The Barn on Half Moon Hill Read Free

comfort him when his father died, not long after she lost her own dad. She’d written a list of tips for coping with grief and
he’d followed it and it had helped. And she’d made him smile more than she could ever guess at whenever he broke up with whichever temporary screen darling happened to be gracing his
arm. None of his romances ever lasted very long. His PR team invariably steered him towards the beautiful self-promoting starlets and their PR teams steered them towards him and sometimes they had
fun for a while. ‘Aerosol-cream relationships’ he used to call them, because they looked great for a very short time before collapsing and sinking to nothing.
    â€˜You hearing me?’ Sonny’s gruff New York voice barked at him.
    â€˜Yeah, I hear you.’
    â€˜He’s a war hero.’
    â€˜Who?’
    Sonny exhaled loudly and impatiently. ‘The guy I’ve been talking to you about for the last five minutes. The owner of the Winterworld theme park you agreed to go and open.’
    â€˜It’s open already, Sonny. They’re having a Half-Christmas celebration because it’s exactly six months to Christmas Day, and it seemed a good time to open the new
attraction – the lagoon which they want me to christen.’ He made the sign of the cross in the air as if he were executing a papal blessing.
    â€˜Hallelujah! He does hear me.’ Sonny fluttered a pair of big meaty jazz hands.
    Franco’s new film was called
Winterworld
and was set in a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with snow. He had press interviews in London, which coincided with the date of the
opening of a lagoon in a park, also called Winterworld. It was owned by an ex-soldier and his wife. Franco’s PR office, hearing about it, thought it would be a great idea to volunteer his
services, especially as there was a tide of newspaper grumbles about stars only ever visiting the capital. Sonny went nuts with them. Chasing a no-fee appearance, what were the idiots thinking of?
He didn’t buy all the crap they were telling him that going to the North of England would make the film star a hero of the people. He ran it past Franco, expecting him to blast the idea out
of the water, and couldn’t believe it when Franco agreed to do it. It didn’t cross Sonny’s mind Franco’s decision could be anything to do with a crazy Welshwoman who had
been writing to him since they were kids.
    Meanwhile, at Winterworld, Jacques, the war hero, studied Eve, his wife, as she stood stroking the head of Ivan, one of the snow ponies. He was a young colt who had been found
in a shocking state on a farm. He wouldn’t have lived much longer if the owner hadn’t been reported. Ivan had really taken to Eve and whinnied to her when he saw her nearby. He would
have let her stroke his head all day, nudging her for more like a demanding cat when she stopped.
    There was something on Eve’s mind, Jacques could tell. Something big that was coming between them and though she insisted she was fine, he knew her better than she knew herself. Whenever
she felt troubled or stressed, she spent more and more time with the animals, though he was sure she wasn’t even aware that she did. It was as if she took comfort from them that a human
couldn’t give her. She was shutting him out and he didn’t know why, but it didn’t bode well. He had learned that the harder her shell, the more the inside of her was broken crumbs
and he was worried.
    From behind him, he could hear Effin Williams ranting again at both his own team of builders and the Polish lads. A stream of angry Celtic guttural sounds that his workforce listened to
patiently with their eyes rolling. The Welsh lads would translate his words into English and the English-speaking Poles would then wearily translate it to their fellow workers. Not that they needed
to because they knew that Effin would be calling them useless in his