Devil Take The Hindmost

Chapter Two

Pebble Deeping is the kind of village dotting the English countryside the length and breadth of the land. Small and close-knit, time and progress have washed past and around it like waves circumnavigating a rock on the beach. The effects of erosion are evident but took millennia to have made even their marginal impact.

Running water, electricity, telephone lines, and most recently the internet, have all managed to puncture the prophylactic barrier erected by a generally conservative community functioning on unquestioning support of a fellow villager and equally instinctive distrust of an outsider.

For as beneficial as these manifestations of progress have been, there is someone, somewhere, in the Pebble Deepings of the World who decries each and every one.

Here, they lurk in the shrouded recesses of The Sickle, nursing a pint of bitter as dark as their mood and harkening back to those golden, simpler days when you couldn't order your M&S pants online and had to dig a hole outside to take a shit by candlelight.

For all of its insularity, Pebble Deeping is a beautiful little corner of the Earth. It is formed of a haphazard collection of stone-walled and thatch-roofed cottages with climbing rose adornments, a handful of shops and amenities including, thank God, a pub. This is all surrounded by half a dozen working farms that have been held by their owners' families for generations immemorial.

One of these small holdings belonged to Tyrone Edge, my business partner and friend. On paper it was also, in very small part, mine. But I was under no illusion that I was little more than a non-paying tenant. The other Pebble Deeping residents had taken to me in time, coming as I did with Ty's blessing. However, there remained something of a subtle barrier arising from my not having been born there, nor carrying the surname of someone who had.

The Land Rover clattered down the drive and into the cobbled farmyard where we screeched to a halt, and I let out a long overdue breath of relief.

"Home sweet home!" he chirped, popping open the door and flowing from the vehicle with the lithe grace of a man who had not spent the entire ride with every muscle of his body braced for impact.

As I fumbled for the seatbelt release button, a device I would occasionally sneak away from Ty's gaze to ensure the integrity of, Fungus cocked her head and gave a little half-growling bark.

I looked up and noticed for the first time the low sleek shape of a silver Audi TT parked across the cobbles.

Priya, I thought. Her presence most likely meant trouble.

Priya Pooni was one of my oldest friends. We had known each other since childhood and I had spent nearly every moment from our teenage years trying to upgrade that friendship, ideally by way of sleeping with her.

She was, to my gaze, flawlessly, draw-droppingly, ball-achingly beautiful.

She possessed the effortless grace of a professional dancer and the super-charged sex appeal of a professional of an altogether different kind. Priya is petite and perfectly formed, with shimmering black hair like a raven's wing and liquid teardrop shaped eyes capable of performing the seemingly impossible double act of glittering and smouldering simultaneously.

Though she had disavowed her religion, and a large part of her heritage with it, she seemed to me to be the embodiment of Rati, Hindu goddess of love and lust. Let me tell you; being responsible for the Kama Sutra, those guys literally wrote the book on that kind of thing.

Priya never lost an opportunity to let me know in no uncertain terms just how little she reciprocated any of these feelings. Her tongue was so sharp the Fire Brigade could use it to extract victims from the mangled wreckage of a motorway pile-up, and it had made short work of my libido over the years. Whether it was puncturing any of my artful approaches at her virtue, or belittling my career trajectory in comparison to the small fortune she was amassing distributing Bollywood films, Priya knew just how to keep me in my place.