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The drive widened into an oval expanse of gravel, stones grinding beneath her tread, and Olivia climbed off to wheel the rest of the way.
She spotted a man up a ladder, his back to her. From what she could see he was fixing a gutter. She pictured how she must look, a stranger with a cloud of auburn hair and thistle scratches on her legs, pushing a bike whose pannier was stuffed with a beach towel and a crumpled sketchbook.
Two dogs bounded over, hindquarters bowed in excitement, their tails going frantically. She made a fuss of them, patting their flanks and scuffing their ears.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Hello there!’ She gave a pointless little wave, like someone on the deck of a ferry.
The labourer swore. He sucked the tip of his finger where he’d splintered it, or bashed it with a hammer, or whatever it was he was doing up there, and turned.
‘Can I help you?’ he hollered down irritably. His voice was very deep, and low, like a shout thrown back from the distant end of a tunnel.
Olivia couldn’t see his face, just a big black shape where he obscured the melting sun. ‘I’m, er, looking for a job,’ she replied uncertainly. ‘I saw the ad at the beach; you’re after someone to help with the gardens? I hope I’m in time …’
The man thought for a moment before climbing down. She could practically see his bad mood, sense it like a squall on the water when she was out on her board and the weather was changing. As he came nearer she was dwarfed by his size. He had a tousle of coal-black hair and his shoulders were treble the width of hers. He was so tall she barely came up to his chin. His eyes were darker than three a.m.
‘I’m Olivia,’ she started. ‘Olivia Lark.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I know.’
She took in his paint-splashed work trousers and faded checked shirt. He had a clever, angular face, catching the sun on one side. His eyelashes were long. Sooty. She wondered if he had helped out on her mother’s allotment.
‘Could I speak to the owner?’
His frown deepened.
‘Or if now’s a bad time …?’
He continued assessing her in that peculiarly penetrating way. She had never been on the receiving end of such stark, unapologetic scrutiny.
‘The thing is,’ she forged on, ‘I’m an artist. That sounds massively wanky, but it’s the truth so I might as well be truthful, and the other truth is that I’m unemployed and I need to make money so that I can move back to London and get on with things.’ Why was she babbling? She never babbled. His frown became more of a scowl. ‘So I’m back for the summer, and I’m hardworking, and reliable, and I wouldn’t ask to be paid too much. I’m good with plants and stuff—and I cook a bit … though actually,’ she retracted it, ‘not very well; as a matter of fact I had a complete catastrophe with a macaroni cheese the other day. You should have seen it! All burned on the top and chewy as bootlaces …’ She trailed off. His expression was stony.
‘I don’t like macaroni cheese,’ he said eventually.
‘Whoever doesn’t like macaroni cheese?’
‘I just told you: I don’t.’
There was a long, difficult silence that he appeared entirely untroubled by. Olivia’s patience expired. What the hell was his problem? No wonder the house was going under with people like this charged with greeting outsiders.
‘I’m sorry I’ve interrupted,’ she said, prim as a debutante as she turned on her heel. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘Don’t.’
Flabbergasted by his rudeness, she raged, ‘Bloody hell, you’re rude. You could’ve just—’
‘Now will do.’
He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. He was sexy, in a prehistoric sort of way. There was something very raw about him, like one of her pictures when she’d only done the most ragged outline in pencil. The top of his nose was cracked out of shape.
‘I’m looking to open the ornamentals at the end of the season,’ he said. ‘I’ve drawn up the plans, and I dare say you’ll be cheaper than a hired hand. It’ll be hard work and I won’t be paying more than I have to. Believe it or not, we’re in need of money ourselves, so that’s one thing we already have in common.’
She expected him to smile but he didn’t.
He named his price, concluding indifferently: ‘Take it or leave it.’
Olivia agreed before he could change his mind. ‘But shouldn’t I speak to Mr Lomax? I mean, I don’t know who you are, but—’
‘I am Mr Lomax.’
‘Oh.’
She looked away, embarrassed, as if he’d just taken all his clothes off in front of her. There were shades of Cato, maybe: a coarser, unpolished version. She had always envisaged the other brother as the hunchback in the attic, warty and stooped and living on a diet of pickled onions. The reality was rather different.
One thing was for sure: arrogance ran in the family.
‘Well,’ she said stiffly, ‘you could have said—’
‘Remember I didn’t ask you to be here. You asked me.’
She blinked. ‘All right.’
‘Be aware that this house owes you nothing except your pay. My brother doesn’t live here, so if that was your motivation you can leave right away.’
‘It wasn’t,’ she clarified hastily. ‘I don’t even fancy him!’
Her statement sounded impossibly stupid in the quiet that followed.
‘I’m Charlie,’ he gave her eventually. ‘Don’t bother with Mr Lomax or sir or anything like that. Just Charlie.’
‘OK. When do you want me to start?’
‘Not now, I’m expecting people.’
‘Right. So …’
‘So leave?’
Olivia bit back the smart retort he’d been begging for since she’d arrived. Did this man have absolutely no social graces? Deliberately he had put her on the back foot, watching her squirm because that was exactly the kind of enjoyment a person in his position preferred. She supposed life must become tiresome when you were king of all you surveyed, lord of a privileged, proud dominion that sprawled as far as the eye could see. Commoners like her were just a passing opportunity for entertainment. Wasn’t Mr Lomax—sorry, Charlie—meant to be an advocate for the upper classes? It went to show that all the huff and puff of an absurdly expensive education couldn’t buy manners. And anyway, Lomax or no Lomax, she wasn’t sure she could ever altogether trust someone who didn’t like pasta and cheese.
‘Monday morning,’ he directed, ‘eight o’clock. Don’t be late.’
He returned to the ladder, gazed up at the darkening sky, dusted his hands off and lifted it from the stones. Olivia watched him disappear inside the house, the dogs behind. She stood feeling like a prize lemon and hoping against hope that the gardens were miles away from Charlie Lomax … The other side of the county would be fine.
She scooped up her bike, running through all the things she wished she’d said. It was his opener that had thrown her. How could he have any idea who she was?
Puzzled by it, she pushed off through the weeping, hanging boughs. The drive was shrouded in gloom, no faint shimmer of streetlights, no passing sweep of traffic, no distant drone of life, only the far-off crash of waves as they washed over the cliffs. A pair of early evening bats swooped