No Place Like Home

Walton Room, while Bram made a start on clearing up in the kitchen, making a point of donning his frilly apron.
‘God almighty,’ spluttered David. ‘I hope you don’t wear that in public.’
‘You could hardly complain if I did, David. You gave it to me.’
‘As a bloody joke!’
‘I did once wear it to the shops. Forgot to take it off.’
Phoebe giggled as David put his head in his hands in mock despair. Well, mock mock despair. Then he looked up at Bram. ‘I suppose in Islington no one turned a hair. Wear that to the shops in Grantown and see what happens.’
‘Give it a rest, Dad,’ said Kirsty. ‘If Bram’s confident enough in his masculinity to take on the traditionally female role, why should it bother you?’
‘It doesn’t bother me. As you say, if Bram’s happy to be the little woman keeping house, spending your money on chai lattes and pointy shoes, and if you’re happy to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed, who am I to object?’
Kirsty opened and closed her mouth.
The problem was that David was a lot cleverer than he looked, and thrived, of course, on conflict, so it was rare that either of them got the better of him in these exchanges. He smiled, and leant back in the armchair he had selected, and closed his eyes.
He was soon snoring away, thank God, and Fraser followed suit, big booted feet stuck out in front of him on the rug. Max offered to take Linda and Bertie round the house so they could familiarise themselves with the layout of the furniture, and Phoebe went with them, chattering to her beloved Bertie and stroking his back, equanimity seemingly restored.
In the kitchen, Kirsty tugged at the front of Bram’s apron, pulling him towards her for a kiss. ‘All together again in our new house.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you for today.’
Oh God, he loved her so much! He took her hand and led her through the Room with a View to the terrace, where he put his arms around her, holding her close as they looked across the field to the hills. How had he got to be so lucky? Little did nineteen-year-old Bram imagine, all those years ago, that the Weird Girl was going to turn out to be his whole world, that they would have this wonderful life together. That they would have two wonderful kids. Live happily ever after.
She had, he reflected with satisfaction, made much more of a success of her life than Gary or Jake or Steph who, last he heard, was attempting to raise cash to save her scuzzy beach bar in Goa. When he’d shown Kirsty the crowd-funding page, complete with photo of a leathery-skinned Steph standing in front of what was basically a falling-down shack, looking about ten years older than she was thanks to excessive sun exposure, Kirsty had just raised her eyebrows, her lips lifted in a little smile, and turned away.
Bram had kind of been hoping that Kirsty, a high-flying freelance forensic auditor, might suggest getting in touch with Steph and working on a rescue plan, but that had been unrealistic. Steph had been horrendous to Kirsty at uni – why should Kirsty help her now? It was nothing less than karma, although Kirsty, of course, wouldn’t see it that way. In Kirsty’s world view, if it couldn’t be proved scientifically, it didn’t exist.
‘What did you do with the crow?’ she asked him.
‘Buried it. Over in the grass near the stream. I hope Bertie doesn’t try to dig it up. Hopefully he’s too much of a lazy sod to make the effort.’
Kirsty nodded. He could feel that she’d stiffened a little in his arms. ‘Do you think Dad’s right, and it was just a farmer? The whirly was maybe a convenient place to put it, like a makeshift fence? Maybe he thought he was doing us a favour, like Dad said.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
Why would a farmer leave a dead crow there? Even if he thought he was doing them a favour, why wouldn’t he just take the corpse away with him? But Bram wasn’t about to voice his doubts to Kirsty. It wasn’t as if he had a better explanation.
He kissed her hair. Maybe now was an appropriate time to broach the subject he’d been trying to talk to her about ever since they’d moved up here. ‘It can’t be easy. Being back home. Must be bringing back – memories?’
Kirsty turned in his arms and broke away, on the pretext of kicking a twig off the flagstones of the terrace. ‘It’s fine, Bram.’ She looked at him, and grinned suddenly. ‘But for God’s sake take off that bloody apron.’

3
The sunlight was dancing on the shallow water of the stream where it widened and looped around a miniature sandy crescent Phoebe called The Beach. The water seemed to coat the pebbles and stones it ran over. They were all different colours, browns and yellows and whites and greys and pinks and blues. Some of them were clean as a whistle and some of them were covered in algae and weedy stuff that swayed and waved in the current.
It was incredibly soothing, watching the play of sun and water on the stones – right up until the moment Bertie launched himself into the middle of it, pushing his head into the stream to hoover up a stone before dropping it again, humphing, spluttering, as if indignant to find that the delicious-looking biscuit-sized object wasn’t in fact edible.
‘Mad dog.’ Max laughed, picking up a stick. ‘Bertie! Go get it!’ He threw the stick across to the far bank.
Bertie ignored it.
This was their own stream.
Well, this stretch of it, through their wood and along the edge of the rough grass that Bram and Max intended turning into a wildflower meadow. Downstream, it dog-legged away through Andrew and Sylvia Taylor’s land to the bridge that carried the track leading to Woodside. The chimneys of the Taylors’ house were just visible