‘Here,’ he said, when he came back. ‘Drink this straight down.’
I gulped down the contents of the glass in one and spluttered as the heat of the amber liquid burned my throat.
‘What was that?’ I gasped.
‘Brandy.’
‘I can’t drink brandy,’ I told him, still coughing. ‘I’m driving.’
‘It was only a small one.’
He walked back to the bar and returned with two glasses of Coke packed full of ice. As he sat down, I couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing the watch again. The sight of it undid most of the good the brandy had just done.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, a deep frown etched across his forehead. ‘You looked as though you were either about to throw up or keel over out there.’
‘I’ve just had a bit of a shock,’ I said, as I took a sip of the sweet chilled Coke and began to feel a little more in control.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘What is it? Trouble at mill?’
He said it with an awful Yorkshire accent, no doubt trying to raise a smile, but he hadn’t got a chance of that.
‘No. Trouble at the farm, of course,’ I snapped.
Grandad’s worrying bout of tiredness, Mr Pagett’s unsettling visit and the sadness of the lost Rolex, all wrapped up in something else I couldn’t quite grasp, swam around my head in a kind of cloying and gloopy soup that I couldn’t wade through.
‘What’s going on?’ Anthony asked, leaning closer and giving me another glimpse of the watch. ‘It’s nothing to do with our crossed wires after Saturday night, is it?’
‘No,’ I said, wishing he’d pick up the glass with his other hand. ‘Nothing to do with that.’
Or was it?
‘What then?’
I drank more of the Coke and then described Mr Pagett’s unsavoury visit, playing for time as I tried to reach whatever it was that was still just beyond my fingertips.
‘Grandad thinks it was just a misunderstanding,’ I finished up with a shrug, ‘but it was unsettling nonetheless.’
Anthony mulled it all over.
‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘And it does make you think, doesn’t it?’
‘Think what?’
‘That this whole supper club idea might be more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘What?’ I blinked.
‘Well, it’s already causing upset and you haven’t even started yet,’ he pointed out.
‘Only because of someone else’s meddling,’ I frowned. ‘I thought you thought the idea was a good one.’
His words seemed to have oiled some cogs in my brain that had previously been stuck fast.
‘Anyway,’ I carried on, ‘that visit’s the least of my troubles really.’
‘There’s something else?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there is.’
I reached for his hand and pushed back the cuff of his shirt.
‘This watch,’ I said with a sigh, ‘belonged to my Grandad.’
‘What?’
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘It was his most treasured piece of family history, aside from the farm of course, and last week Louise sold it and I’m still trying to…’
He didn’t give me the chance to explain that she and Grandad had been scheming over it together.
‘There,’ he loudly and triumphantly announced. ‘What have I been telling you all along? The whole bloody family are at it!’
‘No,’ I began, but he talked right over me.
‘Louise and the watch, Eliot and his undue influence and Rebecca with her bout of teenage shoplifting. The whole Randall family’s rotten to the core. You should be thanking me, Fliss.’
I looked at him aghast.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ he frowned. ‘I know you want to think the best of Eliot…’
‘No,’ I said, this time interrupting him. ‘You said it was Eliot who was caught shoplifting, not Bec. You said he’d pinched stuff and that now he’d moved on to bigger things, such as old ladies’ savings.’
‘Did I?’ he shrugged, as if it didn’t matter at all. ‘Well, it was one of them and with a mother like that, it’s little wonder, is it? Bill’s going to be absolutely devastated. If I were you,’ he said, his tone softening as he turned to look at me, ‘I’d forget all about your plans for the business and focus on making sure this blow doesn’t finish the old fella off. I mean, there are bound to be quicker ways to make money out of that barn, you know.’
Everyone in the bar let out a collective screech as lightning suddenly lit the pub up. It was a blinding flash and in the second it struck, everything I had been trying to work out fell into place.
‘Oh my god,’ I gasped, as a deep and menacing rumble of thunder rolled overhead.
‘Am I right, or am I right?’ Anthony nodded, looking smug.
I couldn’t believe I had been so blind to what had been in front of me all along.
‘This is all about you, isn’t it?’ I shot at him. ‘You want the barn, don’t you? That’s what this has all been about. I thought I was using you as a smokescreen to hide my feelings for Eliot, but actually you were using your bullshit about him as camouflage to try and distract me.’
‘What are you talking about, Fliss?’ Anthony scowled, but I knew I was right.
There was no point in him denying it because I’d finally worked it out.
‘The only rumour you’ve heard about Eliot is the one you made up,’ I started, ‘anything wrong with the safety of the barn is all in your head, you didn’t put all those questions in everyone’s heads Saturday night with the best of intentions and you were the one who reported us to the council…’
‘Now wait a minute…’
‘No,’ I said, raising my voice, ‘you wait a minute. I know that Grandad and Louise cooked up that plan to sell the watch together and you’ve just implied that Louise stole it. You’ve rather shot yourself in the foot, haven’t you?’
He wasn’t looking quite so smug anymore and I felt like Angela Lansbury on a roll.
‘Does Grandad know you want the barn?’ I demanded. ‘Is that why you were really at the farm the day I came home and found you in the kitchen?’
‘Of course, he bloody knows,’ Anthony nastily said. ‘He was the
