One of a Kind

Chapter 15

Ivo and I were separated at the police station. I gave a statement to a bored young constable, who didn’t seem to believe a word of it, and then I asked, ‘Have you got Sally here?’

‘Sally who?’

‘Sally. Who set this whole thing up. You arrested her yesterday, in the hospital, I think.’

‘Oh, her. Yes. She’s not saying anything.’

I produced the piece of paper from my back pocket. ‘These are the men you want. They’re driving a white SUV with a dented passenger wing, and Ivo’s written the number plate on the back.’

The constable held up the drawings. Ivo had done his best from my detailed descriptions, and, with much rubbing out, we’d produced likenesses of Mr Polite and Mr Thug that were as good as I could do from memory. Ivo really was terribly good at drawing, I thought, looking fondly at the pencil sketches. It had probably been thanks to his art therapy.

‘I’m just going to take this to the sergeant,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

‘As opposed to what?’

I got a cold stare. ‘Well, I haven’t handcuffed you to the chair.’

‘Not yet,’ I muttered. ‘And could you ask him if I could talk to Sally?’

Another cold stare and I was left in the little interview room, which smelled of people who smoked too much and cold coffee. There was a large damp stain down one wall, and ceiling tiles made of that dotted plastic that always looks as though it’s going mouldy. I wondered where Ivo was. I wondered what the hell was going on, and why we hadn’t been given a pat on the head and sent on our way.

Eventually the door opened. Bored Constable was there with Irritated Sergeant, who looked as though he’d only just missed having a TV series written about him. He was jaded and tired looking, unshaven, and I would have taken bets on him having a failed marriage, an alcohol addiction and a child who refused to communicate with him.

‘This yours?’ he grunted, holding up the sketch.

‘Yes. Well, not exactly, Ivo drew it. Those are the two that put us in the shed.’

Another grunt. It was like being interviewed by a gorilla in a man suit. Then, ‘And the car? You’re sure about the car?’

‘Absolutely.’

Grunt. ‘We got them trying to board the ferry.’

A silence. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react to that. Delight? Horror? I certainly didn’t want to run into them any time soon. If they realised Sally and I were still alive, they’d know everything was over for them, and I didn’t think they’d be rushing to send us cards of congratulation on our intrepid escape and boxes of chocolates. Ivo, of course, they’d missed out on giving a creative death too. Presumably his escape would be another reason they were so intent on getting off the island.

‘But we need everything you can tell us about them, about the operation here.’

‘Operation Dovetail, sir,’ put in the constable, helpfully. ‘That’s what we were calling this investigation.’

‘Really? Not Operation Red Squirrel? I’d have thought that was more appropriate,’ I said. ‘And I’ve told you everything I know. You need to ask Sally for details, she was the one sending the stuff out in the transport cases.’

A double grunt this time. ‘She’s not talking.’

‘I expect she’s terrified.’ I leaned forward across the table that separated us, putting my elbow on the drawing of Mr Polite’s face. ‘Let me talk to her. I want to know what the hell was going on, probably more than you do, and she’ll talk to me.’

The constable and the sergeant looked at one another. ‘Are we allowed to do that?’

‘Course we are. We’re the bloody police, we’re in charge. Don’t let this young madam make you think otherwise.’

Young madam? I bristled, but it didn’t seem politic to wade in while they were making a sensitive decision. ‘If you record our conversation,’ I said, delicately, ‘then you might just get your evidence.’

The sergeant harrumphed and I upgraded him to being happily married but having an uncomfortable relationship with his ageing parents. ‘True. All right. Think they’re a bit sick of her down in custody anyway, she won’t stop crying.’ He pushed his chair back and I furtively checked to make sure he had both legs. ‘We’ll see what we can do. Stay there.’

While Constable and Sergeant went out, not giving me time to ask what the alternative was again, I leaned back in my chair and looked at the drawings they’d left behind. I supposed there must be CCTV at the ferry port and they’d managed to nab these two trying to get off the island. I frowned down at the sketch, which had Ivo and I arguing over whether a monobrow was really an identifying feature, and shook my head. Ivo’s particularly focussed memory had saved us. He’d recognised the van, and the SUV, because they’d caught his attention and been worthy of memorising. He’d been right; sometimes, just sometimes, it looked as though his brand of butterfly mind could come in very useful.

