She blinked hard and smiled. ‘Thank you. I know it isn’t easy for you.’
‘Mummy—Mummy! It’s a chocolate fudge cake! Absolutely my favourite! And I’ve made some banana sandwiches, and Fran’s made a huge pot of tea—she’s bringing it on a tray.’
‘How lovely—I’ll help her,’ Kirsten said, standing up and giving him another slightly worried smile. ‘Mike, are you sure you’re OK about it?’
‘About what?’ Sophie asked, bouncing around the room with the dog on her heels.
‘Having you for the week once you’re back,’ he said quickly. ‘I think if Fran’s OK with it, we could have you from the weekend after next? I should get a walking cast so I might be a bit more mobile by then. And we’re pushed on the farm at the moment, because one of the shop ladies is off on holiday, so we’ll have you from Sunday afternoon, perhaps? Then we’ll have plenty of time to hear about your holiday.’
Kirsten shot him a grateful look for his hasty intervention. ‘That would be fine. I’ll bring her over—we’ll go and talk to Fran now and sort out the times,’ she said, and went out to help with the tea things.
Sophie went too, dithering and skipping and chatting to Brodie as she went, and Mike laid his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.
Pregnant.
Hell. It was going to kill Fran—and he was going to have to strike the fatal blow …
Mike seemed much more comfortable with the new cast.
Maybe it was because his leg was starting to recover from the insult of the fracture and the repair, or maybe he was giving in and taking the painkillers regularly and not trying to be heroic.
Whatever, he was sleeping better, and that meant Fran was too.
Just as well, she thought, because with him out of action, now she was on holiday from school she was doing as much as she could on the farm to help out. She didn’t do the milking—Russell seemed more than happy to do that, and she didn’t like to stop him. She sensed that he missed the farm, and also that he needed to be needed, something that Mike wasn’t very good at understanding.
He was so busy trying to take the pressure off his father that sometimes she wondered if they’d taken too much too soon, but it was certainly back on now, and Russell seemed to be thriving on it.
And Joy was helping in the farm shop, as usual, and so Fran ended up making the cheese.
She didn’t mind. It was quite therapeutic, really, and because of the tight timings—adding the starter culture once the milk was the right temperature, then stirring it, then leaving it, then adding the rennet, and the mould if it was to be a blue cheese, then cutting it, then scooping out the curds into the strainers, and all the time checking the temperature of the various processes, washing out the vats, scrubbing down the tables, sterilising everything, endlessly hosing the floor and brushing it clean—there was no time to think and yet the steady rhythm of the work was curiously restful.
There was all the work in the cheese stores as well, turning and salting and testing, and then packaging the cheeses for sale, either in wheels or cut into wedges and shrink-wrapped.
It all took time, and as they were so busy with the summer tourist influx it kept her well out of Mike’s way, but it was quite hard physical work, and she was feeling drained this week. Just because it was another thing, another turn of the screw at a time when things were already tough enough, she’d started her period on Sunday evening, and although she knew she couldn’t be pregnant—well, after all, how could she without any contact with Mike?—nevertheless it still made her feel down.
She’d just finished a long session of salting and turning in the blue cheese store on Thursday and was cooking their supper when she saw Ben heading towards the house with a book in his hand. She went to the door and opened it with a smile. ‘Hi, Ben!’ she said, and he smiled back.
‘Hello, Fran. Is Mike in? I’ve got something for him.’
‘Yes—go on through. He’s in the sitting room. He’s bored to death. He’ll be delighted to see you. Want a cup of tea?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I won’t hold you up, I can see you’re cooking. I’ll just go and have a chat for a few minutes.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. You carry on, I won’t be long.’
‘Is the invalid up for a visit?’
Ben was standing in the doorway, and Mike chuckled and shifted up the sofa, propping himself up against the backrest and moving his leg into a more comfortable position.
‘Absolutely. Come on in, make yourself at home.’
‘So how are you?’
‘Oh, you know—bored, sore, frustrated with the ceaseless inactivity …’
‘Peachy, then.’
‘Oh, utterly.’
Ben grinned and dropped into the armchair opposite. ‘Thought so. I’ve brought you a book—it’s an autobiography I’ve just finished reading. The guy was unfortunate enough to become one of my patients and he gave it to me. Nice man. I thought you might enjoy it. It’s quite funny and very touching—he used to be a farmer.’
He slid it over the coffee-table and Mike picked it up, flicked through the pictures and put it down. ‘Thanks. I’ve heard about it—if I’d thought I’d have the time, I would have bought a copy, so I’ll enjoy reading it. God knows, there’s not much else to do at the moment.’
Ben chuckled. ‘I can imagine. So when did they change your cast?’
‘Tuesday. It doesn’t seem to be swelling too much, so they were happy to do it. I have to say it looked pretty grim.’
Ben nodded. ‘I expect it’s black.’
‘Mmm—like this,’ he said, lifting up his T-shirt and making Ben wince.
‘That’s a goody. You were lucky your chest didn’t cave in. You could have had a flail segment there and it would have made it much more exciting.’
Mike groaned. ‘No, thanks. It was quite exciting enough. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve thanked you for coming to my rescue.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘Actually, I seem to remember you rang me at a rather opportune moment for that chat, and you never did say what it was about.’
‘Oh, that. It’s nothing to worry about—it’ll keep.’
‘Well, if it’s nothing to worry about, bring it on, frankly, because all I’ve had to do for the last week is sit here and worry about all the things I should be doing and can’t, and how much work this has put on everybody else, and how far behind we’ll be if I can’t get all the summer jobs done—so, please, if it’s something to think about that isn’t a worry, tell me!’
Ben laughed and sat back, studying him for a moment. ‘OK. It’s about the field in front of the house. Well, all round it, really, but especially the bit between the house and the road. It’s not huge, but when we had the christening you let us use it for parking, and it was hugely helpful. The drive’s really not big enough if we have more than one visitor, and if we had that field, we could extend the parking at the front and make a bit more of a garden on that side of the house. And if you got really carried away and wanted to sell the bit between us and the clifftop, and maybe a little strip round each side too …?’
Mike thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘It would make a lot of sense for you, but we tend to move the cattle