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‘Okey dokey, and Alison?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you,’ Stacey said and meant it.
Alison waved in response before disappearing from view.
‘Can I have a quick look at that, Stace?’ Penn asked.
‘Trust me, you can’t afford these houses,’ Stacey said, pushing the plan towards him.
‘Hmm…’
‘What?’
‘I just want to check something on the planning application.’
‘Penn, now is not the time to check if they followed building regulations.’
‘Okay, cool,’ he said, clearly not listening.
He tapped furiously, focussing on the screen.
She’d seen that look before, and she knew to keep quiet. A bald eagle could land on his head, and he wouldn’t notice.
She jumped as the printer behind kicked into life. She reached for the sheet as it landed on the tray.
‘One sec,’ Penn said as the printer fired up again.
He came round to her side of the desk.
‘Pick a property,’ he said, looking at the two sheets of paper.
‘We playing fantasy homes?’ she asked.
‘Just want the postcode.’
‘Okay, got it.’
‘Get it up on Earth,’ he instructed.
Stacey did so and watched as the world turned and then deposited her with a bird’s eye view of the ten new buildings.
‘Turn it around,’ Penn told her, putting his two sheets of paper on the desk and then wheeling over Bryant’s chair to sit in.
‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing to the first page. It was an old aerial shot of the travellers’ site prior to the housing development. The road accessed the site from a country lane just one mile out of Stourport. It then ran a straight line through the site with eight caravans on each side. The whole area was surrounded by a grove of mature trees thirty to forty feet deep, beyond which was a small reservoir which separated the site from the main road into the town.
‘Okay,’ she said, not sure what she was supposed to be looking at.
‘This second sheet is the planning permission for the new project.’
‘Okay,’ she said again, fighting her frustration. Sometimes she wished Penn would just tell her straight out what he was thinking, but she knew he wanted her to follow his thought process to see if she arrived at the same destination.
‘It’s shorter,’ she said, looking from one sheet to the other.
‘Yep. Planning permission said the last house had to be at least a hundred metres from the tip of the reservoir.’
It was now clear to Stacey that the batch of trees separating the houses from the water was much thicker than it had been on the travellers’ site.
