‘Your cat’s called Bowyer?’ said Jenna, grasping at anything that might calm him down and make him think.
Stan Bowyer had been the leader of the local chapter of the mineworkers’ union during the strike. Still a hero to many, he had thrown himself in front of a bus taking hired labour over the picket line and been killed.
The man looked up, his hand still in the bag.
‘What about it?’ he said, then he went back to rummaging.
He pulled out a penknife and a packet of chicken tikka pieces with a past-the-sell-by-date sticker on. He peeled the chicken packet open, flung it on the floor for the cat, then stood up, brandishing the penknife in front of him.
‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘Don’t come near. Don’t get your phone out.’
‘My dad worked with Stan Bowyer,’ said Jenna. ‘He used to come round our house when I was little.’
The man just stared, then said, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Well, I might as well ask, who the fuck are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my house?’
For a moment, Jenna’s native accent made a surprise reappearance.
‘Your house?’ The man narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you a Harville?’
‘No. Far from it. But this is my house. I bought it, fair and square. Nobody told me about the sitting tenant, though.’
‘You’ve … He sold it? Shit!’
The man looked so utterly crestfallen that Jenna really couldn’t be afraid of him. His eyes were enormous and a deep, velvet brown, like an orphan child in a sentimental Victorian painting.
‘Yes. Harville Hall is mine, as of yesterday.’
‘I never thought he’d sell up. The bastard. You’re from round here then? Funny, I don’t recognise you.’
‘You’ve never watched Talent Team then?’
He laughed, not in mirth but in head-scratching bemusement.
‘Talent Team? I’ve only been camping out up here a few weeks, not years. I’ve heard of that show all right. Everyone has. Christ, are you the girl that left town and became one of them judges on it? You’re not—?’
‘Jenna Myatt Diamond. At your service. Though I’m losing the Diamond.’
‘Fucking hell, now I come to look at you – but you’ve always got ten tons of slap, and some blinging dress on, in that. Fuck me. Is this a dream, or what?’
‘I’ve pinched myself more than a few times this morning, let me tell you. I buy an empty house, and what do I find in it but a resident artist? Did you paint all this?’
He nodded.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Jenna. ‘Look, would you mind putting down the knife? I’m no threat to you, I promise. But I’m very interested in your work.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
He sounded fierce, but he put the knife down, all the same.
‘No, seriously. This is incredible. You’ve been to art college, I take it?’
‘Have I fuck!’
‘You were never taught?’
‘I did GCSE art, but I never handed in my coursework folder, so I failed.’