‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ Nathan takes a swig from his pint and sets the glass back on the bar towel while he pockets his change. ‘You get used to it after a while. We sitting?’

Kester looks at his watch. ‘I should be getting home.’ He notices Nathan’s wry expression. ‘Oh, see what you mean. Still getting knocked back?’

‘Put it this way, when I say I’m worried my protection might be out of date, I’m not talking viruses and computers.’ He chuckles and sits at a nearby table, pushing a chair out for Kester with his foot. ‘Nah, not that bothered to be honest.’

‘What really ticks me off is not knowing what I’m supposed to have done. I wouldn’t mind but…can you really see me and her together?’ Kester laughs. ‘Come o-on! Hardly likely is it?’

Nathan narrows his eyes, rolling his bottom lip and tilting his head to look at Kester as if giving it serious deliberation. ‘Don’t see why not.’

Kester splutters. ‘Two words and the last of them’s off!’ He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins. ‘They say it makes you go blind.’

‘She’s alright….and not bad looking either.’

‘She.... is seriously scary.’

‘She isn’t.’ Nathan laughs. ‘She had me in dredging her ditches soon after she bought that place. A bit straight, maybe, but she does make great coffee.’

‘She gave you coffee?’ Kester gapes .

‘And warm gingerbread.’ Nathan drools.

‘Now, I am seriously pissed!’

The White Horse

Upper Milliwick Road

‘That’s what it’ll be, right enough.’ George Harris nods his certainty, leaning on the gate next to the stile between the road and the track across Parson’s Field, trying to catch his breath. ‘We in’t really going that far is we?’ He grimaces at the stretch of pasture in front of him. ‘You arter killing me off or summat?’

‘Get your arse over! You can do it.  .’ Kester cajoles, effortlessly vaulting the stile. ‘Her cat?’

‘Me arse’s got cramp in, you hang on here a bit…An’ if you’s ‘specting me t’do what you just did, you got another think comin!’ George puts a hand on one buttock and lifts his knee to stretch the muscle, groaning as he does so. ‘Aye. Postie clipped it with his van t’other morning. Right upset he were…though not a patch on her be all accounts.’ He flexes his leg several times more until the cramp eases.

‘It died?’ Kester asks, taking the few steps back to where George is standing.

‘Not yet, not as far as I can gather. Proper poorly though. Daresay that’ll cost ‘er hundreds wi’the vet. If it makes it.’ George adds gloomily. ‘Postie says what she told him the vet said he weren’t likely to and best thing would be to have the poor little begger go quick like.’

‘Have it put down?’ Kester closes his eyes and sighs deeply, making sense of everything that has gone on.

‘Aye. But she weren’t having none o’that, not lessing the vet said it were in a lot a pain. They still got him best part out of it, drips of all descriptions according to that little gal what works there.’ George says with an air of finality. ‘I sees her sometimes when I’s out shopping. Relation a Kath Wishart’s’ he explains.

Kester nods despite not knowing the girl George is talking about. ‘Poor Helen.’

George scoffs. ‘Cor, blimey! It ain’t like it’s human or nothing’

‘Not an animal lover then, George?’

‘They’s alright between a coupla bits o’pastry.’

Kester grunts, annoyed at the remark. ‘Come on, best get going again before we get cold.’

Bazza's Burger Bar, Woodbury

‘You can eat those and still look like you do?’ Nathan grins at Leonie Ward and slides into the seat opposite her.

Leonie puts her hand over her mouth as she swallows the bite from her burger. ‘Er…yeah…um...hi.’ She looks either side of her, shrinking slightly in her seat, the colour rising in her cheeks.

Nathan closes his eyes. His shoulders slump as he exhales a deep sigh. ‘Come on! We’ve been friends too long, you and me. You know me better than that.’

‘Better than what?’ she asks, her eyes wide and unblinking with assumed innocence.

‘Better than what you’re thinking about me right now’ he growls ‘I didn’t touch her, you know.’

‘Never thought you had.’ Leonie blinks slowly as she sucks cola from a supersized carton.

‘Then what’s with the ‘I hope nobody sees me’ routine?’

‘I did not!’ she protests, dabbing her mouth and wiping her fingers on the miniscule paper napkin.

‘Have it your own way.’ He stares at her, the colour rising in his face as she avoids his gaze.

‘Sorry. I’ve got to get back to work. You know how it is.’ She tidies the remains of her lunch onto the brown plastic tray and stands ready to leave, half smiling an apology but with her eyes still cast down.

‘Fine.’ Nathan knocks over his coffee as he grabs his own tray and almost throws it on the table next to theirs. ‘Here! Have seconds.’ He barges his way through the lunchtime crowd and out of the door.

Chapter Two