by Fiona Walker
‘It’ll be brilliant,’ Fitz reassured her, disappearing into the larder for peanut butter.
Having Fitz around was the one big plus point this time. He didn’t communicate much – less than Charlie, in fact – and remained a room-cave dweller, almost totally invisible at weekends, but it was lovely to know he was there. He was knuckling down and getting on at the academy, his home time eaten up with study. Petra needed to take inspiration from him.
As soon as she got back from dropping off the girls, she hurried around the shortest of her morning dog walks with Wilf. It took them across a big ploughed field behind the farmhouse as far as the woods that marked the stud’s boundary. The high wind that had been rattling the sashes all night was shaking out conkers from the horse-chestnuts. Trying to dodge them, she jogged along the track beside it, which turned into a hedged tunnel of waving sloes and blackberries, leading down to the old walled orchard with its ancient stone stiles behind the cottages on the Green.
Wilf charged ahead, plunging away through the overgrown brash and quickly disappearing from sight.
It was a familiar tactic, but Petra had his measure. All she had to do was move out of sight and wait. As soon as Wilf realised she wasn’t accounted for, he’d belt straight back to her side. If only it worked as well with husbands, she reflected, as she moved behind one of the bigger bramble bushes and crouched against the dry-stone wall of the orchard, grateful to be out of the wind.
She checked her phone. She always kept it switched off when she wrote, and no longer obsessed about texts from Bay. Since her ‘This has to stop’ warning, he’d sent her just one message: I miss ‘this’, Bx
She missed it too. She missed it desperately.
Helping herself despondently to a handful of fat blackberries, she heard hoof beats and familiar voices. The Bags were out, hammering along the Green, the wind carrying their voices towards her. Petra elected to stay hidden. Gill’s was one of the many calls she’d not yet returned. She had no desire to face the cheerful ‘How’s the book going?’ interrogation while sporting a malcontent’s bad mood, mad hair, unflattering glasses and stress spots. Squatting as low as she could and finding a large thistle jammed against her rear, she realised they were talking about her.
‘...and, let’s face it, Charlie’s a social animal,’ Gill’s voice rang out over the wind, ‘whereas Petra’s a lot more introverted than she looks.’
‘She’s so bubbly,’ Mo protested, with her customary chuckle.
‘She’s changed a lot in the past year or two. When they first moved here, she was always throwing parties and hosting girls’ nights in.’
‘It must be hard when your husband works away all week.’
‘If he comes back at all...’ Bridge put in. ‘“For years, mild-mannered Petra Gunn lived with the secret of the body under the lavender border...”’
‘She should have buried him under the rose bed. Jolly good fertiliser. And it’s a lot harder when they’re under your feet all the time, drying their Lycra cycling shorts on the Aga and editing their GoPro videos at the kitchen table, trust me,’ Gill said darkly. ‘Charlie’s practically moved out of the family home – that’s my idea of heaven.’
‘Ohm of the week!’ announced Bridge. Pronounced ‘Ohm’, like a Buddhist chant, the ‘Off-putting Husband Moment’ was an old Bags favourite. ‘Mine is Aleš lining up his toenail clippings on the bedside table in perfect size order.’
‘Air guitar to Genesis while sitting on the loo of our en suite,’ Gill muttered, ‘door wide open.’
‘Twenty-minute masterclass straight after sex on how to mix the perfect plaster skim,’ sighed Mo.
‘You had sex?’ Gill was shocked.
‘It was his birthday.’
‘I still reckon Petra’s got the worst deal of all of us,’ insisted Bridge’s cheery, sardonic voice, with its curling Belfast vowels, as they clopped ever closer. ‘Yes, Paul’s a prod-rock wimp on two wheels, Aleš has OCD and anger issues, and Barry would rather drain a diesel tank with a drinking straw than show emotion, but none of them’s a sleaze, are they? Charlie’s such a bloody dog.’
Scowling, Petra shifted on the thistle.
‘Petra loves dogs,’ Mo said warmly. ‘She’s got a knack.’
‘She does seem drawn to them.’ Gill’s voice was still as clear as that of a yacht skipper in a high wind. ‘What was it on her Facebook page you read about baying hounds, Bridge? Or was it hounding Bay? The one that got the village tittering. Has that calmed down?’
‘It was nothing, just a snidey comment from Pip Edwards.’
‘That bloody woman. God, this wind’s hell.’
‘You don’t really think Petra’s hubby’s got someone else on the go, do you, Bridge?’ Mo said anxiously.
‘Well, he’s got form, hasn’t he?’
Shocked, Petra dropped lower in her prickly lair, watching a stray plastic bag flying overhead. Hoofs skittered. From the clattering and whoop of alarm, Bridge’s pony was having a seriously spooky moment.
