky my ma didn’t take that call. If she found out you’d been blanking your old dear, she’d have your guts for garters.”
“I haven’t heard that saying in years.”
“What saying?”
“Guts for garters. My nan used to say it.”
“Yeah, well. We all talk like old women down here. Ain’t got no slick city speak going on.” Joe started chopping his mountain of onions and chucking them in a huge pan. “But feel free to use the farm phone to call your mum anytime. I can’t promise it won’t get cut off, but feel free all the same.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I went with not, as every dinnertime seemed to be taken up by him and Emma squabbling about money. “Thanks. What are you making? Do you need a hand?”
“You want to help cook something you have no intention of eating?”
“I never said I wouldn’t eat it.”
Joe threw more onions in the pan. “Fair enough. Stick them bangers on the stove then.”
I swallowed a poor attempt at humour and took the plate of hacked up sausages to the stove. A frying pan was waiting on the burner. “Is this for the sausages?”
“Yup. Fry them off, then I’ll stick them in here.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fried anything, and Sal’s bemusement on the morning she’d caught me poaching my eggs flashed into my mind.“What are you drowning them poor eggs for?”
