‘I need a waz, anyway,’ Toby announced. He’d had about as much of this as he could stomach.

  ‘I’ll alert the Hernshore Chronicle.’ Nat raised his nearly empty pint glass. ‘Remember, same again, big boy.’

  Inwardly, Toby sighed and slouched away across the beer garden, leaving them to it. Michael was holding court, while Nat was his jester, piping in with wry comments and jokes, but also giving Michael cues as to whom he was speaking. He kept the Lord level-headed with mockery, playing his part, the same as when they were kids. Nat’s dad used to do the same thing for Mikey’s. A bit less when the Lord returned with a Lady from America. Bet the current Lord Lorimer didn’t remember that.

  Passing out of the sun into the whitewashed cob and oak beamed caves of the pub, where he had to stoop, Toby wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with his kerchief. He touched his forelock to the barmaid. ‘’Nother round, Shaz.’

  ‘Same again?’ Sharon said, already reaching for a pint glass.

  ‘Aye, that be,’ Toby replied, turning right for the narrow corridor to the gents’ loo thinking, Always the same again. No escaping it is there? Not for the likes of thee and me, Shazza.

  As urine drummed against the steel trough, Toby wondered how much Michael remembered. Seemed like bugger all. ‘Bout as much as a horsefly’s fart. He’d no bloody idea what was going on. Just rocked back up here with a sixteen-year-old son, as though it was nothing. Spouting off that he was selling the beach house and all the land. Toby snorted at that one and shook himself dry.

  He zipped up his jeans as he meandered over to the sink. There, he paid a cursory homage to hygiene with a couple of waves of his massive hands through the thin trickle of tap water. In the mirror, his tired pate stared back through small puffy eyes. They hadn’t been expecting it, not now, without preparations. Lorimers always came back sooner or later. Mikey’s dad had been here for years before. Even when he was off making movies and TV shows in America, he’d pop back. Built the beach house when the castle burned down. Spent the summers here, and when Mikey was older, came back for good. Sent Mike off to boarding school and that, but he was about through all the holidays. So, when it came to it, everyone knew the gig. No surprises.

  Toby regarded his glum reflection in the mirror. I should have tried to get to London when Lady Lorimer died. That was the start of it, wasn’t it?

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  That’s when the luck started to sour like cream left out in the sun. There were signs then. The harvest wasn’t poor, but it wasn’t good either. This year the soil was full of sand and the white wyrms, the crops withering and blackened, and the dunes pressing in on the town.

  But you didn’t go to London, did you, Toby?

  ‘Couldn’t, could I?’ he said to his unsympathetic face. Bitterly, he added, ‘Only Lorimers leave.’

  Could have tried to make contact, called Mikey home or something, couldn’t you.

  Like he would have listened. Living his razmataz lifestyle. Luck of the Lorimers! Everything falling in his lap. Not that he didn’t pay a price for it... Doesn’t even know he paid it, though, does he? Doesn’t know he’s got another payment to make and soon. But Ma said it was a delicate matter this time. Toby dried his hands on the backside of his jeans.

  There was a bloom of joyful laughter, light as a dandelion clock, when he walked back into the main bar. It lifted his heart to hear it. It wasn’t a bad life in Hernshore. We all got our place, don’t we? There was comfort in that, just like the three beautiful pints waiting for him at the bar, standing shoulder to shoulder. Buttery foam oozed down their curvaceous sides. Their thirst-quenching amber bodies made him wet his lips, and he reached for the crumpled notes in his pocket.

  ‘Thirsty work kissing a Lord’s arse, is it?’

  Toby stiffened and turned to the man slighting him. ‘Fletcher, what do you want?’

  The tubby butcher, with his potbelly and flabby face, blew smoke from the corner of his mouth as he stubbed out the cigarette in the green ashtray on the bar. He was sat on a barstool, legs apart, one hand resting on his hip, pulling back his tired sport’s jacket, like he was a man-sized teapot. A grinning teapot. It didn’t suit him. Not because his teeth were yellow and a touch too far apart, as though he’d never grown any adult teeth. It was because of what it did to the rest of his face, moving his features around like chunks of meat frying in grease.

  ‘What do I want? There’s a question. I’ll give it some thought and get back to you. Maybe Lord Lorimer will throw us a scrap.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Toby said, picking up their trio of pints. He was nearly at the back door when Fletcher called after him.

  ‘I hear the Lord has returned with a teenage son.’

  The pub went quiet. Toby stood still, back to the man. But his shoulder muscles bunched.

  ‘I hear he’s sixteen, or thereabouts.’ A muttering rippled through the pub. ‘I also heard this heir to the throne was seen heading off towards the dunes with our Gretchen.’

  Toby turned, sloshing beer over his hands.

  ‘Seems a bit irregular that. Irresponsible. What with his daddy dearest lording it over every poor fool in the beer garden who’d care to kiss his ring.’ Fletcher puckered his lips and double kissed the air. ‘You look a bit pale there, Tobes.’

  Fletcher hadn’t used her nickname, but he was talking about Tink. He was her grandfather, so he could call her that if he wanted, not that the old snake had much to do with her. He never did forgive Tink’s mother for taking up with a stag. That was all in the past, and even though Fletcher was no fan of Toby’s he had a good point. Ma had sent Tink and Sam off with explicit instructions not to go near the dunes. But Tink was a, well, a tinker, that’s how she’d got the nickname. She hated Gretchen as a name and was always getting into trouble, winding up the grown-ups. Her mother was the same. Toby chided himself for still thinking of his absent wife in the present tense.

  Tink’s sassiness had only gotten worst since she’d become a teenager. She was her mother’s daughter. It would be like her to push it, think it was a joke. By Herne, no! The conclusion hit him like an icy slap. Toby spun on his heels, sloshing more beer and rushed outside.

  Sparking another cigarette, Fletcher called after him. ‘Ever wondered what happens if the Lorimers don’t make it?