“Oh my God!” she said. “This is amazing!”
Then she remembered she didn’t have a lot of money to pay for rent.
“I mean, it’s quite . . . It must have been a lot of work,” she said more stiffly. She moved forward into the room. The lights weren’t needed; the sun, currently out, flooded the place, making her feel like lounging in it, like a cat, without the biting wind of outside.
It wasn’t a large space. There was a cozy-looking wood-burning stove down at one end, and a set of high-end kitchen units along the back wall. A little spiral staircase led up to a small mezzanine with a vast double bed and a bathroom, which both had huge windows of their own looking over the hillside. Bookshelves lined the far wall against the original gray stone.
It was stunning. As perfect a sanctuary as she could ever have imagined. Nina had never wanted to live somewhere as much in her entire life. Someone had designed and made this barn with the utmost care and attention. She wouldn’t have marked Lennox down as an interior-design type on their short acquaintance.
“Um,” she said carefully, scampering back down the spiral wooden staircase. “Do you rent this out a lot?”
Lennox looked around as if he hadn’t been in the building for a year (as indeed he hadn’t).
“Oh, no,” he said. “No, I . . . I never have. Don’t really have the time for all that nonsense. No, it was . . .” He went quiet for a second. “Well. My wife did all that stuff. My soon to be ex-wife.”
His pain in simply pronouncing the words made Nina wary about saying more.
“Right,” she said quietly. “Okay.”
Lennox turned away from the beautiful little apartment.
“Well,” he said, gesturing with a large arm that nearly knocked a lamp off a side table. “Anyway. This is it if you want it.”
“Um,” said Nina. “How much . . .”
Lennox sighed. “Oh God, I don’t know,” he said, then named a sum that was less than Nina could have hoped for.
She could barely conceal her delight, and suddenly felt guilty that she was getting the property for so much less than it was worth. It wouldn’t have paid for a room in a shared student house in Birmingham. Then she looked around and realized that he had about forty thousand sheep and so many chickens he didn’t even check to see where they were around the place, and he was probably doing all right for himself. What was he going to buy, a new flat cap?
“Um, that should be fine,” she said carefully, suddenly flashing back to the last time she’d gone apartment hunting in Birmingham: absolutely loads of horrid places with damp patches on the walls going for a fortune, and weird people until she’d finally been lucky enough to team up with Surinder. “Yes please,” she said, more vehemently.
“Okay.” Lennox shrugged. “I’ll give you the keys when I find them.”
“I will need keys,” said Nina.
“And turn on the water and whatnot . . .” He waved his hand vaguely. “And anything else you need. Do you need sheets and stuff? We have an absolute ton of those, too. Kate . . . She was going to do up all the outbuildings just like this. Had a real fire of enthusiasm for it.” He swallowed hard. “Fell for the interior designer. I didn’t even know he liked girls. Anyway.”
Nina noticed a beautiful picture on the wall. It was dark and gloomy, a heavy canvas, quite out of keeping with the rest of the delicate room. She looked at it.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, wondering about it.
“Oh well,” said Lennox. “Time to get over it, apparently. Bloody Marilyn Frears from the village seems to think so anyway. Bleating about it over the phone, talking about moving on, getting someone in . . .”
He remembered himself.
“Which would be you, of course.”
“Thanks,” said Nina. “I promise I’ll look after it.”
Lennox squinted out through the door suddenly and raised his hand to his forehead.
“Is that your van rolling down the hill?”
“What?” shouted Nina. “No, I left the hand brake on. I did! I’m sure I definitely did!”
“It’d better not run over any of my bloody chickens.”
“My VAN!” Nina was shouting and charging down the hill as fast as her wellies would take her.
“Get back from there!” shouted Lennox, pounding down behind her and overtaking her easily with his long legs. “Get away from it!”
The van was just picking up speed, heading toward a ditch at the edge of the field. Quickly, and without fuss, Lennox swung himself up into the cab—thank goodness she hadn’t locked it, Nina thought—gracefully dropped in and pulled on the hand brake so hard Nina could smell the burning across the farmyard. There was a pause, as a chicken hopped sharply to the side. Nobody said anything.
Then Nina walked forward.
“I think my van has a death wish,” she said miserably. “It’s trying to kill itself. Sometimes with me in it, sometimes on its own. Maybe it’s haunted.”
Lennox clambered down, frowning. “You’re going to have to look after it properly. Which means putting the hand brake on.”
Nina went bright red. “Sorry,” she said. “I had an accident—or nearly an accident—when I couldn’t get the hand brake off, and that’s why I don’t really like putting it on.”
“I’m not sure your aversion to hand brakes has much to do with it,” said Lennox. “You want to park that thing here, you park it properly.”
“Okay. Yes. Sorry.”
Lennox glanced back into the cab. “What’s back there . . . books?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve got a van full of books?”
“Not quite full yet,” said Nina. “But I’m planning on heading that way, yes. Do you read?”
Lennox shrugged. “Don’t see the point.”
Nina’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
“Well, I get Farmers Weekly and I read that. I can read,” he said, as if she’d accused him of being illiterate.
“I assumed you could,” said Nina. “But you never read for fun?”
He looked at her. His eyes, creased at the edges, were blue against his suntanned face; his expression was bleak. Nina wondered if showing her the house, built with such loving care in happier times, had caused him pain. He didn’t look like a man who did anything for fun.