‘You here again?’  Viv clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes as if displeased. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you was stalkin’ me.’

‘Did you want to be stalked?’ Daniel asks, leaning on the bar and grinning lasciviously at her.

‘Not bleedin’ likely! I got enough with the silly buggers in ‘ere. Pint, darlin?’

‘Please...’ he taps a pump and straightens to unzip a pocket in his jacket and take out his wallet. ‘And stick me down for the carvery on Sunday, will you. Two..me and Cyn.’

‘You coming down again? There’s no getting rid of you is there?’ she says, reaching to the shelf above her head for a glass.

‘Not now there won’t be.’

‘How come?’ Viv responds to his satisfied grin with a fixed smile and a sideways flick of her eyes away from the pump and towards him.

‘I’m back at Pennywell. Long term let until Helen gives in and sells it to me.’

‘Gives in?’ her lips vibrate with a snort of derision. ‘You’ll have a bleedin' long wait. She ain’t the sort to give in. She might decide but she won’t give in.’

‘Decide, then,’ he shrugs. ‘What’s the difference?’

‘Stubbornness, mate. Something us women have to have to stop the likes of you steamrolling us into something we don’t want to do.’ She tilts her head and studiously watches the froth on the beer rise up his glass.

Daniel lifts his eyes from his wallet and stares until, sensing the change in his mood, she looks at him.  ‘Is this getting personal?’ he asks sullenly.

‘Of course it ain’t, sweetheart.’ Viv laughs, setting his pint down on the bar towel and wiping her damp hands on the back of her skirt before plucking the ten pound note from his fingers. ‘And we said we wouldn’t go there again, didn’t we?’ Her wink is more in admonition than any playfulness.

‘That’s what I thought.’ He takes his first mouthful and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘Nah..Helen’s more strong than stubborn.’ Viv rings the sale into the till and returns to him with his change. ‘She don’t need nobody fightin’ ‘er corner,’ she says, laying the five pound note onto his waiting palm and dropping the coins on top. ‘She’s got ‘er ‘ead screwed on good ‘n proper, so you needn’t go thinking she’s going to roll over and let you have what you want without weighing everything up first. She’s nobody’s blinkin’ fool. That cottage is a little goldmine. She’d be daft t’sell it.’

‘Something tells me you don’t want me sticking around.’

‘I never said that. It ain’t nothin’ to me if you’re ‘ere or not,’

‘Thanks,’ he says huffily.

‘Look, sweetheart,’ she rests her elbows on the bar and leans forward. ‘Friends is friends wherever they are. You don’t have to live in each other’s pockets to be mates; you just pick up where you left off.’

‘Really?’ Daniel purrs the word and lifts one eyebrow, leering over the rim of his glass.

‘That’s enough a that!’ Viv pushes herself backwards and stands straight. ‘I’d hug me granddad goodnight if he were still alive,’ she says, pointing at him and wagging her finger. ‘So don’t you go reading anythin’ into it that weren’t there.’

His second eyebrow rises to the level of the first and his eyes widen. ‘If you hugged your granddad like that, there must have been some very funny goings on in your family.’

‘I’d had a few brandies, alright?’

‘Yeah...’ Daniel gives a low chuckle and winks. ‘Only kidding.’ He takes another drink while Viv casts an eye over the bar staff, checking that no one is waiting to be served. ‘You fancy a meal out one night?’

‘Eh?’

‘Meal, me and you?’ he repeats, having got her attention again.

‘Nah, you’re okay. Thanks all the same.’

‘No strings, Viv, honest.’

‘After what you said? I ain't so much green as cabbage looking, mate,’ she raps the bar with the tip of her index finger. ‘I know your game.’

‘You’re good for me. What’s wrong with wanting to spend some time with you away from here so we can talk properly, have a chat without being interrupted?’

‘We can do that sitting on the bloomin’ Green!’

‘If that’s what you’d rather do,’ he agrees amiably.

‘Rather that than smell another bleedin’ pub chip!’

‘I was thinking somewhere a bit better than a pub.’ Daniel manages to look affronted but ultimately the twinkle in his eye lets him down. ‘Somewhere they do pommes frites.’

‘You muppet!’ Viv laughs and seeing the barman signalling for help, starts to walks away.

Daniel grabs her trailing hand. ‘When’s your night off?’

‘Depends..’

‘Tomorrow it is then. Get your glad rags on and I’ll pick you up about eight.’ He drains his glass and sets it down with a thump.

‘But...I’m not sure I....’ Viv stares after him when he walks away.

Daniel stands holding the door open and turns to issue what amounts to an order, despite the grin. ‘Eight o’clock!’

He lets the door close behind him.

The White Horse

Chapter Forty-six

Fox Hollow, Upper Milliwick

‘He doesn’t have that...smell...you know...slightly damp and mildewy.’ Helen transfers the bundle of clean tea towels from under her arm into the drawer beside the sink unit and opens the one below to stow handtowels. ‘I’m not saying all homeless people are unwashed,’ she says, pushing the drawer closed. ‘But their clothes seem to have a peculiar whiff...not that Wyndham’s homeless, not in the same way.’

