Sarah would like to live there now. She hankered for independence but she couldn’t quite manage. She loved it here, though. To move away…

He couldn’t, even if it meant spending his spare time mending and mowing and tending animals and feeling guilty because his grandmother’s garden was now mostly grass.

And he was too close to Abby.

Do not go there, he told himself. He started tugging weeds, but then…

The sound of a car approaching tugged him out of his introspection.

Abby.

The car door opened and Kleppy flew to greet him as if he was his long lost friend, missing at sea for years, feared dead, miraculously restored to life. This was the new, renewed Kleppy, sure again of his importance in the world, greeting friends as they ought to be greeted.

He grinned and scratched Kleppy’s stomach as he rolled, and Kleppy moaned and wriggled and moaned some more.

‘I wish someone was that pleased to see me,’ Abby said.

She was right by her car. She was smiling.

He couldn’t roll on his back and wriggle but the feeling was similar.

She’d been crying. He could see it. He wanted…he wanted…

To back off. What she’d said… If I can forgive what happened with Ben… He’d gone over it in his mind a hundred times and he couldn’t get away from it.

He could not afford to love this woman.

‘I came to apologise,’ she said.

He stilled. Thought about it. Thought where it might be going and thought a man would be wise to be cautious.

‘Why would you want to apologise?’ He rose. Kleppy gave a yelp of indignation. He grinned and scooped Kleppy up with him. Got his face licked. Didn’t mind.

Abby was apologising?

‘The forgiveness thing,’ she said, and he could see it was an effort to make her voice steady. ‘I didn’t get it.’

‘And now you do?’

She was standing beside her little red sports car and she wasn’t moving. He didn’t move either. He held her dog and he didn’t go near.

Neutral territory between them. A chasm…

‘I’ve…changed,’ she said.

He nodded, still cautious. ‘You got rid of the diamond. That’s got to be a start.’

‘It wasn’t the diamond. It was Kleppy. One dog and my life turns upside down.’

‘He hasn’t ended you in jail.’

‘Not yet.’

‘How much did you know about what was in Dexter’s briefcase?’

‘Was there anything?’ She couldn’t disguise the eagerness. She didn’t know, he thought with a rush of relief, though he’d already felt it. The Abby he once knew could never have collaborated with dishonesty. She hadn’t changed so much.

Maybe she hadn’t changed very much at all. This was the Abby he once knew, right here.

‘There’s enough to convict Baxter,’ he said mildly-there was no need to go into the rest of it yet-and he watched the rush of relief.

‘I’m so glad.’

‘So are a lot of people. Me included. Is that why you’re here? To find out?’

‘No. I told you. I came to say sorry.’

Sorry. What did that mean?

He couldn’t help her. He knew she was struggling, but she had to figure for herself where she was going.

Abby.

He wanted to walk towards her and gather her up and claim her, right now. He ached to kiss away the tracks of those tears.

But he had to wait, to see if the figuring would come out on his side.

‘Kleppy and I have been up at Isaac’s,’ she said. ‘We’ve been sitting on the road where Ben was killed.’

‘Mmm.’ Nothing more was possible.

‘We were all dumb that night.’

‘We were.’ Still he was neutral. He was having trouble getting a breath here. Abby took a deep breath for him.

‘Sarah and I were seventeen. You and Ben and Philip were nineteen. I’d made my debut with Philip and you were mad at me. Sarah was mad at you, so she accepted a date with Philip to make you madder still. Ben was fed up with all of us-I think he wanted to go out with Sarah so he was fuming. Then the car… The rain… It would have been far more sensible to wait till the next weekend but Ben had to go back to uni so he was aching to try the car.’

‘Abby…’

‘Let me say it,’ she said. ‘I’m still trying to figure this out for myself so let me say it as I see it now.’

‘Okay.’ What else was a man to say?

‘My dad came up here that afternoon and he was angry with Ben for spending the weekend here and not sitting in our living room giving Mum and Dad a minute by minute description of life at uni. So Dad didn’t take any interest. He should have said, Don’t try the car until next weekend. Or even offered to go with you and watch. And Sarah… I remember her trying on the dress I’d just finished making for her, and your gran saying, “Don’t you crush that dress, Sarah, after all the time I spent ironing it.” And I was home, fed up with the lot of you.’

