There was a movement by a clump of thistles in the ditch, and Jazz saw a pointed face blink in the spill from her car’s headlights. Pulling in at a farm gate, she switched off the lights and lowered the window to watch a badger cross the road a few yards up ahead. His powerful legs seemed too short for his heavy grey body, and his black-and-white face gleamed in the moonlight, like a mask. She knew he was aware of her because he’d turned his ponderous head as she’d stopped at the gateway. But he seemed untroubled by her presence. Instead of freezing or retreating, he continued his steady progress and, ducking his long snout into a mass of briars and nettles, disappeared into the farther ditch.
It was a quarter to twelve and the night was so still that Jazz could hear the sound of cattle pulling grass in the field beside her. She was about to start the car again when a second stripy face appeared, framed by thistles, and with the same plodding concentration a smaller badger crossed the road at the same angle as the first.
Jazz had read somewhere that successive generations of badgers would follow well-worn paths for centuries, steadily walking established routes despite obstacles and change. As far as she could remember, the underground systems they lived in were inherited as well. Hundreds of years of instinctive excavation must have gone into the tunnels that lay here beneath tarmac and turf. And this road probably hadn’t existed when forebears of the creatures she’d just seen had first stumped across what, by now, had become their ancestral territory.
Pleasantly tired after her meal with Hanna, Jazz continued on her way home, still thinking about the private midnight world she’d glimpsed on the road. She wondered if new tunnels were dug when populations got bigger, or if badgers threw out extensions for the hell of it, like humans building conservatories and sheds. One thing she knew was that badgers’ tunnels and chambers could extend for half a mile and even more. They lived in clans and mated for life, though, so you could see why they’d like some elbow room in the home.
Ten minutes later, when she got to the flat, she found Sam sprawled on the bed watching telly. He lowered the volume slightly as she came in. ‘Good dinner?’
‘Lovely.’ She walked round the silver mesh partition to put the box of cheesecake into the fridge. ‘God, I can hardly move in here, what’s all this?’
Sam rolled off the bed and came to look. ‘That’s what we call washing-up.’
‘But couldn’t you have done it? And put it away, maybe?’
‘Sorry. It was just a tin of tomato soup. And stuff.’
He tried to kiss her but she slipped past him, catching her elbow on the handle of a pan and splashing the front of her T-shirt. ‘Dammit!’
This was the second time in a week that Sam had left a pan soaking on the hob, and plates and dishes piled up in the sink.
‘Oh, no! Really, Jazz, I’m sorry.’ He dabbed at her T-shirt ineffectually.
‘It’s okay. It’s fine. It’ll wash.’ With a determined smile, she went and sat on the bed, which was supposed to be folded away as soon as you got up. Kicking her shoes off, she glared round crossly. The studio flat had seemed rather sweet when she’d rented it, but now, with Sam here as well, it was just cramped.
Most days they were both out working and didn’t get home till fairly late at night. But two days a week, when Sam worked from home, the place became chaotic. While Jazz generally cleaned as she went along, he let things accumulate. So, by the end of his days alone in the flat, there were papers and mugs everywhere, and half-eaten plates of food on the rumpled bed. But, to be fair, Sam was big and so was his laptop, far too bulky for a console table exactly the width of her own carefully chosen MacBook. The bed was really the only space where he could work.
They’d met in Carrick, Finfarran’s county town, which was about twenty miles from Lissbeg. While the centre of Lissbeg had once been a muddy cattle market, Carrick had grown up at the feet of an Anglo-Norman castle, which, as time went by, had made it the focus of far more genteel commerce. It retained a sizeable medieval cathedral, and an imposing courthouse, now the county museum. But unlike Lissbeg, which so far had no chain stores, its Victorian shopping streets had disappeared behind the plastic fascias of coffee shops and computer outlets. And its slightly dilapidated Georgian squares and terraces were jostled on all sides by ribbon development.
