8. Martin
MARTIN
Nina would be ready Friday. Galen would leave Saturday morning. The run would last ten days and would end in Bristol, close enough to his own rented room that the agency had called it convenient.
Martin knew the itinerary the way he knew weather forecasts or lambing dates, precise and useless against what it meant. He began counting days without admitting it, disguising them as feed deliveries and fencing appointments.
The guitar still stood beside the stove, and he let it reassure him more than it should. A man did not leave the instrument that earned his living unless he meant to come back for it. Technically true, which said nothing about what Galen intended once he collected it.
Their last working days were unfairly good. They finished the north boundary, and on Wednesday Martin began assigning Galen a task for the following Monday before he remembered there would not be one, not for Galen. Galen caught the pause and let it pass.
In the evenings, Martin worked on the accounts while Galen practised. The troublesome bar no longer troubled him. Martin had watched him finish learning it and already missed the repetitions.
Jacks found him alone in the yard on Thursday, checking a fence post that didn't need checking.
"When's he coming back?" she asked, without preamble.
"The run ends in Bristol. Ten days."
"Ten days isn't an answer."
Martin had no answer for her. Hazel passed with a basket of washing and said she'd leave the spare-room bed made, then went on toward the farmhouse. The fence post remained no better inspected than before.
Peter rang Friday morning with the news Martin had been simultaneously hoping for and dreading in equal, uncomfortable measure. The valve had gone in clean, nothing else had surfaced, and the bill matched the estimate they'd already braced for. Nina was ready to collect.
Martin felt the two things at once: relief that Galen's independence was restored, and dread because the last practical reason for him to remain had vanished. Nina had needed to be fixed so Galen could choose freely. Martin had simply never asked what the choice might be.
He drove Galen to Peter's in Jacks's Land Rover, and the journey was outwardly easy, Galen restless with anticipation in the passenger seat, checking his phone, running through the list of what the run would need.
Martin asked practical questions because practical questions were the only ones he trusted himself with.
What had Peter replaced. How far Galen meant to drive the first day.
Whether Ferras knew Nina was fit again. Whether he'd checked the oil before setting off tomorrow.
Galen answered each one, then waited, plainly, for something else.
Martin gave him nothing else.
Nina started on the second try, coughed once, and then settled into a clean, steady idle that made Peter nod with the satisfaction of a man whose reputation had just been proved.
Galen's whole face changed, relief breaking over it openly in a way Martin hadn't seen from him even at the pub, and Martin was glad for him, genuinely, entirely, in the specific way that made his chest ache at the same time.
"Bring her back after the run," Peter said, taking payment. "Just so I can hear her properly under load."
Galen drove Nina back to Ashcombe himself, Martin following in the Land Rover. She had arrived disabled behind Jacks's bumper and now ran cleanly under her own power. Galen could have driven straight toward the run; he chose to return to Ashcombe first, and Martin let the fact reassure him.
They packed that evening, moving between the farmhouse and the cottage in a slow, quiet reversal of everything the last weeks had built.
Clothes came out of the spare room. A charger came out of the cottage kitchen socket.
Galen's water glass went back into the cupboard where it had briefly stopped belonging to anyone in particular.
A pencil Martin had lent him for marking fingerings went into an outer pocket of the guitar case, and Martin noticed, with a small, private ache, that Galen tucked it away rather than handing it back, as though returning it were somehow worse than keeping it.
One toothbrush stayed behind in the bathroom cup at the farmhouse, forgotten or deliberately left, Martin couldn't tell which and didn't ask.
Martin helped because helping was the only language he trusted, folding a jumper he had no business folding, carrying a bag he didn't need to carry.
Neither of them said anything that mattered.
By Saturday morning, the bags were loaded and every remaining task had become an excuse to delay the same inevitable minute.
Galen crossed to the corner by the stove last and lifted the guitar case from the space Martin had cleared for it.
"You'll need that," Martin said.
"Apparently."
The word carried more than its size should have allowed. The corner looked wrong immediately, too empty for how little the case had actually occupied it.
Martin busied himself with the practical instead.
He packed food for the first day's drive, checked Nina's oil himself though Peter had already done it, wrote out directions that avoided the bad stretch past Kettlebridge, and let Hazel press a blanket on Galen that neither of them thought he'd need, all of it saying, as clearly as Martin knew how to say anything, I want you to arrive safely. None of it said the other thing.
Galen grew quieter with every item Martin handed him, until there was nothing left to pack and no further excuse to delay.
"Anything else?" Galen asked.
Martin looked over the van, the guitar, the bags, running through the list in his head. "You've got everything."
"Right."
"You make leaving very easy," Galen said, quiet, not quite an accusation and not quite anything less than one.
"What was I meant to do? Ask you to turn down good work?"
"That isn't what I asked."
Jacks's question came back to him. Martin had failed the same test twice.
"You never asked me anything," Martin said.
"You never gave me a reason to think I could."
Galen said it without heat, which was worse than if he'd shouted it. "Everyone's always very understanding when I leave. Agencies. Venues. Landlords. Nobody's ever minded, not once, in ten years. I thought that was just how it worked. I didn't think it was supposed to feel like this every time."
Martin reached for the only honest thing he had. "I thought you were coming back."
"You never said that."
"Neither did you."
Both true. Both of them, Martin realised, had spent two weeks using silence as though it were a kindness, when it had only ever been a way of not risking the answer.
Martin had the rest of the sentence somewhere behind his teeth, but Galen looked away toward Nina and the lane before he found it.
Martin touched his face instead, once. Galen closed his eyes for exactly as long as the touch lasted, then stepped back.
Nina started on the first try.
Martin stood in the lane and watched her go, engine steady, exhaust catching pale in the cold morning air, the whole van moving under its own power precisely as she should.
Two weeks ago she had failed him at the mouth of this same lane and given him everything he hadn't known he wanted.
Now she worked perfectly, and that, somehow, was the problem.
He watched until the lane bent and took her out of sight, and stood a moment longer after that, listening to an engine he could no longer hear.
He went inside once the yard had gone properly quiet.
The corner beside the stove was empty.
Martin left it that way.