Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (12 page)

‘I wouldn’t mind him running his fingers down my spine,’ Jilly says, with a suggestive giggle; she clutches her lower back, miming extreme pain. ‘Ooh! I felt a definite twinge just now – maybe it’s a sports injury?’

‘I don’t think you get sports injuries from slumping on the sofa,’ Pauline teases. ‘Bit old for you, isn’t he? I thought you liked them young.’

‘There’s something to be said for experience. He looks like he knows his way around.’

Cassandra can hardly stop herself from tutting. She hates it when they talk like that; so unprofessional. They’d soon complain if they heard the pharmacist and his assistant, both male, talking about women that way.

She hasn’t seen this man, the physio. Only his name.

Pointedly she gets on with her work. She keeps her head down. Every morning she is first to arrive, opening up the office, turning on the computers, sitting in her place by eight-twenty, ready to receive the first phone calls, the requests for appointments. At one o’clock, not a moment later, she puts on her coat and scarf and tells the others she’ll see them tomorrow. She suspects that they talk about her when she’s not there.
So buttoned-up
, she imagines them saying;
never one to share a laugh and a joke
.

She found her escape route in the property pages in the local newspaper, soon moving to websites and setting up email alerts. Don was astonished when he found her studying floor-plans and Google maps on the computer at home. ‘It makes sense,’ she told him. ‘You’ve always said we should look for somewhere new. Perhaps it’s time. A change is as good as a feast.’

‘As a rest,’ Don corrected her. ‘That’s the saying.’

‘But I don’t want a rest. I want to do something.’

‘A feast, then, OK,’ Don said, laughing, and she showed him the houses she’d bookmarked. So easy, at that stage, like choosing from a paint chart.
I’ll have that one, or maybe this …

Of course it wasn’t really as straightforward as that. So much to think about. But Don saw it as a change for the good, a project to work on together. Anna – Anna was doubtful at first, Cassandra heard it in her voice. But this was Anna’s new area of expertise, and she had contacts – heard that the Cranbrook house was coming up for sale before it appeared on RightMove or any other website. She spoke to the agent, arranged an early viewing. All this activity made Cassandra realize how inertia had settled over her like a cloak. Don and Anna were eager to throw themselves into purposeful activity on her behalf; all she had to do was let herself be swept along. Surveys, solicitors, searches – it would happen. Things only had to be set in motion.

Now, though?

No. She’s got to stop this before it goes any further. She can’t do it, can’t break out from the walls she’s built around herself. She doesn’t deserve it, anyway; the airy space of a new house, the sense of life starting again. She can’t abandon the life she has: it’s her sentence, her curse, it’s all she knows. She must stay here for Rose; she must wait. One day – when, when? – one day, she knows, Rose will walk in, casual, unflustered, still eighteen, as if she never really left, but stepped aside into a parallel world where time behaves differently.

And an obstinate part of her insists that she won’t be driven into hiding because of that man. She won’t abandon Rose. She’ll brave it out; she will carry on as she is. But – is she standing up for herself, or being defeated? It’s a puzzle she can’t sort out.

‘Look, love,’ Don tries. ‘I know it’s a big thing to face – packing everything up, getting used to a new place. We’ll cope, with Anna to help. There’s no rush. A few months from now, and you’ll wonder what you were so anxious about. You’ll be out in that lovely garden every spare minute.’

‘No. No.’ She shakes her head like a dog shaking water from its ears. ‘It’s no good trying to persuade me. I can’t do it.’

Chapter Seven

Anna woke on Saturday to the sound of steady rain outside. She lay for several minutes thinking about the day ahead – another day of clearing and tidying at Rowan Lodge – and wondering what Martin was doing. He usually spent Saturdays with Liam, but this week it would be Sunday, as Liam was going on a friend’s birthday outing today. With time to himself, Martin would more than likely catch up on work, spending hours at his computer, maybe breaking off for a session at the gym.

