Page 143 of The Cottage at Brambleton Hall

Jimmy pushed his chair back slightly. ‘There’s no need to speak to Chloe like that.’

‘There is,’ Nate said. ‘Because no one else will.’

Standing in the kitchen doorway, Sammy willed Nate on. If he persuaded Chloe to go, that might improve her chances with Magnus.

Chloe laughed at something Jimmy said, sloshing wine into her glass – mostly. ‘It’s good you’re coming home Sam – it’ll be like old times again.’

‘I’m leaving,’ Nate said.

Sammy followed him. The air outside was cooler, the sea a low, constant rush beyond the houses.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked.

‘About what?’

‘All of it.’

Through the window Sammy watched Chloe gulping her wine, Jimmy reaching for another slice of pizza.

‘I can handle it.’

His gaze held steady, longer this time. Measuring. ‘They don’t fit here,’ he said.

Sammy folded her arms. ‘I can’t just send them away.’

‘Why not?’ The words were curt. This was it. Whatever there had been between them had moved out of reach. ‘Take care, Sam.’

Footsteps down the path.

Inside, Chloe called her name again – loud and cheerful.

Sammy waited until she heard the click of his door shutting.

Then she went back in.

Thirty-four

She didn’t stay in the cottage for long.

Shutting the door behind her, Sammy walked without choosing a direction.

At the bend, she stuck to the verge, her footsteps stamping down the grass, wishing she could crush her problems as easily. The evening stretched on, that long Devon light holding the sky open even as the sun dropped. Beyond the fields, the sea stretched out – a dark pewter tonight – the surface rippling gently. The path dipped under her feet, grass brushing her ankles – dry at the tips, still warm where it hadn’t yet lost the heat of the day.

She kept going.

The air tasted faintly of salt. Somewhere in the hedgerow a wren burst into song before falling silent. Further off, gulls cried, their voices carrying clean across the open land.

As she walked, the estate unfolded around her – the orchard to her right, straight rows of trees against the slope; they brought thoughts of Nate with his triploid and diploid apples – she swallowed away that memory. Beyond the trees the polytunnel where he’d nearly kissed her, the rose garden where he had, the ducklings close by, hunkered down in their shed.

She had been part of all that. And she no longer was – she would miss it. She picked up her pace then slowed down again as the path narrowed between hedges. Leaves brushed her arms, releasing a green, bitter scent. Her hand caught briefly on a thorn – a sharp sting that grounded her more than anything else had.

Magnus had been precise, as he always was – end of the month. But precise wasn’t the same as final. She turned that over in her mind. He had dismissed her, but he’d given her time. Time she must use.

One thing she was certain of – Magnus knew she could do the job; last Wednesday she’d been on the cusp of getting her key back, before he’d looked at Mr Wetherby’s photograph. And again, this morning, before the police arrived, she had been certain he would return it.

Magnus had told her he had made a mistake once. An error of judgment, he would have called it. The corner of her mouth lifted briefly. But whatever he called it, people who made mistakes made allowances for others doing the same. That gave her hope.

She stepped out from the hedge, the wind catching her, cooler now, driving her hair back from her face. The scent of wildflowers carried up from the verge, faint but sweet where her foot trampled them as she passed.