‘Going out, love?’ she asked, her expression a mixture of curiosity and delight.
‘Just for a quick drink,’ replied Pip, hoping against hope that this would be an end to the questions but knowing that it wouldn’t be.
‘That’s nice. Who with?’
It was like going two rounds with the Gestapo sometimes. Pip knew it was perfectly reasonable for her mother to wonder where she was going, particularly when she had so rarely left the farm in the evening since her arrival, but constantly having to account for her movements made her feel claustrophobic and she resented the intrusion. She was tempted to lie, but that would only backfire on her. Better to be honest and ignore the raised eyebrows.
‘Just Jez,’ she said without meeting her mother’s enquiring gaze.
‘Oh,’ replied her mother simply, but Pip could hear the pleasure oozing from the single syllable. Her parents had always thought she’d have been better marrying a nice local boy instead of running off to London, and to be fair, it was starting to look like they might have been right.
‘Not sure what time I’ll be back,’ she added. ‘Don’t wait up.’
It was a deliberatively provocative parting comment. She knew she’d be home long before they went to bed, but she was irritated by her mother’s trespassing into her privacy. She strode out of the kitchen without looking back, letting the door bang behind her.
‘How will you get home?’ she heard her mother call after her.
Damn. She hadn’t thought about that. In the past, she would just have hopped in her car, but obviously that wasn’t an option. The car had sat in the yard untouched since her father had recovered it from the police. Even if she were up to driving it, the battery would probably be flat by now.
‘I can get your dad to run you down,’ her mother continued. ‘And pick you up.’
It was like being a child. No privacy, and now no independence, either.
‘No, thanks. I’ll go on my bike,’ Pip shouted back, though every part of her wanted to accept a lift.
‘Well, be careful on those roads,’ her mother added quite unnecessarily, as if Pip could be anything else these days.
The pub was quiet. The tourist season hadn’t quite got underway and the clientele looked local. Jez was already there, chatting to the barman, pint in hand. As she walked in, they both looked over in her direction. Jez winked at her and Pip felt sixteen again.
‘You remember Pip, don’t you, Will?’
Will nodded. ‘Hi,’ he said.
There were no questions about what she was doing back or how she had been, and Pip had the feeling that she had been the subject of discussion before her arrival. She smiled a hello, ordered a drink and gestured to a table far away from the bar where Will wouldn’t be able to overhear their conversation. It wasn’t that she had anything to hide, but she objected to having her business discussed any more than it already was. In London nobody gave you a second glance. Here it was almost impossible to pass unnoticed.
‘So,’ said Jez when they were sitting at the table opposite one another. ‘Long time no contact. Of any sort.’
He placed a heavy emphasis on his barbed words, but his tone seemed jocular enough. Pip searched his face for clues as to how his mind was working. It was true that she had barely said more than a handful of words to him since she’d left for university. She could have replied that they had just gone in different directions, but she knew it had been more of a concerted effort on her own part to separate them. Jez, like so many other things in her old life, just hadn’t fitted with her new environment, didn’t slot neatly into the amended version of herself. Did he know that? Looking at him now, Pip was horribly sure that he did.
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she said, deciding in that moment to go for raw honesty. ‘I have no excuse. I went to London, got ideas above my station, came a cropper, and now I’m back with my tail between my legs.’
It felt so incredibly wrong to dismiss what she had done in these terms, but making light of it was generally the best way to prevent the conversation going in a direction that she wasn’t ready for.
Jez, however, appeared to be having none of her diversionary tactics. ‘I’m sorry about the accident,’ he said. ‘It’s crap and I have no idea how you’re coping with it. It must be hell.’
That was the closest anyone had come to summing up how things really were.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘And what’s it like being back?’ he asked.