"I beg your pardon! You may certainly not."

    "Be reasonable, Madam! We have permission from the council to place these here."

    "Well, you haven't got no permission from me. Now, do one!"

    Snippets of heated voices rose from the conversation that stewed downstairs. Gemma swivelled her feet into her boots to finish dressing, flinching at the needles that lined the last of Iris' syllables. As hostile as she had been since their first meeting, the woman's tone had never swilled in Gemma's ear with such vicious venom. Iris was not just furious with the caller; she was deeply wounded and keen to inflict similar pain, if not more severe.

    Gemma looked down the corridor outside her room, and her shoulders sank as Avery's door stood stubbornly shut. She approached the staircase, cast a final futile glance at her friend's door, and crept her way down. Raised voices flew off the walls ahead, every bitter shout injecting a shot of stress into her blood. With one hand pressed against the quickening rise and fall of her chest, Gemma paused on the staircase and focused on slowing, counting, and controlling her breaths.

    Standing imposingly in the entryway, Iris blocked any glimpse of the caller on the doorstep. "How many times do I have to tell you, Cox?" she cried, punctuated with a fierce slap of her palm against the doorframe. "Nobody clutters my fine windows with tatty adverts!"

    "Watch it, witch," the caller responded, and the steady drip of bile through the words marked the voice's owner out as Edmund. "Your so-called fine windows would smash like any others in the right circumstances."

    "They shall shatter around your thick skull if you don't desist, boy," Edgar hissed from the doorstep, his scalpel-like eloquence slicing through the creaking steps and rustling trees. "Madam, these papers aren't advertisements. They're notices intended to raise public awareness about the consultation happening here tonight, you see."

    "I see a pair of overdressed badgers on my doorstep, that's what I see," Iris spat with another smack on the doorway's loose wood. "You're not holding nothing here 'til the council asks me proper."

    Stacked papers flapped together as a solid heel clicked against the pavement. "Make yourself useful, Edmund. See if Mr Gatland's able to stop by – presently," Edgar said, staying silent in the wake of his son's trailing curses. As a gust of wind barrelled past the front of the building, his shoe tapped back onto the doorstep. "May we at least wait inside? It doesn't become your establishment to keep guests waiting in such dreadful cold."

    Leaning away from the entrance, Iris tilted her head and dug her heels into the floorboards. "...paying guests?"

    The sound of grinding teeth trailed through the air. "Of course."

    "What's going on?" Gemma asked, hopping off the staircase as the others crossed to the bar area. With an anxious eye on Edmund's pacing form by the front door, she returned the older Cox's courteous wave and joined Iris behind the bar. "Hi, Mr Cox – Edgar, I mean. What's this about? We don't usually open until later."

    "And I don't often indulge in alcohol so early, but Life has surprised us all lately," Edgar answered, raising his eyebrow at Gemma as he placed a small cluster of coins beside his elbow. "Just this hour, Mr Gatland phoned to approve a public consultation for my redevelopment plan. It's being held this very evening, in fact."

    Iris slid the money into her hands, counted the value up, and stared at Edgar in unspoken expectation. After a long pause, she claimed another few coins from the man and tucked them beneath the counter. "Handy, that," she muttered under the chiming of pint glass against steel tap. "Especially after weeks of him blocking your little plot."

    A dull thud sounded from the far end of the bar. "It's no plot," Edmund said as he set his phone on top of the notice posters he had carried with him. Another dive into his grey wool coat's inner pocket produced a pair of folded five-pound notes, and he shoved them down the counter while his gaze skewered Iris. "It's called progress – something foreign to this muck heap of a town, obviously."

    Though she recoiled at the sound of the young man's voice while setting a pint of draught beer on the counter, Iris snatched the notes up and placed them with the coins. "This muck heap's been progressing just fine without your cursed money," she answered, pouring another drink that she kept close to herself. "Graham knows that, even he needs a good smack round the head to remember."

    "Is this the plan you mentioned yesterday?" Gemma asked with a fleeting glance at the staircase and the entrance. No sign of Avery or Nathan crossed her gaze, and she gathered all the strength she could from a single nervous breath. "What's it about, exactly?"

