“I’d worked that much out. Luckily the culinary incentives more than make up for your lack of interest in giving me morsels. How can you not stay here all the time? If somebody made me food like this and gave me a bed like the one upstairs and a view so spectacular…” D’Arcy flung her arm out to encompass the divine surroundings. “I’d never leave.”

“Is this your way of warning me I’m going to have to evict you at the end of a fortnight?”

“See,” D’Arcy stood up. “You can be amusing if you try. Now, I’m going to work off my lunch by sawing some wood. And here are two more condition reports for you to frown at.”

She passed him the reports, catching the upward quirk of his lips and turned around before he could see her matching smile.

The day sped onwards. Toward late afternoon, she felt someone’s eyes on her. She looked up to see Josh, in running gear, watching her.

“I’m going for a run. You can leave any more condition reports on the table.”

“Do you mind if I log in to my email on your computer? I have my laptop but by the time I hook up to your modem, it’s probably quicker if I just use yours.”

“Sure.” He nodded. “It’s in the office along the hall.” Before he turned away, he added, “I told Célie we’d have dinner down in the folly.” He pointed to a structure halfway between the house and the canal, almost lost beneath a clump of startlingly red-leafed beech trees. “At about eight. If that suits you.”

“Well, a girl’s gotta eat. Enjoy your run.”

Eight

Running. Just the thought of it exhausted her. D’Arcy checked her watch and saw that it was after seven o’clock but of course it was still so light, a true European summer. She brushed off the sawdust, located Josh’s office and logged into webmail. The email she’d been hoping for was sitting at the top of her inbox and she clicked on it before she could stop and think about it. As she read the words, she flopped into the nearest chair, shoulders sinking.

She hadn’t been chosen for the fellowship. She’d applied—she’d thought carelessly, unworried if it didn’t come off—for a Jessica May Fellowship for Women Artists. But the rejection hit her with more force than she’d thought it would. It meant the slender hope she’d been holding on to that she might still be able to do something about her dream of being a documentary filmmaker—a dream that had started and been nourished at university but which had since withered under the pressure of finding work that actually paid money—was now something she needed to relinquish. She hadn’t pursued it actively for years, had let it flit around in her head in moments of solitude on plane trips and long truck rides couriering others’ artworks, had told herself the fellowship would be the thing to get her going again. But, with no fellowship, she couldn’t afford to dream.