Читать книгу Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm - Jaimie Admans - Страница 10

As the engine of his car echoes down the empty road, I stand in the driveway and look around, feeling a bit lost. I expected a friendly estate agent to show me around fields full of neat rows of trees like the ones I’ve passed on the way up here. I expected him to point out exactly what’s mine and tell me something about Christmas tree farming, maybe stop for a cup of tea while we signed paperwork in my quaint farmhouse.

But that would be a Hallmark movie, not real life.

In reality, the ‘quaint farmhouse’ looks like it could be part of the set for a zombie apocalypse movie, and the neat rows of Christmas trees look like indistinct greenery in the distance, and the map that the estate agent has left me with may as well be written in ancient Greek because I can’t work out how it translates into actual, real-life land.

I text Chelsea to tell her I’ve arrived safely and avoid mentioning the state of things. It seems a bit scary to venture down the lane towards the tall trees, and even scarier to face the farmhouse, so I lean into the car and grab a black bobble hat from the passenger seat and pull it down over my long hair. It’s cold today, the kind of cold that creeps in and numbs your fingers before you even realise it, and I shove my hands into my pockets as I wander up towards the road.

I cross the tarmac and peer over the broken wire fence. There are loads of different trees in there. The bare branches of something that’s already dropped its leaves for winter, the blaze of red, orange, and yellow of a few oak trees in their full autumn glory, and the first sign of a few Christmas trees. Unfortunately, they’re all in shades of yellow to brown. The healthiest looking ones have a few sprigs of green in amongst the brown dead needles. I don’t know much about trees, but I’m fairly positive that that is not what an ideal Christmas tree looks like.

I turn around and look back across the road towards the battered old farmhouse and the land stretching out behind it. It can’t be that bad. All right, it’s a bit neglected, but the map shows loads of land behind the house, the Christmas trees must be there, and they can’t all be in this state … can they?

To my right is farmland that looks neatly maintained so obviously belongs to someone else, and adjacent to my house are fields and fields of pumpkins growing. I can see a farmer in one of them, crouching down by the large orange vegetables on the ground. In the distance is a picturesque farmhouse with smoke pouring from its chimney into the dull afternoon sky, looking cosy and perfect.

I go back across the road to my crumbling old house and have a look around outside. At the back is a little garden enclosed by what’s left of a rotting fence. There’s an abandoned caravan run aground in the overgrown grass, surrounded by the broken glass from its smashed windows. There are piles of roof tiles in such a state that I can’t work out if they’re to repair the broken roof or if they’re the ones that have fallen off it. There are tools and cracked buckets and shards of wood, the bones of what was once a washing line, and unknown parts of unidentifiable machinery.

There’s a noise inside the caravan and I edge a bit closer. You can guarantee there are rats or something living inside it, although given the state of it, I’m not sure even rats would deign to inhabit it – and maybe it says something about my day so far that rats are the least of my problems. Maybe it’s not rats. Who knows what could be living up here outside of civilisation? Apart from the other farmhouse in the distance, there’s nothing else around. It’s been hours since I passed a garage or a shop. Species that don’t exist further south could be thriving here. It’s a different world to the city I’m used to.

Glass crunches under my boots as my weight presses it into the ground and I take a tentative step towards the caravan and look in through the jagged window frame. Inside, the caravan has been ransacked, everything is torn out of its fittings and upside down on the floor, and it’s full of grime, mud, and god knows what else.

‘Oi,’ I say to the unseen occupant. ‘When I find the nearest shop, I’m going to buy a nice big box of rat poison. I’m giving you a choice, mate, all right? If you pack up now and move out, we’ll say no more about it. If you stay, I promise an untimely and probably painful death. You might have been living in comfort here, but I’ve bought the place now, and I don’t know what you are, but I suspect you’re the unwelcome kind of lodger.’ I take another step and tap the side of the battered old caravan. ‘And if buying a Christmas tree farm without thought was insane, god knows what a one-sided conversation with an unseen rodent about the ins and outs of squatters laws would be considered. So go on, matey, off you go.’

I whack the side of the caravan again with the flat of my hand, and there’s a thunk and a scrabbling noise from inside. I peer into the window again to see what my squatter is, and a squirrel suddenly drops down from the ceiling and hits me square in the face.