The door opened and Sally was bundled in. She was wearing what looked like a police-provided tracksuit, her hair was still dreadlocked with mud and salt water and she looked as though she’d spent the last twenty-four hours crying solidly. As soon as she saw me, Sally crumpled and had to be held up by the officers, one to each arm.

‘I don’t know what to do!’ she wailed. ‘Everything’s gone! I’ve been so stupid!’

‘You’re not hearing any disagreement from me,’ I said, somewhat curtly, but then I had had a disturbed night. Oh, and nearly died. ‘Look, sit down and you can tell us all about it.’

We were shuffled towards the little plastic-topped table, screwed to the floor, I noticed. I sat directly under the brown stain and Sally, after some hesitation, sat the other side of the table. Everyone except Irritated Sergeant left, and he went and stood in a corner, being as inconspicuous as he could, but it didn’t really seem to matter. Sally wanted to talk. I could only assume that she’d been paralysed with fear at the whole situation and seeing me had made things feel more normal.

‘They came to me,’ she started, making it sound as though she’d been recruited by a supernatural brigade.

The sergeant cleared his throat and gave me a meaningful nod. ‘These two?’ I took my cue and flourished the drawing. Sally picked it up.

‘Yes. Well, just this one.’ She tapped the sketch of Mr Polite. ‘He told me to call him Simon, but I know his name is really Nate because that’s what the other guy used to call him. He came to me one day when I was trying to get extra funding – I was desperate!’ She turned pleading eyes on me. ‘I was rattling a bucket in town!’

I nodded. Those bucket-rattling sessions were the worst. Being ignored by shoppers while getting soaked and frozen and trying to look upbeat and friendly. Horrible.

‘He asked me if I wanted to make some money.’ She snorted. ‘I was standing in the middle of Cowes, with a plastic bucket of 2ps, so it was a bloody stupid question when you think about it.’

She sounded a little calmer now, a little more like the down-to-earth Sally I’d first met.

The sergeant coughed again.

‘And it went from there?’ I was beginning to enjoy this. Maybe I should join the police force? I’d got visions of myself as the maverick cop who does things unconventionally and Gets Results. Then I remembered the punch to the head, the fear of dying and looked again at the big brown stain down the wall and decided to stick to rescuing animals.

‘They came up with the idea of pretending to take the squirrels around the country and gave me the special boxes. Adam – that’s Adam Williams, he was a friend of mine at school, bit down on his luck at the moment – he came in to do the actual travelling and meeting up with people. He’d take the squirrel – it was usually Swoop, because he’s pretty tame – in a special box with a couple of kilos of… of the stuff, and he’d meet up with someone to dispose of it. They’d transfer the money, swap it for the drugs, give Adam a lift to the nearest station and come back with the squirrel and the cash. But this time it looks as though whoever he was meeting decided to have the drugs and the money.’ She sniffed. ‘He used public transport. Said it would be less easy to track him that way.’

She stopped speaking and dropped her head. Her hair, weighted with mud, fell forwards over her face.

‘How long?’ I half whispered it. She looked so defeated, so downtrodden. ‘How long has it been going on for?’

‘About six months.’ Then she jerked her head up and her eyes were angry. ‘And you know what really pisses me off? Him’ – she jabbed her finger at the sketch of Mr Polite, getting him right in the eye – ‘saying that it was hundreds of thousands of pounds a time! They were giving me ten grand! Ten grand for use of the squirrel and the cover story. Ten’ – and she stabbed her finger down again, emphatically with each word – ‘measly… grand!’

I could only hope that, somewhere in another custody suite, Mr Polite was now wondering why his vision had gone blurry.

‘Would you be prepared to stand up in court?’ The sergeant sounded surprisingly gentle. ‘Testify? Give us everything you know about these two and the operation? Any names, dates, further details?’

Sally snorted. The anger seemed to have re-energised her. ‘Course I will. I’ll personally set them on fire if you want.’

Another cough. ‘Yes, well, I don’t think that will be necessary.’ A pause. ‘Tempting, but not necessary.’

We all looked at one another for a moment. ‘What will happen to me?’ Sally’s voice was small again. ‘Only the unit will close. There’s no funding unless I keep at it, and everyone will lose their jobs, and the squirrels…’ She swallowed a small sob.

