‘Yeah, what?’ Ludo rubbed his aching spine. ‘I got a break, I tell you. My back is broken from sleeping on this goddamned thing here that passes for a bed.’

‘One of the postmen. A temp. Couldn’t get shit out of the usual guys, they were tight as a drum, but this one didn’t care. Says a new girl answered the door to him once at Beechwood Farm.’

‘That place? Looks in shit order?’

‘That’s the one. He’s never seen her there before and chatting in the sorting office he said no one else knew her either. Blonde. Brown eyes. Right age for our one. Says she’s scarred up somethin’ scary. And that fits too. She was bleedin’ when she got out of the tank. Tough bitch, no doubt about it.’

Ludo swung his legs off the bed. ‘Nothin’ a bullet between the eyes won’t sort out. Beechwood Farm, you say.’

‘I do.’

‘Tomorrow morning then.’

130

Belle and Jack slept together that night in the double bed in Jack’s room, cuddled naked into each other like spoons in a drawer. When Belle woke, she was disappointed to see that it was morning already. Time to face reality. She was halfway out of the bed, thinking that yesterday had just been madness and that today would be an end of it, that he would regret everything, realize his mistake and snub her. His hand closed over her arm, stopping her movement.

‘Where you going?’ he murmured.

‘Up. It’s gone nine.’

He pulled her back down. ‘Nah, stay a minute.’

Belle lay back down, turning so that she faced him, careful to let her blonde curtain of hair fall over the left side of her face.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered against her mouth.

Belle’s mouth twisted. ‘I was.’

‘When I found you in the barn I thought I was having a nightmare. You were in a hell of a mess.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re still beautiful.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘But I think it’s changed you. Having this happen.’

‘I’d better get up,’ she said.

‘Nah, you’d better kiss me,’ he said against her mouth. Then gently, almost tenderly, he brushed her hair aside and kissed her scar. She thought of poor Milly, being used for sex by Nipper. Was this what Jack was doing, right now? Was she just a convenient female, a hole to put it in? Was that it?

‘I’m getting up,’ she said, and this time he didn’t argue.