A.L. Lester

It's 1972. Fifteen years earlier, teenage Laurie Henshaw came to live at Webber's Farm with his elderly uncle and settled in to the farming life. Now thirty-two, Laurie has a stroke in the middle of working on the farm. As he recovers, he has to come to terms with the fact that some of his new limitations are permanent and he's never going to be as active as he used to be. Will he be able to accept the helping hands his friends extend to him?<br><br>With twenty successful years in the city behind him, Phil McManus is hiding in the country after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal at his London stockbroking firm. There's not enough evidence to prosecute anyone, but not enough to clear him, either. He can't bear the idea of continuing his old stagnating life in the city or going back to his job now everyone knows he's gay.<br><br>Thrown together in a small country village, can Phil and Laurie forge a new life that suits the two of them and the makeshift family who gathers round them? Or are they too tied up in their own shortcomings to recognise what they have?

Taking Stock

“Feels old,” said Phil. And he subsided into silence, too.


It was still quite early, midmorning at the latest. With his head tilted back against the stone, Laurie shut his eyes and allowed himself, for the first time since ithad happened, to feel the bones of the land underneath him. There was a blackbird singing in one of the trees over the pool. The far-away baa-ing of the sheep was a constant. The almost permanent kee-kee of the buzzard further along the ridge, catching the thermals and circling to look for prey, being moved along by the mobbing crows, they were all sounds as familiar to him as his own breathing.


The sunlight was becoming stronger now and he could feel it on his face. And the dapples of the beech-leaves as they moved in the light breeze that swept up the side of the hill, filtering the sunlight and then shifting out of the way again, caused the light behind his eyes to change from white to pale green.


Chapter 29