MEADOWLAND
Alison Giles

Copyright

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Fourth Estate

Copyright © 1998 by Alison Giles

The right of Alison Giles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9781857026092

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007468898

Version: 2016-02-29

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

About the Author

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

I knew it was a mistake to go and see Flora; but nonetheless I went. Although it was the weekend, I dressed for the occasion in the tailored red suit with its fashionably short skirt which I normally reserved for the office. As a concession to my destination I settled on lowish heels.

The final miles of my journey, an hour and a half’s drive west of London, led me away from the drone of the motorway and into a valley. The road, a thin yellow line on my map, coiled itself loosely round the river across a series of what had once been packhorse bridges, now strengthened but rarely widened. February sunlight glinted on fallowed fields and on pastures churned up around the feeding troughs into waterlogged mires.

As I drove, I glanced at the pile of books perched sedately on the passenger seat. The bundle, secured with doubled string, had the air of some little old woman – not quite tall enough to peer through the windscreen; too polite to complain of the lack of view; occupying herself instead with scrutinising the dashboard. I half expected remonstration at my speed.

I eased off the accelerator. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course. I could have posted them back; I should have posted them. But to do so would have been to refuse my father’s last request.

He had waited until my mother left the ward to speak to the sister. Then, lacking the energy to lift his head from the starched pillow, he gestured me closer. ‘I want you to do something for me,’ he whispered. He described where to find the volumes. ‘Return them to Flora. Yourself. Please!’

My mother had tripped back before I had time to reply. But as we said our farewells that evening, his eyes pleaded with me; reluctantly, resentfully even, I nodded. He died that night at about the time my mother and I, hastily summoned, fretted at a red light at the bottom of the hill.

Now three weeks later here I was, deep into unknown countryside, propelled by a collection of dog-eared books towards the home of a woman whose existence I had for over twelve years dutifully ignored.

Rounding a corner, I found my way blocked by a tractor silhouetted against its cartload of hay. I slammed on the brakes. My God, this really was the back of beyond. I pulled over against the hedge and winced as I heard the scrape of branches along the Astra’s polished paintwork. To my right, the tractor teetered up on to the verge, avoiding tipping its trailer into the ditch by scarcely the width of a theatre ticket. The driver – round-faced under a tangle of curly hair – grinned down at me, mouthing his thanks. I nodded acknowledgement, forcing the corners of my mouth upwards against the downward thrust of lips clamped tight in irritation. The books – which had shot forward into the well – seemed to stare at me reproachfully.

Jerking at the gearstick, I revved the engine and the car leapt forward. The parcel shuddered, held its point of balance for a moment, then toppled sideways, leaving the page edges uppermost. They looked vulnerable, less powerful. That pleased me.

I relaxed a little, slowed to negotiate another narrow bend and began to ponder just what I would say to Flora when I came face to face with her. The road was beginning to climb now, up through an avenue of oaks and beeches merging on either side into gladed woodland. Through the trees to the west, a light airiness hung above the dip of the valley, the hills beyond curving the horizon. Despite all my misgivings, it was hard to resist the serenity.

Was it for such a sense of peace that my father had initially come; once in a while, and armed with fishing rods and a box of assorted flies? I remember – I must have been about ten at the time – his setting out the bright screws of fur and feather on the dining-room table and challenging me, with that great chortle of his, to recite their names. His favourite was his own design: the ‘Golden Retriever’, he called it. He swore he’d enticed more trout with that one fly than with any conventional nymph or dun.

In those days, he would return on a Sunday evening smelling of damp leaves and moss; bearing his pungent catch in an old wicker shopping basket scrounged from the cupboard under the stairs. Mother would squeal at him to ‘leave those filthy Wellingtons outside’, and wrinkle her nose as he plonked his booty on the draining board.

‘Come on, Carrie,’ he would say to me. ‘You wash and I’ll fillet.’ And so I would hold the slippery ovals under the cold tap and, with numb fingers, brush away the mud and grass; and watch as, wielding the brown-handled kitchen knife I was forbidden on pain of direst retribution to touch, he deftly cut away the fins and sliced along the belly of each scaly creature, stripping out the skeleton with practised ease.

Then my mother, having banished Father upstairs to ‘make yourself presentable for goodness sake, dear’, would arrange the speckled bodies in rows under the grill and whip up a delicate butter and herb sauce to pour over them.

The taste – once anticipated with so much relish – was now nothing but a soured memory.

To start with, I only noticed that Father was returning almost, and sometimes entirely, empty-handed from his increasingly frequent fishing weekends; and that my mother turned away, her expression curiously blank, when he apologised awkwardly for the poor catch. Perhaps, I thought, she had looked forward to our trout suppers more than she had ever given reason to suppose.

Then one Friday evening, as he was about to set off and I went to shut the garage doors, I realised his rods were still leaning up against the wall at the back. I ran after him down the drive and, skipping sideways parallel with the moving car, banged on the window. ‘You’ve forgotten your rods,’ I puffed. I teased him triumphantly: ‘You won’t get much fishing done without them.’

His smile, as he pulled the car to a halt, was strange; faraway. ‘Oh, of course!’ He fetched the bundle of canes and stowed them in the boot. He seemed to hesitate before going back to collect the battered red tin box in which he stored the rest of his tackle.

‘Happy now?’ he said. He patted me on the head before sliding his long legs under the steering wheel and driving off.

I knew then that something wasn’t right.

All my mother said, when she saw bewilderment written loud on my face, was, ‘Her name is Flora.’ We never spoke of her again.

There were times when I was crying out to do so, but somehow I knew that to ask for explanations would endanger some sort of balance that held my world precariously in place.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the meaning of Mother’s cryptic announcement; by the time of that revelationary Friday, I was already into my teens – just. In the early days, I spent long hours wondering. I found myself hoping Flora didn’t look like the bewigged and powdered Madame de Pompadour of my school history books; Nell Gwyn, I decided, presented a far more acceptable image of my father’s mistress. On the other hand, Flora must surely be some sort of witch, pointed hat and all, to have lured my father into her lair. I should have liked to speculate with my friends, but the taboo that hung over the subject at home extended to an unspoken prohibition on it being mentioned outside. My fantasies remained secret ones and, undernourished, eventually withered. And, with them, my curiosity.

About Flora herself, that is. My father’s betrayal and my mother’s acceptance of it continued to puzzle my pubescent mind. It was not the stuff of which the romantic novels, into which I escaped to revive my faith in the happy-ever-after, were made. But eventually even those queries succumbed to the practical routine of Father’s regular weekend absences.

For the benefit of the neighbours, he made a point of ostentatiously packing his fishing gear in the car each summer Friday, and on his return nodded comments over the fence about the state of the water. The close season was more problematic. But, each year, something was dreamed up. One winter, he was – Mother would explain as she nodded her way along the Avenue – ‘helping a friend do up a country cottage’; the next, he was ‘tutoring an OU course’. If the Mackenzies or our then neighbours, the Brandons or the Williamses, whispered cynicism among themselves, they were careful not to do so in my hearing.

For my part, I surmounted the difficulty by teasing my peers with the notion that his weekends were spent on top secret government assignments. ‘You mean he’s a spy,’ gasped Penny Kingsley, reliably gullible. Pouring scorn on my giggling claims distracted the others from probing the reality.

At home each Friday evening, after Mother and I had cleared away our supper for two, she would pick up her embroidery and dictate a shopping list for the following morning. Curled up in Father’s big Minty chair, I would, every now and again at Mother’s behest, disentangle my legs from its depths and scurry out to the kitchen to check the stock of some item. (As I grew older, such sorties took on a more self-consciously languid air – but the ritual was maintained right up to the time I went away to university.)

Next day in town and before embarking on the supermarket marathon – traditionally reserved for Saturdays, for unspecified reasons which it never occurred to me to query – we often treated ourselves to coffee in the department store in East Street; and afterwards, wandering back down the escalators, inevitably detoured into the Fashion section. My mother loved clothes and always dressed beautifully. But I was always more comfortable helping choose a skirt or an Hermès silk scarf for her than struggling to find a compromise between my penchant for tatty jeans and T-shirts and her desire to see me dressed in ‘something elegant for a change’.

Oddly enough, it was on these occasions, delving among the clothes rails, when the feminine alliance should have been closest, that I most missed my father’s presence. I found myself longing for his endorsement of my desire – my need, even – to make my choice independently. I could have done with his support as Mother picked out some excruciatingly dull jumper and held it up against me, murmuring how well the colour suited me. But then guilt at my ingratitude would roll in and I would squeeze her arm as she proffered a cheque at the till, thanking her profusely for the latest disappointing addition to my already overfull wardrobe.

They were cosy, though, those weekends, without Father’s ambiguous presence hanging over us. Increasingly, of course, I spent time on my own pursuits: the usual teenage things – discos, parties, or simply browsing the streets and record shops. Mother insisted that it wouldn’t be fair to expect me to stay in and keep her company.

‘I’ve got more than enough to keep me busy,’ she reassured me as she set about spring-cleaning each room in turn or, tying an apron round her waist, rolled up her sleeves to batchbake for the next charity function. ‘You go out and have fun!’

So I did; although I felt obliged – embarrassing though it sometimes was – to be home at whatever time, according to my age, she considered ‘late enough for a young girl to be out, even on a Saturday’. Once, only once, she sighed: ‘It would be different if your father were here to pick you up.’ I stifled my own sigh – of exasperation – at her adamant refusal to drive after dark.

‘Maybe,’ I took the occasion to venture, ‘Clare’s father would give me a lift. They pass the end of the road anyway.’

My mother’s lips pursed. ‘No.’

She was like that; refusing to ask for or accept any sort of help from anyone. Unsanitary gurglings one Sunday morning advised that the drains were blocked.

‘Wait till Daddy gets home,’ I suggested.

Mother wouldn’t hear of it. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she demanded. ‘Keep my legs crossed all day?’

I laughed. Then hastily straightened my face.

Unearthing some ancient sailing trousers and an anorak and reaching for the Marigold gloves, she covered herself from head to foot in waterproofing. Then, heaving aside the manhole cover outside the back door, she prodded the murky sewage with a broken branch. ‘I think there are some rods in the shed,’ she instructed.

I sought them out. Meticulously, she assembled them one by one, pushing the gradually increasing length down and along the underground pipe. I was despatched to lift off the drain cover further down the garden.

Mother raised her head. ‘Anything coming through?’

Suddenly there was a sploosh, echoing and rumbling towards me, and a welter of thick brown porridge surged across the hole at my feet.

‘You’ve done it!’ I shrieked.

‘Yes?’ For an instant, something like pleasure crossed my mother’s face as she stared enquiringly at me.

Much hosing later, with disinfected rods stacked neatly in their place again and scrubbed waterproofs hanging over the line, Mother emerged from the shower, smelling of soap and shampoo, her hair wrapped in a towel. ‘There,’ she said with a look of brave acceptance. ‘One can always manage if one has to.’

If Father felt reproached when he returned that evening, he gave no sign of it. Mildly he remarked, ‘You should have left it to me.’

I was about to say, ‘That’s what I said.’ But Mother shushed me with a look.

I shifted restlessly in my seat as she served up spaghetti Bolognese, chattering about Mrs Duckworth’s roses. Father commented on the traffic jams on the bypass. I wanted my mother to be angry, my father to acknowledge guilt. But as always, if they felt those emotions – or any others for that matter – they never showed them.

A motorbike swooped past me as I approached the brow of the hill. ‘Bloody idiot!’ I yelled, surprising myself at my vehemence. By the time I levelled off on to the narrow plateau, the bike was a blur disappearing down the other side.

I slowed. From my earlier study of the map, I guessed that the road ahead plunged straight into Cotterly; that I was less than a mile or so from my destination.

