Chapter Fifteen
D anni knew from the moment that Eleanor sniffed and adjusted the temperature control knob of the Land Rover like it was a priceless artifact, that this drive home was going to be an ordeal.
Something was stuck in Eleanor’s craw, and she had no idea what it was. For once, she couldn’t think of a single thing that she might have done to put Eleanor in this mood. Other than exist.
She gripped the steering wheel of the battered Land Rover and did her best to ignore the woman beside her, who was sitting in the passenger seat like she was bracing for impact. Eleanor had been weird all afternoon, but then, Danni thought, maybe she’d been weird all afternoon too.
There was this… tension in the air. And it had nothing to do with the coming thunderstorm. A tension that, no matter what Indi might think, had nothing to do with Danni being jealous.
Danni was not jealous.
Not of some fancy woman making eyes at Eleanor. Not of Eleanor’s posh life. Not of anything at all.
Still, she was relieved when the rain started tapping against the windscreen, giving her something else to focus on. Until, of course, her windscreen wipers decided that now would be an excellent time to give up the ghost.
Eleanor made a sound that suggested she had thoughts on this matter.
“Don’t say it,” Danni warned, rolling down the window and leaning forward to give the wiper a helpful nudge on its way.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Eleanor replied, which was clearly a lie. She had absolutely been about to say something.
The Land Rover gave an ominous splutter.
Danni scowled. “Don’t you dare, you—”
The dull roar of the engine became a cough and then a spasm of coughing, and then, with one last little polite cough as though the car had tried its best but really just couldn’t go on, the Land Rover rolled to a slow and tragic stop.
Danni just managed to turn the steering wheel to get it up on the verge before it died for good.
There was a beat of silence.
Eleanor looked placidly out of the windscreen. “Would you like me to say something now?”
Danni thumped her forehead against the steering wheel. “No,” she muttered.
Eleanor sighed and unbuckled her seatbelt, folding her arms. “Well. This is… a turn of events.”
Swearing, Danni shoved the door open and stomped out into the rain to lift the bonnet.
She peered inside, using all of her mechanical knowledge, which was, if she was honest, limited to shaking or kicking things and hoping for the best. The engine, despite being glared at, did not miraculously fix itself.
She could feel Eleanor’s judgment staring at her through the windscreen.
“Don’t say it,” she said, slamming the bonnet shut and getting back into the car.
“You need a new car,” said Eleanor primly.
“Wow. What a revolutionary thought. That has actually never crossed my mind before,” Danni said, leaning her head back against the seat and wondering just what she was going to do now.
Eleanor sniffed. “Perhaps if you took better care of your things—” she began .
“Oh, I’m sorry,” interrupted Danni. “Do I not send my car to the garage often enough for you? Maybe that’s because it costs a fortune every time it goes for a tuneup. Thought of that, have you? I’m guessing not, since you can afford to replace your car the moment it so much as sneezes.”
Eleanor tilted her chin up, her shoulders stiff. “My car has been in my possession since I was seventeen, I’ll have you know.” She rolled her shoulders. “I shall walk home.”
And before Danni could argue, Eleanor opened the door and stepped out into the rain. Just at that moment, there was a loud grumble of thunder, and the rain began to bounce off the road. Not that that bothered Eleanor. She began to march in the direction of the farm.
Danni gawked at her for half a second, then threw up her hands. “Are you serious?”
But Eleanor didn’t answer. Because Eleanor was already half-way down the road. Danni swore eloquently under her breath, kicked the door open, got out, slammed it shut again, and ran through the rain after Eleanor.
After a steady four minutes of walking, Danni was starting to genuinely worry that Eleanor was going to drown in her own stubbornness.
The storm had gone from drizzle to torrential rain in the blink of an eye, and Eleanor was dressed only in the thin cotton sundress that Danni had admired what felt like a lifetime ago.
She was soaked through, the dress clinging to every curve of her body.
Danni, sensibly dressed in jeans and a flannel, with the wax jacket she’d grabbed from the car, was still miserable, but at least she wasn’t trailing fabric and shivering like some sort of sodden ghost.
“You know, if you weren’t so bloody proud, we wouldn’t be doing this,” she shouted to Eleanor over the rain.
Eleanor lifted her chin. “I beg your pardon? If I weren’t proud?”
“Yes! You! You literally just stormed out in a storm.”
