3. Galen
GALEN
The smile changed it.
Without it, Martin's answer might have been dismissal, the sort of dry territorial warning Galen had heard often enough from men whose land, houses, or lives he had wandered briefly across.
With the slight pull at one corner of Martin's mouth, it became something else entirely, and Galen stood beside Nina with the tow strap hanging loose between them and felt his body accept the revised meaning before his mind had finished examining it.
"You already are."
Martin turned away to coil the strap, apparently satisfied that he had said enough. Galen watched the set of his shoulders for a second longer than good sense recommended, then put both hands against Nina's side as though the van required steadying. She did not. Galen might.
He knew how temporary attraction worked, the way you know a route you've driven too many times to really see anymore — arrive light, leave lighter, never let the leaving cost you anything you'd have to come back for.
Martin Cattermole had smiled at him once, and Galen was already curious about the contents of his kitchen cupboards. That seemed excessive.
Martin finished with the strap and put it into the back of the Land Rover. "Hazel will send someone looking if we take much longer."
"Someone?"
"Jacks."
Galen followed him toward the farmhouse. "That sounded less like concern and more like a threat."
"It can be both."
The back door stood open when they arrived, warm air spilling into the yard with the smell of bread, onions, and something richer that had been cooking long enough to make Galen's empty stomach abandon dignity.
Hazel pointed him upstairs before he had fully crossed the threshold, her French accent turning the instruction musical without making it negotiable.
"Second door on the left. There are clean towels in the cupboard. Leave your clothes outside if they need washing."
"They don't need washing," Galen said, looking down at the mud dried across his knees. Hazel looked too.
"They need burning," Jacks said from the kitchen table. She had paperwork spread in front of her and another mug of tea at her elbow, dark enough to absorb light. "Hazel's offering the charitable alternative."
Galen had survived one cup of Jacks's tea and had no wish to test whether the second produced cumulative effects. "The charitable alternative sounds excellent."
The bathroom was warm, old-fashioned, and unexpectedly full of small evidence that two women had occupied the house together for a very long time.
There were two hooks beside the door, one holding a thick dressing gown and the other a lighter one embroidered at the collar.
A shallow dish on the windowsill contained hairpins and two foreign coins.
Labels in neat handwriting marked the cupboard shelves, one in English and one in French, with a correction added beneath the French in darker ink.
Galen could not tell whether Hazel had corrected Jacks or Jacks had objected to being corrected, but the exchange had apparently been preserved as household infrastructure.
He shut the door, peeled off his muddy clothes, and stood beneath water hot enough to make him aware of every place the afternoon had landed on him.
His shoulder had begun to stiffen from the gate.
One knee carried a fresh bruise, and the familiar red mark from Nina's seat spring had been joined by several less familiar marks from sheep, mud, and poor decisions.
The face in the mirror afterward looked older than it had that morning.
His eyes always appeared brighter when he was tired, the blue-green sharpening against skin gone pale beneath road dust and too many nights of inconsistent sleep.
People had been remarking on them for as long as he could remember, usually with the pleased surprise of someone discovering an unusual feature on an otherwise serviceable object.
Martin had looked at them differently. He had looked irritated by the effect they had on him, which Galen found much more interesting than admiration.
He dressed in clean clothes from the bag Hazel had ordered him to retrieve from Nina and returned downstairs with his damp hair loose over his shoulders.
Martin was already at the table, scrubbed clean enough to reveal that the severe mouth had a softer shape when it was not occupied with livestock betrayal.
Galen caught himself looking and redirected his attention toward the safer subject of food.
Hazel had set out stew, bread, cheese, and a dish of roasted vegetables that appeared to have been prepared for twice the number of people present. She waved Galen toward a chair beside Martin, then sat opposite Jacks and asked him what kind of music he played.
"Whatever pays," Galen said. "Folk, mostly. Session work. Private events. Touring when someone needs a guitarist who can learn a set faster than the person they originally hired."
"You play your own songs?" Hazel asked.
"Sometimes."
"That means yes," Jacks said. "Leave him to his stew."
Galen looked at her. "You do this often?"
"Feed people?"
"Know when to leave something alone."
Jacks tore a piece of bread in half. "Only after I've pointed at it once."
Hazel said something to her in French, quick and lightly reproachful. Galen caught enough to recognise that she had accused Jacks of enjoying herself.
"I understood that," he said.
Hazel's face brightened. "You speak French?"
"Enough to get myself fed, housed, and occasionally slapped."
Martin coughed into his drink. Jacks looked almost approving. Hazel gave Galen the measured look of a woman deciding whether the final item deserved follow-up, then apparently chose mercy.
The meal moved around him easily. Hazel asked questions that left room for incomplete answers.
Jacks interrupted once, accepted Galen's look, and returned to her bread.
Martin said less than either woman, though Galen remained aware of him in the particular way one remained aware of a low note held beneath a melody.
His presence altered the shape of the room without demanding attention.
When Hazel offered more stew, Galen accepted. When Jacks reached for the teapot, he considered flight.