I pulled on to the entrance to a wheel-marked track into the wood and turned off the engine. I reached for my bag, found a cigarette and lit it. Stupid habit, I acknowledged, but one I’d taken up after the Mark episode. Mother didn’t approve, of course. I tried not to smoke when I visited her. In any case, I usually restricted myself to two or three, just in the evenings. But today was different.

I inhaled deeply and wound down the window to allow the smoke to escape. The air that flooded into the car had a tang to it. On impulse, I pulled the key from the ignition and climbed out. My shoes sank into the soft ground. I leaned against the warm bonnet while I finished my cigarette, savouring the freshness of the air on my face. Then I threw the stub on to the ground and watched it extinguish as I shrugged my arms into my coat and hugged it round me. A walk would help clear my mind.

By keeping to the hump in the middle of the track, I was able to circumvent the worst of the mud. Ditches on either side were filled with composting autumn leaves. On their slopes, and in among the trees too, occasional clusters of primroses winked pale yellow eyes. I picked my way across the ruts and crouching down, coat-skirt tucked carefully behind my knees to prevent it trailing on the ground, gathered a small bunch. I held them up as a nosegay, breathing in the fragrance.

A cloud crossed the sun which, weak though it was, had been shining comfortingly on my back. I stood up, shivered, and marched on. I could see that the trees petered out a hundred yards or so further along and had an idea that maybe I would be able to look down on the village.

I was right. A huge muddied grass field fell away in front of me revealing a hotchpotch of dwellings in the distance. Which one of them, I wondered, was Wood Edge? I would have to ask directions.

I wondered suddenly if my mother was aware that the sealed envelope, inscribed so seemingly mundanely in my father’s handwriting ‘Weekend address’, had been tampered with. Two weeks ago, a few days after Father’s funeral, I had located it, discreetly tucked away at the back of the top right-hand drawer of the bureau where Father had whispered to me from his hospital bed I would find it, and steamed it open while Mother was having tea at the vicarage. I’d been invited along too but had pleaded a headache. Mother had nodded understandingly: ‘But I feel I have to go – so kind of them to invite me.’

It had been a curious feeling staring at the address – the words on the page somehow transforming the ethereal quality of Father’s ‘absence’ into the concrete reality of his presence elsewhere. Presumably Mother didn’t know the details of it, else why was the envelope there? Had she, bar in dire emergency, always preferred not to; been devoid even of curiosity?

I copied it out, re-inserted the original into the envelope and stuck it down again as neatly as possible. I could only hope Mother wouldn’t notice the hint of tell-tale wrinkling, nor indeed the lack of dust which I’d wiped away to erase the smudges I’d made in it.

She refused my suggestion, inspired at least in part by that concern, that she wait and let me help sort through Father’s things next time I could get down from London. ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘I can manage. And anyway I’d rather get on with it.’

I wondered what progress she’d made. Staring down now on the place where Father had spent so much of his time, I wasn’t sure whether I was grateful or not to be excused the somewhat ghoulish task. Wasn’t it all part of the last rites; of saying goodbye?

A wind ruffled briefly across the ridge and for an instant a vision of my father, laughing with me, filled my mind. I sank down on a tree stump, careless this time of my clothing, and found myself rocking, head in hands. Tears welled up. For a moment I felt like a child again – confused, angry, helpless.

I pulled myself together. This was ridiculous. I was, I reminded myself, twenty-five years old, owner – courtesy of a deposit I’d only briefly hesitated, damn it why not, to accept from Father – of a flat in Fulham, and a rising executive in a West End-based travel company. I hadn’t been close to my father for years. If either of us should feel his loss at all, it was my mother.

And Flora. The thought took me by surprise. I pushed it away.

I stood up, glanced once more at the innocuous-looking buildings below, and turned. As I retraced my steps, a Land Rover lurched along the path towards me. Moving over, I waited for it to pass.

‘Is that your car back there? Had a hell of a job squeezing past it!’ Early to mid-thirties; expensive but well-worn jersey over check shirt; land-owning accent. Not aggressive; not even irritated; just mildly reproving.

He had driven on before I’d decided whether or not to apologise. I glared after him indignantly. Tough. It wasn’t my choice to be here.

Back at the car, I jettisoned the already drooping primroses, cleaned off my shoes as best I could, and renewed my make-up. The books were still lying, dishevelled, on the floor. I heaved them back on to the seat, straightened their edges, and pulled on to the road. The car purred reassuringly and the sun, already on a downward path, reinstated itself in a patch of watery blue sky. I checked my watch as I started the descent. Well gone two already. If this one-horse place did have a pub, it would probably be closed by now. And I could have done with a sandwich at least – not to mention a drink.

I passed a farmhouse, and then a pair of cottages. As the road levelled out, a T-junction loomed before me. ‘Cotterly ¼ mile’, declared the sign pointing left. So this was it. I took a deep breath and turned the wheel.

CHAPTER 2

A lemon-coloured Citroën, old and battered, was parked on the grass beyond a broken-down gate, along the top bar of which the inscription ‘Wood Edge’ was faded but legible.

I had experienced no difficulty finding Flora’s house. Despite my pessimism, the doors of the pub, easily spotted at the side of a small green, had been open; but the clamour of male voices, raised in exhortation at the flickering figures of rugby players on the television screen within, decided me to try the shop next door instead.

I waited impatiently while two small girls and a boy rummaged among the sweets on the counter, finally handing over precious ten-pence pieces. I purchased a bar of chocolate and made my enquiry.

‘Wood Edge?’ The short, middle-aged woman pushed to the drawer of the till, then, wiping her hands on her apron, ushered me to the door. She pointed along the road. ‘The lane up to the right, ‘bout a half mile along. Just past Manning’s barn.’

I had devoured the last square of chocolate as I passed the huge corrugated-iron hay store and drew the car to a halt some fifty yards further on.

Now I climbed out, flung my bag across my shoulder and hoisted the books into my arms. I crossed the lane and stood in the entrance.

The house, like most of the others in the village, was of yellowish grey stone, mellowed with age. The garden sloped up towards it, unkempt grass lush with the first thrust of spring. Purple crocuses dotted banks supporting a path beneath the windows. Here and there, clumps of tight daffodil buds promised a golden flowering.

A robin hopped across the driveway in front of me as I crunched towards the front door, then darted to the branch of a straggling buddleia where it bounced round to face me, twittering. Sparrows rustled in the bushes and overhead a pair of wood pigeons flapped lazily towards some unknown destination. There was no other sound or sight of movement. For the first time, the possibility occurred to me that Flora might not be at home.

The front door, approached by three stone steps built into the abrupt rise, was firmly shut. There was no bell; just an old and tarnished brass knocker. I lifted it and banged twice. The sound echoed. I waited, then knocked again, this time with greater force. As the reverberations faded, there was silence.

I retreated down the steps and surveyed the frontage. One of the upstairs casements was ajar. In the country that probably didn’t mean anything. What now? Presumably I could find somewhere to leave the books. A note through the door … I struggled with a sense of anticlimax.

Then: ‘Come on, Columbus. We have a visitor.’ The voice floated from somewhere along the side of the house. Footsteps sounded.

From under the ivy-clad overhang at the corner, a tallish and solidly built figure, in what I’d guess were her late fifties, appeared. She strolled towards me along the upper path, a somnolent cat, knitted into the design of her heavy jumper, undulating across her bosom as though rocked on a gently rolling sea. At her feet padded a ginger tom, tail erect, rubbing confidently against the green of her scuffed cords. This presumably was the companion I had heard her addressing; but addressing in a tone startlingly softer than the one she now directed at me.

‘Yes?’ Short; to the point; unsmiling.

The cat turned slit eyes towards me and stared. Flora’s own were wide and brown and framed by waves of greyed hair among which glints of auburn provided curious contrast. In one hand she held an ancient trug, half-filled with mud-smeared potatoes and knobbly shapes that might have been swedes; in the other a garden fork. Wooden sabots hugged her feet which she planted firmly on the top of the bank.

I looked up at her; never in all my childhood imaginings had I visualised her thus.

I resisted an instinctive step backwards. ‘You’re …’ I hesitated over the informality ‘… Flora?’

‘Yes.’ The same clipped neutrality.

I took a deep breath. ‘I’m Charissa,’ I said, glad of the extra stature I felt my full, and somewhat distinctive, name gave me. Then, as her eyes roved over me, ‘I came to return these.’ I held the bundle of books out towards her.

There was a pause, while she continued to size me up. ‘So you are. Spitting image of your father of course.’ The merest hesitation before, just a shade less abruptly: ‘You’d better come in.’

Ignoring the proffered parcel, she turned on her heel and started round the house, Columbus falling into step behind her. ‘Never use the front door,’ she announced, leaving me to catch the words as they floated back on the air. It seemed I had no alternative but to follow.

In Indian file, the three of us made our way to a paint-chipped door. It gave access to a lobby cluttered with gardening paraphernalia. Flora deposited trug and fork, kicked off her shoes and pushed the kitchen door wide. A wave of warmth billowed to greet me.

Moving straight to the Aga at the far side, she lifted one of the heavy circular lids and slid the kettle across on to the hotplate beneath. Columbus bounded on to an elderly chesterfield and took possession.

Flora turned, leaning against the rail over which teatowels were drying, and looked at me, arms folded.

‘Well, come in then.’

I took a step across the threshold. The room, unlike the exterior of the house, had a cared-for look; that is to say, not clinically scrubbed as my mother always kept her kitchen, but comfortably clean and ordered. And, yes, cheerful. A first glance took in an antique Welsh dresser hung with good quality china, a large oak kitchen table, the near end of which was home to a pile of shuffled papers, and a set of cupboards and work surfaces along the length of the window wall. Dotted here and there, but always looking as though they belonged, were the bits and pieces that gave the room its lived-in feel – table lamps, a busy Lizzie draped from the window sill, a magazine lying open.

‘Push Columbus over,’ Flora instructed, noting my hesitation. ‘Oh, and …’ she nodded towards the bundle I was still carrying ‘… put those down somewhere. By the bookcase will do.’

It stood against the wall immediately to the right of the doorway, out of vision until I entered and moved towards the sofa.

On its top shelf, and flanked by a rosebowl on one side and a pair of silver candlesticks on the other, stood a large framed photograph of my father. It brought me up short.

‘Tea or coffee?’

I looked across at Flora. Her face was expressionless. ‘Coffee, please. Black.’

Turning back, I stared at the picture again. It had been taken in the garden, presumably at the rear of the house; and, as was clear from the fit of my father’s familiar brown tweed jacket, long before his illness began to take hold. He was standing beneath the branches of an apple tree in full fruit, laughing. That sparkle in his eyes … I hadn’t seen it since …

I bit my lip. Flora – I glanced in her direction – was spooning coffee. I placed the books on the floor as directed and squeezed a place for myself beside the already slumbering ball of ginger fur.

The photograph drew my gaze inexorably. I forced myself to lower it and study instead the contents of the shelves. They held an eclectic collection, bundled in together with the familiarity of use.

Books of poetry rubbed shoulders with a Dickens or two, some Nevil Shute, tomes on subjects ranging from philosophy to the peoples of the Pacific, the odd cookery book, one on pruning roses. All interspersed with a range of current paperbacks. The equally varied selection I’d returned would slip back in comfortably.

I raised my eyes to my father’s picture again. What was it, I wondered – at that moment more perplexed than resentful – that had not only drawn him here, but brought such a look of relaxed contentment to his face?

‘It’s a good likeness.’ Flora had glided across the room in her stockinged feet and was standing over me, a mug in each hand. She passed me one, then swivelled a dining chair and sat down.

I nodded agreement, and waited for her to initiate further conversation. She didn’t.

‘Nice part of the country, here,’ I offered eventually. ‘Very peaceful.’ I forced a light laugh. ‘Makes a pleasant change to get away from London traffic.’

She inclined her head.