‘I think you summed him up well when you called him a neat and tidy nomad...I mean,’ Kester leans against the worktop with his arms folded. ‘Look at him now; he could be me or you camping out.’

Standing beside him, she watches Wyndham at the far end of the garden sitting on an upturned box while he cooks his supper over a small fire.  ‘I’m glad you persuaded him into the barn. It’s not exactly warm out there even though where he was in the woods was more sheltered from the wind.’

‘I think it was more about keeping his few possessions safe than anything else. He’s used to dunking himself in rivers and such like right through the winter.’

‘Which reminds me,’ she lays a hand on Kester’s arm. ‘Message from Steph via Nathan: can we please keep an eye on his chest?’ Drawing a breath through her nose, she grimaces. ‘I can see why he’s got a touch of bronchitis if he strips off for a swim in freezing cold water instead of showering at one of the night shelters.’

‘He doesn’t like either, so I’ve found out. That’s why Nathan took him for a bath at his place. He’s not keen on night shelters, although there’s one or two he’s happy to use, because they’re otherwise full of thieving toe-rags who wouldn’t turn their hand to a day’s work if their life depended on it.’

‘Is that what he said?’

Kester turns from the window. ‘More or less.’

‘He could have a bath occasionally, couldn’t he?’

‘Here?’

‘Well, I wasn’t about to drive him to Nathan’s.’ Helen retorts, finding Kester’s reply irksome.

‘He might not want to.’ He softens his tone as he gazes out of the window again. ‘I don’t think we should crowd him. They choose not to live in houses for a reason, these people.’

‘He’s not a ‘these people’, he’s Wyndham and whatever his reasons were for taking to the road, I think he would be more likely to politely decline than get in a huff and move off.’ She pulls the used tea towel and handtowel from the rail and replaces them with the clean ones she had kept to one side. ’Stephanie said he’d got to be where the foxes were and he seems happy that this is where he was meant to be.’

‘I’ll mention it to him but he seems okay with the downstairs shower even though he’s not keen. That’s another thing...’ he says, moving back to the table in the centre of the room and sitting down. ‘I’m not going to be up at half past six every morning to let him in either, so I’ll point that out as well.’

Helen opens the door to the utility room, tosses the towels on top of the washing machine and closes it again. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she gives him a withering look. ‘I think he’s probably just as aware of a working week as you are. If you hadn’t noticed already, he doesn’t come up the garden until he sees a light on, he’s not exactly waiting outside with his towel under his arm.’

‘And when the summer comes?’ Kester’s newspaper rustles.

‘He won’t be here when the summer comes, he’d have moved on by then.’ She sinks wearily onto a chair.

He leans across the table to lay his hand on top of hers. ‘Are you sure you want him having a bath in here?’

‘Clearly you’re not,’ Helen draws her hand away, making pretence of needing to pick a thread from her sweater. ‘Honestly, Kester, why can’t you say what you mean? You don’t want him in the house.’

‘I’m not saying that at all.’ He repudiates, matching her annoyance with irritation. ‘But he’s a complete stranger!’

‘I trust him completely if you’re worried about him pocketing anything and as far as him bathing is concerned, I wish you left the shower room as clean and tidy. There’s not a hair or a whisker anywhere and he scours the lot when he’s finished. The only way I know he’s been in there is that he’s shiny clean and his towel, ragged that it might be, hangs on the line he’s put up in the barn to dry.’

‘You’ve been in the barn with him?’ Kester is both incredulous and alarmed.

‘Oh, for goodness sake! He wouldn’t hurt a fly! Not IN the barn but I have been down to see how he’s getting on. Which, I have to say, is a lot easier now there’s a path to follow and I’m not likely to get snagged on brambles. He’s worked wonders already and there’s a mass of bulbs coming up that we didn’t know about. That’s what we would have missed if Nathan had grubbed the whole lot up with a JCB.’

‘There’s months of work out there.’

‘So a bath or two isn’t unreasonable if he refuses to take money, is it?’ Helen says glibly.

‘I guess not.’ Kester sighs, reluctantly acquiescent. ‘He will damp that fire down when he’s finished, won’t he?’

‘Not the bonfire, I expect that will keep going as long as he’s here. And I’m sure he knows what to do with his little camp fire.’ She gets up and crosses to the window to look out on the garden again. ‘I might just wander down for another cup of tea.’

‘Another cup of tea?’

Helen turns and clasps her hands together. ‘We had one this morning and it was wonderful, all smoky and thick, with a ton of sugar in. I provided the biscuits and we sat there listening to the birds. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as peaceful as I did then.’

‘You don’t even take sugar.’

‘It was a different drink entirely to what you and I are used to. Come on...’ she grins and waves in the direction of his bare feet while she pulls on one of the wellington boots standing by the back door. ‘Get your shoes on...and you’d better take a mug.’ She hops to the wall cupboard and unhooks one from underneath. ‘I think he’s only got two.’

Infected by her enthusiasm, his concerns are forgotten and he grins. ‘If I take a slice of bread, you think I’ll get one of those sausages?’

‘Quite probably.’

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