Page 137 of Secret Paths

She laughs softly. “Unfortunately, that might be comforting.”

“I can work with might.”

She looks at the stall, the apples, the people moving past us with all the subtlety of a village pretending not to watch.

“I am still scared,” she says.

“So am I.”

“You?”

“I have just been claimed at a baked-apple stall in front of my sister. I am living on the edge.”

Her laugh breaks properly this time.

Then she steps closer, takes my face in both hands and kisses me.

Not a hidden kiss.

Not a hurried one in a hallway or a bedroom or a kitchen with curtains drawn.

A kiss in the middle of the harvest festival, with custard cooling behind me and half of St Claire about to pretend they did not see.

For a second, I forget my own name.

When she pulls back, her cheeks are pink, but she does not look away.

“Well,” I say, because my voice has apparently become unreliable, “the village will go into a frenzy.”

“That is fine.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” She glances at Alexandra, who is at the raffle table with both hands pressed over her mouth and absolutely no intention of being discreet. “At least people will know who you belong to.”

Heat moves through me fast enough to make coherent thought briefly impossible.

Mandy realises what she has said.

Her eyes widen.

“I mean,” she starts.

“No, no.” I pick up the ladle, mostly because I need something to hold that is not her. “I am very comfortable with the wording.”

“Do not be smug.”

“I am not smug. I am owned.”

Mandy gives me a look, but there is colour in her cheeks and no panic in her eyes.

Before I can say anything else, someone asks for two baked apples and extra custard, and the afternoon carries us with it.

Mandy goes back to help Alexandra. I stay at the stall with Ed, serving apples until the trays are nearly empty and the custard jug has been scraped clean. Every time I look across the green, I find her without meaning to.

Sometimes she is folding raffle tickets.

Sometimes she is laughing at something Alexandra says.