‘Had quite a good run down,’ I suggested. I prattled on about the time it had taken me, the weather …

I tried a different tack. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘About my father’s death, I mean.’

This time she did comment. ‘So I should imagine.’

I stared at her. ‘What I meant was …’

‘Yes?’

Confusion stoked animosity. ‘I meant you must miss him.’ It came out angrily, attempts at civility swept aside.

There was a flicker of something indefinable at the corners of her mouth. Eventually she said, as though having considered the matter, ‘Yes, I miss him.’

‘I suppose –’ I managed to soften again as the thought struck me – ‘I suppose we might have invited you to the funeral.’

‘I came anyway.’

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. But then I hadn’t really been aware of anyone but family among the congregation, and I wouldn’t have known who half of them were anyway. I could hardly have been expected to notice a stranger – Flora – in their midst. And maybe, in any case, she’d slipped out before we turned to leave. Must have done, or surely she’d have recognised me more quickly when I arrived.

‘Tell me –’ Flora changed the subject abruptly – ‘why have you come?’

It wasn’t a question I was expecting. I twisted my mind back. ‘My father asked me to.’ I nodded towards the books. Then defensively, pushed into elaboration by a lack of response, ‘One doesn’t refuse a dying wish.’

‘Oh, no. One doesn’t, does one.’ Flora’s tone was bland. She leaned back, that considering look on her face again. Then: ‘Was that the only reason?’ The question, though mildly put, felt nonetheless to prise into me.

The hurt of years surged suddenly in a wave of hatred. How dare she interrogate me! With great control, I rose from my seat, placed the coffee cup carefully beside the photograph of my father and looked her squarely in the eye. ‘Of course. What other reason could there be? Thank you for the coffee. I must be on my way.’ It was, I prided myself, a dignified little speech. I reached for my bag.

‘Sit down.’ Again quietly said; but, given the discomposing effect she was having on me, she might as well have delivered a karate chop to the back of my knees.

I sank back on to the cushions.

Taking her time, she asked casually, ‘Do you always run away from the truth?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

She repeated the query.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Then maybe –’ there was the faintest lift of an eyebrow – ‘you have a thing or two to learn.’

‘But not from you!’ The retort, satisfyingly, seemed to fire itself without any conscious effort on my part.

Flora’s expression didn’t change, and my momentary sense of triumph evaporated as I felt caught up in a childhood game of ‘stare as stare can’. I yielded and looked away.

‘I really must go.’ But the words sounded petulant.

Flora, unperturbed, got up. ‘I expect you’d like something to eat first. I take it you’re going back to London? How about some soup?’ Her tone was matter of fact.

A sick feeling in my stomach identified itself at least partly as hunger. To my astonishment, I found myself accepting.

Unhurriedly, Flora set about the preparations. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘if you want to wash your hands there’s one the other side of the lobby, or the bathroom’s upstairs.’

I opted for the lobby. On my return, I wandered over to the window and stared out. Beyond the bushes and bare-branched trees bounding the garden, the top of the haybarn I’d passed earlier was outlined against the pink-tinged clouds of early evening. ‘Shepherd’s delight,’ I murmured automatically.

‘We’ll have a beautiful sunset.’ The observation floated from behind me.

I turned. Flora was stirring a pan.

Grabbing for the relief of small talk, I said, ‘I was admiring your crocuses.’

‘None of my doing.’ Abruptness had returned to her voice. She poured the soup into a bowl and transferred it to the table, indicating to me to seat myself.

This time, I decided, I would be the one to ignore a comment. I picked up the spoon. The soup smelled good. I tasted it. It was thick with fresh vegetables, just peppery enough to bring out their flavour. Flora placed a farmhouse loaf and the butter dish before me. ‘Help yourself.’ She took the chair opposite. Columbus, wakened by the activity, descended from his bed and sauntered, yawning and stretching, towards the table. He raised his front paws on to Flora’s knee and leapt up. She fondled his ears.

I saw an opportunity for conversation again. Nodding towards the cat, I asked, ‘How did he get his name?’

‘Your father gave it to him. We found him down by the river, soaking wet. He said he looked as though he’d swum the Atlantic.’

‘So he was a stray?’

‘Yes.’

Her monosyllabic response left me scant scope.

‘Was my father fond of cats?’ I regretted the question as soon as it was uttered.

‘He loved animals. Didn’t you know?’

I took a mouthful of soup to delay replying. Columbus purred complacently.

I decided to go on the offensive. ‘The fact that I didn’t know him as well as I should,’ I said carefully, ‘is hardly my fault.’ I stressed the ‘my’.

‘Does anyone say it is?’

She had missed the point. Or had she? Flora didn’t strike me as unintelligent. Far from it. All right, then; if she wanted me to spell it out …

‘Don’t bother,’ she forestalled me. Her eyes were glinting with something. Not anger – I could have coped with that; more an amused, or perhaps merely patient, tolerance.

I put my spoon down. ‘Look,’ I tried. ‘I’ve come all this way …’

‘And I’m supposed to be correspondingly grateful?’ She paused. ‘I can’t think why. You could have consigned the delivery to the Post Office.’ Again, that indecipherable expression. I heaved a sigh; this was getting us nowhere.

‘I take it,’ Flora continued consideringly, ‘that I’m not reacting in whatever way you’ve decided would be appropriate to the … er … circumstances. Which, I would remind you –’ she fixed me with one of her unwavering looks – ‘you have created.’

‘I have created?’

‘You chose to come.’

Her calm only fuelled my indignation.

‘And what about the circumstances you’ve created!’ I thumped the table and the tingle ran up my arm and into my shoulder. ‘Don’t you have any feelings about what you’ve done to us? Don’t you realise how our lives have been devastated by your relationship with my father?’

A level glance met my furious one. ‘I realise it’s affected yours.’

So she acknowledged it. Something snapped inside me. ‘Then what,’ I heard myself explode, ‘do you intend doing about it?’

Throughout the exchange, Flora had scarcely moved a muscle. Now she slowly lifted Columbus from her lap and deposited him on the floor. Then she leaned forward, forearms on the table. The knitted cat nestled into the dip between her breasts.

‘So is that why you came?’

Taken aback, I glared at her. ‘How do you mean? No, of course not. It was just –’ I shrugged – ‘a figure of speech.’

‘Was it?’ She sat back again, fixing me with eyes that seemed to bore deep inside me.

‘If anything –’ I cast around for a more acceptable explanation – ‘it was curiosity.’

She nodded. ‘That, too, I can well believe.’

The conversation was again becoming intolerable. I swallowed the last of the soup, stood up and moved over to the window. The sky had darkened and a deep crimson, interlaced with streaks of purple, had replaced the earlier, lighter colouring. There were no shadows; just shades of grey.

I turned back, my hands grasping the edge of the sink behind me for support. Flora was still seated, immobile. In the subdued light, she no longer looked quite so formidable.

‘Have some more coffee.’ She rose to fetch it.

I sat down at the table again, aware of fiddling with my bracelet. It was the gold one my parents had given me on my twelfth birthday.

‘Your father chose it,’ my mother had said. ‘I’m not sure it’s really suitable for someone your age.’

Father had winked at me over her shoulder.

‘I’ll look after it,’ I’d promised.

I had. Most of the time it sat in the brocade box I’d rather grandly, when I was younger, called my jewel case. It contained only a couple of other items of value. I seldom wore any of them. My decision today, to clasp Father’s gift – I always thought of it as his – around my wrist, had been an impulsive one.

‘Yes, I suppose possibly I was curious,’ I admitted.

Flora had, I was sure, heard me, but she said nothing, merely returning with freshly filled mugs. Her chair scraped lightly on the tiled floor as she resumed her place. Then there was silence. As my ears accustomed themselves to it, I became aware of a clock ticking. I wasn’t sure whether the sound came from within the room or somewhere outside it. I didn’t care to raise my head to discover which.

I ran my fingers over the hard circle on my arm – and began to remember.

I remembered the taste of trout.

I remembered the time, long before Father’s fishing days, when he used to joggle me around the garden piggyback style. I remembered visits to the zoo and clutching his hand as a lion raised its head and yawned, baring ferocious fangs; I saw him down on his hands and knees on wet sand enthusiastically constructing forts which he then pretended to defend from the incoming tide with Canute-like imperatives; I heard again his ostentatious applause when, having ignored my mother’s remonstrations, he’d urged me up on to the pantomime stage and I returned to my seat beside him, flushed with pleasure. I recalled … oh, I recalled so many little incidents – delicious moments of companionship and laughter when I revelled in the certainty that my father found me the most wonderful little girl in the world.

‘He did love me,’ I murmured.

And he’d loved my mother, too. Or I’d thought he did. They used to sit side by side watching television, he with his arm draped over her shoulders as she knitted, or crocheted, or sewed. Sometimes I would try to squeeze in between them; then my father would lift me on to his lap and, as I snuggled against the warmth of his vast chest, his spare arm would slip back to rest around my mother.

He was, altogether, a big man, my mother slim and neat. They made a handsome pair. And I was their princess.

‘But then everything changed.’ I realised I’d spoken aloud.

Slowly, carefully, hesitating over my words, I began to slot the jigsaw pieces of my experience together.

‘It wasn’t as if he just upped and left us. I could have understood that. Not why, but at least the fact of it. But he hadn’t gone. Not physically anyway. Even when he was … away, his coat still hung in the hall; his razor stared at me from the bathroom shelf; his favourite biscuits were always there in the tin; Saturday’s post stood propped on the bureau all weekend.

‘But he had gone. Once he knew that I knew – what little I did know – he never quite seemed to meet my eye again. Oh, he tried to behave normally during those weekday evenings. Sometimes he helped me with my homework, occasionally we even played a game of chess or draughts. But he never … we were never … close again; never did things together any more, not in the way we used to. It was as though he’d handed me over to my mother.

‘She was marvellous, so brave about it all. She never complained. Just got on with the business of running the house and looking after me.’

I paused. Columbus materialised as if from nowhere, and sprang on to my knee. I stroked his fur and he snuggled down.

‘It was as though my father had died, yet I couldn’t tell anyone, talk to anyone about it; I had to go on pretending he was still there. But he wasn’t. Not my real father. The man who called himself my father was a weekday lodger, a stranger.’

Columbus was kneading my thigh with his paws in a slow, steady rhythm. I sat there, allowing my thoughts to tumble over one another.

‘And now he really is gone.’ The words seemed to float towards me across the table. They were spoken so quietly that if there had been any other sound I might not have heard them.

My control shattered. Great sobs, starting way down in the pit of my stomach, forced their way up through my chest, constricted as though by a steel band, and exploded outwards. My elbows involuntarily moved forward on to the table to support my head as it fell forward into my hands. I was vaguely aware of a scrabbling in my lap as Columbus, alarmed, leapt down.

‘There, there. It’s all right.’ I neither knew nor cared whether it was me or the cat Flora was reassuring.

Eventually as the racking subsided, I raised my head. The room was in virtual darkness. Flora’s shape loomed upwards. ‘You need a brandy,’ she said.

CHAPTER 3

The alcohol calmed my shivering. Flora had switched on the lamps as she fetched it, and the glow they cast harmonised with the warmth spreading inside me. As I drained the tumbler, she stretched out a hand to the bottle and raised an eyebrow in query.

‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to drive.’

‘There’s a spare bed made up if you’d prefer to wait and make the journey in daylight.’ There was nothing in her tone to persuade me one way or the other.

I didn’t need to turn my head to be aware of the blackness outside. I hesitated only momentarily; then nodded. ‘Thanks.’ I drowned the waves of unease at my decision in a second generous tot.

It was all becoming increasingly unreal somehow – and Flora’s down-to-earth practicality did nothing to dispel that feeling. It was as though I’d strayed into another world; one in which I was neither approved nor disapproved of – merely accepted; where I was neither guest nor intruder. My mind, hazed at least in part by alcohol, struggled with the problem of how to behave and gave up. It was simpler to sit back and let fate take over.

