Swift knocked on the wooden door. When he got no reply, he tried the iron handle and the door opened. He called hello and stepped inside, into a whitewashed room with a grey slate floor. He put his rucksack down and gazed around. A small round oak dining table with two chairs, a twin door, multi-fuel stove with an old-fashioned drying rack holding jeans and shirts suspended overhead, one armchair and a deep, wide Welsh dresser. A door to the left of the room stood open. Swift crossed to it and saw a bedroom with a double bed, bookshelves, a wardrobe and a small en-suite toilet and shower. He touched the stove. It was just faintly warm and the clothes hanging above it were bone dry.
Swift went back outside. At the rear of the house was a large shed with an alloy frame touring bike propped against one side. The door wasn’t locked and when he went in, he saw that it was shelved, with a long central table made out of an old pine door. Gardening tools, a spade, hoe and a rake hung from hooks above a tall open cupboard containing packets of seeds, a tub of plant food, canes and twine. The shelves were stacked with plastic buckets, empty bottles and glass demijohns. Jars of pale gold honey were lined up on the table. He picked one up and read the orange and white label:
Tir Melys Honey
Our honey is foraged by our bees from wild blossoms and flowers, including Bramble, Hawthorn, Clover and Bluebells.
We don’t heat-treat our honey, thus preserving its natural flavours.
Also on the table were a dozen demijohns fitted with airlocks, with thick sediment in their bases and full of an acorn-coloured liquid. Beside them stood a row of filled bottles, as yet unlabelled, holding a deep amber drink. The labels were in a pile at the end of the table and Swift read the top one.
Tir Melys Orange Blossom Mead
Made by Afan Griffith
Medium-dry mead with a smooth finish
Made to an ancient Welsh recipe
Best served slightly chilled
A pale green jacket was on a hanger to one side of the door. It was elasticated at the waist and cuffs, and a hood with a veil was attached by loops. Grey sheepskin gauntlets dangled on a hook next to the jacket. Swift recognised protective wear for working with bees.
He headed back to the cottage. The temperature had dropped suddenly, and thick cloud was moving in from the sea. It was just gone four, he’d had nothing to eat or drink since a coffee and ham croissant mid-morning, and he was running on empty. He stood in the centre of the room, puzzled. There was no proper kitchen in this cottage and no cooker. Just a small sink with a lidded enamel bucket full of water standing beside it with a note — presumably for his benefit — saying drinking water. A microwave, a mini fridge, a kettle and a breadbin stood on top of the deep middle ledge of the dresser. The kettle was half-full of water. He switched it on and found a carton of oat milk in the fridge, which also held cheese and a small tub of butter. There were teabags, mugs, and a tub of home-baked flapjacks in the bottom cupboard of the dresser, which he noticed was riddled with old woodworm scars.
While he waited for the kettle to boil, he scanned the room again. All the furniture appeared home-made or upcycled and there was no sense of personality, no splashes of colour. On the table, he saw a radio and beside it, a photo with a note attached. He picked it up and read Afan’s comment. Remember this walk, Ty? We did about twelve miles along the river and back and stopped to have a drink at the Mistral. Afan had taken the selfie on a hot July evening in Lyon, by the Lafayette Bridge. He was elegant, wearing a navy linen shirt, Panama hat and designer sunglasses. As usual, Swift’s dark curls verged on the wild and his cotton T-shirt had faded in the wash. Ah yes, the days before he had a streak of silver at his temple. He replaced the photo and inspected the two stacks of books on the table. They were nearly all about beekeeping, with a few of mead recipes and a couple about the Pembrokeshire coast. One was a textbook with the title Brwsiwch eich Cymraeg — ‘Brush up your Welsh’.
He made a mug of tea, added oat milk and took it outside with a flapjack. He decided that oat milk would be an acquired taste, but the flapjack was delicious. He wandered around the vegetable patch, fingering runner beans and picking and eating a couple of juicy tomatoes. The air was breezy and moist. A blackbird sang sweetly nearby. His muscles relaxed. He liked being a long way from everything, and especially Oliver Sheridan.
He glanced back at the cottage. Where was he supposed to sleep, let alone eat, he wondered. He’d worked out that Afan had chosen a simpler life, but this place was basic in the extreme, and the bedroom resembled a monk’s cell. He couldn’t help wondering about the friend he was going to meet again. Would they have anything in common now? Perhaps the friendship had belonged to a certain time and place, and this would prove to be an awkward couple of days with both of them searching for things to say.
The Afan he’d known in Lyon had been a cultivated, wealthy man with a taste for the finer things in life. He’d driven
