Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

off each other. Her left hand strayed outwards till her fingertips brushed the handle of the sledgehammer. As she gripped it, the dog’s ears pricked up.
    Carol swung the hammer up and held the shaft of the hammer across her body, hands apart. Then she launched herself towards the dog, roaring wordlessly at the top of her voice. Startled, the dog jumped up, backed off, then turned tail.
    She followed it through the door, still raging at the blameless animal who was now, she saw, sitting at the heels of a strange man, peering round his legs with ears flat to its head. She skidded to a halt, not sure whether to feel foolish or frightened. He didn’t look very frightening. She fell into her old habit of mentally creating an APB description in her head. A shade under six feet tall, medium build. Flat tweed cap over dark hair, silvering at the temples. Full beard, neatly trimmed. Narrow lips, fleshy nose, dark eyes nested with outdoor wrinkles. He wore a waxed jacket, open to reveal a brown suede waistcoat over a heavy cream cotton shirt with, God help her, a cravat at the neck. Toffee-coloured corduroys tucked into green wellies. He looked as if he should have a shotgun broken on his arm. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘You seem to have terrified my dog.’ Public school accent. The yap of the posh boys who don’t know the price of milk.
    ‘I don’t like trespassers.’ Carol let the heavy hammer swing down till the head was resting on the ground.
    ‘I do apologise. She’s too curious for her own good.’ This time, the smile was full on.
    ‘The dog has an excuse, then. What’s yours?’ She didn’t care that she was being rude. After what had happened here, any local would cut her slack, confronted with a stranger on her own ground.
    ‘I thought it was about time I came to introduce myself. I’m George Nicholas. I live in the house over the brow of the hill.’ He turned and pointed behind him to his right.
    ‘Would that be the bloody big house over the brow of the hill?’
    He chuckled. ‘I suppose you might call it that.’
    ‘So you’re the guy who owns all the land I can see apart from my own patch here?’
    ‘Not quite all of it. But yes, most of it. And this is my dog, Jess.’ He rumpled the fur on the dog’s head. ‘Say hello, Jess.’ The dog sidled out from behind him and sat in front of Carol, raising a paw.
    It was, she had to admit, a good routine. Completely disarming, if you were the sort of woman who allowed herself to be disarmed. Carol shook the dog’s paw then crouched down to stroke its thick fur. ‘You’re a lovely girl, aren’t you?’ Then she stood up. ‘I’m Carol Jordan,’ she said, firmly avoiding a handshake by sticking her free hand in her trouser pocket.
    ‘I know. I was at the funeral.’ He looked pained. ‘No reason why you would know that. I… I was very fond of Michael and Lucy.’
    ‘They never mentioned you.’ It was a harsh response, but she didn’t care. It was a lie too. Lucy had talked about going to dinner at the big house and Michael had teased her about abandoning her socialist principles.
    ‘And why should they have,’ he said easily. ‘I gathered you didn’t live in each other’s pockets. But we were neighbours and we socialised from time to time and, for what it’s worth, I liked them both very much. Like everyone around here, I was appalled by what happened to them.’
    Carol cleared her throat. ‘Yes. Well. It was appalling.’
    Nicholas looked at his feet. ‘I lost my wife three years ago. Drunk driver rammed her car on the motorway slip road.’ He drew in a long breath and tilted his head back to stare at the sky. ‘Obviously nothing like the scale of what happened here, but I do have some understanding of losing people one loves to sudden violent death.’
    Carol tried to care, but she knew she didn’t. Not really. She couldn’t be bothered with people who tried to convince her they knew what she was going through. She was done with empathy. She’d watched Tony Hill being Mr Empathy for years and look where that had got her. Fuck empathy. Still. The obligations of good manners remained. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
    ‘So am I.’ He met her eyes again. This time, the smile was sorrowful. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say hello. And to invite you to supper. Next week, perhaps? I’ve got a couple of friends from the village coming over on Tuesday, if you’d like to join us?’
    Carol shook her head. ‘I don’t