She gave a glance at her chocolate cake as she climbed out of her car. Its frosting had melted into it on the top and begun to pool viscously at its base. Several flies had managed to find it, but it was like one of those insect-eating plants: Whatever landed upon it was becoming mired in sugar and cocoa. Death by delight. The cake was done for.

It no longer mattered. Things were wildly out of joint, and Robbie Hastings had to be informed. For he’d been his sister’s sole parent from her tenth year onward, a car crash catapulting him into this position when he was twenty-five. That same car crash had also catapulted him into the career he had thought never to attain: one of only five agisters in the New Forest, replacing his own father.

“…for what we mustn’t have is the ponies hanging about one spot.” Robbie seemed to be completing his remarks to an audience looking rather guilty for what they apparently had stowed on themselves: apples, carrots, sugar, and whatever else might appeal to a pony otherwise meant to forage. When Robbie was finished with his remarks-made patiently while visitors continually snapped his picture although he wasn’t wearing his formal attire but rather jeans, T-shirt, and a baseball cap-he gave a sharp nod and opened the Land Rover’s door, preparatory to driving off. The tourists drifted towards the village proper and the pub, and Meredith worked her way through them, calling Robbie’s name.

He turned. Meredith felt the way she’d always felt when she saw him: warmly fond but nonetheless terribly sorry for what he looked like with those huge front teeth of his. They made his mouth the only thing one noticed about him, which was a shame, really. He was very well built, tough and masculine, and his eyes were unique-one brown and one green, just like Jemima’s.

His face brightened. He said, “Merry Contrary. It’s been donkey’s years, girl. What’re you up to in this part of the world?” He was wearing gloves, but he removed them and spontaneously held out his arms to her, as he’d always done.

She embraced him. They were both hot and sweaty, and he was acrid with the mixed odours of horse and man. “What a day, eh?” He took off his baseball cap, revealing hair that would have been thick and wavy had he not kept it shorn close to his skull. It was brown flecked with grey, and this served as a reminder of Meredith’s estrangement from Jemima. For it seemed to Meredith that his hair had been completely brown the last time she had seen him.

She said, “I phoned the verderers’ office. They said you’d be here.”

He wiped his forehead on his arm, replaced the cap, and tugged it down. “Did you, now? What’s up?” He glanced over his shoulder as the pony within the horse trailer clomped restlessly and bumped against its side. The trailer shuddered. Robbie said, “Hey now,” and he made a clucking sound. “You know you can’t stay here at the Queen’s Head, mate. Settle. Settle.”

“Jemima,” Meredith said. “It’s her birthday, Robbie.”

“So it is. Which makes it yours as well. Which means you’re twenty-six years old and that means I’m…Blimey, I’m forty-one. You’d think by now I would’ve found a lass willing to marry this heap of manhood, eh?”

“No one’s snapped you up?” Meredith said. “The women of Hampshire are half mad then, Rob.”

He smiled. “You?”

“Oh, I’m full mad. I’ve had my one man, thank you very much. Not about to repeat the experience.”

He chuckled. “Damn, then, Merry. You’ve no idea how often I’ve heard that said. So why’re you looking for me since it’s not to offer your hand in marriage?”

“It’s Jemima. Robbie, I went to the Cupcake Queen and saw it was closed. Then I talked to Lexie Streener and then I went to their place-Gordon and Jemima’s-and there’s this woman Gina Dickens there. She’s not exactly living there or anything but she’s…I s’pose you’d call it established. And she didn’t know the first thing about Jemima.”

“You haven’t heard from her, then?”

“From Jemima? No.” Meredith hesitated. She felt dead awkward. She looked at him earnestly, trying to read him. “Well, she must have told you…”

“’Bout what happened ’tween the two of you?” he asked. “Oh, aye. She told me you had a falling out some time back. Didn’t think it was permanent, though.”

“Well, I had to tell her I had doubts about Gordon. Aren’t friends meant to do that?”

“I’d say they are.”

“But all she’d say in return is, ‘Robbie doesn’t have doubts about him, so why do you?’”

“Said that, did she?”

“Did you have doubts? Like me? Did you?”

“Oh, that I did. Something about the bloke. I didn’t dislike him ’xactly, but if she was going to have a partner, I would’ve liked it to be someone I knew through and through. I didn’t know Gordon Jossie like that. But as things turned out, I needn’t have worried-same applies to you-because Jemima found out whatever she needed to find out when she hooked up with him and she was clever enough to end it when it needed to be ended.”

“What’s that mean, exactly?” Meredith shifted. She was absolutely baking in the heat. At this point she felt as if her entire body were melting, like her poor chocolate cake in the car. “Look, can we get out of the sun?” she asked. “Can we get a drink? Have you the time? We need to talk. I think…There’s something not quite right.”

Robbie gave a look to the pony and then a look to Meredith. He nodded and said, “Not the pub, though,” and he led them across the car park to a little arcade of shops, one of which offered sandwiches and drinks. They took theirs to a sweet chestnut that spread its leafy branches on the edge of the car park, where a bench faced a lawn opening out in the shape of a fan.

A smattering of tourists were taking photos of ponies that grazed with their foals nearby. The foals were especially appealing, but they were also skittish, which made approaching them and their dams more dangerous than usual. Robbie watched the action. “One damn well wonders,” he said darkly. “That bloke over there? He’s likely to be bit. And then he’ll want the pony put down or he’ll want to sue God knows who. Not that the wanting is going to get him anywhere. Still, I always think there’s some kinds need to be permanently removed from the gene pool.”

“Do you?”

He coloured slightly at the question, then he looked at her. “S’pose not,” he said. And then, “She’s gone to London, Merry. She phoned me up one day, somewhere near the end of October this was, and she announced she was going to London. I thought she meant for the day, for supplies or something for the shop. But she says, ‘No, no, it’s not the shop. I need time to think,’ she says. ‘Gordon’s talking about marriage,’ she says.”

“Are you sure about that? That he talked about marriage?”

“That’s what she said. Why?”

“But what about the Cupcake Queen? Why would she leave her business just to go off and think about anything?”

“Yeah. Bit odd that, eh? I tried to talk to her about that, but she wasn’t having anything off me.”

“London.” Meredith worked on the word. She tried to relate it to her friend. “Think about what? Does she not want to marry him any longer? Why?”

“She wouldn’t say, Merry. She still won’t say.”

“You talk to her?”

“Oh, aye. ’Course I do. Once a week or more. She’s that good about ringing me. Well, she would be. You know Jemima. She worries a bit, how I’m doing without her coming round like she did. So she stays in touch.”

“Lexie told me she tried to ring Jemima. First she left messages and then the calls didn’t go through. So how’re you talking to her once-”

“New mobile,” Robbie said. “She didn’t want Gordon to have the number. He kept ringing her. She doesn’t want him to know where she is.”

“D’you think something happened between them?”

“That I don’t know, and she won’t say. I went over there once she’d gone ’cause she’d been in a bit of a state and I thought to have a word with Gordon.”