I scream and stumble backwards as the end of a bushy tail flashes through the window, dashes onto the roof of the caravan, and hurls itself into the grass and scarpers to safety.

Bloody Nora. I expected rats scurrying around the floor, not a squirrel going for the World Gymnastics title.

At the sound of my scream, a dog starts barking, and there’s a shout of ‘Gizmo!’

My heart is pounding from the shock and I put a hand on my chest and try to catch my breath. Of all the things that have been a surprise about Peppermint Branches so far, a squirrel to the face was definitely the most unexpected of them.

There’s still a dog barking, and I look up to see the farmer racing across the rows of pumpkins in the next field as a tiny white and brown dog dashes towards me.

The pumpkin field is fenced in by a short picket fence, but the dog leaps over it easily, and I back out of my garden and crouch down to intercept him before he reaches the road.

The Chihuahua barrels straight into my outstretched arms, barking and spinning in excited circles.

‘Oh, aren’t you adorable?’ I hold my hand out and he licks all over my fingers with his tiny tongue, making me giggle as he puts both paws on my hand and stands up on his back legs, his whole body wagging with excitement. The farmer jumps the fence surrounding his pumpkin field and slows to a walk as he reaches the grassy verge that runs along the edge of the road. He lifts a hand in greeting and I do the same, and while I’m distracted, the dog paws at my trouser leg like he wants to be picked up.

‘You’re so friendly. You don’t even know me and you want me to pick you up?’ I glance behind – there’s no traffic and doesn’t look like there’ll be any anytime soon, but better to be safe than sorry. The dog clearly runs a lot faster than his owner, and it’s a good excuse for a doggy cuddle. It’s been ages since I had a doggy cuddle.

I pick him up and carefully settle him under my right arm, and he licks my chin and his wagging tail tickles my arm, making me giggle again. ‘You are just too cute, aren’t you? Yes, you are, you are. What’s a good boy like you doing out here all by yourself, hmm? Aren’t you a lovely little boy?’

I rub his ears and coo at him, and he turns his head towards every ear rub. I don’t realise I’ve degenerated into baby talk until someone clears their throat and I look up to see the farmer standing in front of me with his arms folded across his wide chest and a dark eyebrow raised.

And he is way hotter than he looked in the distance.

I take in the long dark hair in waves around his shoulders, the red plaid shirt and faded denim jeans that make his thighs look like they’re made of solid steel. Since when are farmers this gorgeous? I thought farmers were all old scruffy types with bits of hay in their grey beards and a faint smell of cow dung. I catch a waft of juniper aftershave. Definitely not cow dung.

I climb to my feet with the dog still under my arm and look up into eyes halfway between blue and green, set off by the darkness of his almost-black hair and unshaven dark stubble. If I was interested in men right now, it would be enough to make me go weak at the knees, but I’m not, and my knees are completely steady. I stamp one foot against the ground because it’s clearly uneven and that’s what’s causing any shakiness there happens to be.

‘Sorry about that,’ he says in a deep Scottish accent, and I can’t take my eyes off the piercing in his lip. It’s just one silver ball nestled in the dip of his upper lip, but it looks so out of place with the outdoorsy clothes that my eyes are drawn to it as he speaks. ‘Usually I trust him to stay with me but he heard your scream and came to rescue you.’

His accent makes ‘to’ sound like ‘tay’. I’m so fixated on the piercing that I forget he’s standing there waiting for a response while I pet his dog’s ears and stare vacantly at his upper lip.

I swallow a few times but my voice still comes out as a squeaky remnant of the baby talk. ‘Yeah, sorry. There was a squirrel.’

‘Utterly terrifying.’ His voice is sarcastic but the expression on his face doesn’t change.

‘It made me jump. I’m not scared of squirrels, I just didn’t expect it to hit me in the face.’

‘If you’re here for a viewing, the place is off the market, it was sold a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Yeah, I know. I bought it.’

‘You?’ That eyebrow rises again. ‘You bought Peppermint Branches?’

I nod, wondering if he needs to sound quite so incredulous.

‘Oh, right.’ He sounds a bit taken aback. ‘Are you in the Christmas tree industry?’

‘No, I’m a data entry clerk. I worked for a company that analyses retail sales figures in London until a couple of weeks ago.’

He looks completely confused. ‘So what are you doing here? Some sort of admin?’

