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As favourite younger cousin of Lucien Avery—sixteenth Earl of Rossingley, the owner of practically everything as far as the eye could see—Freddie lived most of the year up on the estate. He inclined his head. “Naturally. Toby and Noah are also joining us on Christmas Day this year, as Noah’s father will be coming over from France.”
Mentioning Toby, the earl's young manny, he carefully watched for my reaction. We’d had a thing, sort of. For his own sake, Toby had come to his senses and moved on, very happily by all accounts. One of you being out and proud and the other most definitely not was never a recipe for success. I missed him, though; he was generous and kind to me, not that I always reciprocated.
I busied myself with my drink. “A busman’s holiday for Toby,” I said eventually, “With the earl’s kids running around.”
“Toby’s very well, thank you for asking,” responded Freddie. He could read me like a book. “Noah and he are blissfully content. Sorry.”
I looked away. Sweet Toby. It could have been me, if I’d been braver. “Nothing to apologise for, mate. The fuck ups were all mine. I’m glad he’s in a good place. He’s a nice lad.”
We supped quietly. Freddie amused me with a few stories about his latest modelling assignment, all the funnier after a mugful of expensive booze. For a couple of hours, I forgot about milk yields and fertility cycles and yet another Christmas sleeping alone looming. If only I had the balls to…
“You don’t need to go on like this, you know,” said Freddie, softly.
“Like what?” I drained my mug, swallowing the sudden knot in my throat. Freddie’s caustic tongue came nowhere close to reducing me to tears; his caring one, however, combined with a couple of glasses of bubbly, had me blinking them away.
“You put on a good front, Rob. But you shouldn't wear it with me.”
I rubbed at my jaw. “Trouble is I’ve forgotten what I’m like without it. Gay Rob is buried rather deep these days.”
“Balls deep?”
I threw him a smile. “That would be nice. But, unfortunately, not.”
“You know, if you ever…”
I cut him off. I knew what was coming, and I also knew he and his husband Reuben, and probably the rest of the clan up at the big house, would be there if I needed them. If I came out. The stupid thing was I wasn’t entirely sure any more what held me back. I’d been this way for so many years, sometimes it no longer felt like living a lie. My old flame, Toby, had come out as a teenager. Freddie too. So what was my problem? It was the twenty-first century, for Christ’s sake! And I was an independent, full-grown man. Was it my ingrained fear of being seen differently by folk who’d known me a certain way forever? Being judged? Being treated differently? Shame? If I took the plunge and…
“Thanks, I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Perhaps Santa will deliver you a playmate this year,” teased Freddie, lightening the mood. “One screaming his sexuality from the top of his lungs. He’ll be that sexy twink who loves mud and cows that we talked about. He’ll take you by the hand, march you into the Rossingley Arms in his rainbow Santa outfit, and then serenade you with the soundtrack of Les Misérables until your only option to shut him up is to bang the bejesus out of him, against the dartboard. You never know.”
“That…um…would be quite the coming-out announcement.”
“Memorable indeed. They’d be gossiping about it into the next millennium.” Freddie quickly glanced at his watch. “And on that bombshell, I shall have to love you and leave you. Reuben is demanding my attention, and if married life has taught me one thing, it’s that Reuben Avery-Costaud does not like to be kept waiting.”
CHAPTER 2
I endured the family Christmas thing. I uncled, I brothered, I snored through The King’s Speech, and then, revived from my post prandial nap, I won the fuck out of charades, upsetting my sister. Apparently, favourite uncles were supposed to let the children triumph. And I was too busy competing to notice Zeus pissing up against the velour sofa. My penance for both misdemeanours was to build a Lego replica of the Starship Enterprise. Meanwhile, Zeus was shut in the scullery for the night, from where he mounted a campaign of such mournful keening that he was allowed out again after half an hour.