She found herself oddly touched by his loneliness before telling herself that she had no right to know, having walked out on him. That had been her intention, but Ruth was making her stay here seem normal, unprompted by anything drastic. She hadn’t encouraged Anna to talk about Martin, speaking of him only in affectionate terms or in connection with the boys. This odd three-sided relationship was starting to feel comfortable, as if Ruth had always been part of it. No mention was made of when Anna would leave, or what she’d do next. It was enough to go from day to day.

After dropping Liam at his friend’s house, Ruth and Anna headed out to Rowan Lodge. In the drizzle of a mild but unpromising morning, the countryside looked grey, featureless, the gateways rutted and striped with puddles, the hedges blackly severe. The fields rose through mist to the ghosts of distant trees. Rowan Lodge looked forlorn behind its fence, but Ruth, resolutely cheerful, pointed to blunt green spears poking through bare earth by the gate. ‘Daffodils. There are dozens along this edge.’

Inside she turned on the heating and made tea, and they returned to their clearing, Ruth sorting blankets and bed linen, Anna starting on the kitchen. They’d come prepared with boxes and old newspapers for wrapping, and progress was brisk; Ruth had put aside a few kitchen items to keep, and Anna packed the rest for the charity shop. The drawers contained mostly spice packets and sachets, sauce and mixes well past their sell-by date, and a range of cooking implements, some unrecognizable. One drawer was stuffed full of papers: receipts, and instruction manuals for the cooker, microwave and washing machine. Anna put these on the worktop, knowing that Ruth intended to find homes for the appliances via Freecycle.

Next came a manila folder of recipes cut out of magazines, and underneath that a framed photograph, face down. Anna turned it over. The frame held a grey mount, with oval cut-outs allowing four small photographs to be inserted. One was a wedding photo, an image blurring in Anna’s eyes then swimming sharply into focus: Martin and Ruth. Ruth wore a simple white gown, scoop-necked and long-sleeved; Martin – longer-haired than now, and less consolidated somehow around the jaw – was smiling broadly. There were separate pictures of Liam and what must be a gap-toothed Patrick, each aged about five. The last, larger than the others, was a family group – Martin holding baby Liam, looking down at him, Patrick standing close to Ruth, her arm reaching over his shoulder, his hand raised to clasp hers. Here in Bridget’s garden, perhaps? There was a hedge behind: Martin wore jeans and a polo shirt, Ruth a long patterned skirt and vest top, Patrick was in shorts.

What had happened? Why had Martin left? He looked so happy in the photograph, so proud; a loving father.

‘I’ll start loading these boxes in the car.’

Ruth’s voice behind her made Anna jump; fumbling, she almost dropped the photo frame. Too late to hide it, to shove it back in the drawer or pretend she hadn’t been looking; Ruth had seen.

‘Oh,’ Ruth said flatly. ‘I didn’t know Mum still had that.’

As she looked at Anna, awkwardness spiked the air, the consciousness of how it could so easily be between them.

After a pause, Anna said, ‘Why did it end?’

‘You don’t know? Hasn’t Martin told you?’

‘I haven’t really asked. It just didn’t work out, that’s all he’s ever said.’

‘Hah. Didn’t work out.’ It was the first time Anna had heard Ruth speak of Martin with any bitterness. ‘He left me for someone he met through work. Hilary. She was married too. They’d been seeing each other in secret for nearly a year. You know the sort of thing – he’d be working late, seeing clients in the evenings, staying away at conferences. I never guessed. Till suddenly he announced he was leaving us to live with her.’

‘But—’ Anna felt her mouth dropping open. ‘Martin did that? What happened to this other woman, then? When I met him he wasn’t with anyone. Or if he was, I didn’t know.’

‘Things didn’t work out,’ Ruth said, with an ironic twist of her mouth. ‘Hilary went back to her husband. And – Martin didn’t come back to me.’

‘But, what, do you mean—’ Anna faltered. ‘You’d have taken him back? After he lied to you and deceived you? Left you and the boys for this Hilary who couldn’t even make up her mind?’

‘I don’t know whether I would have or not. He met you.’

‘But I didn’t—’

‘I know.’

