He hadn’t had Annie’s cooking in nine years and she’d seriously perfected her recipe in the interim. Everything was delicious, but still the thought circulated in his head; he was going on a real date with someone who wasn’t Paisley. It felt far too much like beingout thereagain, and he really didn’t know how people were supposed to act on a normal date, let alone a double blind date.
Annie had dabbled with Hinge back home and she had a large circle of festival-going friends who she could have her pick of. Harri had gathered they were all devoted to her. Then she’d had something semi-serious with that maths teacher last year, though she seemed to have forgotten about him.
Harri, on the other hand, had lived with one woman for nearly a decade, and before that there’d been a girlfriend who lasted pretty much all through sixth form, but she’d dumped him to go to uni in London, and that was it, the sum total of his romantic experience.
‘I don’t know anything about veterinarian sciences,’ Harri mumbled into his third taco, while Annie topped up his Sprite.
‘Just as well Anjali knows all about that, then,’ she said. ‘That’ll be something you can ask her about.’
Harri observed Annie as she carried on devouring her food. ‘You seem pretty relaxed about this.’
She fixed him with a simple smile. ‘It gets the locals off our backs; we meet some people our age in Clove Lore. We get a dinner. What’s the problem?’ She took another big bite.
‘Just dinner?’ Harri said, a tiny part of him not relishing the idea of watching Annie inevitably charming this Kit person who Mrs Crocombe had described as ‘an absolute looker’.
‘Don’t even have to do dessert,’ she reassured. ‘One and done.’
‘Oh, I expect we’ll want pudding.’ Harri smiled, realising how silly he’d been acting. If he was going to have to start dating again, maybe this was as good a way as any to go about it, with Annie there to help with conversation if it turned awkward or if he ran out of things to say.
Annie seemed excited about the innocent prospect of going out and making two new friends, and since he wasn’t exactly planning on a rebound holiday romance, maybe a friendly dinner was absolutely fine? It didn’t signify a thing.
He raised his glass to Annie’s. ‘To double dates,’ he said, and she smiled before toasting him back.
‘To being each other’s wingmen,’ she said, and seeing his face fall, she laughed raucously. ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding!’
Chapter Eight
Wayfaring
Early the next morning, out on the cliff path, eighty-year-old William Sabine ambled slowly along, his head down, thin hair plastered to his crown. Frosty dewdrops hung diaphanous in the air, soaking through the clothing of anyone senseless enough to be out wandering. His only concession to the damp morning was a ragged brown muffler wrapped across his chest beneath his inadequate, shabby coat.
He’d have stuffed his hands into his pockets for warmth were they not already filled with treasures. Tiny leatherbound books, not one of them under a hundred years old, a fine compass, several stubby pencils, a vial of India ink and a tarnished fountain pen in its worn leather sleeve, all of which jostled in a jumble of rubber bands and crumpled handkerchiefs.
He pressed a hand to his chest pocket at regular intervals, struck with sudden worry, before sighing in relief. The keys – his own particular responsibility – were still there.
He had no idea how long he had been walking, but his feet were wet inside his leather slippers. He wondered vaguely where he’d left his shoes. He was glad he’d set a fire in the grate before he went out. Would it still be burning? He couldn’t quite remember when he’d set off or, for that matter, where he was off to.
Nicholas had wanted thatBaedeker; he knew that much. Was that where he was going? Did he have an appointment with a dealer today?
‘Oh dear,’ he said through a ragged breath that sent white fog floating in clouds across his vision.
He’d stopped to wipe his cold, clammy forehead with a handkerchief when all his attention was stolen by the sound of a robin singing its hardest from the tall wall that lined the path on his left.
The robin hopped into view in a mossy recess in the stones, which were dotted all over with fuzzy orange lichen and the first curled fern fronds waking up at the end of winter. Even through Mr Sabine’s filmy eyes, the red of the robin’s breast against the orange and green made a lovely sight.
‘Hallo, tiny fellow,’ he croaked hoarsely. ‘Where’s your lady friend?’
The robin sang again, and, to the man’s delight, it was met with an answering call from the scrubby gorse that lined the cliff edge to his right.
A second robin appeared, singing brightly.
Mr Sabine observed them with childlike wonder, his eyes wet, as the birds set off together in chirruping, tumbling flight along the path.
‘Sing your hearts out!’ the man told them, his reedy voice swept away in the swirling wet air. He shivered as they disappeared and his brows fell, dismayed.
He looked about the spot where he stood like he’d been suddenly placed there.
‘Nicholas will wonder where I am,’ he muttered. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ His soft slippers scuffed the loose stones of the path as he moved off again and the grey wintry weather set in around him.
