LITMIR.BIZ

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busy with the baby to work out. Normally, in his crazy nomadic lifestyle, he stayed in hotels that had gyms—unless they were filming in the back of beyond, in which case very often they’d had a hike to get there—and when he was at home in London he went to the gym round the corner from his flat.

      But in the two—or was it nearly three?—weeks since Kizzy had come into his life, he hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a basket of wet washing, and he needed this.

      Therapy, he told himself, and at least he’d slept last night.

      And now, at the end of the second day, the shrubs with the yellow squirt on them had been evicted, a rotten tree was felled and the root hacked down to below ground level, and a huge pile of shredded material was heaped up at the bottom of the garden ready to be composted and put back into the soil. He tipped out the last bag onto the heap with a sigh of relief and surveyed the devastated garden thoughtfully.

      ‘It looks vast,’ he told her. ‘I’d forgotten the garden was so big.’

      ‘They always look like this when they’re cleared. Even cutting the grass can double the apparent size of a garden. And using fine lawn grass does the same thing, because we have a mental scale rule and a blade of grass is x big, therefore the garden must be y long—and so on.’

      ‘Tricks of the trade? Clever. So what’s next?’

      ‘Marking out the hard landscaping, deciding on the shape of the lawn, and then getting down to the nitty-gritty of the planting. But to do that, we need a big rope to lay on the ground to give us a line. There’s one in the summerhouse. Can you give me a hand? It’s quite heavy.’

      The summerhouse?

      ‘Sure,’ he said, his mouth suddenly dry. He hadn’t been in the summerhouse since the night of his grandmother’s funeral. He’d been actively avoiding it, because so much of their past was in the place, but it seemed his avoidance tactics were to come to nothing.

      Right now.

      He followed her, Freddie and Beth running ahead to show him the way, Kizzy sleeping in the carrier in the shade by the back door where they could keep an eye on her from either garden.

      And there it was, screened by shrubs, tucked away at the end in a lovely, private little dell, the sort of place that as children had been a magical retreat, and as adolescents in the grip of their hormones had been an ideal trysting place.

      ‘Right, it’s in here somewhere,’ she said, pulling the door open and picking her way in. ‘We don’t use it any more, so it’s a bit of a dumping ground now. Ah, here it is.’

      It smelled the same. Slightly musty, the odd cobweb hanging across the windows, and it had gone downhill a little, but it was basically the same, and the memories slammed through him.

      The hedgehog with its fleas. Secret societies with Dan, and Emily and Georgie, on occasions, if the girls insisted. And then later, on her sixteenth birthday, their first kiss.

      Tender, tentative, staggering in its impact on the seventeen-year-old boy with a massive chip on his shoulder and a feeling that he’d never really been wanted.

      Until then.

      But Emily had wanted him, and, God help him, he’d wanted her. So much.

      That innocent, simple kiss had awoken a whole world of sensation that had somehow been much more than straightforward lust. It had been the tenderness that had shaken him. Her tenderness, and his. Particularly his. Until the night of his grandmother’s funeral. That hadn’t been tender. That had been desperate, and frightening, and wild with a passion that had left them both shaken. They’d stopped, pulled back from the brink, shocked by the force of their emotion—

      ‘Harry?’

      He lifted his head and met her eyes, and the memories must have been written all over his face. ‘Sorry. Miles away,’ he said, and he watched the soft colour sweep her cheeks and she looked away.

      ‘Um—the rope,’ she said, but she was between him and it, and the only way to get it was to squeeze past her. She turned away from him, but as she struggled not to fall headlong into the piles of clutter, he took her shoulders in his hands to steady her and her bottom settled briefly but firmly against his groin.

      She gasped softly and squirmed past him and away, out of the door, and he sucked in a huge breath, forced himself to concentrate and reached for the rope. If she had any sense, she’d tie him up with it and leave him there to cool down.

      ‘Uncle Dan! Mummy, look, it’s Uncle Dan!’

      ‘Hi, Half-Pint. Hello, little sister—got room for a lodger for a few days?’

      Dan’s voice came to him through the open door, and Harry took a moment longer to steady himself while Emily ran to greet him.

      Then he followed her out of the door and hesitated on the step, the rope in his hands. ‘Might be a small problem with that. I seem to have borrowed your bed,’ he said, stepping forward out of the doorway, and Dan did a mild double-take.

      ‘Harry?’

      He felt the smile start, right in the centre of his chest, along with that strange tightness and the prickling in his eyes. ‘Well, hi, stranger.’

      ‘Me, stranger? Coming from you?’

      He laughed and—typical Dan—crossed the garden in two strides and engulfed Harry in a hug. ‘Ah, hell, you’re all sweaty! Since when did you get your hands dirty?’ He laughed, and let him go.

      ‘Since your sister started cracking the whip,’ Harry replied with a wry smile. ‘God, it’s good to see you again. You are the world’s lousiest communicator. How are you?’

      ‘I’m the world’s worst? And you’re so darned good at it?’ he returned, but Harry noticed he hadn’t actually answered the question, and the smile on his face didn’t really reach his eyes.

      ‘So what’s going on? What brings you back?’ he asked, but Dan just shook his head.

      ‘Never mind me, what brings you here?’

      And right on cue, Kizzy started to cry.

      It was hours later, and the children were in bed. Dan’s luggage was installed in their parents’ bedroom, because, as Emily had pointed out, Harry was about to go back to his own house and it would be silly to change the beds just for two or three nights. They’d had supper and were sitting down with a glass of wine and catching up.

      Well, she wasn’t drinking, and any minute now she’d have to sneak off and deal with Buttercup, but if Daniel was going to be staying there—and he still hadn’t said why he was there, or how long for, or where Kate was—he was going to find out sooner or later.

      Later, preferably.

      ‘I feel nibbly—jet-lag,’ he said, and got up and went out to the kitchen, coming back a few moments later with another bottle of wine and a party-sized packet of hand-fried potato crisps. He ripped them open, tipped them onto the table and sat down, propping his feet up just inches from the crisps.

      ‘So where’s Kate?’ Emily asked him, fed up with waiting for him to say anything and going for the direct approach. ‘Kicked you out because of your disgusting habits?’

      He gave a laugh that sounded just a little hollow to her ears, and reached for some crisps. ‘Never mind about Kate, what’s all the gubbins in the sterilising solution? Looks like bits of a breast pump. Don’t tell me Freddie still isn’t weaned!’

      She shot Harry a desperate look, and he just shrugged.

      OK. So she was on her own here.

      ‘It’s for Kizzy,’ she said, being deliberately evasive. ‘She doesn’t tolerate formula very well.’ OK, slight exaggeration, she’d been fine with it until she’d realised there was a choice, but he didn’t have to know that.

      He stared at her

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