‘Oh prison, that’s a given, I’m afraid.’ The sergeant poked thoughtfully at an ear. ‘But for full and complete co-operation, transparency, maybe some useful info – you’ll get a reduced sentence.’

‘I know a high-court judge,’ I offered, helpfully. ‘Well, Ivo does. If that’s any use.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. But we’ll do what we can, given the severity of the offence.’ The sergeant eyeballed Sally sternly. ‘What the hell were you thinking, girl?’

‘I don’t know!’ She was back to wailing. ‘I just wanted to keep IWRSPS going!’

She pronounced it Eye Warsps. I made a note to tell Ivo.

‘Bloody stupid way to go about it.’

‘I know. I know.’ She hung her head again. ‘I’m not going to get involved with anything stronger than paracetamol from now on.’ A deep breath. ‘And I’m going to be giving that a swerve if I can.’

‘And Tony?’ I had wondered about the absolutely-no-anger-issues-at-all man. ‘What was all that about him knowing Mr Williams?’

I got an approving nod from the sergeant for that.

Sally snorted. ‘I got scared. I was trying to throw you off. I knew Tony had seen Adam around the place sometimes. I tried to only hand over the squirrel and the boxes at night or when nobody was about, but people keep coming and going and it’s really hard to keep a secret on an island. So I thought, if I told you Tony was a bit… well, that he had problems, it’d put you off asking him anything. He’s going to wait for me, you know.’

The sergeant and I frowned at one another. ‘What, now? Is he outside?’ I asked, confused.

‘No, no, I mean, for me to come out of prison. He says he doesn’t care what I did, he knows it will have been for good reasons. He’s actually quite sweet.’ Sally looked as though this had come as a revelation to her. ‘And he’s very good with the squirrels.’

‘Which is what really matters,’ I said, somewhat weakly.

‘Well, yes.’ Sally looked as though this should go without saying. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘I was bloody stupid,’ she said, and now her voice held strength rather than self-pity. ‘I thought I could raise a bit of money for IWRSPS and I sort of kidded myself that they were just renting a squirrel for a while. I managed not to think about it being, well, basically, drug running.’

‘Did you know?’ I grasped at the feeble straw.

She dropped her eyes. ‘They didn’t tell me, not directly. But I knew they weren’t moving duty-free cigarettes or anything, it was a bit obvious.’ She sighed. ‘I am a good person, Cressida, really.’

‘Tell that to the judge,’ said Irritable Sergeant, who then slapped himself across the forehead. ‘Sorry. Too much Law and Order in my formative years.’

Sally stood up. ‘You can take me away now,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to explain to Cressida why she nearly died, and to tell you that I’m really sorry.’

The sergeant stood up too and went to take her arm to hustle her back to the cells, but she stopped again in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder at me, in a scene worthy of the best TV detective drama. ‘Look after the squirrels, please,’ she said, with her eyes full of tears. ‘I couldn’t bear…’

Anything else she said was lost in the noise and general bustle once the door was opened. The corridor outside was full of people moving and talking, there was laughter and a crackle of radio, and it was evidently lunchtime, because there was also a smell of cottage pie and the distant noise of plates clinking.

I wanted to stop her. I wanted to ask her how the hell I was supposed to look after the squirrels. I could hardly package up and ship all the orphans and hand-reared creatures from the rehab unit to Yorkshire, which hadn’t seen a wild red squirrel in decades – and what about the other unit? The one that dealt with fundraising and public awareness? What would happen to them without Sally and her, albeit sometimes misguided, fundraising attempts?

Ivo was waiting for me in the small plastic reception area near the doors. He was jiggling about, pacing the floor and reading the unenlightening posters about stopping crime and locking your car. When he saw me, he grabbed me into a hug and drooped all over me.

‘Thank heavens! I thought they’d arrested you and bundled you off in a van covered in a coat!’

‘Ivo,’ I said indistinctly, giving him a bit of a push so I could breathe. ‘Why would I have been arrested? I haven’t done anything. And who would be covered in the coat, me or the van?’

‘Oh, you know, like on the news, when you see someone covered in a blanket, although that’s to protect their identity isn’t it, and they wouldn’t do that for you because you haven’t been found guilty yet.’ He loosened his hold but didn’t let me go.

‘What do you mean, yet? I was talking to Sally, to get her to tell them about her involvement. She’s an idiot,’ I added. I hadn’t got over that precarious time on the landslip, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. But then I remembered her red-stained eyes, her blotched face and general air of abject misery. Sally was making herself suffer for her stupidity, she didn’t need me to join in.

