Page 60 of You, As You Are

* Goodnight

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IAIN

The phoneon the desk buzzed – some kind of alert tone Iain had never heard. He picked his head up from where he’d slung it back in boredom.

It was a slow day at work, if nothing happening at all could be considered slow and notstatic. Gareth had been on the phone in his office for an hour, and Mari tapped away at her computer, flicking through catalogues and chatting up the workmen who came to collect stock.

Iain looked too slowly and only caught his phone’s screen fading to black. He glanced around the empty showroom. No one would care if he checked what the alert was.

The notification on the home screen said he’d been mentioned in a Facebook post, which was odd as he barely used social media, not since he had every single person in his friend list – not to mention that of his ex-fiancé and family – getting up in his business about the wedding that never was. He’d deleted everything and started new, which still only left him with the hiking group and guys from rugby as his ‘friends’.

The post he’d been tagged in was in the local resident community page.

Arjun Choudhary:Hi! My wife and I are avid landscape photographers. We will be staying in Aberystwyth in a few weeks and were wondering if there was a local tour guide available, preferably for hiking?

Ronald Davies:Hello there, I hope you enjoy your visit to our little town! Your best bet would be to talk toIain Howell, he could be able to sort you out.

“What?” Iain reread Ronnie’s response to the post and the words came together the exact same way.

He wasn’t a tour guide. He was good with hiking and reading maps, and he knew the land around these parts like he knew exactly how many minutes after eating that Ted would need to be taken outside, but he wasn’t aguide.

Mr Choudhary hadn’t responded yet to Ronnie’s comment, and Iain didn’t know how to word his rejection to not be obstinately rude, so he left it. A problem forlaterIain to grumble over.

He went to open a mindless go-kart racing game app that he used to pass the time when a name he didn’t see too often lit up his phone.

“Shit …”

Mari looked over from her desk that time.

Iain grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and headed outside into the rain, shoes scuffing on the car park gravel as he stabbed with his thumb to answer the call.

“I’m at work,” he said right off the bat.

“We want you to come for dinner on Saturday,” his eldest brother, Lewis, responded.

“I have plans.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

Iain didn’t think Maisie would mind him using her as an excuse. What else was this plan of theirs for?

“I’m seeing someone.”

“Well bring her too,” Lewis said.

“I’d rather not.”

“You can’t avoid us forever.” It was uncanny how much their voices matched; the same worn-down, irritated tone from years of this same dragged-out conversation.

“I’m not avoiding you,” Iain murmured, turning his back on the showroom. “I’m avoiding Alun.”

“He wants to see you.” His brother’s response was terse.

“I wouldn’t know what for.”

“You would if you answered his calls.”

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