Elle picked her way across the rocky floor, poking her head into small arch entrances and then climbing a curved section of staircase that led to a landing one floor up. Beneath was a small, ceiling-less room that rose high above her like a tall, narrow chamber into the sky.

‘I believe this part of the lower floor used to be the kitchen. The black soot marks on the stone wall would have come from some kind of large open-fire oven.’

‘What a shame there isn’t more of it left intact,’ she said thoughtfully as they continued carefully across the uneven ground.

‘So, tell me,’ Stuart said, ‘what do you do back in Australia?’ Elle looked at him quickly as she picked her way across the rubble. ‘Nothing terribly exciting. I work … worked,’ she amended wryly, ‘in a supermarket.’

‘You don’t work there anymore?’ he asked.

‘No. They put me off in favour of a self-service checkout. Welcome to the era of robots taking over.’

‘What are you going to do when you go back?’

‘You sound like my mother,’ Elle told him dryly.

‘Ah, I see.’

‘What do you see?’ Elle asked, stopping to look at him.

‘You have a mother with opinions about your future.’

‘You sound like you know how that is.’

‘I do,’ he said, and she was momentarily distracted by the way he rolled the words off his tongue.

‘Yes, well. Mine wasn’t too impressed with this trip. In all fairness, it did happen pretty quickly, but, I don’t know, I think I just wanted to get away for a while before I had to make a lot of big decisions.’

He nodded. ‘Mine’s never really understood why I gave up a London office and law degree to become a farmer.’

‘But you’re still practising?’ He lifted an eyebrow questioningly. ‘Yesterday you weren’t dressed like a farmer,’ she said, then wished she hadn’t.

He smiled. ‘I still have the occasional loose end to tie up, but technically I’m a full-time farmer now. But if you ask my mother, I’ve lost my mind and given up my career to work with a bunch of smelly cows.’

She grinned at the way he pronounced coos.

‘So, why did you?’ Elle asked, eyeing him curiously. ‘Give up a law practice to be a farmer?’

‘Because my grandfather was a farmer, and I was tired of living in London doing a job I never really wanted to do in the first place. I guess I wanted a simpler life. This place needed attention, so I moved back.’

‘Has it been in your family for a long time?’

‘It was my grandfather’s. He worked hard to give my father a better life. Dad went off to become a solicitor and I guess it was just expected that I’d follow in his footsteps when my time came.’