And it did seem to be something more ethereal than Flora to which I was relinquishing control. For a moment, I had a vision in my head of my father.

Flora placed both hands on the table and pushed herself to her feet. ‘I have things to do,’ she said. I was vaguely aware of her shrugging on shoes and coat; and then of the beam of a torch as she opened the back door and closed it again behind her.

I pressed the stopper back on the brandy, then rinsed my glass under the tap, staring out through the window as I did so. The night, I realised now that my back was to the lights in the room, was not as dark as I’d imagined. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, pinpricks of stars enlarged into dancing crystals. I started as a shadow streaked across my line of vision. A bat, maybe? Hardly. Not this early in the year.

But the thought had stirred an image; myself, cringing; and Father sweeping me up in his arms, laughing away my fears. ‘They’re only bats, silly,’ I heard him say, his voice deep and comfortable. When could that have been, I wondered.

Now I could discern branches stirring gently and, in the distance, the shimmer of headlights. I watched them approaching, turning into the lane and lighting it up with powerful beams. There was a squeal of brakes and the sound of tyres swerving on gravel as the vehicle swept round and up to the house. The lights were extinguished.

I retreated towards the table. A metallic bang was followed by heavy footsteps. A broad shape passed the window. Then, with no more than a token knock, the same man who had spoken to me earlier in the day from his Land Rover pushed open the door and stood in the entrance.

He gave a swift glance round the room before addressing me. ‘Flora in?’ Then he looked at me more closely. ‘Oh, it’s you. Nearly ran into your car out there.’ He shook his head tolerantly. ‘Do you always park in damn fool places?’

I clapped my hand to my mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry … no lights. I hadn’t thought …’

‘If you give me the keys, I’ll move it.’

I scrabbled in my bag and produced them. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Self-interest. By the way, where’s Flora?’

I hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, she didn’t actually say.’

He gave me a bemused look. ‘Probably shutting up the hens.’ He jiggled the keys in his hand. ‘Right. I’ll just go and do this.’ He strode out.

Aware that my face was probably still showing traces of my recent outburst, I reached for my make-up. As I touched up, Flora returned.

‘I see Andrew’s here,’ she said from the lobby. She stepped into the kitchen. ‘Where is he?’

‘Moving my car.’ My words were accompanied by the sound of its engine starting up.

She nodded and went to the sink to wash her hands.

When he came back, she introduced us.

‘Not …?’ He hesitated and looked questioningly at Flora.

‘Yes. That’s right. Hugh’s daughter.’

His reaction on discovering my identity was totally different from Flora’s. His eyes lit up in greeting as he moved forward to grasp my hand. ‘Really?’

I responded gratefully.

Andrew turned to Flora. ‘You didn’t tell me …’

‘I didn’t know.’ Flora stood leaning against the cupboard, arms relaxed at her sides.

‘You mean … you just …?’ He swivelled his head from one to the other of us, seeking clarification.

‘My father asked me to return some books.’

Andrew’s face sobered. ‘We all miss him,’ he said. Then, as though realising the possible trickiness of his ground, ‘What I mean is …’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

So he obviously knew the situation. It occurred to me that Flora wasn’t the sort of person to try to hide it. Whatever else, there seemed a straightforwardness about her. I couldn’t help wondering if things would have been different if my mother had cared less about what the neighbours thought.

‘So what brings you, Andrew?’ It was Flora who spoke.

He jerked his attention back to her.

It turned out to be a matter of mild curiosity about rumours concerning the egg farm. They chatted about it, Flora meanwhile opening a tin of cat food and spooning it into a dish. Columbus, awoken by the sound of scraping, stirred himself and then bounded across the room to its source. When he’d licked the plate clean, Andrew bent down, scooped him up and carried him to the door where he unceremoniously shooed him out into the night. ‘Go catch some mice,’ he said.

For the first time, I saw Flora laugh. ‘What, with his stomach as full as that? At best he’ll only have the energy to sit and ogle Joe Manning’s tortoiseshell.’

Andrew’s eyes crinkled acknowledgement. ‘Mind if I help myself to a beer?’ He was clearly very much at home.

‘Go ahead.’

He poured himself one and came to sit beside me on the sofa, to which I’d retired while they were talking.

‘Flora’s bite’s not nearly as fierce as her bark,’ he informed me conversationally, grinning across the room to where she still stood. Her face was a mask.

He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, gestured it towards Flora who waved it away, then held the packet out to me.

I made to take one, then glanced at Flora. ‘If you don’t mind?’

‘Not at all.’

Gratefully I lit up.

‘So,’ Andrew said, ‘did you enjoy your walk this afternoon?’ He gave Flora a quick résumé of our earlier encounter.

We pursued the subject briefly. Then: ‘Didn’t Hugh do a painting of the view from up there?’ He looked enquiringly at Flora.

She nodded.

He turned to me. ‘Has Flora shown you your father’s watercolours?’

I hesitated, then opted for honesty. ‘I didn’t even know he painted.’

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, and then he said, ‘Well, you must see them.’ He looked at Flora for confirmation. ‘Mustn’t she?’

Flora went to fetch them, for the first time opening the door to the rest of the house. A rush of cooler air swept in, and on it the steady tick of what I guessed could only be a grandfather clock – the sound I’d been aware of earlier, no longer muffled by panelling.

I shivered involuntarily. Andrew grinned. ‘Now you know why Flora lives in the kitchen.’

She returned moments later bearing a dozen or so examples of my father’s work. As I studied them, one by one, I gasped. ‘But they’re amazing. Did he really do these?’ I found it hard to comprehend. The paintings were delicate and robust at one and the same time; mostly landscapes, but here and there focusing with finely sketched lines on an animal or, in one instance, a young woman. I stared at this last – one of the only two framed ones. The girl was seated amongst meadow grass, arms hugged round legs over which full skirts were drawn tight, eyes turned towards a background of tree-dotted hills. Cornflowers bent, as though pressed by the same gentle breeze as ruffled her hair.

Andrew studied it over my shoulder. I felt him turn to look again at me. ‘It’s you!’ he said.

I knew he was right.

Yet again those tears – those damn tears – started to well up.

Flora was the one who broke the tension.

‘Are you staying for supper, Andrew?’

‘I was hoping you’d ask me. Ginny’s taken the boys off to visit their grandparents. Don’t know where she gets her energy from, working all week and then rushing around at the weekend.’

I surreptitiously dried my eyes, then stacked the paintings. From the conversation I gathered Ginny taught music, wind instruments mostly and some singing, juggling her time between several different schools.

‘Mind you, I’m all for it,’ Andrew was saying. ‘No point women sitting at home all day, wasting their talents.’

‘I do.’ Flora challenged him with a look that might or might not have been serious.

‘Waste your talents?’

Flora allowed herself a small smile. ‘That’s for others to judge. I meant stay at home.’

Like my mother always had, I thought.

Andrew was laughing. ‘Ah, but you’re one on your own, Flora. You don’t need the world like the rest of us mere mortals.’

He had, I realised with a sudden start of recognition, the image of my mother receding rapidly, put his finger on something.

‘And what about you, Charissa?’ He turned to draw me back into the conversation. ‘Didn’t your father say …’ He stopped. ‘Don’t you work for a travel company?’

I nodded. ‘At their head office.’

He encouraged me to expound.

Recruited from university, I explained; stints in different sections. ‘I seem to have settled for the time being in the Complaints Department.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Whoops,’ he said, ‘that must make you pacifier in chief?’

‘Something like it,’ I laughed.

I could feel myself relaxing as he pressed me to recount the contents of some of the more bizarre mail that landed on my desk.

Flora intervened to allot tasks in the preparation of the evening meal. As I peeled potatoes and Andrew chopped vegetables beside me, he whispered, while Flora was briefly out of the room, ‘Don’t judge Flora on first acquaintance. There’s a heart of gold under that dour exterior.’

I didn’t answer but concentrated on swishing the mud off the last potato.

‘I hadn’t intended to stay more than half an hour,’ I eventually said. Let him make what he would of that for a response.

‘Oh? I’m not sure that I quite …’

‘You haven’t told me what you do.’ My tone was artificially bright. ‘Do you farm?’

He accepted the change of subject. ‘Only at weekends – and even then only because I’m dragooned into it. No, no. I’m the second son. It was the army or the law for me. I opted for the latter.’

‘You’re a solicitor?’

‘Small practice in town. Mostly land disputes; a few matrimonials. Not so dissimilar from what you do, I suppose, except it’s fists rather than letters that thump on to my desk.’

I laughed, picking up the saucepan and turning.

‘Goodness. You are like …’ Andrew was staring at me.

‘My father?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Do you know,’ I said slowly, ‘until today, no-one’s ever suggested that to me.’ I passed the saucepan to Flora, who had returned to her place at the stove and was standing there, holding out a hand.

I recollected the scene, back in Fulham the following afternoon. Remembering Flora’s Aga, the flat seemed dispiritingly chilly, despite my having turned up the central heating. I had a sudden urge to wrap my hands round a mug of cocoa. Rummaging in the back of the cupboard, I found an ancient tin.

It tasted good. I curled up in an armchair and switched on the television. A 1940s’ black and white film was nearing its climax. I tried to concentrate, to pick up the threads of the story, but found it impossible to focus my attention. The turmoil of the last thirty-six hours was too immediate.

Throughout supper, which we’d eaten at the kitchen table, Andrew had kept up a stream of light conversation. The children, I discovered, were Tom and Justin, aged eleven and nine and ‘noisy little terrors’. I blinked. Andrew must either have started young or be older than he seemed. Still, he was saying, it was good to see them enjoying life; and Ginny, he had to hand it to her, was a first-rate mother.

I learned that old Mr and Mrs Partridge had been on holiday to ‘Oh, somewhere in the Balearics’ and – he turned to me: ‘This will sound familiar’ – hadn’t stopped moaning since they got back about not being able to tune in out there to the British weather forecast. ‘Seems their only interest was in comparing hours of sunshine and making sure they were getting their money’s worth.’ Mrs Tuckett – ‘Why couldn’t she have chosen anywhere but here to retire to!’ – had managed to get herself elected on to the village hall committee and had been so rude to Commander Lancaster that now there was some doubt that he’d allow his paddock to be used for the summer fête. More seriously, had Flora heard that there was a brucellosis scare at Upper Farm? Philip – his brother, I deduced – was only too thankful he’d switched over to arable.

It was all village talk and I was torn between disdain and reluctant fascination. Whichever, I was more comfortable sitting on the sidelines listening.

Andrew left at about ten, gripping my hand and hoping he’d see me again soon.

I helped clear away the dishes and wash up.

‘Andrew’s nice,’ said Flora, as she dried her hands. ‘Parents left everything but the old Dower House to Philip, of course. Andrew and Ginny …’ She lapsed into silence. I shrugged mentally; it was no concern of mine. It was what I was gleaning about my father that tantalised me. Over a cup of coffee before bed, I brought up the subject of his paintings again.

‘I really had no idea,’ I said.

‘I expect you’d like to have the one of you.’

‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

I expressed my gratitude. I wished I could make her out.

Flora was glancing at her watch. ‘I’ll show you your room. You’ll need a hot water bottle.’ She fished one out from a cupboard and filled it from the kettle simmering on the hotplate.

I was glad of it; the bedroom was icy. Flora produced a nightdress and toothbrush. ‘Come down when you’re ready in the morning,’ she said.

Despite everything, or perhaps because of it, I must have fallen asleep straightaway. I woke to the sound of hooves clopping along the lane. It took me a moment or two to orientate myself.

I got out of bed and, wrapping the eiderdown round me, pulled back the curtains. The room was on the opposite side to the kitchen, facing east. Frost glittered on the ground, and a faint glow behind the trees indicated mat the sun would soon dispel the greyness.