The silence of the kitchen settled like dust: too quiet, too still. Anna’s mind blurred. The idea flitted into her mind that Ruth had brought her here to kill her. Helpfully, Anna had placed six knives, lined up in order of size, on the worktop.
Don’t be stupid.
There was no glitter of madness in Ruth’s eyes; she looked, if anything, as if she regretted saying so much. Her eyes, so blue and guileless, always seemed ready to film over with tears.

Anna swallowed. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t know why you don’t hate me.’

‘What would be the point?’

‘And I don’t know why you don’t hate Martin.’

‘I did, for a while,’ Ruth conceded. ‘But, well, he made an awful mistake. He knows that.’

‘Is there – have
you
met anyone?’ Anna asked. ‘In five years there must have been opportunities.’

‘Not really. Not the way you mean.’ Ruth pushed the drawer shut. ‘I don’t know if I’ve got the confidence to start out again. Martin and I married so young, and I thought he was the only person I’d ever want, or need. I’ve been out with people occasionally, but nothing serious. There’s someone I know through the garden project, a good friend. But Martin’s the only man I’ve ever slept with. I suppose that makes me hopelessly old-fashioned.’

She looked at Anna for a reaction; Anna said nothing.

‘I wasn’t actually a virgin bride,’ Ruth went on. ‘In fact I was pregnant with Patrick when we got married. I suppose we were too young, both of us barely in our twenties. But after so long, I don’t know that I want to get used to anyone else.’

Anna needed to be on her own to assimilate this. She could only think that Ruth had loved Martin with a loyalty he hadn’t earned. What he deserved was her, someone as fickle as he was, someone who’d flit off and abandon him on a whim.

She was still holding the photo frame, unsure what to do. Hanging onto it looked like an attempt to claim what was rightfully Ruth’s.

‘I’ll take that,’ said Ruth, reaching out for it.

Summer 1986

Rose was on the swing, reading. She had a look of intense concentration, her mouth slightly open. One hand fiddled with a strand of hair, corkscrewing it round her finger, releasing it when she was ready to turn a page. The hand that held the book was wrapped round the swing rope; she turned herself in slow half-circles, one way and then the other, her sandals trailing on the bare, scuffed patch underneath. Anna was nearby, crouched over the small section of border the girls had been allocated for their experiments in growing. She was waiting for Rose to notice what she was doing, a little resentful of Rose’s absorption in her book.

It was a day of heat and stillness, of pleasure that was part boredom; the passing of time was measured only by the house’s shadow slowly elongating itself across the grass, the chattering of starlings and the drone of a light aircraft already assimilated into memory. This end of the garden, the girls’ end, beyond the pear tree and the swing, was in full sunshine, and Anna felt heat strike at the back of her neck as she crouched over the baked earth.

Anna’s patch of ground was divided from Rose’s by a line of pebbles. Rose had grown marigolds, but Anna’s seeds had failed to come up, and now she was making a pattern with stones and shells collected on their seaside holiday. Earth-dust caught in her nostrils, mingling with the sharp scent of marigolds from Rose’s more productive half. She was humming quietly to herself, a repetitive tune without words. She wanted to transform the shells and stones into something magical, the way Rose would, but already it was becoming pointless; she was merely scraping dust about. To be real and purposeful, it needed Rose’s attention, and the elaborate detail she would bring to the pretence.

Rose gave a sharp intake of breath. Anna looked up. Rose was holding the book close to her face as if she were short-sighted. She couldn’t get the story in through her eyes fast enough.

‘What?’ Anna demanded. Rose didn’t answer. ‘What are you reading about? Rose?’

Rose’s book was called
Lord of the Flies
. Anna didn’t know what it meant, and the cover, just words, gave nothing away.

‘Rose?’ she said again.

Rose’s eyes swam back from some other place, as if it took an effort to remember where she was.

‘What?’

‘I said what are you reading about?’

‘Oh Anna, it’s horrible,’ Rose said. Her mouth twisted; Anna thought she was going to cry.