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Where did Yuan Ju go on Saturday afternoons? As June became July, and the temperature of the ground became more consistently warm, Pitt realised that it was consuming him; the mystery of the cook.

He realised he knew very little about her. Did not know where she came from, did not know how long she had been in the UK. She could have had family; there might have been a boyfriend. Perhaps she had another job.

Nothing, however, could explain what he did know. On Saturdays, before she left the vineyard in the afternoon, there was no light about Yuan Ju; the day sat heavily upon her, her mood was sullen and matched her constant silence. The following morning she seemed crippled by melancholy.

Pitt became aware that the kitchen itself, and everyone else in it, seemed to come and go with these moods. There would be an uneasy air on Saturdays, a feeling of things not being quite right, though nothing that he could ever put his finger on. Jenkins was frequently edgy, Daisy more irritable than usual. Only Mrs Cromwell was unchanging in her condemnation and her accusations by silence.

At first he wondered if Jenkins might be the problem. He never saw Jenkins and Yuan Ju speak to one another, but Jenkins looked at her, and, right from the beginning, he had made plenty of comments to Pitt. And once or twice Pitt had noticed Yuan Ju looking at Jenkins; quick glances, stolen glances, Pitt told himself.

Jenkins worked on Saturday mornings and then had the rest of the weekend off. Perhaps they spent the evening together, away from the judgement of the vineyard. On the third weekend, Pitt made up some excuse to keep Jenkins in work all of the Saturday, then had him stay for dinner. But Jenkins had seemed quite happy, had seemed neither concerned nor interested when Yuan Ju had left for the afternoon. There had been nothing to indicate that Pitt had interfered with any plans.

Pitt had embarrassed himself so much by interfering like this, even though there had obviously been nothing with which to interfere, that he hadn’t done it again.

Weeks passed. The weather was not kind to the vintners of the south of England. Too many damp, cloudy days, an unexceptional summer.

Pitt missed the warmth. He needed the heat that the climate-change scare-junkies peddled on the news every day. The planet was getting hotter, yet not the south of England. Not yet. He knew it would happen in small changes, and that two or three degrees over fifty years did not amount to much in a short life of growing grapes in East Gloucestershire, but he needed the warmth to come now. He needed every summer to be the summer of 1976.

They waited for news from the vet, but Pitt was not of a mind to push. No news was fine. The vines did not seem affected, the birds had stopped coming and so they no longer found any dead. They could allow themselves to forget. Eventually, there would be news, one way or another, and they could deal with it as it came.

Daisy was unhappy, but that was a state with which Pitt was familiar. Her unhappiness centred around the weather and the likely poor yield, the vicious presence of her mother in the corner, the continuing cipher of Ju at the kitchen sink.

Everything seemed to be channelled through Ju. Mrs Cromwell remained committed to her leaving, committed to not eating the food she produced; although she did at least begin to expand her own culinary horizons. Pizzas would arrive at the door. In the middle of Ju cooking dinner for seven, Mrs Cromwell would suddenly stand at the cooker, taking as long as possible over a tin of beans.

Pitt took every moment that he could alone with Ju, although these moments were never accompanied by words. The kitchen, with the dual devils of Daisy and Mrs Cromwell, such a bitter and unwelcoming place, suddenly became a room of light and beauty in their absence.

When it happened, when Ju and Pitt would find themselves alone together, then the room would become warm, the light mellow and soft. They could barely look at each other, but they could feel one another and the warmth of their time alone.

Perhaps, Ju sometimes thought, she had not had to leave China to feel something like this. Yet, those moments alone with Pitt were the only time when her heart did not bleed.