Leaving Home, by Hambel
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Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Their first winter was spent in a croft somewhere in the Scottish Highlands in a place that Doyle couldn't pronounce, much less pinpoint on a map. Bodie was in his element, his survival skills coming to the fore, which he spent a lot of time showing off. To Ray's relief they'd stocked up on provisions before they got there, so there was no foraging for food needed.
The cottage consisted of two rooms. They shared the big bed because no matter how often they fed the Aga in the kitchen-cum-living-room, the warmth didn't quite make it into the bedroom. Two duvets and a furry bedspread on the bed, and they still found themselves drawn to each other seeking out body heat as they dropped off to sleep.
They squabbled over whose turn it was to chop wood even though they both kept a tally in their heads that was inarguably accurate. Baths were taken once a week in a tin tub that they dragged in from an outbuilding and placed in front of the Aga. There was no place for modesty and while each noticed a weariness in the other's eyes and appreciated the muscles that wood-chopping bestowed on them, neither mentioned it.
Every so often they defrosted the car and took it for a run on the twisty roads, sliding around corners and skidding into open fields, so as to keep the battery charged. They might have been in the middle of nowhere, but at any time they could be tracked down and neither of them had any intentions of being CI5's whipping boy or a statistic for the MI6 clearup rate.
Christmas came and went with an ironic salute to absent friends and a bottle and a half of Glenfiddich downed in the evening. Boxing Day brought vicious hangovers for them both, but apart from that it was much like any other winter's day in the Highlands; cold, dark and lonely.
When the thaw set in, it was with not a little relief that they packed their things up and moved on.
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