I dressed and crept downstairs. The grandfather clock, ticking away sonorously, registered a few minutes past seven. For a moment I considered sneaking out to the car and driving off before Flora appeared. After all, I’d completed my mission. But then the childishness of such an action dissuaded me. I would at least wait and bid her a civil farewell.

Warming myself by the Aga, I heated the kettle and brewed a pot of tea. To my surprise, it was the back door that opened. ‘Oh, there you are,’ said Flora. She deposited a handful of eggs beside the sink. ‘Breakfast?’

In the end, it was mid-morning before I left. Somehow Flora persuaded me to take a walk through the woods before I departed. ‘You should,’ she said. ‘Your father loved it.’ She didn’t suggest accompanying me.

The lane petered out to a track, horseshoe imprints fresh there in the damp earth. Between the shadows of branches meeting overhead, sunlight glinted, dappling tree trunks and ground. I stood and breathed in great lungfuls of sweet-tasting air, gasping at yet relishing its coldness. It seemed to reach right through me, scouring out restraint. I stared up at the sky and shook my head in wonder. Every sense tingled.

Then I heard it – the sound of running water. Twenty yards further on, I came across a broad stream meandering up to the edge of the path and away from it again. I hunched down beside it, watching the flow of ripples round stones. I looked for fish but couldn’t see any. Maybe it was too early in the year.

I’m not sure how long I stayed there. Eventually, cramp in my legs forced me to straighten up. Reluctantly I wandered back, pausing every now and again, as though I could capture and hold within me every whisper and scent.

When I got back to the house, Flora was in the garden picking daffodils. ‘I thought you might like to take a few with you,’ she said. ‘They’ll come out in a day or two.’

In the kitchen, the watercolour had been set aside from the others and lay ready on the table. Flora carried it out to the car and stood waiting as I took it from her and placed it carefully in the back. The daffodils I laid on the passenger seat.

‘Well, goodbye.’ I hesitated awkwardly beside the open car door.

Flora reached out and touched my arm. ‘Take care,’ she said.

The daffodils! I’d dumped them unceremoniously on the draining board when I first came in. I zapped off the television, jumped up and found a vase. Pity to let them die. I crushed the ends as my mother had taught me, and found myself wondering whether Flora would have done the same. I fingered the tight buds lightly. No hot-house blooms these; they smelled of the country and freedom. Impatiently, I brushed away something that was more than a physical sensation. I didn’t wish to be reminded of Cotterly.

I’d driven up the hill out of the village in a state of confusion. It wasn’t until I reached the motorway and was able, with my foot hard down on the accelerator, to put distance between myself and the source of my bewilderment, that I began to feel a sense of normality returning. Cars beat a steady rhythm along the uniform stretches of tarmac. This was the world I knew. As I crossed Hammersmith flyover, the buildings on either side enfolded me in the familiar again. Relieved to be home, I’d staggered up the stairs fully laden, balancing Father’s painting between raised knee and chin as I turned the key in the lock. I’d left it just inside the door.

Now I wondered what to do with it. I almost regretted having accepted it. It was disturbing somehow – my father imposing an image of me on the landscape he loved. Had he sent me down there simply to make a reality of the fantasy he’d painted? Just once? Or did he have some deeper intention? I’d assumed my visit was aimed at satisfying some need of Flora’s. Having met her, that hardly seemed likely. What was he up to?

Dammit. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I’d done what he asked. That was the end of it.

I carried the flowers through to the sitting room, changed my mind about placing them on the coffee table, and instead made space on top of the cupboard in the corner. I picked up the phone, trailed its lead across the room, and perched on the arm of a chair.

‘Clare? Are you in? Can I invite myself over? … Supper? Hadn’t thought about it. I could bring a tin of … Right. See you in ten minutes.’

I was my old resilient self again. I threw on a coat, grabbed my contribution to the feast, and clattered down to the street. I loved London, particularly at night. Lights everywhere; the buzz of traffic; bright, exuberant voices of passers-by; traffic lights alternating red, amber, green. I walked the three blocks, humming to myself.

It was eleven-thirty when I returned, pleasantly weary. My old schoolfriend, temporarily grass-widowed by her boyfriend’s attendance at a conference in Stockholm, had been a good choice of companion for the evening. She didn’t believe in moping – whether over a broken ornament or, as she assumed in my case, a bereavement. Instead, she kept up a bright bubble of chatter and encouraged me to help her drain a large bottle of Spanish red.

I fell into bed. My last thought before falling asleep was that I’d forgotten to ring my mother. Too late now. I’d do it tomorrow.

CHAPTER 4

I wondered, next day, whether Mother would ring me at work. I rather hoped she might; I’d have an excuse to keep the conversation brief. I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of speaking to her. I’d never lied to her before. Not about anything of any consequence. However, I’d decided from the beginning that there was no need for her to know about my visit to Flora. The whole matter, I’d reassured myself, was totally unimportant, and the sooner it was done, finished, forgotten, the better.

But I’d come back with that painting. I wished I’d never seen it. I wished Flora hadn’t been at home. I wished …

I struggled through the day, formulating platitudes to disgruntled customers and seeking advice on two particularly thorny problems from our legal people. I tried not to snap at the school-leaver who dropped a tray of coffee in the corridor outside, jangling my nerves. Even the physical exertion of an aerobics class after work did nothing to relieve my mood.

I slammed into the flat that night, tired and sweaty. The first thing I would do was throw out those daffodils. I marched across the room and grabbed the vase. But Flora was right: they were already beginning to open, their bright gold centres offering themselves up. So vulnerable they seemed; so fragile. I replaced the vase. For heaven’s sake, they were only flowers.

The phone shrilled. Skidding my sports holdall out of the way, I grabbed it; then wished I’d waited long enough to prepare myself.

‘Hello, dear. Is that you?’

‘Hello, Mother. How are you? Sorry I didn’t ring last night.’

As always, she was understanding. She expected I’d been late getting back. Had I had a good weekend?

‘Yes, fine. Gorgeous weather as well.’ Then hastily, as I sank down into a chair, forcing myself to relax: ‘How were Leah and Harold?’

My enquiry was genuine enough. I was fond of my mother’s sister and her husband; and knowing she was occupied entertaining them over the weekend had somehow made me feel less guilty about my own activities.

She gave me a quick run-down on Uncle Harold’s hernia operation; and amused me by lowering her voice – as though even now Mrs Potter next door might be skulking in the flower-bed, ear pressed to the curtained window pane – to confide that they were somewhat concerned about my cousin Elspeth. ‘Taken up with a very questionable type, by all accounts.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is that you’re so sensible.’

No, I thought. I certainly didn’t give her any worries over men. Most of those I came across these days were firmly attached elsewhere, as often as not to my girlfriends.

‘What about your weekend?’ she was asking as I banished a sudden image of Andrew.

‘Oh, lovely,’ I heard myself respond. ‘Paula’s totally immersed in nappies … yes, twins, didn’t I tell you? And James …’ I garnished the tale with up-to-date information gleaned from a recent telephone conversation with my ex-university classmate. The words slipped smoothly from my tongue.

Later, lying full length in the bath, I wondered, guiltily, at the ease of the deception. But then, Mother had never had any cause to doubt my loyalty. Nor was she by nature suspicious. I wondered how long it had been before she became aware of Father’s infidelity. Now, the thought struck me, not only was I the one deceiving her – but over the very same person.

Flora. I wanted to put her out of my mind, but her image confronted me implacably. What on earth could my father have seen in her? ‘Heart of gold,’ Andrew had said. Even at her mildest, I’d seen no sign of it. On the contrary, she must have taken some sort of sadistic pleasure in stirring me first to anger and then to tears.

I lunged for the hot tap and turned it on full pressure. The water scalded my toes and I scooped it round to merge with the cooler pool at my back. I added more oil and lay back once again, surrounded by a mist of steam which settled in a film on the tiles. I watched the small rivulets of condensation as they trickled down the mirror-hard surfaces.

Three months later – three months devoted, by dint mainly of immersing myself in work, to putting the past, that is to say anything to do with my father, out of my mind – I wallowed similarly in the ‘tastefully-modernised-en-suite facilities’ of a Georgian country house which some years ago had been converted into a highly priced hotel. It lay, as the blurb had it, ‘betwixt Warminster and Bath’. Which meant it was in the back of beyond. But, given the rates we tightly renegotiated each year, it suited us as a base for day excursions or as an overnight stop on circular tours.

It had been on our books since before I joined the company. When time for another inspection came round, I found myself volunteering. We had our regular team of appraisers of course but, having just been moved – on gratifying and, I complimented myself, well-deserved promotion – to that department, I’d persuaded the head of section, my immediate superior, that some ‘hands-on’ experience would be useful.

‘Why this hotel?’ I taunted myself, flicking foam across my stomach and watching the tendrils of froth settle over my navel. I brushed them aside to reveal again the curving indentation. Above and below it, the outline of my bikini was still faintly discernible. I considered whether, this year, I might dare to return from some hotspot with only a lower triangle of pallor. Crazy, really, that I’d never as yet summoned up the courage. My flatmates, in the days not so long ago when five of us shared two floors of a house in Maida Vale, returned each summer uniformly brown from their hip-bones upwards. ‘God, you’re so inhibited,’ one of them – Becky, no doubt – had teased me on more than one occasion, rolling her eyes in mock despair. Maybe I was. A bit, anyway. Something to do with being an only child? After all – I looked down now approvingly at my boobs – nothing to be ashamed of there.

I knew I was distracting myself from my own interrogation. Why this hotel? Why here? Why not Carlisle or Aberdeen or Norwich? Reluctantly, I confronted myself.

‘So it’s Flora country. Give or take. So what?’ I sank deeper into the water until my chin rested on its surface, the hair at the nape of my neck instantly saturated. It wasn’t as though I had any intention of going anywhere near her again. Maybe I was just taking the opportunity to prove the point – by ignoring, as I would, the turn-off to Cotterly on my return journey this afternoon. That was it.

Or was it? Just as clearly as I visualised myself driving straight back to London, I saw myself detouring at least as far as the hilltop above the village. Unable to dissolve either image, I hoisted myself impatiently up through the vapour and towelled vigorously.

It was a relief to descend to breakfast and concentrate on the details I needed to note for my report.

I attempted to write it in the garden, settled on a slatted bench with the file on my knee and the sun on my back, out of sight of the wide sweep of the tarmacked entrance. A faint burr of voices and the slam of car doors mingled with intermittent chatter of small birds and the hum of a foraging bee. I did my best to focus on the task in hand, but my mind refused to co-operate. I stared at the tip of a church spire, visible above rhododendrons which formed an effective hedge between me and the long stretches of countryside beyond.

I don’t know why I thought of Mark. Churches? Marriage? A starling flying towards its nest with a full beak? Had I missed the only boat, I wondered. Did I care?

I’d been right to finish the relationship, of course. Mother had been devastated. ‘But he’s so nice. And stockbrokers don’t come two a penny, you know. You’d have been very comfortable.’

‘He never actually asked me to marry him,’ I said.

‘He’d have got round to it … He adored you …’

I couldn’t tell her what had sparked our break-up.

We’d been lazing in bed – his bed – one Sunday morning, debating how to spend the day.

‘Let’s go and visit your parents,’ he’d suggested. ‘Wouldn’t mind doing justice to a traditional Sunday lunch.’

I hesitated. I’d taken him home several times during the fifteen months I’d known him, usually choosing a weekday evening when the Market was quiet and he could get away promptly. We’d reach the Surrey dormitory town at about a quarter to eight, earlier if the A3 traffic was light, and drive back, fortified by my mother’s cooking, in time to fall into bed at around midnight. ‘It suits my parents better,’ I’d explained. ‘They tend to be busy at weekends.’ I’d elaborated this excuse to explain my father’s absence on the one or two occasions I hadn’t been able to avoid our calling in on a Saturday or Sunday.

