Chapter 14 #3
Gemma thought for a moment. ‘I don’t have a huge amount of money,’ she said. ‘But I have enough to replace some of the things which were lost. What do you think?’
Leo was shaking his head. ‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘I’ve made a similar offer in the past, but Rowan wouldn’t hear of it.
He’s adamant that self-sufficiency means just that, and not relying on other people for handouts.
He was very grateful for the offer but he wouldn’t budge, and I can understand that.
This place means the world to him and Willow, but they’re doing things their way and you have to respect that. ’
Gemma nodded. There was a question she wasn’t sure she could ask, yet one she was sure she should… ‘Are you going to be all right sleeping in the farmhouse?’ The memory of his earlier words was fresh in her mind.
He nodded. ‘I have a mattress, a thick sleeping bag and a hot-water bottle…’ He swallowed a mouthful of cocoa. ‘I’ll be fine.’
He certainly looked cheerful enough about it.
‘It’s very kind of you, what you’re doing,’ she said.
‘It has been known.’
‘I know,’ she said softly, because she did know. She paused. ‘What you said earlier – about when you first started up your business. Did you really have nowhere to sleep?’
He held her look for a moment and she could see the tussle on his face, the urge to respond with the hurt he had been feeling back then, against his need to be somebody different now.
‘For a while I didn’t, no. I’d used up the goodwill of friends. Sofa surfing sounds like it ought to be no big thing, except it is, when it really comes down to it. Invading someone’s space. Never having any of your own…’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really think you’d… Well, I didn’t really think.’ The words about what would happen when you left hovered in the air between them.
Leo’s mug stilled a moment, halfway to his lips. ‘Perhaps…’ He glanced at her briefly. ‘Perhaps you already had too much to think about. Understandable. I didn’t blame you. It was as much my choice as yours.’
She thought back to that time, remembering all the things that had been filling her head. There were too many. Horrible things. Unbearable things. But… had it been his choice to leave? Because she really wasn’t sure…
She shifted her position on the crate, aware that something was digging into her.
When it didn’t ease, she put down her mug on the ground and reached around to check for the cause, realising as she did so that she still had the screws in her pocket that she’d picked up from the old farmhouse floor.
She held them in her palm, staring at them, deep in thought.
‘What have you got there?’ asked Leo.
She looked up, surprised to find him watching her.
‘Just some screws I found on the floor when we were clearing up. From all the shelves, I guess.’
Leo nodded. ‘You have a very odd expression on your face, though,’ he said. ‘Is there something particularly significant about them?’
‘Not really,’ replied Gemma. ‘At least, I don’t think so, just that…
’ She trailed off, frowning at the memory of what she had seen earlier.
‘You know how none of us heard the break-in?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper.
‘There’s something which struck me as odd.
Because the lock on the door hadn’t been forced, which is fair enough, but as Willow said earlier, half of the windows are broken and if not that then rattling in their frames.
A good shove would have knocked them out and someone could have got inside that way, so why go to the bother of dealing with the lock? ’
‘Quieter, I guess…?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I first thought. But look at all the damage that was done, the amount of things that were broken. That was not a quiet exercise…’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t really follow.’
‘The two things are at odds with one another. Why not smash a window when you were about to smash everything else up too? Why opt to do something the quiet way when you then didn’t seem to care at all about the noise you were making?
’ She held out the screws in her hand. ‘The shelf brackets these belonged to were on the floor, in different places, one right across the other side of the room. The shelves were scattered, too. But you know what state the walls are in – just like the windows, a good tug would have pulled the shelves clean off. But if that had happened, the walls would have been damaged, bits of plaster would have come down, but they hadn’t.
I don’t think the shelves were pulled down at all.
I think the screws were removed and they were lifted down and made to look as if the opposite had happened. ’
Leo scratched his chin. ‘But why would anyone do that? It’s barmy.’
‘It’s not if you didn’t actually want to make a noise. That I can understand. You wouldn’t want to be caught if you’d broken into someone’s property. But if that was the case, why go to all the trouble of making it seem like senseless vandalism?’
Leo held her look, his eyes widening in astonishment. ‘To hurt,’ he said. ‘You’d do it if you really wanted to hurt someone.’