One Hot Summer: A heartwarming summer read from the author of One Day in December

She looked at him hard. What had they been talking about?

‘The house,’ he prompted. ‘You own it?’

Back in the room. ‘Yes. Yes, the manor’s mine.’

Robinson looked at her for a few silent seconds before he spoke again.

‘And will your family be joining you in the Airstream soon?’

He loaded the question with just the right balance of sarcasm and innocence, but he didn’t fool Alice.

Right. So that was how they were going to play it. She knew she’d read his fleeting expression of annoyance properly yesterday when she’d asked if his family would be coming to stay, and he was firing an answering shot across her bows.

It was her turn to play her cards close to her chest. Robinson’s eyes were full of questions, and she chose not to answer any of them.

‘You’ll like the village,’ she said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘There’s everything you might need, and The Siren’s a decent local.’

‘Local?’ he said, frowning.

‘Pub,’ she explained. ‘If you fancy a drink, it’s usually fun in there … a good crowd …’ Alice trailed off, aware that it sounded quite a lot like she was asking him out, which she absolutely wasn’t.

‘I’m pretty private.’

And that sounded quite a lot like a knock back.

‘I didn’t mean …’ he said, after a second, and then just shrugged and let his sentence hang in the air.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, over bright and too quick, then pushed her cup away from her on the table and stood up decisively.

‘Come on. Let me show you around the manor.’

Robinson followed Alice hurriedly across the lawns and in through the back door of the manor, pausing with her to shed his coat and wet boots.

‘Is it like this much?’ he asked, already disenchanted with the English weather.

‘April showers, I’m afraid. There’s talk of a hot summer though, if that’s any help.’ Alice smiled as she stepped out of her boots, hanging her wet parka up. ‘Come and warm up by the Aga.’

She moved across the kitchen tiles, her feet once more bare.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, when he joined her by the stove. ‘I said that as if it’s my kitchen, didn’t I? Old habits.’

‘Change takes a while to get used to,’ he offered, wondering how the hell she’d wound up living in an Airstream in her own garden. Maybe in time she’d know him well enough to tell him. She was a very different kind of woman to those who’d filled Robinson’s life back home; there was a quietness about her, a self contained way that intrigued him despite his quest for privacy and peace. He hadn’t got the measure of her yet, but one thing was abundantly clear: she loved this house.

After a quick and complicated lesson on the Aga, Robinson resolved not to buy anything that couldn’t be microwaved and followed Alice back into the lofty entrance hall.

‘Dining room,’ she said, pushing open a wide door to reveal a high-ceilinged room with double aspect views over the lawns. The furniture was scaled to match the room, the long table grand and suitably aged beneath the central chandelier, but somehow the pretty interior decor choices allowed the room to avoid standing on ceremony. It was impeccably done, like the rest of the house, as far as he could see, a perfect blend of relaxed luxury and welcoming informality.

‘This is the living room,’ Alice opened another door to show him another equally large, airy room with French doors onto a terrace, this time with oversized ivory sofas that beckoned you to sleep on them and a fabulous original stone fireplace. Logs filled a basket beside the hearth, and Robinson made a mental note to light a fire in there later that evening.

‘There’s satellite TV in here, and the music system is decent,’ Alice said. She probably assumed that was important to him. In a previous life, it would have been pretty darn crucial.

He nodded, non-committal, and she led him back into the entrance hall towards the sweeping staircase. Pausing by a door under the stairs, she backtracked on herself and opened it.

‘Down there’s the cellar,’ she said, feeling around on the wall for the light. ‘I’ll show you, because you’ll need to know where the electric box is. The lights can trip sometimes if you overload the system.’

She stepped down and then turned back to him. ‘Mind your step, it’s pretty steep.’

Robinson followed Alice down the steps into the coolness below the house.

‘Is this the part where you kill me and store me in the deep freeze down here along with all your previous tenants?’

‘Keep paying the rent and I’ll let you live a while longer yet,’ she murmured, flicking the lid down on the fuse box and pointing out what he needed to know.

