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“Thanks.”
Nick took his habitual armchair.
“So, I’m new around here, you’ll have to forgive my ignorance. I haven’t met many people yet.”
“You’ve been busy?”
Nick hummed and sipped his tea. “I’ve been setting up my practice for the past couple of weeks, trying to get settled in. I heard it’s been a while since you guys had a vet in the area.”
“I honestly wouldn’t know,” Joel said. His eyes were still a little glassy, but Nick thought he might be sobering up. “My family used to own some of the land around here, though it’s been years since I’ve done any manual labour.”
“What do you do?”
Joel shifted in his seat. “I work for an app development company.”
“Oh, really? I’m definitely not technologically minded.” Nick gave him an encouraging smile. “What does the app do?”
“It, uh, brings people together?”
It took a moment for Nicholas to get it. “It’s a dating app?”
“Dating, hookup, sure. That sort of thing.”
“That must be interesting.” Nick sipped his tea.
“I work on user experience. I have a degree in behavioural psychology.”
“Oh, wow.”
“So I look at all the data around how users navigate the interface; whether or not it’s intuitive or not, how long they spent looking for whatever it is they need before they give up and shut down. You don’t have long to give people what they want.”
“That’s fascinating. I’ve never even considered anything like that before.”
Joel shrugged. “It’s one of those things that we’re all so used to these days. We download a new app and within seconds we know how to operate it, because it works on principles that are familiar to us.” He took a sip of his tea. “What made you want to move all the way out here?”
“I grew up in Edinburgh.”
“Really? You don’t have the accent.”
“We moved down to Bath when I was seven… I got teased, a lot, when I started school. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to talk posh like them.”
“That’s sad.”
“At the time I was more worried about fitting in than anything else. It was just me and my mum, my dad had left by then, and she wanted to be closer to her family.”
“And now you’re back,” Joel murmured.
“It was too good of an opportunity to miss,” Nicholas said. “I’ve been looking for a job in this area for a long time. This is close enough to Edinburgh that it feels like home, but practically on farm land so I can work with bigger animals.”
“You’re going to be busy when it gets to lambing season,” Joel said. “The sheep farm is right behind my place.”
“You said you’re on Church Road?”
Joel nodded. “I inherited my granny’s cottage. She left stuff to my cousins and my brother, but I was her favourite, so I got the house.”
Nicholas laughed. “Well that’s a nice thing to inherit.”
“I’m still doing it up. I love my granny, but I don’t share her taste in home decorating.”
