Green Grass by Raffaella Barker

delightedly; it was easier than he had thought to speak, now he had started, and she was better, even better than he had dared hope from seeing only the back of her beautiful neck. Best of all, he hadn’t missed his moment and watched her walk away without ever seeing her face. She was here, with him now. She was part of his success.
    In the car Laura wonders if it’s worth broaching thedog thing, and decides against it. Inigo is sulking anyway, partly because he had not wanted to spend the weekend at Hedley’s house, and partly because Laura still hasn’t got a new washing machine, despite the old one having broken five days ago. The fact that one is to be delivered in the middle of next week in no way placates him, nor do the neat piles of laundry in his drawers and cupboards. Inigo is a control freak, and no washing machine to him equals a worrying decline in standards at home and the eruption of chaos.
    Laura is half-relieved that none of Inigo’s clothes were caught in the turquoise flood which killed the washing machine – he would be unspeakably angry. It would almost be worth it though, for the entertainment value of seeing him in frivolous beach blue. Inigo does not like to wear bright colours. Indeed, he only really likes dark green, and the odd streak of grey. He hates patterns, and Laura has come to notice that there is an element of
Star Trek
in the close-cut way he wears his clothes. She suspects that this predilection for polo-necks is fostered by his view of the low standards at home. Inigo knows that if he had shirts, he would not be able to persuade anyone to iron them for him. He has no intention of ironing them himself, so it is not worth having shirts. With some effort, Laura withdraws from her musings aboutInigo’s laundry. It is time her mind became better occupied, but with what? For years now she has been looking after her family’s interests and has forgotten how to have any of her own.
    Inigo turns off the motorway and dark descends suddenly around them.
    â€˜When will we be there, Dad?’ shouts Fred, his voice raised too loud because he cannot gauge it with his music blasting in his ears.
    â€˜Another hour,’ Inigo answers, not hoping or expecting that Fred will hear him. He glances at Laura, but cannot see if she is awake in the soft dimness. He sighs and accelerates through the night towards Norfolk.
    Laura had never expected that Norfolk, so much a part of her childhood, would become an important place to her again in her life. If she had thought about it at all, she would have imagined that her uncle’s house, Crumbly Hall, would be sold when he died, and the place where she had spent her school summer holidays would become no more than a memory. She and Hedley both left for America before they were twenty, never thinking of looking back. Fifteen years later, Peter Sale died aged eighty-five and Hedley came back, leaving his university teaching in America, to live at Crumbly and run the small farmthere. He thought he would just do it for a year or two. An outdoor life on the north Norfolk coast seemed a bleak prospect for a newly divorced academic, but the change of pace was what he needed, and life lived according to the seasons suited him, and even soothed him as he struggled through the aftermath of his marriage. After four years at Crumbly, Hedley recognised that he would stay, and that he loved it now in a way he could never have imagined loving a place. Only Inigo’s lack of enthusiasm stops Laura visiting him there more often.
    Hedley sees the headlights approaching along the drive, swooping up and down, raking spindly branches with their gleam then diving down into ruts and potholes. He hovers inside the front door, not wanting to appear overeager by going out to greet them, but unable to return to the sitting room where Tamsin is watching an unsuitable film.
    â€˜There’s no such thing as unsuitable,’ she snarled at him