I stroked the soft hair on Mark’s forearm as he put it round my bare shoulders and pulled me towards him. ‘Or, of course,’ he teased my ear with a flick of his tongue, ‘we could just stay here …’

I snuggled up to him. Then I pulled away.

He reached out for me again. I resisted. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

He grinned up at me.

‘Seriously. It’s about my father,’ I said. ‘And my mother too, I suppose. And –’ I took a breath – ‘someone called Flora.’

I expanded, Mark prompting me with the occasional question; when I’d said as much as there was to say, I drew up my knees and rested my chin on them. ‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ I said.

In the silence, I could hear two people calling to each other in the street below. Suddenly Mark flung back the sheet and leapt out of bed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. I turned my head; and giggled. Standing there stark naked, he looked, I decided, like some indignant Greek god straight out of a Renaissance painting.

I waited for the declamation.

It came. But not in the form I was expecting. ‘Why the hell didn’t your mother let him have a divorce?’

I sagged, staring at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What sort of bitch is it that …’

‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘The hell I have.’

‘But …’ I felt my tongue on my lips. My mouth was dry as ice. I got up, enfolded myself in a dressing gown and tied the belt. In the kitchen I automatically flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘No! Well, yes. Please.’

He followed me and put his arms round my waist as I reached up into the cupboard. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Milk?’

He loosed his hold and fetched the bottle from the fridge.

We carried the coffee through to the sitting room. I took the big easy chair while Mark fetched a towel and wrapped it round himself, sarong-style. He perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning towards me, his broad bare feet planted squarely on the thick-pile rug.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘So that’s not how you see it?’

‘Of course not!’

He raised his arms in mock surrender. ‘All right. All right. Have it your own way.’

‘I should never have told you.’

‘Whyever not! It explains a lot. I mean, why your parents are so … polite with each other.’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your attitudes too, perhaps?’

‘My attitudes! What are you talking about?’

‘Forget it.’

But I wouldn’t. I made him spell it out. Challenged him. Provoked him. I was aware of what I was doing but unable to stop myself. It was a blazing row, with no holds barred on my part. Every last thing I could find to throw at him, real or imaginary, I flung in an oral stream of rage that seemed unstemmable.

On a tide of exultation, I stormed through to the bedroom, threw on my clothes and, gathering up what possessions of mine I could carry, swept out, crashing the door behind me.

Frigid, he’d called me. Distrustful of men. Well – I waved away a fly that had settled on my notepad – I supposed he was right. About being distrustful anyway.

Clare, good old Clare, robust as ever, had scorned the accusation of frigidity when I confided a vetted version to her. ‘That’s what all men say when they can’t have things their own way.’ It made me feel better – a bit. But there was a nasty, logical little corner of my mind whispering that if you don’t trust someone entirely, then maybe you do hold back. And that – I swiped angrily at the fly again – was no doubt what I’d been doing ever since. Attempts to patch things up with Mark hadn’t worked; nor had any relationship since then progressed beyond the first few dates.

And I’d never again risked telling anyone, not even Clare, about Flora. With a sudden start it dawned on me that it wasn’t just men I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust anyone. Not even my mother? I certainly didn’t trust her to understand about my visit to Cotterly. A wave of loneliness engulfed me.

‘Shit!’ I said it aloud, but there was no-one to hear.

I stood up and, grasping my briefcase, marched back into the hotel.

I dreaded the moment when I would be faced with the decision whether to head straight back to London or to turn off and take the valley road.

As I drove, I resorted to a game of counting red cars – why red ones? – as they passed me heading back the way I’d come, like plucking petals from a daisy: I will turn off, I won’t turn off, I will … In the event, it was a grubby blue Volkswagen trundling along at a steady thirty that fate commissioned. Several times I prepared to overtake, only to drop back hastily as a van or lorry appeared over the brow of a hill or round a corner. Distracted by the frustration, I lost track of my counting game, relaxing my consciousness of precisely where I was even. As I flicked my indicator yet again, the junction sign loomed at the roadside. I glanced in my mirror at the line of vehicles holding back behind, anticipating my pulling out. The indicator ticked remorselessly … and obediently I allowed the Astra to follow the grid markings on to the centre of the road. On the passenger side, the queue ground past as, committed, I waited to cross the oncoming traffic.

It was madness, of course. I regretted the impulse as soon as I’d acted upon it. Even now I should have been half a mile further along the main road, heading sensibly back to London. If I’d kept going, I’d have been back by late afternoon, in time to arrange to meet someone later for a Chinese or even to change and wander over to the South Bank to pick up a last-minute ‘return’ for tonight’s show.

Oh, well, instead – the thought restored me – I could call on my mother and drive up to town early the next morning. I should have thought of it anyway. After all, I hadn’t really given her as much time as I might have done these last couple of months. Not that she’d complained. That wasn’t her way. ‘You have your own life to lead,’ she’d said. ‘I can manage.’

She had certainly shown herself wonderfully resilient in the face of widowhood. ‘At least,’ she’d confided with a brave smile on the day of Father’s funeral, ‘black suits me.’

The weekend after my mission to return Flora’s books, when guilt prompted a visit home, she ran out to greet me as I pulled up in the driveway, sheltering us both from the rain under a huge golfing umbrella. She was wearing a black and silver polka dot blous.

‘New?’ I queried as we settled round the fire and Mother poured tea. Flames hissed quietly around the artificial coals.

‘Why, no. I’ve had it quite a while.’ She leaned across, proffering cake. ‘In fact I discovered I had quite a number of suitable bits and pieces tucked away at the back of the wardrobe.’ Almost – I tried to suppress the thought before it could surface – as though she’d been waiting for this day. Not that anyone, least of all me, would blame her if she had. It had hardly been – I searched for the right word – a satisfactory marriage.

Even so, it was not like my mother to let an opportunity for a new outfit pass. Surely she wasn’t needing to economise? Whatever else, Father had always provided amply. An image of Flora loomed up as an appalling possibility struck me. Casually, helping myself to a piece of Battenberg, I asked, ‘Has Father’s will been sorted out yet?’

Her answer was reassuring. It would all take time, but according to the solicitor, ‘such a nice young man … taken over from old Mr Robinson who retired last year…’, everything was very straightforward. ‘He’s left everything to me, of course.’

I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Apart from some small bequest to – what was it now? – some wildfowl trust, I believe. Wildfowl, I ask you!’ She picked up the teapot, nodded towards it and looked questioningly at me.

‘Oh. Yes please.’ I passed my cup and saucer.

‘Eventually it will all come to you of course …’ Mother transferred her attention to the milk jug. Then she looked up brightly. ‘If you need anything at the moment …?’

‘No, no. I’m fine.’

The telephone rang – someone checking the Meals-on-Wheels rota, it became apparent. Mother could oblige on Tuesday, but Wednesday was her library run, and Friday … She certainly kept herself occupied, I reflected. What with her good works and her keep-fit classes and her keen membership of the local fuchsia society. I’d asked her once whether she’d ever considered taking a part-time job; like so many other mothers, I’d suggested. She’d stared at me in bewilderment. ‘But how would I ever find the time? And in any case there’s no need.’ There wasn’t, of course. Feminist ideas, I reflected, hadn’t percolated through to Mother – not as far as she personally was concerned anyway.

She was still chatting. I leaned back, idly surveying the room. The furniture was arranged as it had always been, each chair and table nailed by habit to its decreed position. The usual pile of magazines sat to attention on the shelf beneath the occasional table, and my parents’ wedding photograph, set at its precise angle, continued to grace the top of the bureau. It was all comfortingly familiar and reliable. In contrast, the gap where my father’s pipe-rack had always stood seemed, as soon as I identified it, as substantial as the physical object itself.

‘You’ve made a start on sorting Father’s things, then?’ I observed when my mother eventually replaced the receiver.

‘I’ve done more than that. I’ve been through the entire house. Easier done straightaway. It’s all in the garage waiting to go down to the charity shop or be collected for the Scouts’ jumble sale.’

I nodded. ‘Well done.’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘I can’t imagine there’s anything you’d want? I told Harold to take anything he could use …’

‘Quite right.’

I took my bag upstairs and dumped it on the bed. The bedspread was the one I’d so painstakingly crocheted with oddments of wool while I was still at junior school. I’d resisted regular suggestions by my mother that it was about time to throw it out. The colours had faded and in places the wool had worn thin, springing into holes. Gingerly I fingered them. They could be darned – if I was prepared to take time and trouble.

‘I think,’ I said to my mother before I left on the Sunday, ‘I’ll take that old bedspread back with me. If that’s OK with you?’

‘I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’ She laughed. ‘You are funny. Is there anything else you want?’

I lied. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ For some reason I didn’t feel inclined to own to having already stashed three fishing rods and a red tin box in the boot of the car.

They were still there, wedged against the slope of the back seat; offering, in some way, an excuse for the route I was now taking. All I needed – I grinned wryly – was a pair of green wellies and a Barbour. I indulged the entertaining image of myself so dressed; standing by the open boot, rods in hand – smiling for a cameraman from one of the up-market glossies. I laughed aloud. My mother would love that. Her daughter: ‘… relaxing at the weekend on Lord Whatsit’s estate,’ she’d read out delightedly from the blurb alongside.

‘And you could have had it all,’ I mentally parodied her, ‘if you’d married Mark.’ Yes, well, I didn’t.

There was a sweep of bare earth to the side of the road where it curved to approach a bridge. I pulled on to it and wound down the window. The silence flowed in, cocooning me more effectively than pressed metal and reinforced glass ever could. Two children, glancing sideways in momentary curiosity, rattled past on bicycles. They paused on the hump of the bridge and, standing astride their crossbars, peered over its low parapet. Their voices piped towards me, then wafted away into the stillness. When I glanced again, they were weaving their way up the hill beyond. And were gone. The occasional car swooped or, according to its driver’s temperament, drawled past – like flies across the pages of a book. I lit a cigarette and leaned back. There was no hurry.

No hurry for what exactly? What was I planning; what did I expect to happen? It was as though the valley were a stage and I a member of the audience – the sole member of the audience – waiting for the curtain to rise. Had I come to observe, or – as at the pantomime so many years ago – to take part?

I jerked round in my seat, for a split second experiencing the almost physical presence of my father beside me – his smiling warmth, his bulk. The vision melted and I shivered, turning back and trying to ignore the sense of Mother behind me frowning disapproval.

Abruptly I switched on the ignition and, pausing only to grind out my cigarette, pulled the wheel sharply over as the car moved forward. I was going home; the time for fantasy was long gone.

The screech of brakes as I nosed at right angles on to the road was real enough though. I slammed on my own and watched helplessly as the other car veered towards the hedge opposite and buried its bonnet in the branches ten yards or so further along.

Somehow it didn’t surprise me at all that it was a familiar figure who clambered out across the passenger seat of the Volvo. Father, I reflected later, could be said to have had his way this time too. There was no opting out of this scene.

Still clutching the wheel, engine running, I watched as Andrew peered across the bonnet of his car at the offside wing. I wondered, guiltily, how much damage had been done.

He shrugged, then turned and walked unhurriedly towards me. ‘Could be worse,’ he announced. He bent to peer in. ‘Good God, it’s you.’ His eyebrows lifted, and he laughed. ‘You’re an absolute menace with this thing, aren’t you?’ He patted the roof just above my head.

I shifted in my seat. ‘I’m terribly sorry …’

The grin was still there. ‘Don’t worry. I doubt there’s anything a bit of touch-up can’t put right. In any case, I was probably driving too fast.’

‘Even so …’ I reached for my bag, intent on producing insurance documents.

He cut across. ‘Been to see Flora, have you?’

‘No.’ I kept my tone carefully neutral. I produced my wallet, opened it and took out the certificate. ‘You’ll want to make a note of this.’