‘I gave Mum a ring.’ Ivo slung his arm around me casually, but it felt different now. He’d always been a hugger, given to random physical contact, but now his touch had more certainty to it. As though he knew I welcomed it, rather than regarding it as something casual. ‘Obviously she can’t say much, she doesn’t know the ins and outs of it all, but she said Sally won’t do too much time.’ He gave me a sideways look and grinned. ‘See, there’s me with all the lingo now.’

I laughed. Some of it was at his evident pride at his brush with the law, but some of it was relief that we were walking out of the police station without a backward glance. A shiver vibrated my spine for a moment as I realised, again, that it could all have been very different. ‘How long could she be in prison for?’

‘Maybe a couple of years. If Sally’s got a completely clean record, and she talks up being persuaded into it by a guy who’s liable to violence – with a good legal team, she may well be out in a year to eighteen months.’

We walked out into cool air. The storm had swept the last of the lazy heat from the day and replaced it with briskly moving clouds and the smell of the sea. I stopped at the car and looked around, filled with relief that I was able to stand here, watching the traffic and seeing the uncaring crowds pushing through the narrow streets. It could all have been so different. I wasn’t sure that I had enough lifetime left to process all the possibilities.

Then I thought about Tony, labouring alone in the squirrel rehab unit, and the three workers at the other location, whose jobs might not last out the month. What was going to happen to them all, now that Sally wasn’t around? Who would push for the funds, fill in the paperwork, raise their profile? Who would make sure that they got the publicity to bring in the public who brought in the funds? Would IWRSPS close down?

What would happen to Fred?

‘Can we go back via the rehab unit and say goodbye to Fred, like we were supposed to be doing?’ I asked Ivo as we strapped ourselves in. He was being uncharacteristically quiet, allowing me time to process what had happened, I supposed. I’d caught sight of my reflection as we’d got in the car, and it was not a pretty sight, even though I didn’t have Sally’s excuse of being in a cell all night, crying. I still had red-rimmed eyes and an unnaturally pale face. And, despite the bath and the scrubbing, there were still traces of mud in my hair and around my ears.

‘Mmmm.’ Ivo didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Cress…’

‘Only I’ve got a horrible feeling that the whole IWRSPS thing is going to have to be wound up while Sally’s in jail.’ Actually saying the words, ‘Sally’s in jail’ made everything seem more real and dreadfully inevitable. ‘I can’t see that there’s anyone else who could step in to help keep things on the rails, is there?’

Again, Ivo didn’t seem to be listening. He was driving normally, slightly faster and slightly less conscious of any white lines than most people, but his gaze wasn’t wandering as much as usual. On country roads he could be easily distracted by an unexpected view or an unrecognised bird cruising overhead, which made journeys interesting, if somewhat hair-raising. Now, though, he had both hands on the wheel and a concentration so ferocious that I was slightly surprised it wasn’t scorching a groove in the tarmac. ‘Are you all right?’

I got a distracted smile. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m just… thinking.’

Despite the fact that the car was warm, I felt a chill over my shoulders now where his arm had been. Was this Ivo having a rethink about him and me ever managing to have any kind of relationship other than the superficial? Last night he’d been so sure. I’d been so sure. None of our differences mattered enough to keep us apart, we cared about one another. Could his tendency to overthink be causing him to second guess our future?

Given Ivo’s variable focus, I didn’t want to ask. Not while he was driving, anyway. But I did feel a chilly grip take hold of my insides. Ivo and me. All I’d ever really wanted. Ivo, with his velvet trousers, his horrible shirts, his liability to come down to breakfast looking as though Beau Brummell had found William Morris and the pair of them had discovered Rihanna. We’d come this close. Surely he didn’t want to back out? But then, fear of death changes people, and perhaps he had decided that landslides and crazed drug traffickers were the thin end of the wedge?

Oh, this was horrible. It was my familiar Ivo at the wheel, but his set jaw and straight stare made it feel as though this was a new man, a man I didn’t really know at all.

‘I’m going to miss our Fred,’ I said. I tried to inject jocularity into my tone, but found I couldn’t. Anything to distract me from the way my brain was cycling through thoughts. ‘We hardly had him for any time at all, but he’s my first ever red squirrel and he made quite an impression.’