    Taking a cursory sip of his unexpected drink, Edgar cleared his throat and fiddled with his goldenrod tie. "Why, it's simple, really. Milnhome is a wonderful town, but like myself, it's seen better days. Much of it is on its last legs, one heavy storm away from total, irrevocable loss," he explained, emphasising the peril with pointed thrusts of his hands. With the skill of a seasoned storyteller, he exchanged his doom-laden mask for a posture of detached pragmatism. "The council has tried to address this glaring issue many times, but renovations on legacy structures require considerable finance – finance I and my contacts are willing to provide."

    The floorboards complained loudly under Gemma's shifting weight, earning a wince of her eye. "You have a point about the buildings around here showing their age," she muttered through a groan as she leaned on the thankfully peaceful counter. Through the pub's dusty air, she stared into the depths of Edgar's dark, marbled eyes. "But what's in it for you? Like you said, rebuilding this whole town won't be cheap. You must be expecting some return on this investment."

    "You're a sharp one, Miss Haywood," Edgar said with slick, drawn-out syllables. His narrowed eyes flitted to the far side of the bar, a dull look briefly passing over his son's face before returning to Gemma. "Indeed, I'm negotiating for the rights to a good deal of land outside the town. Rest assured, maintaining the integrity of our countryside is among my top priorities. This whole project is about preserving what makes Milnhome special, after all, both naturally and historically."

    "I get it." Gemma pushed off the counter and folded her arms. "Just like how that medieval manor was preserved on your estate, right?"

    Edgar tapped the ends of his fingers together. "You may sneer, but your knowledge of the manor attests to its enduring memory," he replied, a careful restraint characterising his retort. As his words settled among the dust across the floor, a wet gleam sprinkled over his eyes. "The past has a way of lingering, no matter how much is done to bury it."

    Jolting to a jaunty rhythm, the front door shook under the force of a distinct knock. "Finally," Iris huffed in between hefty swigs of her beer. She shoved the glass to the back of the bar's shelf and rounded the counter, speaking loudly as she opened the door. "Graham, get your carcass in here and set this straight, will you?"

    "Aye, but I'm afraid you won't like how it straightens out." With dour bags saddling his eyes, Graham pushed through the muggy air under the room's collective attention. He met each gaze, taking a silent, sombre look at Gemma before turning to Iris with a gruff grunt. "The council approved it yesterday evening, Iris. This consultation is happening here tonight."

    "You what?" Iris mouthed, knocking the bar hard enough to rattle a rack of pint glasses. "And you swine never thought to ask me? Or even grace me with a phone call? Don't I deserve to know what you stuffy sods are planning on doing with my own bloody pub?"

    Reeling from the woman's attack, Graham strode up to the counter. "I tried phoning last night. If you were too busy to answer, that's nothing to do with me," he said as he stabbed a large finger into his chest. Thick veins bulged through his neck and brow, shattering his usual composed mask. "Look, go dig up the contract we drew up this year, and you'll see –"

    Another clash of glass accompanied Iris' scoffing spin. "To hell with your bloody contract!" she cried, and she shoved past Gemma with stomping steps. Graham's tall, broad frame shuddered as Iris marched up to him, cinders glowing in her eyes. "What happened, then? Lose your nerve? A nice bag of money get thrown your way? Because you were cursing these pests as much as I was just yesterday morning!"

    The Cox relatives hammered Graham under their combined gazes, Edmund's knuckles blanching. Beads of sweat summoned to Graham's brow, and the folds of his freshly ironed work shirt began to cave and crinkle. "I wouldn't be calling it cursing, as such..."

    "You spineless leech," Iris hissed as she jabbed a yellowed, chipped nail into Graham's shirt. Her target inched away from her, and she pursued the scent of emotional blood. "You're flogging us off to vultures who don't know nothing about our town!"

    "We know you're bankrupt, hag," Edmund said, his simmering spirit pushing Graham aside. Unlike the council leader, his stance refused to buckle under Iris' oppressive glare. "This hopeless town is sinking deeper into dirt every day. Unless you've got a better plan to fix it – which you don't – sit down and let the real leaders do their work."

    "Back off, asshole," Gemma said as she mirrored Edmund's intruding stride. For the first time, Iris stepped away from a confrontation to let Gemma take her place. "You weren't this harsh when you were pushing Liz to take Silverlake's hush money. Or is she a special case?"

    Edmund's body barely moved, yet a wet film coated over his eyes as they wheeled to Gemma's face. "Don't you bark at me, bitch. Liza has nothing to do with this."