‘I doubt it. Here, let me get the thing off the road-’ he straightened up – ‘and then we can consider.’

He bounded across to his car, climbed in and reversed. Branches sprang back into place; uprooted strands of grass clung to his front wheels. He steered the car efficiently on to the rough beside the Astra and crunched up the handbrake.

I got out and went to meet him. Together we surveyed scratches to the paintwork and an ugly three-inch-long dent just behind the headlight. I ran my hand over it. ‘Soon knock that out,’ said Andrew.

‘Are you sure?’ I looked at him uncertainly. He stood there, as relaxed in a suit by the side of the road as in a pullover lounging in Flora’s kitchen.

‘It’s honestly not worth making a thing about. Can we drop it?’

I gave in – gracefully, I hoped. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I owe you.’

‘Good. Then come back and have a cup of tea.’ He waved his arm towards a boxful of files on the back seat of the car. ‘Help me put off the evil moment when I have to start wading through all those.’

CHAPTER 5

‘My curiosity,’ said Andrew, leaning back and crossing his legs, ‘is getting the better of me. If you didn’t come to see Flora …?’

We were sitting in his garden, the sun throwing a patchwork of light through the branches of a horse-chestnut on to our afternoon-tea scene. It was all very Rupert Brooke somehow – fine china set out on a silver tray, garden trestle and chairs casually occupying an oasis of close-mown grass bounded by flower-beds and an orchard.

I’d had time, as I followed the Volvo along the route I’d taken in February, to prepare myself for the inevitable question. By the time we reached the T-junction, turning right rather than left this time, I’d decided to be honest. More or less.

I explained my visit to the hotel; and the start of my drive back to London. ‘I suddenly saw the sign,’ I said. ‘It was just one of those spur-of-the-moment things.’

‘But you didn’t go to Wood Edge?’

‘No. Where you “found” me –’ I grimaced at the euphemism – ‘was as far as I’d gone. I was turning to go back.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged and reached towards the table. ‘May I help myself to a biscuit?’

‘Sorry.’ He leaned forward and passed the plate. I selected a Bourbon. Andrew picked out one with a dollop of jam at its centre. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, pausing to swallow, ‘you probably wouldn’t have found her at home anyway. I’ve an idea this is her week for going to see Donald.’

‘Donald?’

He threw his last piece of biscuit to a blackbird that had been eyeing him hopefully, and watched as it scooped the titbit up and flew off. Then he glanced across at me. ‘Her brother.’

‘Oh.’

In the silence that followed I smoothed my skirt and tried not to consider that I could, and should, have been halfway back to London by now. Andrew, sitting sideways on to me, appeared totally at ease. He’d taken off his jacket and tie as soon as we arrived. One arm was flung over the back of the garden chair; with the other hand he balanced his cup and saucer on his thigh.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, bringing myself back to the moment, ‘that I had any idea of calling on her anyway. I think I might have gone up to the meadow. The one above the village. You know, the one at the end of the track.’

‘Where I nearly ran you down.’

I smiled. ‘Hardly. But yes, that one.’

Andrew put his cup down and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He passed me one. I held the end to the flame as he flicked the lighter. Settling back, I watched the fronds of smoke rise and waft gently towards the house.

It had, I remembered Flora saying, been built as a dower house. Not that long ago, maybe seventy years or so by the look of it; but long enough for the bricks to have mellowed to a deep golden grey, to unstripped parts of which ivy clung; like old memories, I thought. Inside, as Andrew had proudly shown me when we arrived, the place had been totally redecorated and the kitchen gutted and fitted with modern units. ‘Ginny says,’ Andrew had laughed, ‘that if she’s to be deprived of a big kitchen, at least she’ll have an efficient one.’

I remembered Flora’s kitchen. And Andrew in it.

‘Did Flora give you the painting?’ His voice, against the stillness of the summer air, startled me.

I swivelled my attention back. We both knew which one he meant. I pictured it, still propped at the back of the hall cupboard; thrust there in discomfort that first evening back at the flat. ‘Yes, she did.’

‘I thought she might.’

I brushed a leaf from my skirt and squinted up at the sky. ‘So Flora has a brother?’ I said eventually.

Andrew accepted the change of subject smoothly. ‘She doesn’t talk about him much,’ he said.

I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows politely.

‘Visits him every month, though. He’s in some sort of a home in Sussex.’

‘Really’

‘Caught by a sniper in Malaya. Brain damage. That’s about all I know.’

‘And he’s been like that for … what … forty years?’

‘Coming up for. He was there towards the end of it all, I think.’ Andrew took a final pull on his cigarette. ‘Almost died twelve or so years ago. Pity he didn’t, poor fellow.’ He leaned sideways and pressed the butt into the flower-bed, sweeping the earth over it. Sitting up again, he looked across at me. ‘That was how Flora and your father met, of course.’

I stared. ‘Go on.’

‘You don’t know this?’

‘I don’t really know anything.’

I flinched slightly under his gaze as he breathed in and paused.

‘They phoned through to the Horse and Dragon. Typical Flora. Wouldn’t have a telephone then – and still won’t. Just one of her quirks,’ he explained in response to my raised eyebrow. ‘Making some sort of statement about her space, I guess. Anyway –’ he returned to his tale – ‘your father happened to be downing a half of Guinness at the time, grasped the situation and, having driven round to Wood Edge with the message, offered to drive her over.’

‘All the way to Sussex!’ I shot upright.

Andrew surveyed me calmly. ‘I wasn’t there so I can’t recount the tale blow by blow. But yes, he certainly – so I understand – ended up taking her the whole way.’

‘And, I suppose, held her hand through it all.’

‘He was that sort of man.’

I subsided. ‘But that,’ I said after a moment or two, ‘doesn’t excuse his … getting involved with her.’

‘No …’ Andrew spoke slowly. ‘I don’t imagine it does.’ He reached up and took a considering swipe at a trailing branch. Changing patterns of sunlight waved across his arm and face. ‘I hadn’t realised how angry you were with him,’ he said.

‘Are you surprised?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t know. I take people at face value. If they’re pleasant to me, I’m pleasant back.’

‘And if they’re not?’ I made the effort to calm down.

He grinned. ‘I walk away.’

‘Does that apply to your clients?’

He considered. ‘No. But that’s different. I’m talking socially. Bit of an emotional coward, I expect that makes me.’ He eased forward and cupped the teapot in both hands. ‘Stone cold. Is it too early for a drink, do you think?’

‘I won’t, thanks.’ Suddenly restless, I rose to my feet. ‘I know what I should like to do.’

‘Go up to the meadow?’ Andrew leaned back and regarded me lazily. ‘Shall I come with you?’

I wandered across to the flower-bed, ostensibly inspecting a clump of marigolds. I’d rather he didn’t. One of the heads came off in my hand as I stroked it. Guiltily I leaned down and placed the circle of orange petals carefully on the earth. ‘Sorry,’ I said. The apology dissipated among the scents rising from the border. I turned. ‘What about your paperwork?’

He waved it away.

Squeezed into a pair of the older boy’s rubber boots – Ginny’s flatties had turned out to be even smaller – I clumped after him up a narrow path behind the house.

‘Watch the nettles,’ he called, too late, as I sucked my wrist. At the top he waited, holding out a hand to steady me over the stile. We skirted the upper part of a crop field. ‘Oats,’ he announced over his shoulder.

I feigned interest. But as we approached the ridge, I felt my spirits lifting. Up here the as-yet-green heads swayed delicately and a light gust lifted my hair almost imperceptibly from my scalp. As I straightened up from a stumble across a crumbling clod of grey-brown earth I instinctively halted, raising my face to the sun and breathing in – and in some more, until my rib cage felt it would burst.

‘Are you all right?’ Andrew was silhouetted twenty yards further on, staring back at me.

I let the air go. ‘Fine.’ I hurried to catch up. ‘You forget …’

‘Forget what?’

We’d reached the gate. Ahead a broad swathe through trees led to the road.

‘Now I recognise where we are,’ I said.

The hardness of the tarmac under my feet, as we strode left along it, restored a sense of reality. I clung on to it as we turned off along the track I’d walked before. The primroses were long over, their leaves, together with last year’s mulch, buried under a tangle of fresh greenery. Further into the wood, in the shade of branches locked overhead, bluebells sheltered from the sky, radiating their own deep indigo.

‘Forget what?’ Andrew and I had been walking side by side in companionable silence.

I blinked. ‘Oh … I don’t know. Everything I suppose.’

I was aware of his glancing at me. Then, as though having considered, he said, ‘I love this part of England.’

‘Have you always lived here?’

‘Basically, yes. Did a bit of travelling and was at law school in London. Then articles there. Didn’t need my arm twisting to leave it, though. I just don’t seem to be the ambitious type.’ Again he turned his head to look at me. ‘Are you?’

I considered. ‘Well, yes … Reasonably so, anyway.’

We strolled on. My foot scuffed the ground sending a flurry of dust and small stones billowing ahead of us. A sudden commotion erupted in the undergrowth and a squirrel leapt towards a tree trunk and up it, bounding away through the branches.

We reached the end of the track. The gate, now, was shut. I leaned up against it, staring into the meadow.

‘It’s OK. Only horses. No bulls.’

‘What makes you think I’d be worried?’

Andrew laughed, steering me through and across to the base of a large oak standing on its own. I perched myself on a root, facing away from the rooftops of Cotterly. Andrew sank to the ground beside me.

I slid my legs out of the borrowed boots and wriggled my toes, relishing the coolness around my ankles. Picking nodules of dried-out earth from around the base of the tree, I crumbled them between my fingers. Two horses, one a deep brown, the other a mottled grey, cropped peacefully in a lower corner of the field. Every now and again they swished their tails at flies. At one point, the grey abruptly cantered forward a few paces, then stopped and dropped his head again to continue grazing. It was as though the moment of activity had never been.

I broke the silence. ‘Do you ride?’

‘Not any more.’ The answer rose lazily. ‘We had ponies as children. Mine was a skewbald. Stubborn as hell except when she was pointing for home.’ He laughed, and rose on one elbow. ‘Do you?’

‘Me? No. Unless you count donkeys on the beach.’ I remembered the occasions – two of them; Father hoisting me up …

‘I suppose we were pretty spoiled. Lots of freedom. We used to go off all day with a packet of sandwiches, build dens in the wood, fish a bit …’

‘My father fished.’

‘Not that sort of fishing. The trout stretches are all heavily controlled. Apart from anything else our pocket money wouldn’t have stretched to the fees. No, worms on bent pins, that sort of thing. Kept the cat supplied with minnows – and the occasional roach. I sometimes wonder about all those kids trudging along pavements …’

‘I was one of those kids “trudging the pavements”, as you put it.’

‘So is my sympathy wasted?’

I had to laugh. ‘Not entirely. But it wasn’t as dreary as you make it sound.’

I didn’t feel inclined to elaborate. Andrew lay back and closed his eyes. I hugged my knees and stared over the hedges towards the horizon. This was where Father had painted me, or rather his image of me. Sitting like this. But a little further over. I estimated the spot, then rose and padded across to it, the grass coarse against the soles of my feet. I squatted down, surveying the scene.

My nose twitched at the sickly-sweet odour of horse dung, a large dollop of which, disturbed by buzzing flies, steamed gently close by. The smell mingled with the scent of baked earth and grass, fine dust from which hovered in the air, tickling the back of my throat. A plane, jetting towards London, scored the sky, its slipstream flaking out into a cotton-wool trail. I could just make out the tiny silver shape at the head, winking the sun’s reflection. In less than half an hour its passengers would be disembarking at Heathrow; real people again with lives to lead, no longer cocooned in a sliver of metal suspended in mid-air.

I straightened up and strode back towards Andrew. ‘I really should be making a move,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry.’ He bounded to his feet. ‘I’ve kept you too long.’

