The Country Escape. Jane Lovering
it’s no trouble?’ He’d taken the glasses off again now, and was looking at me with that curiously exposed look that glasses wearers often have when they have their barrier against the world removed.
‘Compared to finding a bus stop, waiting, missing the bus, bus running late, getting to the other end and having to find the location whilst not knowing where to get the bus back from? I’d say driving was the least of it.’
Gabriel tilted his head. ‘Some of us don’t have a choice,’ he said gently.
‘Sorry, no. Of course. But I don’t mind driving and the car could do with being out a bit more often. It’s starting to look like the world’s most expensive garden gnome out there.’
I didn’t know whether it was my apology or my lightening of the tone, but his face lightened too. ‘Tomorrow at ten thirty. I’ll be outside Thea’s shop waiting. You can’t miss it – it’s the one with all the knitted monstrosities in the window. Now I’d better go and syphon Kee back into the car. We’ve got to see a couple more locations this afternoon before it gets dark.’
We stood together in the doorway. Keenan was a dark smear beyond the window; he’d wound his coat around his upper body and head like a shroud and was walking up and down the front path, glazed with rain and muttering.
‘Looks like Davin’s family banshee on holiday,’ Gabriel observed. ‘Let me get him out of here.’
We stared at one another for a moment. ‘Let’s agree on a handshake,’ I said.
‘I was going to go for cheek kiss?’
‘I’m just going to gently pat your arm. It’s safer.’
There was a bit of a moment of confusion when we both raised our right hands, but because we were standing face to face there wasn’t room for either of us to do anything with the raised hand, and we lowered them again.
‘Take it as read?’ he said, after a bit of elbow-clonking.
‘I think so, yes.’ I opened the door.
Keenan, mac over head dripping like a gutter, jumped and then said, ‘We’d better go. I think I’m dissolving.’
I closed the door and went back to Patrick’s bucket.
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