Ana with one n reached out an affectionate hand. “I’m not sure that’s quite how satnav works, sweetheart.”
“Either way, it seems to be our best option,” said Oliver. “So I suppose we should all grab our things and get going.”
At the back of the bus, Barbara Clench glowered. “This was not a well-planned excursion.”
Rhys was still grinning. “No, but it’s been an adventure, hasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure ‘got wet walking across a field’ counts as an adventure,” I pointed out.
“You know the difference between you and me, Luc?” asked Rhys. And before I could reply, he said, “Attitude. If I want to have an adventure, I’ll bloody well have an adventure.”
While everyone was disembarking and Rhys was locking up the minibus, I checked our surroundings. We’d pulled into a sort of dip in the hedgerow next to a gate that was very firmly chained shut. Up and down the road I could see precisely nothing except water and darkness. On the other side of the gate I could see… I mean, I assumed it was a field. But the way the moonlight was gleaming off the surface made it look almost like a lake. A big, square lake with a cottage on the other side of it.
“The plan,” I yelled over the increasingly insistent sound of the rain, “absolutely can’t be to wade across that”—I pointed at the aqua field—“to get to that.” I pointed at the cottage.
“I agree with Luc,” said Barbara Clench. She’d agree with me on something about once a year. I think she just did it to throw me off.
“We’d be better off in the bus.”
Ana with one n shrugged. “The absolute worst plan is to stand here debating. Come on.” With her jacket over her head and her overnight bag under one arm, she clambered over the fence and set off. To my relief, she wasn’t immediately swallowed by a hidden bog —the water actually only seemed to come up to her ankles—but I wasn’t particularly keen to follow her. Rhys, of course, was, which I suspected was only partly because they were dating and mostly because he was the kind of person who genuinely enjoyed doing this kind of thing.
I gave Oliver a pleading look. “Is it too late to go home?”
“Significantly, I’m afraid.” Taking me by the hand, Oliver climbed elegantly over the fence and then waited for me to do the same.
Well, to do the same in that I also climbed, but I was way less elegant about it.
Squelching down on the other side, I let Oliver wrap his free arm around me, leaned my head against him, and tried to believe that Rhys was right and that this was an adventure. Not just a gigantic pain in the arse.
RHYS HAD NOT BEEN RIGHT. This was not an adventure. My feet were wet. I was trying really hard not to think about what happened when you partially flooded a field full of cowpats, and like most bits of the countryside in the dark, the house was much farther away than it seemed. Or I walked much slower than I thought. One of the two.
Probably the second one. I was both tired and unfit.
Rhys found the key under the mat because apparently we were in a part of the world where you could still do that without having your TV stolen, and we all hurried very gratefully inside. Well, nearly all.
“I’ll join you soon,” said Professor Fairclough. She was at least as drenched as any of us, but it didn’t seem to faze her at all. Hell, it made her look like the heroine at the end of a romantic comedy, waiting for some jerk to show up and do a big apology scene at her.
“Large areas of stagnant water attract mosquitoes, and I’m interested in observing how the weather affects their behaviour.”
“Have a nice time, then,” said Rhys, who seemed to have decided that since this was his friend’s house he was host by proxy.
“Everybody else, who fancies a cuppa?”
Cuppas were duly provided. A dubious advantage of having worked with the same pack of misfits for more than five years was that everybody knew how everybody else liked their tea. Of course none of us ever actually bothered to put that knowledge into practice, but I preferred to think it was sort of an unspoken pact we had, like the opposite of buying a round at the bar. I won’t complain if you put too much milk in if you don’t complain that I let it stew too long.
We dumped our coats in the hall and our bags under the stairs, then settled down in the sitting room to dry off. Whoever Rhys’s friend was, he’d done well for himself because he’d wound up with a cosy little cottage in the borders, with an inglenook fireplace, exposed beams, and tastefully chosen furniture. I flopped down in an armchair with Oliver sitting in front of me, his back resting against my knees.