‘Yes. He was adorable, wasn’t he?’ But Ivo sounded vague, as though his thoughts were back up in Yorkshire in the comfortable agedness of his gatehouse. I gave a tiny, guilty start at the realisation that I hadn’t thought about my place at all. I’d been so lost in the character of Ivo’s home and the magazine-style luxury of the house on the island, that I hadn’t given my tiny house a second thought. Did this mean I was getting above myself? An admonishment of my mother’s that hadn’t meant anything, until I’d found out about her life, her past. She must have struggled, raising a child with a casual acquaintance with Latin, whose early reading had been Greek myths and tales of battles and history, whom she knew would never have the advantages that she had grown up with. I wondered if I’d ever have the nerve to ask her about that guilt.

Again, we had to leave the car where the forestry ruts began. It must have been my imagination, either that or Isle of Wight vegetation contained some ruthless genetic make-up, because it already seemed that the unit was a little more overgrown, the Portakabin a little shabbier. As though decay and a kind of Sleeping Beauty-vibe had already set in. Which was ridiculous; we’d only been here two days ago.

‘Tony has gone to Shanklin to borrow some money from his parents,’ Ivo said, still in that curiously tight voice. There seemed to be a lot of words that had backed up inside his head and he was trying to find the right way to let them out. Like sheep, penned together in a barn that had to go into the field one at a time, I thought, and then cursed myself. This was no time for Ivo’s whimsy to be catching. Not if he was about to give me the ‘I’ve had second thoughts about us’ speech that I suspected was clotting in his throat and stifling his movements.

He led the way around the Portakabin, where I could swear paint was already beginning to peel, to the huge enclosure behind. He still didn’t speak and my stomach had the feeling that I’d recently eaten a lead sandwich. Ivo. All I’ve ever wanted since I met him that first day of university, where he’d stuck out so far that I’d feared life would try to hammer him back in to make him fit. Charming, breezy, flighty, gorgeous Ivo. My friend. And now… could I go back to being friends? Forget that kiss, and the way he held me all night to keep the nightmares at bay last night?

‘Cressida.’ He stopped as we got through the second door of the escape-proof enclosure and I had to squeeze past him in order to close the door and make certain that we didn’t allow all the hand-reared squirrels to ping off into the countryside.

‘Can you just budge up a bit, please, Ivo?’ I nudged against him to make room for the door to swing shut.

‘What? Oh, yes, sorry, that’s thrown me now. I had it all ready to say and I’ve lost my… thing.’

He still looked so serious that I wasn’t sure I wanted to help him find it. Ivo and serious didn’t go together, it was incongruous, like seeing a horse in high heels, and my heart already felt as though it had a series of tight elastic bands wrapped around it.

I tipped my head back and stared up into the trees: mostly beech and hazel, with pine rearing their evergreen darkness further into the enclosure. The leaves were brilliant emerald in the sun, fluttering coquettishly in the whisper of breeze that tickled through them. Fine grass wove a green mat where the light was strongest and in the shade tiny white flowers I didn’t know the names of glowed as little highlights. There were no squirrels in sight.

Ivo couldn’t give me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech while the world was so beautiful, he just couldn’t. It would ruin summer forests for me forever, and that would be too cruel.

‘I can’t bear to think of all this closing down,’ I said. It was true, but I was putting the words out there in the way of anything he might want to say. Give me a few moments longer, please. Let the sun and the shadows be enjoyable, just for now.

‘IWRSPS could recruit someone else. Someone to hold it together until Sally is allowed out,’ Ivo said, almost conversationally for someone who’d had ‘portent’ in every previous syllable.

I shook my head, still looking up into that green-sky world, knowing that there were squirrels up there doing their best to hide from us. Not so much as a fluffy tail-end was visible. ‘They’re on a shoestring. I got the feeling she was doing a lot of her work unpaid, to make sure everyone else got their wage. And the printers don’t work, they’re spread over two sites, so there’s travel costs. She was bucket-rattling to raise funds, and that’s desperation territory.’

Ivo came in close. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him tip his head back to look where I was looking. His hair fell back, leaving his face bare and pale. He looked like a da Vinci angel who’s been forced to Earth to work in retail. Beautiful, careworn and a little cynical.

‘You could do it,’ he said.

My eyes dropped from the trees to Ivo. ‘What?’

