The doorknob twisted and Maisie panicked. Instead of pretending to have just this second come downstairs in order for Otto not to realise she had been eavesdropping, she darted towards the front door and was through it in a trice.
Closing it behind her as softly as she could, she tiptoed around the back of the farmhouse and made her way to the barn. Hopefully the goats wouldn’t be as judgemental as her sister.
Adam checked the time and realised he had fifty minutes before he needed to be at the farm on Muddypuddle Lane; enough time to stop off in the village for a brunch panini and a coffee.
He eyed the sit-on lawnmower with satisfaction. It was now running as sweet as a nut, and he had even sharpened the cutting blades. It hadn’t been part of the repair, but it hadn’t taken long with the grinder, and being willing to go that extra mile was helping to build his reputation because the vast majority of work that came his way was by word of mouth.
He lived on the outskirts of Picklewick, in a flat above what had once been an MOT garage, and the farm was in the opposite direction, so he drove through the village, found a parking space on the high street and hopped out, aiming for the cafe a short distance up the road.
‘Adam, what can I get you?’ Lou asked. She had owned the cafe for years and, in Adam’s opinion, served the best coffee for miles.
‘I’ve just about got time for a ham and cheese panini and an Americano, please.’
She flicked a cloth over the counter. ‘Find a table and I’ll bring it over. Can I tempt you with a slice of strawberry and vanilla sponge?’
Adam’s mouth watered. He was a sucker for cakes. ‘Go on, but if I can’t fit into my jeans, I’ll blame you.’
‘Pah! It’ll take more than one slice of cake! You haven’t got an ounce of fat on you. If I was ten years younger…’
Adam sat down, grinning. Lou was an outrageous flirt, but she was like that with all the men, not just him.
‘Here, get that inside you,’ she instructed, putting his food and a coffee on the table. He noticed she had given him a generous slice of cake, and he reminded himself to leave her an equally generous tip.
As he ate, he scrolled through his emails, glad to see that a part he had ordered for a trailer had been dispatched, and he highlighted it. As soon as it arrived, he would let his customer know andhopefully he would be able to crack on with the job.
Finishing his food, he drank the last of the coffee and settled the bill.
‘See you soon,’ Lou called, and Adam waved as he stepped into the street. He was a regular at the cafe, calling in two to three times a week. It was more convenient than making his own sandwiches, and it forced him to take a proper break, otherwise he would be eating his lunch on the run.
Suitably fuelled up, he returned to the van. It was time to take a look at Dulcie Fairfax’s pasteurisation unit.
The farm was roughly a five-minute drive out of Picklewick, at the top of a steep lane. He used to go up that way a lot when he was a kid, because halfway upthe hill was a riding stable, where his mum used to take him for lessons. He quite liked horses, although he hadn’t ridden in years. At the time, the farm had been owned by an old chap called Walter York, but he’d moved into a cottage further down the lane, and Dulcie Fairfax lived at the farm now, along with Walter’s son, Otto, who had recently opened a restaurant in the village.
Adam had heard that the food in The Wild Side was good, although he hadn’t tried it himself and he probably wouldn’t any time soon. It was the kind of place you went to for a special occasion, or if you wanted to impress a date. As far as Adam was aware, there were no special occasions on the horizon and he hadn’t had a date in ages. Nor did he want one: he wanted to concentrate on growing hisbusiness before he allowed himself to become distracted by a girlfriend.
He was still thinking about the stables and wondering whether the place had changed, when he made the right-hand turn on the lane. Over the tops of the hedges he could glimpse horses grazing in the fields to either side, and out of the corner of his eye Adam thought he could see a donkey. There was something incredibly cute about donkeys, he mused.
Easing around a bend in the lane, he changed down a gear as the incline steepened, but as he came out of it, he swore loudly.
Tearing down the road at break-neck speed was a bloody goat!
Adam slammed on the brakes and came to a standstill just as the goat swervedinto the verge to avoid his van, and as he did so he realised a woman was racing headlong after it, her arms windmilling as she fought to maintain her balance and not let her feet run away with her.
‘What the hell?’ he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. What on earth was she thinking? He had almost ploughed into her. Thank goodness he had been doing no more than twenty miles per hour, if that.
Her horrified expression as she skidded past the van, told him she realised how close she had come to being flattened. But she didn’t stop, and his last sight of her was in his side mirror as she carried on running down the lane in hot pursuit of the goat.
Shaken, Adam sat there for a minute, adrenalin from the near miss making hisfingers tingle and his heart pound. His good mood gone, he finally pulled himself together and carried on up the hill to the farm, muttering darkly.
Maisie’s heart was in her mouth as she spotted Princess, and she slowed to a walk, not wanting to spook her. The goat was calmly munching on something in the hedgerow, but she was perilously close to where the lane met the main road. It wasn’t a particularly busy road, but all it took was one vehicle... A van coming up the lane had nearly taken the goat out as it was, but thankfully it had been travelling quite slowly. Traffic on the main road would be going considerably faster.
‘There’s a good girl,’ Maisie crooned breathlessly, as she drew closer to the animal.
Princess carried on munching, but one eye was on Maisie who fully expected the goat to bolt at any second.
Changing tactics, Maisie calmly sidled to the opposite side of the lane, hoping she was conveying total disinterest in the naughty creature.
Whistling tunelessly (it was more of a wheeze than a whistle because she was still out of breath from her mad run down the lane), Maisie put her hands behind her back, lifted her chin, and pretended to be interested in the sky as she strolled nonchalantly past.