‘No. I’m going to run it.’

‘Run it?’ He scoffs. ‘Run it as what?’

‘As it is. As a Christmas tree farm.’

His eyes flick towards the patch of trees in the distance. ‘But it isn’t a Christmas tree farm. It was, once, but it’s been abandoned for over four years now. As the owner of the adjoining land, I can tell you it’s in a hell of a state. How on earth do you intend to sort it out?’

‘Four years?’ I say in surprise. ‘It didn’t mention that on the auction site either.’ I avoid his question because I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to sort it out, and I try not to think about the little stone of dread that’s settled in my stomach at his words. It confirms the niggling fear I’ve had since I arrived: that this isn’t a viable business and it will need a hell of a lot of work and investment – work I know nothing about and money I don’t have – to make it viable again.

He ignores my ignoring of his question. ‘You’re not what I expected at all.’

He runs his eyes down me from the cable-knit bobble hat weaved with sparkly thread to my black coat which I now realise is no match for the Scottish autumn air, and my muddy winter boots that were clean before I got out of the car.

‘What did you expect?’ I feel myself bristling, certain this conversation is going down some sort of sexist route.

‘Well, I had this daft idea that someone buying a Christmas tree farm might know the first thing about Christmas trees.’

‘How do you know I don’t? I could be the world’s leading expert on Christmas trees for all you know.’

‘You could.’ He gives a nod of agreement. ‘But your pristinely sparkly car has clearly never seen a dirt track before, your shiny boots have clearly never stepped in a puddle before now, your nails are clean, and from the look of horror and confusion on your face, I’d guess that this place is not what you thought it was going to be.’

I try to arrange my face into a non-horrified, non-confused look, but it probably makes me look like I need an ambulance.

All right, I don’t know the first thing about Christmas tree farming, but is it really that obvious? Between getting paperwork exchanged with the solicitors, getting hold of my landlord, and the small matter of packing everything I own, I figured I could learn when I got here.

‘I’m Noel.’ He holds out a hand and I stop rubbing his dog’s ear long enough to shake it. His earth-blackened hand is warm despite the chill in the air, and his rough skin rubs against mine as I slip my hand into his huge one. ‘That’s Gizmo.’

I grin at the name. ‘As in the Gremlin?’ I pull my head back and look at the dog, who’s got gorgeous markings – a white chest and brown sides, and around one eye is a big patch of white that extends over his head, making one side brown and one side white. ‘That’s such a perfect name, he looks just like Gizmo from the film.’

‘Ah, Gremlins. One of the most underrated Christmas films.’ He whistles the song Gizmo hums in the film, and the Gizmo in my arms turns his head to the side and his tail wags like he’s heard the tune many times before. I suppose if you have a dog named after Gizmo, why wouldn’t you whistle Gizmo’s song to him at every opportunity?

‘I’m Leah.’ I realise I haven’t let go of his hand yet and quickly extract my fingers and go back to rubbing Gizmo’s ears. ‘I asked Santa for a mogwai every year when I was little. Never got one though. Can’t imagine why.’

‘Probably because they’re not real?’

‘Oh, really? I had no idea that a race of animatronic fictional creatures from an Eighties’ Christmas film didn’t actually exist. You’re not going to tell me that Santa doesn’t exist next and that reindeer can’t really fly, are you? What about the tooth fairy? It’s not the parents all along, is it? And what of Jurassic Park? Are you trying to say that it wasn’t a documentary?’

‘Hah.’ He laughs but his face shows he has no idea if I’m being sarcastic or not. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve totally thrown me. I expected the person who’d won the auction to be a property developer intending to flatten the place and build something new, not someone turning up and intending to run it as a tree farm again. And you’re seriously telling me that you’re not in the industry and you haven’t got any experience? Do you have any idea how much of a state this place is in? What on earth were you thinking?’

‘I was a little bit drunk, okay?’ I snap, annoyance creeping in again. ‘What’s it got to do with you whether I have any experience or not? I’d just caught my boyfriend cheating with half the office and I wanted to change my life. All right, it needs a bit of work, but I wanted a challenge. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You were drunk?’ His voice goes high with indignation. ‘Didn’t you even come for a viewing?’