‘No, you could. Right up your street, in fact, thinking up new ways of fundraising and juggling everything all at once. It’s what you do now, only with fewer species.’

‘Ivo, I’m just a rescue worker! I go out and pick up injured animals, stick them in a box and make sure they get to a vet. I don’t run anything!’

Now he was right in front of me. ‘But you could,’ he said, gently.

‘No. No, I couldn’t.’

Ivo sighed. ‘And this is what I mean by risk-aversion, Cressida, my darling. This is your chance to show the world of small furry animals what you can really do. Organise, recruit – I am absolutely positive that you could make volunteering for squirrel rescue the next ‘must do’ vocation. They’ll be queueing up! And you’re wonderful at raising money, look at how you’ve learned to keep life on the road without a penny to your name!’

I stared at him. His eyes were shining with the kind of zeal that was usually only inspired by a potential story. He had his arms raised to the woods as though to indicate that this was my natural territory, and a faint and traitorous wind was blowing his hair back. He looked like the final scene in every disaster movie ever.

Was this Ivo’s way of getting rid of me? If I moved to the Isle of Wight, well, he couldn’t be expected to have a relationship with anyone that far away, could he? No one would blame him for immediately meeting and marrying a Classics graduate with a part-time modelling contract and a family with a little place in town, would they? Only I would blame him until the end of time…

‘But I’ve got a house in Yorkshire,’ I said, carefully ‘And a job.’

‘Let it out! I’m sure Lilith and Dix can find someone who wants to take the second bedroom! And your job will still be there when you get back – they’re hardly inundated with people who want to get covered in mud in the middle of the night whilst being bitten, for a pittance, are they?’ Now he was standing so close to me that I could feel his excited breathing, past the sheer magnetic pull of Ivo himself.

Above me, there was a flick of branch, caught out of the corner of my eye. A squirrel had emerged to sit in a willow fork, staring down at us. The sun glimmered on its fur, dappling it with leaf-shade and the dancing twist of twig-shadow, so it seemed hardly there. An ethereal, tree spirit, waiting for my answer.

I just knew I couldn’t condemn all this to fall into decay. For the upkeep to be more than Tony, even should he want to carry on working here, could manage. The wire would rot and split, the squirrels would escape out into the wild where, hand-reared and fed as they were, they wouldn’t survive for long. Rats would take any young they might have, or they’d starve over winter. And the rescue programme that was run from the little cottage in the cliffs? Those busy three people who’d mended and dashed about – they’d all go off to do other things, or move to the mainland and not be replaced.

I knew how to work a recalcitrant printer, and organise fundraising events.

‘I could, I suppose,’ I said, sounding more reluctant than excited.

‘Yes, you could,’ Ivo said, far more decisively than I had. ‘Here, you can show the world what Cressida Tarbet can really do!’

At the expense of you, I thought. But then, hadn’t my mother always drummed into me not to live my life based on what a man wanted? Stained and scarred by her family’s rejection, them cutting her off from the life she’d been born to, all because of grief and some silly mistakes, one of which was me, she’d become fiercely independent. She’d had to. I had a choice.

‘Yes, you’re right,’ I said, and my voice sounded firm. Strong. ‘The place needs a shake up anyway. I can make it successful, and then hand back over to Sally when she’s released.’

This was where Ivo should insert, ‘And I’ll be waiting for you in Yorkshire when you come back.’ I left a little pause, but he was gazing upwards into the canopy again, at where the little squirrel was now grooming its fur.

‘I’m sure that’s Fred,’ he said.

Everything in my risk-averse nature wanted to glide over the uncertainty, not say anything, not hazard my heart. But I’d stared at death down the barrel of a few thousand tonnes of unstable earth, and the ferocious hungry sea. I could take Ivo backing out gracefully, of course I could. It would hurt, but I’d heal.

‘What about you, Ivo?’ My voice had more strength than I thought I was capable of, and I was glad. ‘If I stay here, that’s it for any chance for you and me, isn’t it?’

He looked at me, and his expression was total astonishment. ‘What? No, Cress, don’t say that! I mean, I’ve made arrangements, there are things in place… what on Earth would make you think… please don’t tell me you’ve had a rethink! I know I’m terrible and awful to be with and I’m unreliable and everything but – darling Cress, please reconsider.’

