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‘Last time was this spring just gone,’ he mused. ‘In April. Then it was really flooded. This poor woman got her wee yellow car stuck in the middle of it and everything?—’

‘Sorry, Roddy, but could you—’ Bex cut herself short. ‘I’m sorry. Did you say it was a yellow car that got stuck?’

‘Yeah, one of those wee things. Three doors. No room to swing a cat. Probably better in a city than somewhere like here, but?—’

‘Do you have a photo?’ Bex asked. Her pulse was rising, as if it was trying to tell her this was more than just a coincidence.

‘Sorry?’ Roddy said.

‘A photo of the car,’ she repeated. ‘Do you have one?’

His nose scrunched a little.

‘I could probably find one online. One sec.’

A minute later, after several taps and sweeps on his screen, Roddy handed Bex his phone to look at. Every muscle in her jaw tensed.

‘Lorna,’ she growled before picking up her phone.

58

‘I know what you’ve done,’ Bex said as soon as Lorna picked up the phone.

‘Bex, are you still here?’ Lorna’s voice had a cheery tone, yet Bex heard the nervousness rolling behind her words.

‘Yes, I’m still here. Even though I could have left last night because the ford wasn’t flooded at all. Did you do the tyre too? You know that’s vandalism.’

‘So you are still here?’

It was a good job they were having a telephone call, because if they had been talking face to face, Bex was pretty sure she would be ringing her neck.

‘I’ll take it from your lack of response that you are the reason my back tyre is flat? Just like you’re the reason Niall told me that the road was flooded so that I couldn’t get out? Did you arrange the sheep too, so my car couldn’t get out the village?’

‘Of course I didn’t. That was pure luck. Incredibly well timed, I have to say.’

Bex let out a wail of annoyance.

‘Oh my God, Lorna – why would you not just let me leave? You’re supposed to be my friend.’

‘I am your friend, I absolutely am,’ Lorna said, her voice sounding choked. ‘Which is exactly why I couldn’t let you leave until you’d spoken to Duncan. I’m sorry, it was wrong of me, but please… I spoke to him last night, just before I let the air out of your tyre and I promised I wouldn’t say anything to you, but I know he’s going to be back soon, and I know you two are perfect for each other. You’ve just got to talk this through, please.’

Bex was seething. She had heard all about village mentality and the way people living in small communities like this would feel they had the right to stick their noses into everyone else’s business, even when they definitely didn’t. But she was not a village person, and she was less than impressed with being manipulated. Especially by someone who had proclaimed to be her friend.

‘Let me make this perfectly clear,’ Bex said, aware that her voice was raised a good few decibels above what was considered polite. ‘I don’t want to speak to Duncan. I have nothing to say to him. Whatever happened between us was obviously one colossal mistake, as has been proven by everything that’s happened since. Duncan and I are nothing. We will never be anything and my life would be perfectly okay if I never have to set eyes on Duncan again.’

‘That’s a shame.’

The sound of the voice behind her was enough to make her stomach flip and her heart somersault, and in that instant, as the air quivered in her lungs, she knew that everything she had just said to Lorna was untrue. She had wanted to see Duncan again, so much it made her body ache. That was why she didn’t look up the ford herself, or ask anyone else at the pub about it. That was why she had drunk so much the night before, so that she could block the image of him with his hands touching her out of her mind. She wanted to hold him and kiss him and never let anything get between them.

But that couldn’t happen now, could it?

She hadn’t thought so, and yet as her legs trembled and she turned slowly around, she knew exactly who she was going to find there.

‘Hey, Barker. I heard you were planning on leaving,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure I can let you do that.’

59

He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. There were bags under his eyes, and his cheeks were sunken in, and yet it was his gaze that held her completely. Those blue-green eyes that she had first laid eyes on all those weeks ago in her bathroom. Only they hadn’t looked at her then like they were looking at her now.