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now was a tit-free zone. Ryan was staring at him with narrowed dark eyes, a scowl disfiguring his handsome, Elvis features, with the smouldering look that drove the girls wild, along with the careless tumble of shining dark curls that haloed his face. Kieran had no need to look in the mirror to know that his own amiably stupid face was too fat and too freckled, not to mention too spotty, to make any headway with girls.
    Ryan stood on the swing and glared at Kieran.
    ‘My girl. Gemma.’ He was speaking with exaggerated patience now, the way nearly everyone did eventually. Kieran was used to it, and most of the time he didn’t mind. He had heard Ryan only the other day, explaining his friend to somebody else. ‘Old Kieran’s all right, just a bit thick and you have to give him a kick now and then when he has one of his stupid times, but he’s a good mate and built like a brick shit-house ; comes in handy if there’s a fight.’
    Kieran beamed now and nodded, glad to be of use, smiling as he remembered Ryan snorting with laughter as he went on: ‘He’s good to take with you if you want to nick stuff, get him in the off-licence with that great khaki army coat flapping round and he’ll knock cans flying. He doesn’t mean to do it but the noise it makes and the fuss means they don’t notice me sticking cans and bottles in my pockets.’
    ‘I was telling you about Gemma, are you listening?’ He took another can from his pocket, flicked the ring-pull over towards the bushes at the edge of the playground, and took a long swig. ‘She’s only gone and got a job at that Firstone Grange place. You know, down the road with the rich old wrinklies. I told you about it the other day when she was going for the interview. She texted me and told me she’s got a live-in job so she’ll be away from her old witch of a mother. Might come in handy.’
    Kieran nodded slowly. Gemma’s mum was one of the few who had failed to come under the spell of Ryan’s soulful brown gaze. In fact she had threatened him with a knife if she ever caught him near Gemma again and Kieran could tell that Ryan had been impressed by the threat.
    ‘Funny how upset Gem was about getting rid of the baby,’ mused Ryan, switching moods. ‘Everybody does it, my mum’s done it loads of times, never bothers her. So why did Gemma get in such a state? Besides,’ the scowl was back. ‘She was supposed to be on the pill. Might have known she’d cock that up somehow. Like I said, she’s about as bright as you are.’
    Kieran accepted the clap on the shoulder but avoided Ryan’s eyes. It was only too plain from the lowering frown that Ryan was remembering what Gemma’s mum had said. She had called him a ‘shifty, oily, randy little scumbag who never did a day’s work in his life and ought to have his balls chopped off; and would have, if she had her way.’
    The fat boy had been lurking by the garden gate when heoverheard that diatribe and now he trembled for Mrs Sankey’s safety. Ryan’s temper had been evil for days after that episode and that meant Mrs Sankey was on his punishment list.
     
    ‘Do you handle many period cottages?’ Neil asked as he opened the leaded casement window and gazed out at the view from the master bedroom. The cottage, with its immaculate decor, Farrow & Ball of course, and manicured garden (no expense spared), had stood for more than three hundred years against a gentle slope of farmland, halfway between the winding and pretty redbrick village of Hursley and the nearby village of Otterbourne.
    Alice leaned beside him on the window sill, a tight squeeze but a companionable one.
    ‘Cottages?’ She shook her head. ‘Not an awful lot, Barry hasn’t really concentrated on what you might call country properties. He’s gone more for smaller and cheaper, the first-time buyer and the next stage up.’
    She cast an approving glance over the garden with its neat vegetable plot, bare now apart from cabbages and brussels sprouts,