Five

Lucy

August

Lucy put her book aside and lay back on the sun lounger, eyes closed, face tilted up, feeling the warmth on her skin. She wasn’t sure how the first week at Gunpowder Barn had passed so quickly. One day had become two and then more as she sat outside on the terrace, ate the food that Cleo and Finn had left for her and read her way through the pile of paperbacks that Cleo had also thoughtfully provided. Once she had stopped, her body seemed disinclined to start moving again, as though she was truly resting for the first time in months if not years. She slept a great deal and she did not dream at all. The ghosts and nightmares that had stalked her first day and night at Gunpowder Cottage had vanished and the barn felt warm and welcoming. She could see why it had a near-perfect score on TripAdvisor.

She saw Finn and Geoffrey a couple of times in the distance, heading down the valley for a walk, and sometimes she spotted Finn working on the garden excavation: digging and measuring, writing notes, taking pictures. On a couple of occasions he was accompanied by a tall, lanky youth with very dark hair who was carrying what looked like a sieve and a selection of trowels and brushes. Finn looked up and saw her watching and gave her a wave. Lucy scuttled off as though she had been caught spying on them. But Finn was true to his word; he didn’t drop in and Lucy was aware of a vague sense of disappointment. A couple of times she also heard the low hum of a digger and guessed that the archaeologists had called in some heavy machinery, but it was out of sight at the bottom of the valley. They had not yet started to explore Clarabelle the donkey’s paddock and hadn’t undertaken any more work at the front of the barn, where the duck pond lay weed filled and placid beneath a summer sky.

She hadn’t been completely alone. There had been loads of calls to deal with from her parents, relatives and friends checking up on her. Cleo called every day. There was nothing from her agent, whom she suspected would quietly let her go, or from the majority of her orchestra colleagues. Perhaps they felt awkward about the sudden dismal change in her career fortunes. Some, she thought, were probably superstitious that it might happen to them as well.

“Fair-weather friends,” Cleo had said stoutly, when Lucy had told her. “You’re better off without them.” And Lucy was curious to find that she did feel freer, lighter in some ways, without the constant pressure of planning and schedules and work. It reminded her of the long-forgotten childhood summer holidays before the practicing had got too intense, when the drowsy end days of July and August were for fun and adventure.

Her phone rang—Verity’s number. And there was her aunt, sounding as crystal clear as though she was in the next room. “How are you, darling? Settling in all right?”