Robinson really didn’t need the explanation. He knew his way around electrics. Before hitting pay-dirt in Nashville he’d made a living on building sites as a carpenter, and he’d worked around enough electricians to have more than a rudimentary grasp on the basics should he ever need it. All the same, he let Alice demonstrate and nodded in the right places, because it was clear that sharing her knowledge of the house gave her pleasure. When she turned to close the box up he inspected the room behind him.

‘You play the drums?’ he couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

Even from behind he didn’t miss the way her shoulders tensed. She turned slowly, her expression carefully bland. ‘Not me. They’re my husband’s, not that he used them much.’

‘Your husband?’ She’d ducked out of answering his earlier question about family, and Robinson instinctively looked down at her hands and found her fingers bare of rings. She didn’t miss it and met his eyes steadily when he quickly looked back up again.

‘He’s away just now,’ she said, her voice way too breezy for the troubled expression on her face. ‘Feel free to make use of the drums if you’d like.’

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t make use of the drums, nor would he play the gorgeous baby grand piano he’d spotted in the living room earlier. He wasn’t even sure he’d play his beloved guitar again; he’d brought it only because travelling without it felt like leaving one of his limbs behind. He hadn’t been anywhere without it since he was fifteen years old; not even his honeymoon. Right now it was propped against the wall in the corner of the bedroom, almost out of sight, even if never entirely out of his mind. Just because he wasn’t playing it didn’t mean that his fingers didn’t ache to hold it and strum its familiar strings. Would this bitterness ever leave him? Lena really had done a number on him; she hadn’t just hacked his heart up, she’d as good as hacked his hands off too. He didn’t know which hurt more any longer; losing Lena, or losing the will to play, to sing. Forcing the thoughts away, he followed Alice back up the cellar steps and onwards up the staircase towards the bedrooms.

‘The house has seven bedrooms in all,’ Alice said. ‘Five on this floor, and then a further two en-suite rooms upstairs in the attics. You might want to take one down here though, the ceilings up there aren’t really designed for people over five foot.’ Alice nodded towards the second-floor staircase as she spoke, towards the rooms she’d once hoped would house her children. Squaring her shoulders, she continued on down to the far end of the wide hallway.

‘This is my favourite of the bathrooms up here,’ she said, leading Robinson through a door off to the left. ‘A loo with a view.’

One of the many things that had enchanted her when they’d first viewed Borne Manor had been the magical corner bathroom with huge picture windows looking out over the gardens. She’d since spent countless candlelit hours in the huge roll-top bath that stood central in the panelled room, a fire in the hearth in winter, a book in her hand whatever the season.

Drawing the door closed, she moved back down the hall, opening each of the original oak doors to reveal the pretty bedrooms that lay beyond.

‘And this one’s the master,’ she said, opening the door that up to a day or two back had been her own bedroom, and just a few months ago had been the room she’d shared with Brad.

‘Yeah, I’ve …’ Robinson’s words dried up as he and Alice stood in the doorway and surveyed the unmade bed, the guitar propped in the corner and the suitcase he’d thrown open on the floor last night in search of his razor.

There was no reason for it to come as shock to see her bedroom being used by someone else; part and parcel of renting your house out furnished, after all, was that the tenants used your things. They cooked in your kitchen, they watched your TV on your sofa, and they slept in your bed. Nonetheless, Alice needed a minute to find the right words, or to find any words at all. It was a shock to imagine him sprawled out in her bed. Had he slept on her side, or on Brad’s? It was hard to tell from the way the quilt was tangled on the sheets, it looked as if he’d spent the night tossing and turning.

Robinson seemed to realise her discomfort, because he reached past her and pulled the door shut again.

‘I think I’ve got this one covered already,’ he murmured.

‘Quite,’ Alice said, trying to pull herself together. ‘Quite.’

Walking ahead of him, she took the stairs at a skip and walked briskly back to the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the familiar flagstones.

‘Thanks, Alice. I’m sure I’ll have a hundred questions while I get used to the place,’ he said, resting his ass on the kitchen table as he watched her. That’s my table you’ve got your backside on, she thought. That’s my table and you’re sleeping in my bloody bed.