‘Look, with hindsight, I realise that not viewing it first was a bad decision, but it was on the spur of the moment; the auction was ending and I had to decide then and there whether to go for it or not. There was another bidder and I didn’t even realise how much I wanted it until I put the very last bid in with four seconds to go.’

‘Four seconds.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘How do you even do that?’

‘I buy a lot of shoes on eBay?’ I offer, hoping it might make him laugh but no such luck.

‘You bought a Christmas tree farm like it was a pair of shoes?’

‘No, I used my experience of buying shoes to win an auction. Not that it has anything to do with you, obviously.’

His eyebrows rise and he has the decency to look a bit guilty. ‘No, of course it doesn’t. I was only trying to figure out how insane my new neighbour might be.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t accost a complete stranger on the road and start telling them what they’re allowed to do with their money and make judgements about how they intend to run their property.’

‘People around here are going to comment, you may as well get used to it.’ He lets out an annoyed huff. ‘You bought a Christmas tree farm, with no experience of the industry, because you were drunk? What did you expect? Did you think you could stand back and watch the trees fell themselves, net themselves, and toddle off to market on their own?’

‘Maybe. Well, apart from the toddling bit. If Christmas trees were going to move independently, it would be more of a leaping sprint, don’t you think?’

I can tell he’s trying not to smile. His piercing shifts as his lip twitches. And then he shakes himself and frowns again. ‘This could be someone’s life, someone’s livelihood. Peppermint Branches was important once, it really mattered to the community of Elffield, and you think you can snap it up on a drunken whim and lark about here until, what, the heels of your designer boots sink into the first cowpat, and then you can sell it on to the next idiot who comes along?’

‘These are Primark, not designer.’

He looks down at my feet. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

I go to start explaining but stop myself. I don’t think a Scottish pumpkin farmer is interested in the pros and cons of high-street brands. ‘I don’t want to sell it on,’ I say instead. All right, it’s not what I expected, but I wanted to do something that made me stop feeling like I was standing still waiting for the grief of my parents death to dissipate. ‘Why can’t I learn how to run a Christmas tree farm? When I started data inputting, I had no idea what I was doing, but I learnt. No one starts a job knowing exactly what’s what. This is a job like any other.’

‘This isn’t just a job. This is a life. Living and working on a place like this is all-consuming. This isn’t an office that you leave behind at 5 p.m. every night. You live it, day in, day out, 365 days a year, and no, you don’t get Christmas off. You don’t get holidays and pensions and medical insurance. You spend every day trying to keep these trees alive. You don’t look like the kind of person who’d be very good at keeping things alive.’

‘I think a séance might be the only way to help these. They’re already dead, look at them.’

He glances towards the area of dead branches on the opposite side of the road. ‘I wouldn’t worry about those, they’re the windbreaker fields. The northern fields are healthier. Marginally.’

‘Northern fields?’

‘Oh, for god’s sake.’ He gives me a withering look. ‘You don’t even know what you’ve bought, do you? You have a northern and southern patch of land. South.’ He throws a hand out towards the patch of dead-to-dying trees in front of us like I’m an imbecile. ‘Road.’ He stamps his foot on the tarmac like I don’t know what a road is. ‘House. Beyond house, trees. Yours.’

‘You Tarzan, me Jane?’ I say in an attempt at humour.

It goes down like a lead brick with an elephant tied to it. Probably just as well. The image of him in nothing but a loincloth is a bit too much for me.

‘You don’t know the first thing about trees, do you?’

‘Well, I …’

He points to a large green thing behind me, one of the only green trees in sight. ‘What type of tree is that?’

I squint at it. Is this a trick question? I pluck a species name out of thin air and hope for the best. ‘Fir?’

‘Cedar.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Cedrus Libani, actually. But I’m sure you knew that.’

‘Oh, right. Of course. I knew that, I was just making sure that you weren’t bluffing.’

‘And what’s that tree dying of?’ He points in the opposite direction towards a sad looking spindly thing that probably had leaves on both sides once.

It’s another trick question. It doesn’t look like there’s any dying about it, it’s almost certainly already completed the process. ‘Creeping brown deadness?’

‘Aye.’ He gives me a scathing smile. ‘Otherwise known as windburn. It happens when the wind pulls water out of the needles faster than the roots can replace it. I can see this is going to go really well.’

‘But I can learn this stuff. You weren’t born knowing this, you learnt it.’

