T H R E E
Y E A R S
L A T E R

"AKAI."

No response.

"Akai." If anything, the grip around me grows even tighter. I sigh.

Resting both hands on the keyboard, I say reproachfully, "How do you expect me to find a job if you're going to spend the entire time distracting me?"

The back of my ear tingles deliciously as Akai nuzzles even closer. "Don't leave me," he mumbles.

"We agreed on this," I remind him. "Chihiro's starting upper school in a month and one of us needs to go with her to the city. I'm definitely not sane enough to stay here and talk with geese all day long – no offense, Gacho."

Gacho barely looks up from where she's sleeping. A fortnight ago, Akai bought a dog basket for Inu's puppies – except Gacho saw it first and decided then and there that it was her new bed. With her round body snuggled perfectly in the hollow of the wicker, and beady eyes that never seem to fully close, the message she sends is clear: touch one twig of this basket and I'll kill you. A statement every member of the household instinctively respected.

"We'll dump her in boarding school," says Akai. "She's thirteen, she's should learn how to be independent."

"Not when it's barely been six months since Fumiko passed." I keep my tone gentle. "I want to keep an eye on her. It'll make both of us less worried."

It's like a bunny, the way he keeps burying his nose in the crook of my neck. "I know." A heartfelt sigh. "Just wishful thinking."

We stay like that for a while in comfortable silence. My eyes fall on a framed photograph on the wall of Akai's bedroom. On first glance, it looks familiar: it has the same layout, same poses, and same people who once headlined an article in a newspaper – an article about a company heir, an article read on a mobile in a café three years ago. But it doesn't take long before you realise there's something distinctly incongruous, for in a sea of black hair and black eyes there's a pair of green eyes peeking out from beneath a head of balayage blonde.

I remember that day well. Fumiko had not left the house in more than three months, but for this occasion she pulled her body together and insisted. We could all see her effort: the slight grimace behind every laugh, the way her breathing quickened too easily, and how she didn't stay more than five minutes on her feet. None of us told her what the doctor said, about how much time she had left, but I think she knew anyway. It was hard not to know, considering how we were tiptoeing on eggshells around her by then.

And she made it clear. She wanted none of that for that day. Not when the weather was perfect and the sun was not too hot and for the first time in a hundred days she could feel grass beneath her feet.

Not when Akai and I were getting married.

"The only tears allowed," she said, in that soft voice I knew so well, "are happy tears."

So we had the wedding (small, fifty guests), the cake (big, four tiers), and spent the evening picnicking in the park. Letting the sunlight tickle our toes. Blasting Japanese songs from the nineties and dancing till we collapsed from exhaustion. Chihiro plucked daises and slotted them in our hair. Gacho hissed at all the park geese. Inu ran around in mad circles.

Fumiko laughed, and laughed.

Three days later she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Hayate was with her in her last hours. He said he'd never seen his wife look more serene.

"Penny for your thoughts, Mrs. Satoh," Akai says lightly.

I turn, half-amazed. "How did you know I was thinking of Fumiko?"

"I didn't." It takes a second for me to figure out which Mrs. Satoh he's talking about, and when I do, a pleasurable feeling ripples through my stomach.

Akai scowls adorably. "You seem to be developing a habit of forgetting we're married."

I pinch his cheek. "I'm just not used to it. Mind, this is the third surname I have now."

Akai's countenance darkens further. "Maybe you need a little reminding."

"Maybe I do." I lean in. "Regular reminding."

Our lips touch, and even though I've long lost count of how many times I've kissed Akai – still, I shiver. The way he slips his hand under my shirt is familiar, territorial even. As if they have the right to be there. I can't say I dislike it.

"Akai," I murmur as his tongue flicks my earlobe, "I really should be job-searching."

"No; you really should be picking up where we left off the night before. And the night before that. And the night before that. And the afternoon and morning before that. And the – "

I shove him hard, laughing, and he topples over with a grin, but not before pulling me down. We lie on the bed for a while, his rough voice murmuring sweet nothings in my ear, his hands going places where I'm too helpless to resist, and just as I'm reaching out for my laptop's power button –

Bang! on the bedroom door. A yell. "I'm coming in! You guys better not be having sex in there!"

It's the impatient voice of a thirteen-year-old girl who hasn't quite decided whether or not to go into her rebel phase, but has definitely decided on teetering wildly between both options so she can drive her two guardians insane. Akai thumps his face into the pillow and mutters something incoherently along the lines of this is why you should never have children.

"I'm going out with Dean," Chihiro declares. She's grown her hair long and has expressed multiple times her desire to dye it mermaid green, a proclamation Akai and I both decided, quite unanimously, to ignore. "I won't be back until night, so don't keep dinner for me."

