Page 35

Danni sat down on the small bench, and after a moment, Eleanor joined her. They sat in silence as the rain poured down outside, clattering on the tiled roof. It was a long time before Danni said anything.

“It’s not that I don’t want to maintain the Land Rover,” she said quietly. “It’s that when money comes in, it’s alwaysearmarked for something else already.”

Eleanor nodded quietly.

And Danni, who usually avoided feelings like the plague, accidentally had one. The stray thought of money and debt and all the rest of it hit her like a stone.

“I can’t lose the farm.”

Eleanor, surprised, turned to look at her.

Danni swallowed. “I don’t… I don’t have anything else.” She closed her eyes. “And I know that there’s Hector and Home Farm, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t have anything else that’s me. That’s mine.”

Eleanor hesitated, then, very, very carefully, said, “I don’t know who I am without my home either.”

Opening her eyes, Danni looked at her, saw the raw honesty on her face, and, without thinking, lifted her arm and placed it around Eleanor’s shoulders.

And Eleanor, to her credit, didn’t slap her.

She actually leaned into the warmth.

For all of a second.

Then, far too quickly, she straightened up, moving so that Danni’s arm dropped back to her side, and cleared her throat. She peered out into the brightening day. “Looks like the rain’s calming down. We should probably get back.”

Danni, a little shocked by what she’d just done, nodded. “Yeah, yeah, right. We’ll start walking. I’ll, um, I'll get Tommy to come and have a look at the Land Rover when he’s finished at the fête, if he’s in any fit state, that is.”

“No need,” said Eleanor. She pulled out her phone and started to walk.

Danni trotted after her, curiosity turning to irritation, and then outright anger as Eleanor talked to the AA agent and arranged to have the Land Rover towed and serviced as well as a rental car provided.

When Eleanor hung up, Danni stopped dead in the middle of the lane.

“What?” Eleanor asked, turning around to look at her.

Danni just stared at her.

“What?” asked Eleanor again.

“Why the fuck didn’t you do that in the first place?”

Eleanor arched an eyebrow. “I assumed that you’d want to fix the car yourself. Or you’d call your own tow service.”

Danni groaned. “You are unbelievable, do you know that?”

“I’m unbelievable?” asked Eleanor. “You’re the one without a break-down service. It really should be considered part of the cost of owning a vehicle. You do have insurance, don’t you?”

“Of course I have insurance. It’s illegal not to have insurance,” said Danni.

“I’m only asking, it wouldn’t have surprised me,” Eleanor said.

“It wouldn’t have surprised you that I was breaking the law?” asked Danni. “Now, why does that not surpriseme?”

And they bickered the entire way back to the farmhouse, wet and sodden as they were.

Yet something seemed to have changed, Danni couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was like the bickering wasn’t as intense, wasn’t as meaningful as before. And her arm felt all tingly from where she’d put it around Eleanor.

Chapter Sixteen