‘Over years of living here. I grew up on a farm. From the age of ten, I came over here every weekend to help Mr Evergreene. You’re not going to pick it up after five minutes with a How to Identify Trees book. It takes more than Trees For Dummies.’

I make a mental note to check whether he’s being sarcastic or if this book actually exists. Trees For Dummies sounds like just the ticket.

Also, Mr Evergreene – seriously? ‘There’s no way that was the previous owner’s name. You’re making that up. Who runs the local garage – Mr Petrol? How about the manager of the nearest supermarket – Mr Tesco, is it? If there’s a bakery owned by Mr Croissant, I want to go there.’

‘Peppermint Branches is an amazing place,’ he continues, ignoring me. ‘A special place, a beautiful tree farm that was once famous and could be again if it had someone to take care of it and restore it to its former glory.’

His green-blue eyes are fiery with passion. He must really love this place. ‘I could do that. Why couldn’t I do that?’

‘You know what, rather than answering that question, I’m starting to think I should go home and let you figure it out for yourself. I predict it’s going to be fun to watch.’

‘You could give me some advice rather than trying to make me feel stupid,’ I snap. ‘I want to restore it to its former glory. I want to make it a functioning Christmas tree farm again. You seem to know so much about it, tell me where I need to go to learn how. Tell me what books I need to read, what websites I should visit. Tell me what its former glory was like and how I can restore it.’

‘Why? So you can do two weeks here, realise it’s too difficult, and swan off back to London?’

‘I’m not going to do that. I’m committed to this. I want to make a go of it.’

‘I’ve heard that before. It lasts until you spoilt city women get bored of not having the luxuries of designer shops and posh restaurants at your fingertips.’

I want to ask him where he’s heard that before and why he sounds so bitter, but I get the feeling he doesn’t like me very much and would tell me to mind my own business. ‘Have you seen some of the things those posh restaurants serve up? The contents of a vacuum cleaner bag look more appetising. And given the amount of money I’ve spent on this place, even Primark will be out of my designer shopping budget for the next thirty years.’

His mouth twitches and I can tell that he’s trying not to smile. I’m entranced by the little silver ball again as we stand there staring at each other.

‘So, what do you grow?’ I ask when I suddenly realise it’s a bit weird to stand on the roadside with a stranger’s dog under your arm while you stare at said stranger’s upper lip. I tear my eyes away from his piercing and nod towards the field he came from. ‘Pumpkins?’

‘No, Brussels sprouts.’

I look over at the field and lift my hand to shade my eyes from a sun that isn’t there in case it’s distorting my vision. ‘Those round orange things trailing along the ground? They’re pumpkins … aren’t they?’

He throws his hands up in despair. ‘The fact you even had to question that …’

‘Obviously I know they’re pumpkins. I was being polite. It could’ve been a new variety or something.’

‘When have there ever been round, orange, giant sprouts that grow along the ground on vines?’ He sounds exasperated.

‘That’s not fair. That’s like me showing you a designer handbag and expecting you to guess the designer and then laughing at you for not knowing.’

‘But I haven’t bought a business selling designer handbags. Forgive me for my mistaken assumption that someone who’s just entered the Christmas tree farming business might know something about growing things.’

‘I know plenty of things about Christmas trees.’

‘What, that they’re green and look pretty with lights and a fairy on top?’

‘No,’ I huff, racking my brains for something I might actually know about trees. Any tree would do at this point, not even a festive tree. Come on, Leah, there are trees in London. ‘Antarctica is the only continent where trees don’t grow.’ Hah. That’ll show him. And prove to my Year 7 geography teacher that I was paying attention in class all those years ago.

His dark eyebrow quirks at the perfect angle to show exactly how unimpressed he is. ‘Oh, there you go then. My concerns are unfounded. I’m sure you’ll be wowing hordes of early customers before the week is out. So dazzled will they be by your intrinsic knowledge of Christmas trees that they’ll be queuing up to buy them six weeks early.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ I mutter. I know he’s being sarcastic, but I can’t let him get to me, even though if I’m completely honest, he’s kind of got a point. Meeting a real farmer who knows this land and thinks I’m a lunatic for taking it on … I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t got me worried.

‘Let me ask you something,’ he says. ‘I know how long this place has been up for sale and I know how much the price has dropped and I know they were trying of offload it in an auction as a last resort, so I’ve got a good idea of how much you paid – very, very cheap. Did that not start any alarm bells ringing?’

