I looked up at the clock and saw it was only just after seven, but Rory had already stood up, like a rookie soldier who had just been given his marching orders by a sergeant major.
‘I’ll take you upstairs for a bath,’ I said, holding out my hand to him.
‘Night, Mouse,’ Rory said.
‘Night, Rory.’
Having filled the bath, Rory splashed around, then lay back and closed his eyes as I shampooed his hair. He plunged himself under the water, then emerged and opened his eyes.
‘Star?’
‘Yes?’
His hands came up out of the water to sign. ‘Don’t think Mouse likes me very much.’
‘I think he does, but he’s rubbish at this.’ I indicated our hands.
‘Not hard. We will teach him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and held out the towel in front of me so he could step out and maintain his modesty. I helped him put on his pyjamas and took him along the corridor to his room.
‘Now, do you want me to read you a story, or am I too bad at it?’ I teased, tickling him gently.
‘You’re much better than Mouse, so yes please.’
Rory turned before I did to see Mouse standing in the doorway, and I was grateful he didn’t understand the language our hands spoke.
‘Want me to tuck you in, Rory?’ Mouse asked.
‘Yes please,’ he said dutifully.
‘Night, night.’ I kissed Rory on the forehead and left the room.
‘You’re very good with him,’ Mouse said later, entering the kitchen as I was just finishing the washing-up. Of all the modern conveniences I would wish for at High Weald, the first would be a dishwasher.
‘Thank you.’
‘I presume you’ve worked with deaf kids before?’
‘No, never.’
‘Then how . . . ?’
I explained to him briefly how I’d come to learn to sign. He took a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open.
‘It’s interesting that you and Rory have met and bonded, as you’re certainly a woman of few words. He doesn’t miss the absence of them as a hearing person would. You don’t give much away, do you?’
Neither do you, I thought.
‘You live with your sister, is that right?’
So he’d remembered. ‘Yes.’
‘Boyfriend? Significant other?’
‘No.’ Not that it’s any of your business. ‘You?’ I rounded on him.
‘I’m fully aware no one would have me, and that’s fine.’
I wasn’t going to be goaded into a response. In the silence, I stowed away the plates and cutlery.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said eventually, revealing – as everyone did after a long silence – more information than he’d originally intended, ‘I was married once.’
‘Oh.’
‘She seemed to think I was okay.’
Again I said nothing.
‘But then . . .’
I continued my silence.
‘She died.’
I knew I was beaten. There was no way I could not reply to that statement.
‘I’m sorry.’ I turned around to see him standing awkwardly by the table.
‘So was I. But that’s life . . . and death, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said, thinking of Pa Salt.
There was a slight pause before he glanced at the clock on the wall and said, ‘I should go. I have three months’ worth of outstanding accounts to tackle. Thanks for supper.’
Leaving his half-drunk beer on the table, Mouse left through the back door.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I felt dreadful about his abrupt departure, which I knew had been engendered by my cold response after he told me his wife had died. However rude he usually was, he had confessed an emotional confidence. And I had given him an unemotional platitude in reply.
In essence, I had allowed myself to sink to his level.
Eventually, exhausted from being exhausted, I staggered up with the sunrise at half past six, put on my layers, and went down to the kitchen.
Then I did the only thing that I knew would calm me – I baked a cake.
After breakfast, I asked Rory if he could take me to Mouse’s farmhouse, to which he nodded eagerly.
‘I was thinking that maybe we could take this cake to him as a present,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Rory gave me a thumbs up. ‘Mouse is lonely.’
With Rory on his bike and the cake nestled in a tin between my palms, we headed up the drive and from there across the lane. Rory led me along the narrow grass verge and I inhaled the evocative and unmistakable scent of deep autumn in England: the rich smell of fermentation as the countryside discarded the remnants of another summer, ready to renew again in spring.
‘Here.’ Rory pointed to a sign, which led us to an overgrown driveway. He hared off as I followed more sedately with the cake. Finally, the farmhouse came into view – a sturdy red-brick building without any of the embellishments of its neighbour across the road. If High Weald was aristocratic, Home Farm was workmanlike and cosy.
In the centre of the farmhouse stood a large door – once painted a cheery red, but now a peeling, faded version of its old self. Growing along the front of the house were lavender bushes that were way past their best and needed replacing, but their calm scent still filled the air. Rory raced around the side of the house and headed straight for the back door.
‘Can you knock?’ I indicated, and he thumped it, enjoying the vibrations. There was no response.
‘Knock again,’ I suggested.
‘Always open. Go in?’
‘Okay.’
Feeling like a guilty trespasser, I followed Rory inside and found myself in a kitchen that was a miniature version of the one we had just left. Except this one was even more chaotic, the pine table almost invisible under used coffee cups, newspapers, and what looked like account ledgers with receipts and bills spilling out from their pages. The breeze from the door closing behind us sent a couple fluttering to the floor. Putting down the cake, I stooped down to pick them up, just as Mouse entered the kitchen from the inside door.
He stared at the receipts in my hand and frowned.
‘They were on the floor,’ I said wanly, as I put them back on the table. ‘We brought you a present. Rory, give Mouse the tin.’
‘Star baked it,’ he signed. ‘For you.’
‘It’s lemon drizzle cake,’ I added.
Mouse stared at the tin as if it might contain a bomb. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s okay.’
As we stood there uncomfortably, I shivered in the chill of the room. The range was not turned on, and the cosiness promised by the exterior of the house was clearly not present inside.
‘Everything all right?’ Mouse said.
‘Fine.’
‘Good. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on.’