From upstairs came the sound of a door opening. ‘Are you going to Binty’s?’ grunted an almost indecipherable Morgan Freeman. Bloody hell, Binty’s, thought Meg – was that still there?
‘I don’t know,’ shouted up Meg. ‘Why?’
‘I fancy some doughnuts,’ grunted Connor. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Meg called up. ‘What time are you going to work?’
‘Not ’til tonight. I’m on shifts. Thaaanks.’ The door banged shut again.
‘OK,’ muttered Meg to herself. ‘Doughnuts.’
She pulled on a pair of Sarah’s wellies that were in the tiny boot room by the back door – she may have to have a sort out at some stage; it was as messy as the porch – adding a thick pair of socks she managed to extract from the huge pile of footwear and miscellaneous items there, as the wellies were too big. And she stepped out of the back door.
‘Bloody Nora!’ A thick, pungent pong of manure slapped her right in the face and nearly knocked her for six. ‘Muck spreading’, that’s what her parents called it; Dad sometimes used to put a comical washing line peg on his nose as he mowed the lawn. Mum used to laugh and say it was good for clearing the sinuses. Meg shook her head and tried to zone out the stench – she preferred Eau de London: traffic fumes, food of every denomination, the occasional drain – and stomped down the stony path that wove through the overgrown back garden to the low hedge and wooden gate at the end. Beyond, all she could see were fields. Fields and yet more fields. Ugh. Meg prayed for an oasis of a Starbucks or a Costa on reaching the village. Maybe one had sprung up since she was last here. She could lounge on a sofa with a latte, read the emails she wasn’t allowed to reply to and pretend she was back in London.
The field was on a slight incline and furrowed, so Meg followed the lines. If she went straight up this field and right along the next two she would reach the village. Not that she was in any rush. She, sadly, had all the time in the world. It was a hot morning – she should have worn flip-flops not wellies – and she tried to make the effort to appreciate it. Not that she ever had – this walk across the fields to the village had only ever been highly dull. Birds were chirping overhead, bees hummed in the hedgerows, there was the distant sound of shots … Shots? Meg ducked automatically, going into a kind of comedy walking squat, peering around her. Then she remembered. Mad people in green tweedy jackets liked to shoot pheasants around these here parts. She straightened up again.
Meg was on the second field now. There was a bull in the neighbouring one, trumpeting and looking angry about something. The third was planted with some kind of shaggy grass – she remembered, with a giant yawn, that each field had something different every year – and sloped downwards. Finally, she came to the road. It looked exactly the same as it had twenty years ago: dead boring. To get on to it she had to climb the old stile set into the thick, dense hedge. She’d done it a million times before, to be picked up seconds later by some rusty old banger with an unsuitable boyfriend in it, who would take her to pubs in various neighbouring towns and villages, or, sometimes, to Ipswich, for a night of usually underwhelming underage clubbing. There was a huge cowpat on the road, the other side of the stile, but she wouldn’t be falling for that one. She was an old hat at climbing stiles; she used to live here.
The beam that crossed the middle of the stile was worn and a little slippery. The further two steps to the top were rough and sturdy. Once up there, Meg looked over to the village. She could see The Duke of Wellington, her local old stomping ground, where so many hilarious and terrible nights had taken place. The awful hairdresser’s, old-fashioned even back then. The ancient village green, looking just the same. No Starbucks, no Costa. Oh well, what did she expect? Covent Garden? A life-size replica of the London Eye?
Meg stepped down onto the beam the other side. She was still looking over at the village, wondering what time the pub opened, when her foot, sliding around in the too-big welly, made slippery contact with the edge of the beam and skidded off. It flailed, trying but failing to land, and, before she knew it, she was crashing through the air and landing right on her backside in the enormous cowpat. Oh god! She was hapless City Girl, wasn’t she, she thought, as she landed – like in books – who falls into a cowpat only to be rescued by the handsome local vet, whom, after a few chapters of resistance, she marries on the village green with all the locals cheering and waving bunting … Yuk.
‘Oh, sh—’ she was about to say, but before she could get the very apt words out or even begin to struggle to get up, she was highly surprised to be suddenly and forcefully flattened into said cowpat by a steamrollering, rushing grey hulk of taut muscle and tickly, silky fur.
‘Oof! What the bloody hell?’ Meg, with a very soggy bottom and shocked limbs, was prone, on the ground, and something was licking her face with a very large, wet tongue. ‘Get off me!’
There was a whistle, from somewhere in the distance, and the thing that was licking Meg stopped licking her and raised its head away, tilted in curiosity. It had huge, floppy, silky ears, jowly chops and eyes that said ‘I wish I could lick you again.’ Then there was another whistle and the creature bounded up and galloped over to a man who was walking swiftly up the road.
‘Come on, boy! Good boy, Garfield. Oh god, I’m so, so sorry.’
Meg slowly picked herself up off the ground. She checked herself out for physical damage – none, apparently, apart from a sore arse and – sartorial disaster – oh, not good, designer jeans probably ruined. Still, at least she was alive. Miraculously, she had survived being rugby tackled by the biggest dog in the world.
‘I’m so sorry,’ repeated the man. He now had the enormous beast on some kind of lead and had almost reached Meg. She recognized him, didn’t she? He was the man from the field outside the train station. The one with the horse. She’d been right – he was handsome. He looked thirty-something, tall, floppy brown hair, brown eyes, wearing jeans and a checked blue shirt. Very good-looking, for a country sort, she acknowledged. Shame his dog was an absolute animal.
‘That’s one big dog,’ she commented dryly, checking her elbows for grazes. ‘And isn’t Garfield a cat?’
‘Sorry he’s such a brute,’ said the man. ‘And he’s named after Andrew Garfield, from the Spiderman movies. I’m a Marvel fan.’
‘Marvellous,’ she retorted.
‘I’m sure he’s very sorry, too.’ The man gave a sheepish grin; it would have been quite cute had he not indirectly tried to kill her. ‘I guess he saw you and just had to come and make friends.’ He patted Garfield the dog, who snuffled his wet nose into the man’s hand.
‘Some way to make friends.’ Meg sniffed. ‘Knock a person to the ground and then lick them half to death!’ She looked at the dog suspiciously. It was staring at her with love in its eyes and an overactive tongue. Meg was not a dog person; never had been. They were smelly, they needed walking all the time, they ambushed people on the street and their not-sorry-enough owners had to apologize for them … She was really glad Sarah only had a cat, not that she’d seen hide nor tail of him yet.
‘I really am very sorry.’ The man ran a hand through a head of floppy hair; it had a slight wave and looked overdue for a cut. ‘He has form for this, I admit. Great Danes do get very excitable, I’m afraid.’
‘Fabulous, I’ve been mauled by Scooby-Doo,’ said Meg. ‘I guess that makes you Shaggy?’ She glanced at him, from under her stripy side-sweep fringe. He was really rather good-looking, she had to admit. Not her usual type, but definitely flirtable with. She smiled a wide, slow smile and ran her fingers through her tousled hair, a couple of classic ‘pulling’ gestures of hers. This man could be a fun, no-strings-attached dalliance, like the ones she had in London – a ‘thing’ to stop her being bored, and it was not like she was going to fall in love with him or anything. She