The Things I Know(16)

‘You leave the front door unlocked?’ he asked, aghast, apparently more interested in their security arrangements than in her dodgy foot.

‘Yep, we don’t really have any bother out here. There’s always someone around and, besides, Mr Chops over there is a fearsome guard dog.’ She nodded towards the lithesome pig that ferreted in the undergrowth.

‘Guard pig,’ he corrected, and again they both snickered, sharing a joke like friends. Hitch pulled the red leather-bound guest book from the writing desk and licked her finger before flicking through the pages. She saw the man wince a little.

‘You might have chickeny stuff on your fingers,’ he pointed out.

‘I might have.’ She smiled at him, with a faint shrug of indifference, before turning her eyes back to the ledger and running her bent finger over the page. ‘Here we go – Mr Grayson-Potts, here for two nights and all paid for!’

‘I’m here to go to a seminar – speaking at a hotel tomorrow. Organised by the brokers I work for in London, but I’m talking to people here in Bristol about how I do my job.’

‘I see, and you didn’t want to stay right in Bristol? We’re a little way out.’ She wondered if this out-of-towner had booked the farm in error.

‘No.’ He seemed to consider this. ‘I’ve stayed in a hotel before, but Sherry, a girl in Accounts, said I could choose a hotel or a farm. I thought I could stay in a big hotel any time and they all look the same, but I’ve never stayed on a farm – so I chose the farm.’

‘Right. And you’ve come from London?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve been twice.’ She nodded, as if to emphasise this truth that she considered an achievement.

‘To London?’

‘Yes. I went to Covent Garden and Victoria Street on one trip and the next time I went to Chelsea to visit the flower show with my mum and her friend from the village, Mrs Pepper.’

‘I’ve never been to the flower show.’

‘Would you like to go?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Hitch stared at him for a second and wondered if he was about to elaborate in the way most people did, to justify their yes or their no, but instead he stayed silent. She wondered if this was in response to her again inadvertently doing or saying the wrong thing and felt a jolt of unease in her gut. She shut the book firmly and smiled broadly.

‘I’ll show you to your room. Follow me!’ She walked through the low-ceilinged dining room and noted the way he stared at the fireplace, which took up a whole wall, letting his eyes linger on the smoky black shadows jumping up the bricks of the inglenook, over the wide stone mantel and up towards the ceiling.

‘It smells like a bonfire and a pub and wet leaves.’

She watched him inhale deeply. ‘It does.’ She liked the way he phrased things, without pretension or flowery words or fear of offence. This was exactly what their house smelled of – bonfires, pubs and wet leaves.

‘This way, Mr Grayson-Potts!’ She climbed the slightly twisted, creaking wooden staircase.

‘My name isn’t Mr Grayson-Potts.’ He stood on the bottom step and spoke loudly.

‘Oh?’ She turned to face him, trying to quell her rising sense of alarm, wondering at that moment where her parents were, as her eyes darted to the hallway and the front door behind him. She realised for the first time that she was maybe in a vulnerable situation with this stranger, alone in the house. Who was he then, if not the man written down in the guest book?

‘I am Grayson Potts, but Grayson’s my first name.’

‘You are Grayson.’ She breathed an obvious sigh of relief.

‘Yes.’

‘Right, I thought that was your surname and that my mum had made a mess of the booking on the phone. She does that, always rushing, or she doesn’t hear properly. I thought it might be a double-barrelled surname, Grayson-Potts, or that she might have got it the wrong way round.’

‘You thought my name might be Potts Grayson?’

‘Well, when you put it like that, it sounds less likely, but I haven’t heard the name Grayson before.’

‘Most people think of Grayson Perry.’

She looked at him blankly, too shy to say she didn’t know who he was talking about. Grayson Perry was probably a footballer, a sport about which her knowledge was zero. ‘Why did your parents call you Grayson? It’s unusual – are you named after someone?’

Grayson shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I might be.’

She stared at him, again a little fascinated. This was definitely the kind of thing most people knew about their own name.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked boldly, without elaborating.

‘My name’s Hitch.’ She looked at the floor.

‘Hitch?’ he queried. ‘Is that your real name?’

‘What, you think I was christened Hitch?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

She noted his red flare of embarrassment or confusion – hard to tell which – and she made a judgement call.

‘My real name’s Thomasina.’

‘Thomasina,’ he repeated. ‘So why did you say your name is Hitch?’

Still she stared at him, and narrowed her eyes. ‘Because of the hitch in my top lip. That’s what people call me.’ She touched the tip of her finger to it. ‘I was born with a problem, a cleft palate, and I had to get it fixed, but they didn’t do the best job. Nowadays the surgery is much better, neater, and you can’t really tell.’