Page 67 of Secret Paths

She smiles.

And somehow that feels more intimate than anything else we have done tonight.

By Saturday, I have made one firm decision about the Morton Hall job.

I am not thinking about it.

This would be going better if Hunter had not spent the first half of the Ramblers walk asking carefully casual questions about Monday.

Not obvious questions. Hunter is far too smooth for that. He asks whether he's told me that Morton Hall is getting a new accounts software, whether I still know someone at the printers in Lowdale, whether my cottage boiler is behaving itself. All of it sounds innocent, right up until I remember he once convinced a teacher that the cricket ball had flown through a greenhouse window of its own free will.

The man is not to be trusted.

Mandy is not here today.

Neither is Alexandra, which is probably why the walk has made it all the way to the old quarry without anybody producing a flask, a contingency plan or an opinion about my vitamin intake.

Mandy had messaged this morning to say she was covering a colleague’s clinic. Sensible. Brief. No mention of our night together, her bedroom or how she let me kiss her wrist afterwards as if she had forgotten herself for one dangerous second.

I have only thought about it fourteen times.

Possibly fifteen.

“Are you going to eat that?” Hunter asks.

I look down at the flapjack in my hand. “I had planned to.”

“You have been holding it for five minutes.”

“I am savouring it.”

“You are ignoring it.”

“I did not realise you had become emotionally invested in my snack.”

“Someone should be.”

We are sitting on a low stone wall above the quarry path while the rest of the group spreads out across the grass. Nancy is explaining something about route options to Luke, who looks as if he would rather be pushed into the quarry than look at another map. Mrs Higgins is holding court near the viewpoint with three women from Lowdale and a man with walking poles who has already made the mistake of asking Bernard’s age.

Bernard himself is with us.

Not by invitation.

He has planted his elderly beagle backside directly between Hunter’s boots and is leaning against his shin as if moments from collapse. Mrs Higgins handed Hunter the lead ten minutes ago with the words, “Be a dear,” and then walked away before he could refuse.

Bernard has since eaten a corner of Hunter’s sandwich, sneezed on my trouser leg and sighed six times with the bleakness of a dog denied basic human rights.

Hunter looks down at him. “You are not getting any more.”

Bernard does not move.

“He understands you,” I say.

“He is choosing not to respect me.”

“That is his whole brand.”

Bernard huffs through his nose and rests his chin on Hunter’s boot.