‘I didn’t know how much they cost. I’ve never bought one before. There’s no price comparison site for Christmas tree farms.’

‘No, but there’s this weird, and obviously miniscule in your case, thing called common sense. I see it’s a completely foreign concept to you, but did it not cross your mind that fifty grand was cheap for twenty-five acres? Have you not heard of the phrase “too good to be true”?’

I huff in annoyance. He might be gorgeous, but I’m starting to really dislike this bloke. He speaks sense that I should’ve realised before I ploughed all my money into a failing Christmas tree farm. ‘Just how desperate were they to sell it?’

‘It’s been on the market for over four years. There must’ve been a couple of hundred viewings over those years, but it’s worthless land because you can’t do anything with it. The trees have gone wild. Pruning them back into shape and selling them is an almost impossible job, and cutting them all down and replanting means any potential buyer has got roughly ten years to wait for them to grow to a saleable size. No wonder no one’s bought it, but an idiot had to come along sooner or later. It’s the law of averages.’

I don’t even bother to be offended. I haven’t seen much further than the driveway so far and I’m inclined to believe that he’s not being totally unfair in that description. ‘Am I unreasonable to want something that even vaguely resembled the pictures on the auction site?’

‘No, but you’re unreasonable to buy a property without looking at it, without hiring a surveyor, doing any background research, or using the common sense that would tell most people that if they’re getting something so big for such a ridiculously cheap price, it’s probably not that much of a bargain after all.’

‘I don’t call fifty grand cheap.’

He does another sarcastic laugh. ‘Cheap in relation to size. Thinking you were going to get a working, functional Christmas tree farm that you could simply step into and start raking in money for that kind of price.’

‘I knew there would be work involved,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘Did you see the auction listing?’

He scratches the back of his neck. ‘No.’

‘There were pictures of living trees on it. So far, that seems to be a complete misrepresentation.’

‘This land hasn’t been maintained in four years. It would resemble the pictures. If it had been maintained, which it hasn’t. For four years. That’s more than half a Christmas tree’s lifespan to average selling age. It’s a lot of work to get them back into shape if any of them are salvageable, but they’re not all dead. Yet.’

I look at the brown to browner shades of the trees behind me. ‘No, what are they then? Dressed up in their Halloween costumes? Performing a horticultural re-enactment of Night of the Living Dead?’

His lip twitches again. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about these ones. These are your windbreaker fields.’ He sighs at my blank look. ‘They’re to protect the Christmas trees from the worst of the Scottish weather. Strong winds can distort branches and desiccate needles, and that’s if you get lucky and the wind doesn’t take the trees down altogether. Good farmers plant windbreaker fields to take the full force of it instead of the Christmas trees.’

I look around for some sign of these Christmas trees, and he waves towards the land behind the farmhouse like he knows exactly what I’m looking for. ‘They’re that way.’

‘Oh, brilliant,’ I say, genuinely overjoyed by this news. Gizmo licks my chin in approval and his tail wagging amps up. ‘When I was growing up, my mum and dad had a houseplant in the corner of the room, and once a month, my mum would drown the poor thing, and every time I’d fish it out, drain it off, and nurse it back to health. If anything on this farm is alive, it’s better than I expected when I drove in. I’m going to go and have a look around.’

He doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head upwards and looks pointedly at the darkening sky. It’s gone 4 p.m. and it’s well on the way to getting dark. I can’t make sense of the estate agent’s map in the daylight, never mind the dark, and the unseen forest of trees at the end of the lane beyond the farmhouse looks intimidating, but I don’t want to let him know I’m bothered because he thinks I’m an idiot anyway, it’d make his day if he thought I was afraid of the dark too.

I decide to be brave and point towards the gate closed across the lane. ‘There’s not going to be anything out there, right?’

‘Like what?’ He’s got that smug eyebrow quirked up again, waiting for me to say something stupid. ‘Worried you might run into another big, scary squirrel?’

‘No.’ I wish I hadn’t said anything now, but it looks remote and scary. Apart from him, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around for miles. If no one’s been on this land for years, anything could be lurking out there and no one would know. ‘Didn’t someone float an idea of reintroducing wolves to Scotland once? And what if I put my foot in a bear trap or something? I’ve seen wilderness films – there’s always a bear trap when you least expect one.’