Yet, from Lissbeg’s point of view at least, Carrick still had notions. Its tourist office had grandly styled it the ‘Gateway to Finfarran’s Glory’, and its chamber of commerce doggedly attended international trade fairs at which companies considering relocation were wooed by promised local-government tax breaks. Jazz found the Lissbeg–Carrick rivalry pathetic, but she recognised there were nuances in the relationship, which, as someone born and raised in London, she’d never understand.
On the day she’d met Sam, she and her friend Eileen had been having coffee in Castle Street, and he’d been sitting alone at the next table, checking his emails. Eileen’s dad owned Dawson’s AgriProvision, the biggest business of its kind in the west of Ireland, and, with his fortune made, he was about to splash out on a lavish wedding for his daughter. Jazz had been chosen as chief bridesmaid and they’d met in Starbucks to discuss the latest twist in Eileen’s plans.
‘So, hang on, let me get this right. You’re making it a double wedding?’
‘That’s the plan. Me and Joe, Conor and Aideen.’
‘But when was this decided? And why?’
‘Well, you know Joe and Conor have been running their family farm, right? And their dad’s been off work forever because he tripped over a cow?’
‘Not quite the story as I heard it, but yeah.’
‘Well, my dad has offered Joe a job in the Dawson’s office in Cork. Management, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
Oblivious to the amusement in Jazz’s voice, Eileen had nodded. ‘Which would leave Conor struggling to cope on the farm.’
‘Especially as he’s also my mum’s assistant at the library.’
‘I know, and he’s been faffing about for ages, trying to decide whether to stick with farming or go off and become a librarian.’ Eileen, who’d caught sight of her own eyebrows reflected in the window, frowned at them sharply before deciding that they’d do. ‘Anyway, the thing is that the farm can’t just be left to die the death. I mean, that’s what Joe says and I do see his point. So he’s going to cover the cost of a labourer’s wages. And Conor’s going to chuck the library thing and choose life on the farm.’
‘And when you say Joe’s going to cover the cost of a labourer, you mean your dad is.’
‘Of course.’
‘What does Conor think?’
‘He’s over the moon. Because this settles things. Plus they’ve been saving up for about a year to get married, so Joe said why not have a double wedding and do the thing in style?’
‘And you’re up for that?’
‘Oh, come on! Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not a total egomaniac.’
‘Well, I admit that “the bigger the better” has always been your motto.’
‘Aideen and Conor are dotes and they could never afford a big do.’ At that point Eileen had slammed back her chair and gone to fetch more coffee, and the violent impact on Sam’s table had caused him to look up.
Catching his eye, Jazz had smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry. My friend tends to do things at speed.’
He’d smiled back and said it didn’t matter, and there’d been an awkward pause in which they’d both felt that if Eileen weren’t in the offing they might have begun to chat.
Now, sitting on the edge of the bed, Jazz pulled her T-shirt over her head. ‘Imagine if we hadn’t met again after that first day in Starbucks.’
‘Why? Would you rather we hadn’t?’
‘No, of course not! But it was just chance, wasn’t it? And, look at you. Here you are.’ She looked at him, marvelling at how great it was.
Sam shrugged. ‘Isn’t that a definition of life? You walk through one door, one thing happens. Choose another and it’s something else instead.’
‘Definitely chance, not Fate, then?’ Seeing his bewildered expression, she laughed. It had been a daft question anyway. Sam was an inveterate pragmatist and the idea that Fate might intervene in his life would never enter his head.
Yawning, Jazz rolled off the bed and went into the tiny bathroom. When she came back, Sam had shuffled his work into an untidy pile on the floor and was under the duvet with the light off.
Snuggling in beside him, Jazz mentally ran through a checklist of all she had to do tomorrow. At least, she thought, it only took five minutes to get to the office. Rental property round Broad Street was as scarce as hen’s teeth but, having found the perfect office space, she’d been determined to avoid having to drive to work. So coming upon an ad that offered ‘a dream studio apartment’ had been a triumph.
Stretching out under the duvet, she found Sam’s foot and tickled it with her toes. It was wonderful to have someone she loved so much to come home to. Though sometimes she wished they could tunnel through her flimsy walls, like a couple of stripy badgers, and turn her studio apartment into something less like a cell.