Page 48 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

Need and bravado gathered in her stomach. ‘Where are you going?’

He stopped. ‘I’ve got stuff to finish in the workshop.’

‘Would that stuff involve operating power tools?’

His lips quirked. ‘Perhaps.’

The mellow heat in her belly got jittery. Art was definitely less of a wanker when he smiled.

‘Then I’m afraid, I’ll have to object,’ she said. ‘I am in no condition to drive you back to A and E tonight.’ Pulling the chair out beside her, she slapped the seat. ‘Join me. You’ve had too much to be sober and not enough to be drunk. I think we should remedy that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m half pissed already. And it’s always a bad idea to do that without company.’

He settled in the seat beside her and she absorbed the stroke to her ego. Then she popped the stopper on the gin bottle.

‘Fair warning, you should watch yourself with that stuff,’ he said, as she poured. ‘The hangovers are brutal.’

‘I’ll risk it, if you will.’ She lifted the bottle, charmed that he might actually care about the state of her head in the morning.

He nodded and she poured them both another shot.

‘How about we stop when we’re cross-eyed,’ she said. ‘Or we’ve told each other all our most embarrassing secrets. Whichever is the quicker?’ She blinked. ‘Then again, you have a head start, because most of mine involve you.’

He laughed, the sound gruff enough to be rusty.

They drank in silence – the endorphins firing through her body didn’t exactly make it companionable silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Much.

As Art drank without speaking, it occurred to her he never felt the need to fill the silence, like most people. Was that what made him such an enigma? Or was it just the ten-foot high wall with barbed wire fencing he erected around his emotions?

Ellie slopped some more gin into her glass. Why not take a pop at the Berlin Wall? Now they were actually playing nice.

‘Did you ever wonder,’ she asked, ‘how we both ended up with mums that were lesbians?’

‘No.’

The one syllable answer did not deter her. Drawing Art out was going to require perseverance, but he was dealing with an admin ninja who could talk the notoriously cautious Mr Hegley into a fifty grand bank loan. Plus, they had all night. Or at least until 5 a.m., when Dee would come down to start mixing up her first batch of dough for the loaves she sold at the farmers’ market in Gillingham every other Saturday morning. Art didn’t know it yet, but he didn’t stand a chance.

‘Is that because your mum turned out to be a faker?’ she said.

‘She wasn’t a faker.’ Art’s work-roughened hand picked up the bottle and tipped it into his own glass. He squinted at her, and she wondered if he were short-sighted. Or drunker than he looked. And if he knew how that intense, penetrating look had always made butterflies flutter around in her stomach?

‘Living with my old man would turn any woman into a lesbian,’ he added.

‘You

had a father?’ The words popped out, propelled by the complete lack of inhibition caused by the floaty buzz of the gin.

His lids lowered. ‘Of course. Did you think I was an immaculate conception?’

‘No, I thought you were a sperm bank conception.’

Art coughed, spraying gin across the table. She slapped him on the back, feeling the tensing muscles under his T-shirt. He drew a steady breath. Took another gulp of his gin. ‘I wish. He might have been a medical student then, instead of an arsehole.’

‘How was he an arsehole?’ she asked. Had she hit the jackpot already? Was Art actually going to talk about himself?

He stared into his glass. ‘He drank too much. He hit her. He hit me. Usual arsehole behaviour.’