Martin noticed. The movement was small, nothing more than an eyebrow lifting as Jacks filled Galen's mug, but it carried the private satisfaction of someone about to watch an experiment repeated under controlled conditions. Galen wrapped both hands around the cup and met his gaze.
"You could warn me," he said.
"I could."
"That implies you won't."
Martin's mouth shifted at one corner. "You survived the first one."
Jacks looked between them. "It's tea."
Hazel made a quiet sound that required no translation.
Galen lifted the mug. The first swallow was no less alarming for being expected.
Whatever leaves Jacks used had surrendered every remaining property they possessed into the water, including several that probably required licensing.
He kept his expression steady until he saw Martin's eyes narrow with amusement, then took another drink out of pure refusal to give him the satisfaction.
Martin looked down at his plate, but the smile remained. There it was, Galen thought, the beginning of a joke neither of them had agreed to and both already understood.
After supper, Hazel offered him the spare room with the same matter-of-fact certainty she had applied to food and towels. Galen thanked her and declined.
"Nina's comfortable enough when she's level," he said. "I've got heat, bedding, and power now. More than I have at some venues."
"You are certain?" Hazel asked.
"I sleep in her most of the year."
Jacks glanced toward the dark yard. "Breakfast is at seven." It was not phrased as an invitation.
"I'll be here."
Martin carried a lantern outside despite Galen pointing out that he had a torch.
The temperature had dropped, and the hard standing beside the cottage held the day's chill.
Nina looked even less distinguished under the yellow light, primer patches pale against the faded green and one rear corner sitting slightly lower than the other.
Martin rested the lantern on the low wall.
The cottage stood close behind him, old stone darkened by weather, one kitchen window lit from within.
Galen could see the edge of a table, a chair, and a row of hooks beside the back door.
Nothing remarkable, except that every part of it seemed to have a settled purpose.
Martin followed his gaze. "You've got the power lead?"
"Jacks gave me one."
"She gave you hers."
"I'm beginning to understand that distinction."
"Are you?"
"Anything she hands me remains hers, even while I'm using it."
Martin's expression suggested Galen had passed a test. "You'll be all right out here?"
The question was practical, but it had taken him several seconds to ask. Galen looked at the cottage, then at Martin. "I will."
Martin nodded and picked up the lantern. "Night, then."
"Martin."
He paused. Galen had intended to ask whether the line beside Nina had meant what it sounded like.
The question reached the back of his teeth and stopped there.
Martin stood in the cold with his face half lit, waiting without impatience, and Galen decided that some things could remain unresolved for one night without constituting failure.
"Thanks," he said instead. "For all of this."
Martin glanced toward Nina. "You did help with the sheep."
"I'm fairly sure that only covers the phone call."
"Then you're in debt."
The slight smile returned before he turned toward the cottage. Galen watched him go inside and told himself the warmth under his ribs came from the borrowed extension lead humming into life.
Nina's interior had always settled him. Everything fit because everything had to: the bed folded out beneath the pop-top, his clothes packed into shallow cupboards, cables arranged by length, tools secured against movement.
He closed the curtains, checked the guitar case, and sat for a while with his phone in his hand.
One bar had returned now that Nina was nearer the farmhouse.
Ferras and Co had left no message. That was worse than anger.
Anger could be answered. Silence meant someone else had already been called, the problem solved without him, his name shifted a fraction lower on a list he had spent years climbing.
He opened his banking app, looked at the available balance, and closed it again. The lost fee hurt. Peter's estimate would hurt more. Neither qualified as catastrophe, but Galen's life depended on a chain of weeks in which nothing went badly enough to expose how little slack the chain contained.
He put the phone aside and reached for the guitar.
Practice had never required optimism. It required repetition, attention, and hands willing to do the same difficult thing until it became less difficult.
Galen tuned softly, adjusted the blanket beneath the body to keep the wood from knocking against the cupboard, and began with scales because scales made no demands beyond accuracy.
After ten minutes, his breathing had evened.
After twenty, he stopped replaying the agency call.
He worked through a fingerpicked arrangement he had been refining for months, slowed one passage, repeated it, changed the voicing, and began again.
The notes filled Nina without needing to travel any farther, close and unamplified, the sound of work rather than performance.
He was halfway through the tune when he noticed the kitchen light in Martin's cottage.
A shadow moved once across the curtain, then disappeared.
Galen kept playing. The cottage walls were old and thick, but Nina's windows were thin, and sound travelled across open ground.
He lowered his touch without stopping, telling himself that practising quietly was ordinary courtesy and had nothing to do with the possibility of Martin standing somewhere beyond the glass.
The difficult passage came again. Galen missed the shift, went back four bars, and tried it more slowly. This time his fingers found it.
The light remained on.
He played until the stiffness left his shoulder and the day had arranged itself into something he could carry. When he finally muted the strings, silence returned in layers: first inside the van, then across the hard standing, then from the cottage.
Martin's kitchen light went out a few seconds later.
Galen noticed and told himself there was nothing in it.