I’d read up on Whisper Farm before I’d set off. Their simple website had them listed as a horse rescue charity, and for some reason I’d expected something... grander, maybe, than the ramshackle farm I’d seen so far. Animal rescue centres in London were slick operations—gift shops, fundraising booths, and marketing spiel on every corner. This place wasn’t like that. There was nothing to indicate that it was a rescue centre. In fact, I hadn’t seen a horse yet.
“Still awake?”
“Hmm?”
Joe was right in front of me. Again, his piercing gaze seemed to penetrate my soul. “I was saying that there’s a bathroom upstairs that you can consider yours. It’s attached to Grandpa’s—to your room, and no one else uses it.”
I didn’t miss his slip. Nor the fleeting grief that crossed his face. And when he showed me upstairs, I saw why. The room I’d be renting for the next ten weeks was spotlessly clean and exactly as it had appeared in the photographs, but there were touches that the lens had missed—the rocking chair by the window, and the old school tobacco pipe on the ledge.
This room had been his grandfather’s.
A stillness came over me as I deposited my bag on the bed. I didn’t know why it mattered that Joe had frozen in the doorway, but it did. Something had happened here—in this room—and it had hurt him. And now I was going to spend the whole summer rubbing it in his face. “I don’t have to take this room, you know,” I said. “I came for the peace and quiet, so if there’s a—”
“Something wrong with the room?”
“No. It’s lovely, I just...” Just what? Made an assumption about his emotional attachment to it and figured I could make it all better? “It’s fine. I just don’t want to get in anyone’s way.”
“You won’t,” Joe said shortly. “Emma and my mum live in the bungalow, and no one else lives on-site.”
“What about you?”
“I live downstairs.”
Unless I’d missed a whole separate wing of the house, there was nothing downstairs but the kitchen, a living room, and a tiny walk-in shower, but I let it go. For all I knew, Joe spent every night with a girlfriend up the road, and it was none of my business.
And I wasn’t even curious if that girlfriend existed.
* * *
Later that day, after I’d unpacked my bag and set up my laptop at the large desk in my room, I wandered downstairs to ask directions to the nearest supermarket. Stupidly, I’d forgotten to bring a box of groceries with me.
Sal was in the kitchen, fussing with something on the stove. “There’s a Morrisons up the road, but it’s closed now.”
“Closed? Ah, shit... it’s Sunday. Damn. I took Friday off work so I’m all out of sync. Are there any smaller shops nearby that I could grab some supplies from?”
“Depends what you need.” Sal heaved a huge pot of potatoes to the sink and drained them. “The Londis in Holywell does a few bits, but old Dora’s a pisshead. She doesn’t stay open much past five whatever day of the week it is.”
My stomach growled as it considered going to bed empty. Sal laughed and reached around me for a potato masher. “Daft boy. Eat with us. There’s plenty to go around.”
And there was. Sal put a giant pie on the table, with a mountain of mash and more peas than I’d ever seen. Gravy followed, and just when I thought she was done, a loaf of fresh bread appeared from the oven.
I expected a hoard of staff to roll in when she bellowed out of the back door that dinner was ready, but only four new faces pulled up chairs at the kitchen table: two teenage girls, Jemima and Lacey; an even younger boy called Toby; and an old geezer in his sixties who everyone, apparently, called Uncle George.
The two girls looked at me and giggled. Sal swatted them with a tea towel. “Ignore ’em. Boy crazy, those two.”
I’d been accused of the same when I was their age, so I spared them a grin as I took a seat between Lacey and Uncle George. “Hey. I’m Harry.”
“We know,” Lacey said. “We saw your blog.”
I cringed. “Oh god. Really?”
For all I had a six-figure following, it still surprised and unnerved me when my real life collided with the online mask. I rarely showed my face on my blog for the sake of my physiotherapy patients, but the rest of it was all me—my life, as I lived it. Sometimes I regretted splashing it all over the Internet, but then I’d remember that regrets cancelled out the lessons I’d learned from my mistakes.
Or something like that. Over the years, I’d learned that I was a better teacher than the mess in my head deserved.
I left Lacey and Jemima to their giggling and turned to Uncle George. “I’m Harry. Nice to meet you.”
“George.” The old man turned to face me and held out his hand. “None of this ‘uncle’ nonsense. Can’t think why this young lot harp on about it.”
