Chapter 1

Sweat trickled down Adrian’s neck as he hauled the hay bales into the barn. The summer sun beat down on the rolling fields of his small farm, the deep blue sky dotted with puffy, white cumulus clouds. His muscles strained under his threadbare T-shirt, dust and hay clinging to his arms. He paused for a moment, and looked out over his land.

His land. Even now, he had to remind himself that Ladywell Farm was his and his alone. That hadn’t been how it was meant to be, but it was what it was.

Stretching, he tilted his neck from side to side to ease out the knots. If he believed in a heaven, he was sure his old man would be looking down on him — and smirking. Or sneering. Adrian shoved his fingers through his unruly dark hair. It was just as well, then, he didn’t believe.

A screech split the air. Adrian whirled around just in time to see the hawk take flight, a limp body clutched in its talons. The cycle of life and death on full display, it was the way of the countryside and not for the squeamish. Not everybody could adjust to the reality of rural living. His jaw clenched. It’d been something he’d discovered the hard way.

The familiar bleating from his small flock of sheep was a reminder he had a lot more work to do. Shaking off his moment of gloomy reflection, he headed over to the pasture, grabbing the last bale along the way.

“All right, all right, I’m coming.” Tossing it into the field, the sheep swarmed around it.

One, much smaller than the rest, battled through the scrum. Bleating hard, it shoved through the woolly wall to claim its share. A faint smile tugged at the corner of Adrian’s mouth. It had been a weak, scrawny little thing when it’d fought to be born, back in the spring, and nobody had expected it to survive. Tyson, as he’d secretly named the lamb, had surprised them all. The puny little scrap had proved to be a fighter and had grown into an undersized sheep who wasn’t even fit enough to be given away at the livestock market.

Adrian groaned as he watched the small flock feed.

First rule of running a farm. Do not anthropomorphise the livestock. Do not give them names. And definitely do not scratch the undersized, limping, three and a bit legged wool ball that was making its way towards him.

“You sure you’re not really a dog, Ty?” Adrian leant over the fence to do all the things he shouldn’t as the tiny, undersized sheep bleated up at him. “You do realise you’re going to end up in a stew?”

Was the little runt really giving him the side eye? Tyson didn’t believe a word he said, and Adrian wasn’t sure he believed himself, either.

Giving Tyson a final scratch, Adrian turned towards the farmhouse. With the hot sun on his back, and birdsong filling the still air, his life wasn’t glamorous, but it was the life he’d made for himself and if it was a life he was destined to live alone, then so be it.

* * *

Adrian cracked a couple of eggs into the sizzling pan, alongside the bacon. The food, like much of what was stocked in his fridge and freezer, was home reared or grown although not, as he poked at the crisping bacon, home butchered. He huffed as he turned the bacon over. His old man had grumbled he’d never make a true countryman if he was squeamish about dispatching and butchering his own livestock; he’d answered that he didn’t care, because living the life that was his supposed birthright and destiny wasn’t on his agenda.

His hand slowed as he moved the food around. Argument after argument, increasingly bitter, coloured by mutual antipathy, his gran had had to intervene more than once as his mum had stood by and said nothing. The woman, he understood now, had been cowed by his dad, but it still stung, years later, that she’d done nothing to stand up for her youngest child. He’d turned his back and rejected everything that had been expected of him. Until he’d been faced with a stark choice. Prodding hard at one of the eggs, he broke the yolk.

The kitchen door burst open just as he began piling the food between two heavily buttered slices of bread, and a thin, gangly guy almost fell over the threshold.

“That smells good.”

Adrian looked up at Harry, who flopped down at the large table that dominated the kitchen, and poured himself a cup of tea from the big, chipped brown teapot. No sooner had Adrian placed the plate in front of the younger man, Harry fell on it. The lunchtime sandwich was a doorstop, but it would be gone in an instant, to be followed by at least three huge slices of cake. The guy was as skinny as a rake, so god alone knew where he put it all.

Wiping away the crumbs from his lips, Harry fell back in his chair and sighed in satisfaction before gulping down his tea and refilling his cup. Adrian wasn’t even half way through his own sandwich, but he got up and brought the cake tin over without asking. Harry grinned and cut himself a wedge.

“Have you finished repairing the fences?” Adrian looked at Harry over the rim of his cup.

Harry nodded, his mouth too full to answer, before he swallowed. Adrian tracked the cake as it made its way down the length of the man’s gullet. It was like watching a snake swallow a small mammal.

“Yes,” Harry said at last. “They’ll be a lot stronger now, and I’ll apply weatherproofing tomorrow. I’ve almost finished building the new hen house. Should be ready to move them all in by the weekend, I reckon. Oh, I noticed that the gate in the upper field is wonky and there’s a lot of rot. Do you want me to build a new one?”

Adrian grunted. They both knew the answer to that. He was a farmer, not a carpenter, as some of his past efforts and blackened thumbnails had woefully demonstrated.

“You coming into the village on Friday? It’s pie night at The Fisherman’s Arms.” Harry’s face lit up at the thought of food.

Adrian shook his head. “Unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Adrian frowned. He couldn’t think of a because. “I’m too busy here,” he finished lamely.

“Not on a Friday night you’re not. And pie night is Love’s Harbour’s biggest event of the week. Everybody’s there.” Harry slurped his tea, clattering down the cup and cutting himself another slice of cake; Adrian would be lucky if it hadn’t all been eaten by the time Harry left for the day.

“Everybody? I doubt it.”

“Don’t you get fed up being here on your own all the time?”

Adrian bristled. “But I’m not on my own, am I? You and Elena are here most days.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Harry bit into what was left of his cake, eyeing the tin where the rest of it was. Adrian put the lid on it, and rammed it down hard, narrowing his eyes at the disappointment on Harry’s face. “They’re introducing a new pie variety this week, and?—”

“Do you think you can finish the new hen house today?”

“What? Er, maybe.”

“Then perhaps if you get back to it now, you might do.”

Harry nodded, his face growing red, as he stood up and wiped his crumb covered hands down his thighs.

With Harry gone, Adrian poured himself another tea and sipped slowly. Of course he wasn’t going to drive into the village for pie night. His days were filled with hard work from the moment he got up to when he stumbled, exhausted, into bed, falling into a deep sleep within seconds. It was the life of a farmer, and the life he had accepted. Yet… When had he last made the effort to go out?

A warm body pressed against his leg, and Adrian smiled. Spud stared up at him and Adrian rubbed the old collie dog behind one of his ears.

“How was your nap, old fella?” he asked softly. Spud had long since retired from herding sheep, the flock so much smaller than it had been in Adrian’s father’s day, and spent his time snoozing in a sun drenched patch of ground in the summer, and by the big log burner in winter. Now, his place out in the fields was taken by Fang, who showed more enthusiasm than skill.

Spud barked and nuzzled into Adrian’s hand and, as he gazed down at the old dog, Adrian’s mind drifted back to what Harry had said. The secret truth was, he did get fed up rattling around the sprawling farmhouse on his own yet owning up to that felt like a failure. His brows contracted into a tight frown, because it had never meant to be just him here, night after night. Yet, that’s what it was.

Perhaps he should go in on Friday. Show his face, have a couple of pints. Do something other than work and sleep. Or not.

He glanced at the clock, and pushed himself up from the table. There was a lot to do before the day was out, just like there would be tomorrow, and the day after. Banging the back door closed harder than he’d intended, he made his way towards one of the fields, pushing Harry’s words aside.