To cut a long story short, by the time I tumbled alone into an unfamiliar guest bed made for two, my jaw ached from smiling, my belly ached from overindulgence and my heart ached from loneliness. Too occupied with the minutiae of their own lives, no one noticed.
Sleep eluded me, and my mind drifted to imagining Freddie, curled up against his foxy French husband. My skin itched with envy. Not for what they had together—Freddie’s happiness warmed my soul—more a quiet grieving for a closeness I’d never known. And, unless I stepped out of the shadows, probably never would.
On Boxing Day, laden down with tinfoil-wrapped leftovers, far more than one man and his elderly dog could eat, I drove home. A light feathering of snow greeted me on my sister’s driveway, gradually thickening as I journeyed south. By the time I hit Allenmouth, it had swollen into an ominous travelling companion, snuggling like a cosy white duvet over the fields and hedgerows in every direction. A quick phone call to my aged sidekick, Bill, reassured me the herd was safely tucked away. As Zeus and I crunched along silent, traffic-free country roads, swerving around abandoned vehicles and snow drifts, not for the first time did I bless the gods of Japanese engineering for a solid truck with four-wheel drive and an excellent heating system. With Zeus curled up on the front seat next to me, I ploughed through the last hazardous stretch of even narrower lanes towards Rossingley in warm comfort, looking forward to being back home.
Lacking in creative flair, my parents christened me Robert Langford. My dad was also Robert Langford, as was my grandfather and his father too. Like generations of Langfords before me, I farmed my cows over four hundred acres of rich pasture sitting to the east of the Rossingley estate, cunningly known as Langford’s Farm. My cottage and cowsheds lay tucked away down a twisty lane in the far corner, much to the daily inconvenience of the milk tanker. Strictly speaking of course, they weren’t mine. They belonged to the Duchamps-Avery’s, exactly like every other brick, tile, hedgerow, and blade of grass around here. Thankfully, Lucien Avery ran an extremely benign dictatorship. Langfords had farmed our patch for nigh on the same number of years as the Duchamps-Averys had been collecting rent. In the terms of the tenant agreement, the land and the bulk of its profits were ours for as long as a Langford was willing to farm it.
I switched to a low gear and skirted the eerily quiet village at a crawl. The lane leading me homewards was hidden away on a sharp bend. Poor weather conditions didn’t concern me; I could navigate it blindfolded, although its narrow hairpins posed a regular booby trap for unfamiliar visitors, as my unfortunate Grindr hook-up had found. Even trickier, when daylight, never more than half-hearted at this time of year, had exhausted itself and called the whole thing off.
All of this is to say I only narrowly missed slicing the back wing off a blue BMW, inconsiderately parked across the middle of the track.
I skidded to a halt just beyond, cut the truck’s engine and twisted in my seat. The rather smart saloon’s front end had come to rest wedged between a sturdy oak and an unforgiving hawthorn hedge, backside blocking most of the road. Twin rear brake lights stared dejectedly out across endless white barren fields, two unfocused, bloodshot eyes. As I craned my neck, I made out the outline of a person, merely a dark shape and nothing more, trying to extricate themselves from the driver’s seat.
“Hey!” I yanked the handbrake up and flicked on my hazard lights. Ordering Zeus not to move from his nest of old sweaters (as if it was ever a threat), I scrambled out of the truck. One brown leather loafer sank straight into a six-inch bank of snow. The other swiftly joined it. My only decent pair of shoes. Fucking marvellous.
“Hey? Are you all right? I’m coming. Don’t move!”
Maybe the guy was foreign because he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, shifting himself through the partially obstructed car door with an anguished yelp of pain. Fucking idiot. I’d sat through enough tedious agricultural health and safety courses to know first principles of managing high-impact injuries. Rule number one: unless at risk of imminent danger, don’t fucking move the casualty. Still applied though, on initial assessment of the situation and the barren landscape, the only imminent dangers I could ascertain were freezing-wet socks and trousers. Mine, not his.