I wondered if my bafflement was showing on my face to anything like the degree that his confusion was on his. His eyes were wide, their pupils huge and his skin had acquired the taut look of someone facing horror.

‘What?’ I said, for the second time in as many minutes.

Ivo’s expression changed. His eyebrows came together in a ferocious frown and his mouth twisted. ‘Er,’ he said. ‘I think we may have missed out a conversational step here, Cress.’

I was beginning to feel that I’d missed an actual physical step. My insides had jolted hard enough to remind me that I’d not eaten for most of the day. ‘Please can we back up and go over it again, then?’ I said, with, I thought, commendable evenness. ‘Because, to me, it sounds as though you’re leaving me here on the island.’

A new spark came into his eyes now and I was rushed into an embrace that I didn’t want to start to enjoy until I knew what was causing it. ‘Sorry, sorry, I’ve done it again. I’ve had the conversation in my head so often that I’ve forgotten to actually have it in real life! I’m so sorry, Cress.’

‘Shall we have it now then, for the sake of argument?’ I asked, encouraged by his turn of mood. Maybe things weren’t quite as grim as I’d thought.

‘Events, shall we say, of the last few days, have brought home the point to me that I’m not really cut out for this investigative journalism thing. Far too dangerous, and that’s me saying it. So I was thinking, maybe, of moving down here. I’ve got contacts…’

‘Of course you have,’ I muttered faintly.

‘…on Radio Four. There’s the possibility of my making some programmes about the reintroduction of our native species; bustards on Salisbury plain, that sort of thing. It would keep me busy for, oh, the next couple of years or so.’ I got a wide, innocent, Ivo-smile then. ‘I thought I’d mentioned it to you. Obviously not.’

‘Oh, Ivo,’ I said, and I wasn’t sure if I meant my tone to be happy, understanding or so bloody annoyed that I was only two steps away from throwing wildlife at him.

He shrugged. ‘Life with me, Cress. It’s how I am, I can’t keep saying sorry. I won’t keep saying sorry. It’s tough being with me, but you ought to try being me.’ A look of momentary sadness crept into his eyes. ‘I think too fast. I miss out stages. I can’t cope with overload, but I overload myself all the time, I can’t help it.’ Then a sudden switch and there was that mischief back. ‘But, you know, I saved your life and so there’s that.’

‘Oh, Ivo,’ I said again, and this time it was happiness. Definitely happiness. A teeny bit of exasperation, perhaps, but I could deal with that. As long as he was trying, as long as he was aware of his difficulties, I could deal with that.

‘And I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure, but Ru messaged again.’ He stopped and began fumbling for his phone. Today’s trousers had too many pockets, and there was a good deal of poking and prodding.

‘Oh? Have they got the person who killed Adam Williams?’ I asked.

‘What? No, not that. Ru reckons it will have been the person sent to collect the drugs on the moor that night and we may never know. But if they’ve tried to steal from their own people and go freelance, they’ve got the life expectancy of a mayfly.’ A vague smile and more pockets were discovered. ‘See, I’ve got the animal lingo down. Ah, here it is.’

He opened his phone. It occurred to me that mine was gone. I’d have to borrow Ivo’s to see if Lil and Dix wanted to stay in the house and to tell work that I was staying on the island. Then, the sudden clutch of panic again – but where would we live? Were there houses to rent, that I could afford?

‘Ru has had a word.’ Ivo looked at his messages. ‘As long as we’re prepared to move out for Cowes week and two weeks in November, when there’s a film shoot, we can have the house. Peppercorn rent, to keep it occupied so that burglars and drug dealers don’t move in.’

‘Stop it.’

‘No, Cress, you have to admit it, there are benefits to being with me.’ Now he came in again, and this time there was nothing fraternal, nothing everyday, about the way he put his arms around me. ‘In fact, there are benefits that you know nothing about yet, but I have the feeling that we might be exploring them really quite soon.’

He slid a finger under my chin and, as I looked up, he kissed me. It was a hard, hot kiss, and there was a degree of roaming of hands that heated things up even further. I was slightly surprised that some of the nearby branches didn’t catch fire and set the entire compound alight, as Ivo backed me up against a narrow sapling, mouths connected and fingers sliding in a most pleasurable way.

So, thankfully, it was a few minutes later that the squirrel dropped out of the tree and landed on Ivo’s head, because it would have quite ruined the mood.