‘It’s only that I’m planning to stop off overnight at my mother’s –’ I looked up from pulling on a boot – ‘and it’s a good hour and a half’s drive.’

‘Of course.’ He steadied me as I pushed my foot into the second one.

‘Pity you haven’t seen Flora,’ he said as we wandered back.

‘Why?’

‘Because you ought to talk to her, get to know her.’

‘How so?’

‘You tell me.’ He turned and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re kidding yourself, you know, if you pretend you don’t want to.’

I released myself and walked on quickly.

When he caught up, I said, ‘Will Ginny be back?’

‘Possibly. And the boys. Why?’

‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘She’d like to meet you.’ I felt him looking at me. ‘You’re changing the subject.’

I didn’t answer.

‘Oh, well,’ he said eventually, ‘it’s your life, I suppose.’

We’d reached the road. Ahead of us it dipped towards the village. As we turned off it to retrace our steps across the field and down the path to the house, I said, ‘I can’t see it would do any good to speak to her. It’s all in the past now.’

I marched on. ‘In any case,’ I said, as we descended to the garden, ‘Flora wouldn’t want to see me.’

‘You don’t think so?’

The house was empty. I retrieved my shoes and made towards the car. The Volvo stood next to it, the scrape disconcertingly visible.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, grimacing towards the damage. Then, unnecessarily formally, ‘You’ve been very kind, and I’ve enjoyed my afternoon.’

He held the car door open. ‘See you again perhaps.’

The revving of the engine drowned my muttered, ‘I doubt it.’

I was angry. I knew I was angry, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I drove badly, narrowly missing a grey Metro as I swooped round the corner and changed gear for the climb away from the source of whatever it was that was bugging me. Its driver was a fair-haired woman. Two smaller heads bobbed in the back. I guessed it was probably Ginny. If so, I was relieved to have left; I was in no mood for polite conversation with a stranger.

Would Andrew tell Flora of my visit? What did it matter? My stupidity in returning here at all was embarrassing anyway.

I didn’t stop at my mother’s. It was too late, I told myself lamely, knowing the real reason was that I wanted to be alone. Safely back in Fulham, I switched on the hi-fi as I started to fling the contents out of my suitcase. A recording of popular arias was, for some reason, already in the machine. As soon as the baritone came in, I lunged for the off-button. I threw myself down on the sofa and pulled the crocheted rug, still awaiting attention, up over me. Forty minutes later, the burning smell of a forgotten pizza drifted through from the kitchen.

I was only just beginning to feel more relaxed when, halfway through the following week, the postcard arrived. The handwriting was large and sprawling. I turned it over. The brief message filled the space. ‘I’ll be at home next weekend if you want to come. F.’ I didn’t really need to check the postmark, but I did and it left me in no doubt. How did she have my address? But then she clearly knew a great deal more about me than I her.

No, I didn’t want to go, damn her. Whatever gave her the idea I’d want to have anything more to do with her? In any case, I’d already arranged to spend the whole of the bank holiday with Mother.

I’d been neglecting her shamefully, I’d reminded myself again early on Monday when the need to replace laddered tights had me nipping into Selfridges, one of her favourite London shopping haunts. I’d said as much when, fortified by the normality of a frenetic day at the office, I rang her that evening.

‘It has been a while,’ she acknowledged. ‘But you mustn’t worry about me.’

‘But I do.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to feel you have to come unless you want to.’

‘Of course I want to. It’s just that we’re so busy at work at this time of year and I’m utterly exhausted by the time I get home.’

‘Then you need a break.’ She promised me roast pork with crackling, and a lazy time in the garden.

Mother’s idea of relaxing outdoors usually involved back-breaking weeding, but I said, ‘Lovely. See you on Friday, then.’ I sketched out plans in my mind. We would go into the town together on Saturday morning as we always used to – I might even pick up a bargain in one of those little side-street boutiques – and in the afternoon drive over together to Windsor or Henley. Mother would enjoy that.

Poor old Mum. She’d had it tough. She needed my support; deserved it. After all, who was it who, virtually single-handed, cared for me through my growing-up years? I was looking forward to doing what I could to cheer her up. Over a cup of coffee, I glared again at the postcard and thrust it behind the toaster.

And there it would no doubt have curled and yellowed until eventually I threw it out if Mother hadn’t opted to postpone our arrangements.

But she did. At mid-morning on the Friday. When I’d already watered the plants, packed a bag, and brought the car into central London ready for a quick getaway at the end of the day.

Aunt Leah, she apologised down the wire in that slightly off-key voice I recognised as meaning she had already made up her mind, was begging her to accompany her on that coach trip to Wales she was so looking forward to. ‘Harold was going with her,’ she continued as though, despite having made the booking for them, I didn’t know, ‘but he’s decided now – now, I ask you – that his tomatoes are at a delicate stage and he can’t leave them. She’ll be so disappointed if she has to cancel …’

At any other time, I’d have grinned to myself; Uncle Harold had built up a lifetime’s subtle resistance to being organised. With wry amusement, I’d have imagined him in his greenhouse conspiring with his plants to produce the necessary excuse.

Today, exasperated, I flung my arm out in a gesture of frustration. A plastic container rattled to the floor, scattering paper clips. ‘Damn,’ I said.

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Is that upsetting your plans?’

Clearly it was upsetting my plans. ‘No, of course not. I just knocked something off my desk.’ I bent to retrieve the half-dozen clips that had landed within reach. ‘That’s fine. Have a good time.’ I tried to sound cheerful.

Alone in the flat that evening, ensconced with an Indian take-away and a bottle of wine picked up on my way home, I attempted, without much success, to still the voice of self-pity. The room, despite my having flung open all the windows, was hot and airless. The sound of children’s voices, and of a mother calling them in to bed, hung on the humid air like a long drawn out echo. Everyone I knew had taken the opportunity to get out of London for the holiday. Somewhere on the M4 a coach – one of ours, just to rub salt into the wound – was heading towards the Severn bridge. I felt thoroughly abandoned.

I refilled my glass. The bottle, I noted, was already more than half empty. Looking into it, as I held it up to pour again, I could see the inside of the label. Where the wine level cut it, the image shifted sideways. Refraction of light, I murmured. For a moment I was back in the science lab at school. All those bunsen burners and rows of chemicals in glass jars with enormous stoppers. And the smell – musty, yet sharp and sickly at the same time.

I’d never been very good at science. But I did remember about refraction of light. Perhaps because my father, poring over that piece of homework with me, had cited fishing to illustrate its application.

‘Maybe you’d like to come with me sometime?’ he’d suggested.

But my mother, looking up from her embroidery, had shaken her head. ‘Don’t be silly.’ Then, to me, ‘You wouldn’t want to, darling, would you?’

I stared into the bottle again, twisting and turning it to first maximise and then eliminate the distortion. ‘Interesting,’ I announced a shade over-solemnly.

I woke next morning with a dull head, aware of having slept restlessly. I heaved the duvet, three quarters of which had ended up on the floor, back on to the bed and went in search of orange juice. I was out of it. I plugged in the kettle, reached for the coffee jar, then changed my mind and tore the cellophane off a box of teabags. The windows were still open from the night before. The day promised to be another hot one, but for now it was cooler and I shivered. Crossing to the kitchen window to close it, I saw a woman opposite shaking a tablecloth into the air above her half of the two small squares of garden that divided us. I smiled, but she turned back inside without acknowledging me.

I slopped water on to a teabag and thrust a slice of bread into the toaster. I pulled out the card from behind it. ‘Well, why not?’ I said.

CHAPTER 6

The temperature rose steadily as I drove, the early summer heatwave showing no signs of breaking. The heat pressed in through the wound-down windows whenever I was forced to slow.

The twists and turns of the last few miles were now sufficiently familiar to allow me to anticipate the road ahead. The feeling of confidence this gave me began to wane as I drove through the village, up the lane, and turned in through the gates of Wood Edge. I parked beside the yellow Citroën. The handbrake squealed as I pulled it on.

I eased myself out of the car, my crêpe shirt peeling away from the back of the seat and clamping itself in damp creases across my spine. I brushed back the wisps of hair sticking to my forehead.

‘You look as though the first thing you need is a shower.’ Flora had materialised behind me as I burrowed into the car to retrieve bits and pieces from the passenger seat.

I emerged and held out a bunch of irises. They matched the blues and yellows in her dress, which hung low necked and loose from comfortable shoulders. ‘Rather like bringing coals to Newcastle,’ I apologised, looking round at the garden about to burst into unordered bloom, ‘but I didn’t think chocolates would survive.’

She led the way into the house and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. ‘The bed’s made up. You remember where the bathroom is.’

The shower was a hand-held one in the cast-iron bath. I pulled the curtains round and doused myself. For a few minutes, everything but the blissful relief of tepid water on parched skin was drowned out. I towelled my hair, brushed it back loosely and, dressed in fresh cotton, slowly descended to the kitchen.

Flora had meanwhile prepared a tray – a pile of salad sandwiches and a large earthenware jug of juice in which segments of apple and orange floated.

I followed her outside and round to the back of the house. She placed the tray on the ground under the apple tree and I helped set up deck chairs in its shade.

‘I’m not at all sure why I’ve come,’ I said, having drained one glass of grape and pineapple and accepted another.

Flora acknowledged my statement with no more than the merest movement of her head. She leaned back, seeming in no hurry to press me to talk. In an odd way I found it comfortable sitting here with her, lunching companionably. Apart from the distant whirr of a tractor, there was no sound other than the discreet ones of our eating. But it was a deceptive silence. As my ears accustomed themselves to the quiet, I began to be aware of a background murmur: a flutter of wings; the protest of drying-out timbers as a bird landed on the shed roof; the sigh of grass under its feet as it hopped down, searching spy-eyed for insects; the click of its beak on the hardened soil. Bees, busy about their pollinating duties, strummed a steady harmony.

I put my plate down on the ground beside me. ‘That was delicious,’ I said. ‘Was the lettuce from the garden?’

She nodded.

She was watching my face and, with nothing to occupy me, uncertainty returned. ‘I thought it must be.’ I laughed awkwardly. ‘Lot more taste than those limp things one gets in London.’

I stared into the branches overhead. ‘Why did you invite me?’ I wondered what I was hoping she’d say – and what I was afraid she might say.

‘Andrew told me you’d been down. He got the impression you felt you wouldn’t be welcome. I thought you might appreciate reassurance.’

I lowered my gaze and tried to read her expression. It told me no more than the words themselves. ‘I think you’ve just put the ball back into my court,’ I complained.

‘Not really.’ Flora regarded me without rancour. ‘It’s always been there, hasn’t it?’

‘In my court?’

‘In the sense that it was up to you. You would have been more than welcome here at any time.’

I looked at her. Did she mean it?

‘It was hardly that simple …’ I said.

‘Your father and I both realised that.’ Flora picked up the jug, checked my glass, then refilled her own and sat back.

There was an extraordinary stillness about her. So unlike my mother who, even when she sat down, had to keep her hands busy. I wondered where she was now. Probably scouring some tourist attraction, determined not to miss any small corner on the itinerary. Just as she did with her duster; there was no place for cobwebs in her house. Everything clean and orderly.

Flora had been a particularly untidy item.

‘Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have come.’ I remembered my father’s one hesitant suggestion and knew it was true.

Flora’s hands cupped her glass. Her fingers were round and softly lined. An emerald gleamed on her right hand, its gold band nestling into the supple skin. ‘So why is it different now?’

I sipped my drink and wondered.

Flora rose to her feet; not particularly elegantly – I was beginning to realise that wasn’t her style. ‘I think I’ll clear these things away.’ She collected up the plates, leaving the jug and glasses.

‘Can I help?’

‘You stay there and relax. You’ve got things to think about.’ She brushed crumbs on to the grass and strolled off towards the house.

I was glad of the time to myself. My mind jumped and twisted; but came up with no satisfactory answers.

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