instructed, lifting her hair and indicating for him to fasten the buttons at the back of her floaty blouse. ‘I deserve a bit of fun. And you … my love,’ she paused and gave him a lingering look, ‘are far too nice. That’s your problem! Always has been,’ she laughed, almost mockingly.
And as the golden glow of the sun dipped down on the horizon, framing the fields full of strawberries, sheep, cows, apple, pear and plum trees, he knew that it was time to face the truth. She was about to marry someone else and he needed to tell her straight. He had to, because he couldn’t carry on feeling this way. It was wrong. And he needed to be free. Free to find someone else. Someone to love, properly, and not in secret, feeling brimful of shame and confusion.
Present day
Sam Morgan pulled over into the muddy gap beside a five-bar gate that led into the fields behind Tindledale Station and switched off the engine of his tank-like old Land Rover. He undid his seat belt and tried to relax as he sat in silence, watching a plump robin perched on the gate, its stout crimson breast in stark contrast to the virginal white of the spring evening frost. Sam was sure he’d read somewhere, years ago, that robins signified ‘new beginnings’ … well, he sure hoped that was true. He wound down the window and inhaled, drinking in the surroundings, as if drawing strength from the familiarity of the sycamore trees that led down to the train track. The place where he had always come to think, right back from when he was just a young boy.
Peering into the rear-view mirror, he pushed a hand through his messy dark hair and then pulled his lower eyelids down to inspect his conker-brown eyes, which were bloodshot and dry after the ten-hour flight from Singapore. But it was going to be worth it – a new job, a year-long contract, which he hoped would be more than enough time to fix things. He would be right here, redeveloping the Blackwood Farm Estate. He’d have less responsibility than he was used to, but it meant being back home in Tindledale. And it would be the perfect opportunity to put everything right with his family. His daughter, Holly, would be fourteen soon. Her birthday was just around the corner, so he really wanted to do that … more than anything.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump. Since when did Tindledale have full mobile coverage? Things sure have changed since I was last home. He couldn’t believe it was almost a year. Why on earth had he left it so long? On seeing that it was Dolly, his gran, he pressed the button to take the call.
‘Hello Sam, love. How are you getting on?’ she asked, in her familiar country accent.
‘I’m almost home, Gran, shan’t be much longer.’ He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and quickly calculated that he’d arrived at the airport over three hours earlier, which was when he had called her to say that the plane had landed safely.
She had insisted he let her know immediately when he touched down. Dolly didn’t trust aeroplanes, having only ever been on one in her lifetime, and it had taken two attempts to land on the tiny holiday island of Mykonos before reaching terra firma. Dolly had never forgotten it, and had vowed to stay in the village ever since, or travel to faraway places only by coach. So it was the least he could do to put her mind at rest, especially as she and her second husband, Colin – a coach driver she had met on one of those trips to a faraway place – had kindly offered Sam their spare bedroom to stay in for the duration of his new contract, if need be. But it had taken ages to find the long-term parking place near the airport, and then even longer to defrost the lock on the driver’s door so he could actually get in to his car, which had been standing outside in all weathers since he’d last been home to Tindledale. And the parking bill had been astronomical, almost as much as the ancient old Land Rover was worth. But it served him right, Sam figured, he really should have come home sooner.
‘Oh well, that’s very good now,’ Dolly chuckled kindly. ‘We’re really looking forward to seeing you, son … I’ve got your favourite cottage pie with a cheesy mash topping keeping warm inside Beryl, all ready for your dinner when you get here.’
Sam grinned, fondly remembering the extended name of his gran’s buttercup-yellow Aga, Beryl the Peril, on account of her being quite temperamental, often needing a tweak to get going, making her perilously unreliable at times. One Christmas, when he was a boy, they had eaten their turkey dinner with all the trimmings at nine o’clock in the evening, thanks to Beryl conking out at the crucial moment. They’d had to take the tinfoil-covered turkey in its tray round to the neighbours next door to cook in their conventional oven. And Dolly had been devastated. Christmas dinner was always at one sharpish in her house, and quite a magnificent affair … except that year.
‘I can’t wait. Thanks, Gran.’ Sam smiled fondly, momentarily feeling like that twelve-year-old boy again and, given that he was pushing forty-two, there sure was a certain comfort in that.
‘Right you are. Cheerio, Sam,’ she said, and then added, ‘and don’t go haring off down those lanes. It’s been very wet this spring and then chilly in the evening, so they become coated in frost. Take your time, the pie will wait.’ And, after a big intake of breath, followed by an even bigger sigh, she was gone.
Using the elbow part of his jacket sleeve, Sam wiped away a circle of condensation from the windscreen, big enough to look out across the lush, undulating fields leading all the way down to the valley. The valley he knew like the back of his hand, having grown up right here. Number Three Keepers Cottages. A neat row of tiny two-up two-down converted old workers’ homes, situated at the top of the unmade lane near the orchards, and not far from the woods. Violet Wood, they used to call it, on account of all the purple flowers that covered the ground in springtime. Where he would play and fish for pike and trout on the banks of the stream with his younger brother, Patrick, and the rest of the boys from the village – Matt (he was the village farrier now) and his older brother, Jack. Not forgetting his good pal, Cooper (who now had the butcher’s shop in the High Street), plus a load of other kids who always turned up in the school summer holidays. It was idyllic. And a shame in a way that life couldn’t stay like that for always. Sam often wondered why it all had to be so complicated.
Talking of which … his thoughts turned away from the past, where he had avoided the implosion of his marriage rather than dealing with it and trying to do something, and to the reason he had finally returned to Tindledale after so long away. His wife, Chrissie. Well, his soon-to-be ex-wife, if she had meant what she said when they had spoken on the phone that time. ‘Right now, divorce feels like an inevitable eventuality for us, Sam,’ she had told him, frankly.
That conversation had been soon after he hadn’t made it back home for Christmas. There had been a last-minute near-catastrophe at work, when their largest investor had almost pulled out, and Sam and his team had spent anxious weeks trying to keep the project on track. He was the architectural engineer for a Pan-Asian company, building a prestigious chain of new hotels in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. He’d cancelled his long weekend home, and knew that both Chrissie and Holly had been devastated. Chrissie had told him it was the final straw the last time they had spoken on the phone.
‘If it was this one thing in isolation, Sam, then I might have been able to deal with it. But, on the back of everything else, I just can’t. It’s all the other weekends when you could have come home and didn’t, the phone calls you could have made and didn’t, and the five-minute Skype calls that we’ve had to make do with – or without – most of the time. It’s the culmination of everything …’
‘Chrissie, I’m honestly doing my best here. I just want this project to be a success and then it could set us up for the rest of our lives. It could really put me on the map and make a huge difference to all of us.’
‘And what about me? And our daughter? What is the point of all that success if we’re not together to share it? It’s meaningless. Empty and lonely.’ Sam could hear the frustration and anger in her voice and roused his own to meet hers.
‘I’m doing this for us – for you and for Holly, can’t you see that?’
‘No, Sam, that’s