Mary and Clive tossed their heads, snorting like dragons and rolling their eyes, while Scotch and Haggis cantered away over the rough grass. ‘Alvin,’ Mats reproved. ‘That’s not nice behaviour.’
He swung the little boy down to solid ground. Though the reproof had been mild and his descent to earth gentle, Alvin burst into tears. ‘I want to see Mam-ma,’ he sobbed, reverting to Swedish in his upset.
‘So do I,’ declared Astrid, looking suddenly unhappy.
Mats crouched down to encircle both children in his arms. ‘You’ve just seen Mamma. You talked for ages.’
Astrid’s lips trembled. She looked a lot like Inger when she did that. ‘We want to see proper Mamma. Real Mamma. Not on the iPad.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Mats hugged them harder. ‘We can try to talk to her again on my phone, if you want.’ But the children only knuckled their eyes and sniffed, looking small and vulnerable in the magnificent landscape of grass and rock, sea and trees.
‘Playthings, then,’ Mats said, swinging Alvin back up onto his shoulders. ‘I’ll bet we have them all to ourselves.’
Astrid looked up through the dirty circles that had appeared from rubbing her eyes with grubby hands. ‘What kind of playthings?’
‘Wait and see,’ he said mysteriously, and led the way, chattering about how tall the pine trees were and that the formal bit of garden was called a knot garden, which Farmor liked, then past the bare twigs that graced the walled garden, and there it was – a playground made of wood, which would swarm with visitors in summer but was now still and empty.
‘Swings,’ Astrid cried, dropping his hand and beginning to run.
‘And me,’ Alvin shrieked urgently, kicking against Mats’ chest as if he was urging on one of the ponies.
‘Ouch.’ Mats laughed, swinging him down to the damp ground. ‘Let’s go see that wooden fort.’
Astrid, hearing this, changed course for the fort. ‘We can be soldiers.’
The log fort was so substantial that even Mats clambered up onto it, as there was no one to see him ignore the signs that said the apparatus was for under-fourteens. He could only take two strides before making an about-turn, but Astrid, bossier than any drill sergeant he’d encountered when on compulsory basic training in Sweden, gave him so many contradictory orders it was easiest to march on the spot. Hair blowing crazily in his eyes, he shouldered an imaginary rifle and marched with a jerky gait to make the children giggle.
And then Alvin shouted, ‘Hallå!Hello!’
Mats spun around to see Ezz with a member of staff he knew to be the head gardener and Ezzie’s sister, and his buffoonery faltered.
‘Hello,’ both women called back, wearing polite smiles. Thea was buried in an enormous fleece, cargo trousers and work boots. Most of her dark hair was covered by a green woolly hat. Ezz was wrapped in a stylish blackcoat with twin rows of buttons and her blonde hair flew around her head.
Mats felt like a prize fool but prepared to style it out. ‘Um, hello.’
‘We been to see horsies,’ crowed Alvin, his tears of a few minutes ago forgotten.
‘Aren’t they fab?’ Ezzie answered. ‘This is my sister, Thea. She’s one of the people who feeds the ponies and the donkey in winter.’
‘Yoursister?’ the children chorused in tones of disbelief, as if adults couldn’t possibly have siblings.
Astrid turned inquisitor. ‘Do you live in the same house? Or do you live here at the hall?’
‘Different houses, but the same village,’ Ezz answered gravely.
‘What village?’ she demanded.
‘Rothach village,’ Thea said. ‘It has a beach.’
‘Quite a rocky beach,’ Ezz chimed in. ‘The sand isn’t great for sandcastles. Our nephew likes the rock pools though. Enjoy the playground,’ she added to the children – presumably – and then they said goodbye and hurried away towards the hall, Ezzie’s smart black ankle boots tapping on the path.
A few drops of rain blew suddenly against Mats’ face and automatically he turned to the children to pull up their hoods. ‘Time for hot chocolate, I think.’ He felt oddly deflated that Thea and Ezzie hadn’t lingered to chat but sped away as if he’d offended them.
Abruptly, he remembered inadvertently leaving Ezzie to climb on a stool to empty the luggage box when they’d arrived from the airport and he glanced after her. He’d meant to apologise for that but had forgotten when he’d asked her to take Josefin out and for a split secondshe’d looked appalled, before her usual courteous mask had slipped back in place.
The appalled look had made him curious. He was sure it had been a glimpse beneath the bland, professional mask Ezzie Wynter habitually wore, a clue to the inner life of the pretty, composed woman.
Yet he hadn’t understood that look at all.