‘Wolves and bear traps? Seriously?’ He pushes a hand through his hair and shakes his head in despair. ‘You do know that this is the United Kingdom, right? You may have driven a long way but you haven’t actually left Great Britain. There are no wolves and no bears to require the use of a bear trap. Have you mistaken Scotland for northern Alaska?’ He’s using a saccharinely sweet voice and it kind of makes me want to punch him. And I’d had such high hopes given the gorgeous dog and love of Gremlins.

‘Well, thanks for the warm welcome,’ I snap, and spin on my heel to walk away. ‘It was a joy to meet you.’

‘Leah?’ He calls after me.

Hah. One well-placed sarcastic comment is all you need to make someone realise what a miserable twat they are. He’ll try to backtrack and apologise now, no doubt.

‘Can I have my dog back?’

Oh. Bugger. I forgot I’ve still got Gizmo in my arms.

I pull my head back so I can look into Gizmo’s big brown eyes. Would it be petty to say no? ‘You’d come home with me, wouldn’t you, lovely?’ I murmur to him, pressing my mouth against the brown side of his head.

His tail wags against my side in agreement, but I stomp back towards Noel guiltily. Even though I think this lovely animal deserves a much nicer owner, I didn’t mean to dognap him.

Noel holds his big, dirty hands out and I somehow manage to transfer the wagging, licky dog into his arms, my skin brushing the surprisingly soft sleeve of his red plaid shirt as Gizmo pushes himself up to start licking the dark scruff of Noel’s neck, excited at being reunited with his owner. The dog must see a nicer side than I do. I’ve only known Noel for ten minutes and I’d happily never be reunited with him again.

‘Thanks,’ he mumbles, his voice muffled behind the dog trying to give him a facial. ‘Feel free to give me a shout if you need anything. Cup of sugar, a pumpkin to carve for Halloween, help building a bonfire which is probably the best use you’ll get out of most of the trees, the address of some local demolition companies …’

‘Yes, thanks for the sterling, solicited advice you’ve given me so far,’ I mutter, even though he’s been more helpful than the estate agent was. ‘I’m going to go and look around my farm now and figure out what’s best to do with my Christmas trees for myself. Goodbye.’

I only get a few steps before he calls my name again. ‘I wouldn’t go out there in the dark.’

‘Why not?’ I say to the empty road, not giving him the satisfaction of turning around. I will retain the moral high ground here.

‘Mountain lions.’

‘What?’ I turn to look at him in shock, all pretences of the moral high ground or any form of dignity disappearing, although I think the dignity was already lost when a Chihuahua came to rescue me from a squirrel.

He points towards the trees and nods knowingly. ‘Mountain lions.’

I wait for his mouth to twitch up in a grin or for him to burst into that sarcastic laughter again, but he doesn’t. ‘You’re winding me up.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Oh, come on. If there are no bears or wolves, there are no mountain lions. You’re having a laugh.’

‘Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. The only way to find out is to venture into those trees at night.’

We stare at each other in silence for a few long moments. I’m still waiting for him to continue the joke, but what’s he waiting for? Me to run screaming to the car and zoom off back to London?

‘Also because the fence between your property and mine is flimsy in places and I don’t want you stumbling into my vegetable garden in the dark and destroying my livelihood. And there’s a river running through your property that’s not marked on the estate agent’s map, and most of its banks are worn away. It’s too cold to fall into a river at this time of year, so wait until it’s light to go exploring, all right?’

‘Do you think I’m incapable of using a torch?’

‘No, but if you get lost and die from starvation or hypothermia or get eaten by mountain lions overnight, having to give a statement to the coroner is really going to delay my morning and I have a lot to do tomorrow.’

I gulp. There’s no way he’s serious about the mountain lions.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of responding. I turn around and stalk along the grassy edge of the road until I turn into my driveway. I open the car door and lean in, pretending to hunt around for something on the passenger side so I don’t have to see his smug face again, and I don’t look up again until I see him and Gizmo walking back across the pumpkin field in the distance.

I sigh and stand up, stretching my back out and looking up at the rapidly darkening sky and then down the lane towards the trees in trepidation. I’m not going out there in the dark. Even though there are no mountain lions.

Probably.