‘So…’

‘So it was all just…there,’ she said. ‘Pressure on you to drive on a night that wasn’t safe. Excitement. Knowledge that no one used that track except loggers and no loggers worked over the weekend. Stupid kids and unsafe decisions and a slippery road, and pure bad luck. Sarah not wanting to crush her dress. Ben being too macho to wear a seat belt. Philip wanting to show off his car, his girlfriend. You weren’t charged with culpable driving, Raff, and there was a reason. My parents took their grief out in anger. Their anger soured…lots of things. It enveloped me and I’ve been too much of a wuss to fight my way out the other side.’

‘And now you have?’ It was a hard question to ask. It was a hard question to wait for an answer.

But it seemed she had an answer ready. ‘You kissed me,’ she said simply. ‘And it made me realise that I want you. I always have. That want, that need, got all mixed up, buried, subsumed by grief, by shock, by obligation. I’ve been a king-sized dope, Raff. It took one crazy dog to shake me out of it.’

The dog in question was passive now, shrugged against Raff’s chest. Raff set him down with care. It seemed suddenly important to have his arms free. ‘So you’re saying…’

‘I’m saying I love you,’ she said, steadily and surely. ‘I know it seems fast. We’ve been apart for ten years so maybe I should gradually show you I’ve changed. But you know what? I can’t wait. I’ve messed the last ten years up. Do I need to mess any more?’

He didn’t move. He didn’t let himself move. Not yet. There were things that needed to be said.

‘Your parents hate me,’ he said at last, because it was important. Hate always was.

‘They have a choice,’ she said steadily now, and certain. Her eyes not leaving his. ‘They can accept the man I love or not. It’s up to them but it won’t stop me loving you. I’ll try and explain but if they won’t listen…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t live with hate any more, Raff, or with grief. I can’t live under the shadow of a ten-year-old tragedy. You and me…’ She gazed round the disreputable farmyard. ‘You and me, and Sarah…’

And Sarah? She was going there?

She’d accept Sarah. He knew she would.

He could never leave Sarah. That fact had coloured every relationship he’d had since the accident, but this was the old Abby emerging, and it was no longer an issue. This was the Abby who held to her friendships no matter what, who’d never stopped loving Sarah, the Abby with a heart so big…

So big she could ignore her parents’ hatred?

So big she could take on the Finn boy?

And then he paused. Another vehicle was approaching, travelling fast. Its speed gave it a sense of urgency and he and Abby paused and waited.

It was a silver Porsche.

Philip.


For ten years Abby had never seen Philip angry. She’d seen him irritated, frustrated, condescending. She’d always felt there was an edge of anger held back but she’d never seen it.

She was seeing it now. His car skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel, and the hens clucking round the yard squawked and flew for cover. Kleppy dived behind her legs and stayed there.

Philip didn’t notice the hens or Kleppy. He was out of the car, crashing the door closed, staring at her as if she were an alien species.

Raff was suddenly beside her. Taking her hand in his. Holding her against him.

Uh-oh.

She should pull away. Holding hands with Raff would inflame the situation.

She tugged but Raff didn’t let her go. Instead, he tugged her tighter. His body language was unmistakable. My woman, Dexter. Threaten her at your peril.

How had it come to this?

‘So that’s it,’ Philip snarled, staring at the pair of them as if they’d crawled from under Raff’s pile of weeds. ‘You slut.’

‘It’s not polite to call a lady a slut,’ Raff said and his body shifted imperceptibly between them. ‘You want to take a cold shower and come back when you’re cooler?’

‘You sabotaged the case,’ Philip said incredulously, ignoring Raff. ‘The bank accounts… Suddenly you leave, and my briefcase’s gone and in comes Finn and the Prosecutor has a whole list of new evidence. You gave it to Finn.’

‘Baxter’s a maw-worm,’ Abby said, trying to shove Raff aside so she could face him. This was her business, not Raff’s. ‘I didn’t know there was anything in your briefcase to convict him, but if there was we shouldn’t have been defending him.’

‘It’s what we do. Do you know how much his fee was?’

‘We can afford to lose it.’

‘You might.’ He was practically apoplectic, and she knew why. She’d had the temerity to get between him and his money. Philip and his reputation. Philip and his carefully planned life.

‘So what about this?’ He hauled the diamond out of his top pocket and thrust it towards her, but he was holding it tight at the same time. ‘Do you know how much this cost? Do you know how much I’ve done for you?’

‘You’ve been…’ How to say he’d been wonderful? He had, but right now it didn’t seem like it.