Eleanor tutted, stepping over a rather large puddle with all the poise of a woman who’d spent her life dodging peasants. “Perhaps if your car wasn’t an actual death trap,” she began.
Danni waved a hand. “Oh, here we go.”
“I’m just saying,” Eleanor went on. “A little maintenance wouldn’t hurt.”
“A little maintenance costs money, Your Ladyship.”
Eleanor gave her a look that very clearly translated into ‘I’m trying not to strangle you.’ “A little money spent now saves a larger sum of money in the future.”
For an instant, Danni thought about trying to explain the realities of the situation to her, that as much as she understood the sentiment, when it came to a choice between car maintenance and sheep nuts, the animals needed to be fed. Then she spotted a familiar gray stone building in the distance.
“Come on, there’s a bus shelter over there. Run. You’re going to catch pneumonia,” she called, breaking into a jog.
Eleanor hesitated for only a second, reluctant to accept what was clearly a good idea, before a particularly strong gust of wind and loud clap of thunder urged her onward. Danni watched her smugly as she ducked into the small shelter.
It wasn’t a large space. But the stones were tightly packed, it was windproof, and it only smelled a little bit of sheep. Eleanor, soaked through to the bone, wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
Danni sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake.” She peeled her jacket off and all but threw it at Eleanor. “Put that on before I have to deal with tending to your sick bed as well as everything else I have to do.”
Eleanor, stiff with pride, hesitated before grudgingly putting it on.
Danni sat down on the small bench, and after a moment, Eleanor joined her. They sat in silence as the rain poured down outside, clattering on the tiled roof. It was a long time before Danni said anything.
“It’s not that I don’t want to maintain the Land Rover,” she said quietly. “It’s that when money comes in, it’s always earmarked for something else already.”
Eleanor nodded quietly.
And Danni, who usually avoided feelings like the plague, accidentally had one. The stray thought of money and debt and all the rest of it hit her like a stone.
“I can’t lose the farm.”
Eleanor, surprised, turned to look at her.
Danni swallowed. “I don’t… I don’t have anything else.” She closed her eyes. “And I know that there’s Hector and Home Farm, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t have anything else that’s me. That’s mine.”
Eleanor hesitated, then, very, very carefully, said, “I don’t know who I am without my home either.”
Opening her eyes, Danni looked at her, saw the raw honesty on her face, and, without thinking, lifted her arm and placed it around Eleanor’s shoulders.
And Eleanor, to her credit, didn’t slap her.
She actually leaned into the warmth.
For all of a second.
Then, far too quickly, she straightened up, moving so that Danni’s arm dropped back to her side, and cleared her throat. She peered out into the brightening day. “Looks like the rain’s calming down. We should probably get back.”
Danni, a little shocked by what she’d just done, nodded. “Yeah, yeah, right. We’ll start walking. I’ll, um, I'll get Tommy to come and have a look at the Land Rover when he’s finished at the fête, if he’s in any fit state, that is.”
“No need,” said Eleanor. She pulled out her phone and started to walk.
Danni trotted after her, curiosity turning to irritation, and then outright anger as Eleanor talked to the AA agent and arranged to have the Land Rover towed and serviced as well as a rental car provided.
When Eleanor hung up, Danni stopped dead in the middle of the lane.
“What?” Eleanor asked, turning around to look at her .
Danni just stared at her.
“What?” asked Eleanor again.
“Why the fuck didn’t you do that in the first place?”
Eleanor arched an eyebrow. “I assumed that you’d want to fix the car yourself. Or you’d call your own tow service.”
Danni groaned. “You are unbelievable, do you know that?”
“I’m unbelievable?” asked Eleanor. “You’re the one without a break-down service. It really should be considered part of the cost of owning a vehicle. You do have insurance, don’t you?”
“Of course I have insurance. It’s illegal not to have insurance,” said Danni.
“I’m only asking, it wouldn’t have surprised me,” Eleanor said.
“It wouldn’t have surprised you that I was breaking the law?” asked Danni. “Now, why does that not surprise me ?”
And they bickered the entire way back to the farmhouse, wet and sodden as they were.
Yet something seemed to have changed, Danni couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was like the bickering wasn’t as intense, wasn’t as meaningful as before. And her arm felt all tingly from where she’d put it around Eleanor.