    A stuttered sound of incredulity escaped Gemma's throat. "You're insulting her whole town. She has everything to do with this!" she snapped, each word darting from her lashing tongue. "And she's smart enough to see right through any bullshit you pull."

    "I wouldn't be so sure." With widened eyes, Edmund released a single laugh. The slight smile that crossed his lips lingered long after he fell silent. "If that moron Haywood hid his secrets from her, then she probably falls for anything. The things I could tell her about him, I –"

    "Save it, boy," Edgar uttered, a slow, cool lift of his hand interrupting his son's heated rambling. He shoved his glass aside, its contents hardly touched, and parted from the bar, tapping the top of the stacked posters. "I think we've provided ample proof of permission. Let us post these notices, Madam, and we'll be out of each other's hair until this evening."

    Returning behind the bar, Iris took the man's stranded drink up and sipped at its untouched side. Graham drifted opposite her, his face twitching with unspoken apologies. "What are you still littering the place for? You don't need my blessing to do nothing, clearly," she said with a deepening scowl. "See yourselves out after. The ones I'm not employing, anyway."

    Gemma retrieved a mop and bucket from the cleaning closet, the mango-scented cleaning solution doing little to quell the putrid stench from the bucket's crusted interior. Wet, soapy trails poured from the bedraggled mophead, each stroke drying instantly as if to testify to her employer's smouldering fury. Sharp, snatched curses erupted from the two Coxes at the front windows, and Gemma tactically steered her cleaning towards the safe bower of the rear room.

    The Cox relatives stuck up the last of their posters, muttered a civil sound of thanks in Iris' vague direction, and left. In their wake, Graham paused by the bar and shifted in his jacket. "I don't like this either, Iris," he said through clawed strokes of his thick beard. "But our budget's stretched already. This plan is what works for everyone, like it or not."

    "Is that right?" Iris answered, her seething tone wringing the thrust from her question. Small cracks sprawled from the lines of her face, and her cheeks sagged under the redoubled strain of her years. "Because as far as I see it, this isn't working for anyone but them."

    Graham crossed to the front door. "Like it or not," he repeated under his breath with a sigh.

    Minutes flushed away into the suds of Gemma's mop strokes, blending together until only the aches through her arms measured the passage of time. As she cracked the soreness from her neck, the stairs squeaked to announce an approaching weight. "Good news, bad news, roomie," Avery cried as she hopped off the penultimate step, waving her phone and scanning for Gemma. "Which do you want first?"

    Resting her mop in its bucket against the near wall, Gemma rubbed the back of her neck. "Bad, I guess."

    "I don't know why, but that farmhouse pic freaked Nate the hell out," Avery said. She shrugged at the sight of her friend's narrowing eyes, and she swiped a thumb over the text conversation on her phone. "Good news is that he's coming round to fill us in. He didn't say when, though –"

    "Vee? Gem?" Nathan's voice wailed through the cracks in the entrance. Before either girl reacted, the man himself burst through, his ATV-riding helmet clasped in his shaking hand. His bright eyes picked his friends out, and he crossed to them with a fleeting wave at Iris. "Was that my dad's car outside? Did he ask about the picture you sent me?"

    With a gentle step back, Gemma held up a surprised palm. "No, he was here about some public meeting. It was just Cox stuff," she said, letting her voice fall away as she set her hand on Nathan's shoulder. "What's up, Nate? You look awful."

    Though she laughed, concern soaked into Avery's eyes. "Did your wild camping trip get cancelled, farm boy?" she asked with a playful punch on Nathan's arm. Her friend did not react, and her smile faded as quickly as it had arrived. "Jeez. If I'd have known that a picture of a stupid condemned farmhouse would mess you up like this..."

    "It's not condemned," Nathan answered, his cool tone summoning a chill draught to permeate through the pub walls. "Not anymore. It's being renovated, or it was at one point, at least."

    "So you know the house," Gemma said as she searched Nathan's eyes. She flexed her fingers, her beaded bracelet fidgeting along her wrist. "But how can you be sure someone's fixing it up?"

    "Because my dad bought that farmhouse a few months ago." Despite his best efforts, a shaken sigh slipped through Nathan's resolve to escape in broken gasps. "Whatever Jake found, it's on our land."