Ever since Chihiro got herself a boyfriend, a whole new feeling has developed itself inside my chest. I've been trying to keep it inconspicuous, which I'm clearly not doing a good job of; Akai's latest nickname for me is mendori – mother hen.

"Dean, huh?" I cross my fingers behind my back and try not to sound like I care too much about the answer to my next question. "What will you guys be doing ... alone the whole day?"

Chihiro opens her mouth, then closes it. "The last time I told you, you dressed up as a Mexican man and followed us into the cinema."

"Ah yes." Akai rolls over onto his back. "The legendary sombrero."

"Excuse me!" I huff. "That 'sombrero' was a custom-made, summer blue oversized hat with a gorgeous silk sash and pin-up brim. I will not have you guys disrespecting it, not when it cost me five hun – "

Akai's eyes glinted.

" – gry," I finish hastily. "Who's hungry? Oh, will you look at the time. It's lunch. Chihiro, be a dear and call your dad down, will you?"

Half an hour later we're seated around the dining table of the Satoh house, and I'm carrying out, very gingerly, a clay pot of braised pork, spring onions and ginger strips. Akai doles out the rice, Chihiro grabs the cutlery, and Inu pads to his usual spot near his mistress' chair, where he may receive discreet helpings of a sausage or two.

Hayate takes his seat at head of the table. There's more grey in his temples now, but also more tan – he's taken to getting out and about on the farm. Sometimes, in the quiet mornings where it seems only sparrows are awake, I see them, uncle and nephew, out on the estate. Akai mucks out the stables. Hayate combs the horses down. Then they go to the barn, where Akai moves wheelbarrows of hay, and Hayate scatters chicken feed with the birds pecking at his heels. They never seem to talk, the pair of them, and I've noticed they like to stand with both hands clasped behind their backs, silently looking out over the still surface of the lake.

Sometimes Akai smiles. Often, Hayate looks proud. It is in those moments that I truly understand – the Satohs' love language is wordless.

Hayate takes a bite now of the pork and I find myself holding my breath. While my husband and adopted ward are more than happy to deliver in-depth criticism of my cooking, Hayate has always been, true to form, less forthcoming. These days I find myself having the same fixation on getting the Satoh patriarch's approval as I do on getting the latest Gucci bags.

Hayate grunts. "Not bad."

Not bad! Not bad! I've long learned that getting a word out of Hayate is an achievement in itself, and getting two means full bragging rights and the knowledge that for the rest of year, nothing can possibly ruin your mood.

I lean back in my chair, very much satisfied.

Later that afternoon, when we've dropped Chihiro off for her – urk – date, Akai and I stroll hand-in-hand over the hills. Spring has come into full bloom, and the hem of my dress ripples across a sea of bluebells and red campions.

We talk of everything – and nothing. With Akai, hours of silence fly by as easily as hours of conversation. His lips do not move, but he speaks, still, in every movement of his hands and lingering gaze of his eyes.

The sun is setting, and my head is in Akai's lap.

"I'm sorry your father didn't come to the wedding," he says, his fingers running through my hair.

I shrug. If it wasn't for Heather, I would never have bothered to even send Spencer an invitation in the first place. But my sister was persistently hopeful that there was a chance we could still reconcile. I won't deny that her optimism swayed me somewhat, but it was swiftly banished the second I receive the reply.

Mr. Monet thanks you for your invitation but is unable to make it at this time. Please accept this gift in lieu of his presence, and warmest congratulations.

One look, and I knew instantly that his personal assistant had sent it. I don't know which was worst: that my letter had never even made it to his desk, or that it had. Either way I was disgusted, Heather was disappointed, and she never brought up Spencer to me again.

Attached with the reply was a £1000 Amazon voucher, which I gave Chihiro to spend whichever way she liked. She bought a saddle for Hoshi, donated the rest to charity and kept only eight-pound-fifty to buy herself the largest fruit parfait I'd ever seen. Money well spent, if you ask me.

In the end, it was Heather who walked me down the aisle. I say walk; the truth is she was pausing every other minute to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief. Watching back our wedding montage, you could have been fooled into thinking it was a stop-motion film.

Thinking about our wedding montage makes me smile.

"That's alright," I say. "Someone wise once told me that I only need love that truly matters."

I can hear the smile in his voice before he speaks. "And do you? Have all the love that truly matters?"

In response I pull him down, just as the sun sinks over the horizon. Pure rays of gold wash over the hill, over us, over Ryefair and beyond.

"Yes," I whisper as I kiss him again. "And it is all the love I will ever need."

FIN.