She was appalled to hear them talking about Charlie like that. What did they know about his form? That had been years ago, before they’d left London, when she was pregnant with Ed. Blood curdling with the toxic shock of betrayal, she tried to remember what she’d said to the Bags. Not much. Over a decade later the fault-line still ran through their relationship. She pictured Charlie hurrying towards his train the previous Sunday evening, remembered her own sense of relief at the end of two days in which dissatisfaction hung between them, their most emotional conversation concerning the whereabouts of the kitchen scissors.
The wind picked up with a sudden squall so violent that the trees all groaned and apples pelted down in the orchard around Petra.
‘She’s called Claudia, apparently,’ Bridge said, with authority.
Charlie and... Claudia? Who was she?
‘Over here from the Caribbean,’ she went on. ‘Force to be reckoned with.’
How did Bridge know Charlie was involved with this Claudia woman?
‘Oh, yes, I read all about it in Mum’s Daily Mail,’ said Mo, in a worried voice.
It had made the papers?
‘There’s going to be one hell of a mess when she turns up tonight,’ Gill said darkly. ‘The Met boys have warned northerners to stay inside.’
Claudia was coming to Compton Bagot? And what did she have against northerners to worry the Metropolitan Police? Petra scowled. Had she missed something? She racked her brain for the last time she’d heard a news headline.
‘We’ve got the sandbags out,’ Gill went on. ‘Last time Lord’s Brook flooded it was halfway up the garden. Watch out, Bridge! Plastic bag’s coming back.’
Hurricane Claudia, Petra remembered with relief. They’d been talking about it on Newsround.
On the other side of the wall, the whoa-ing and hoofs skittering on tarmac carried on, Gill yelling, ‘Right rein, right rein!’ and Bridge laughing.
‘You’re doing super!’ Mo encouraged. ‘Wayta go, girl, wayta go!’ An Officer and a Gentleman was her favourite movie, and she never missed an opportunity to raise the cheer.
Just at that moment, Petra missed the Bags’ camaraderie with a heartburn that made her want to stand up. But she mustn’t: she had a seventeenth-century Yorkshireman in need of a sexy makeover waiting at home, and the sight of her appearing would finish off Bridge’s pony totally.
Charlie – who knew her better than any of them – was doing her a favour, she reminded herself. Her husband had seen her through enough deadlines now to know that she needed to be left alone to get a book done, and that she always beat herself up and picked fights for the first few weeks before the addiction kicked in, just as Fitz had said. Writers were monstrous to live with. She’d stop feeling illogically rejected and angry as soon as the story was flowing. The romantic-history junkie would get hooked. She would start to fancy Thomas Fairfax.
The Bags had drawn level with her hiding spot, the horses so close she could smell th
em. She pressed back against the wall.
‘Will they cancel the Goose Walk in this weather?’ Mo asked.
‘We never cancel the Goose Walk,’ Gill said sternly. ‘And bloody Petra is being winkled out of that house for it, whether she likes it or not. It’s not healthy being cooped up like that. She needs fresh air.’
‘There’s certainly going to be plenty of that flying around.’
Petra had no intention of taking part in the village’s Michaelmas tradition.
‘Won’t the goose be scared in this wind?’ Bridge was saying.
‘It’s an old pro. It’s done it before.’
‘Does it get eaten?’
‘Purely ceremonial. The goose is a pet, from Vintner Cottage. We’re serving chicken pie. Those are all in Brian and Chris Hicks’s garage freezer.’
They were still beside Petra’s lair. She could smell the extra strong mint fumes as they were circulated and crunched; Mo’s cob was eating grass immediately on the other side of the wall, bit jangling. Bridge’s pony was still snorting furiously, sensing something hidden there.
To prove her right, Wilf broke from cover at last with a great crackling of twigs, and there was a frantic clattering of hoofs. Panting furiously and wreathed in smiles, he bounded straight for Petra, the wind turning his ears inside out, his wagging tail covered with burrs. He had company. Two short-legged, prick-eared black and tan raiders appeared, barking first at Petra, then up at the riders.
Staying out of sight, Petra shushed them with frantic silent mimes.
Then, as she resigned herself to the mortification of being sprung, Ronnie Percy strode out from behind necklaces of blackberry-beaded bramble, stopping short as she saw Petra crouched, like an SAS commando, finger pressed to her lips.
*
When Carly went to see Spirit and his bachelor-herd friends after dropping Ellis at school, she found his field empty, the gate banging in the wind, hoof-prints tracking across the road and into the field opposite where the old man had driven them up to the yard. She’d seen him do it before, amazed that one diminutive, wizened character could command a dozen flighty young horses so effortlessly.
‘No horsie!’ Sienna mewed, taggie flapping in the wind as Carly spun the buggy in a U-turn and headed back into the village, past the school again, the yummy-mummy four-by-fours all gone now, her elder son sharing carpet time somewhere beyond those tall windows dotted with paper butterflies and alphabet letters.
Defying Carly’s expectations, Ellis loved school. While some of the little Alfies, Phoebes, Georges and Chloës still clung to their mothers’ legs, weeping piteously each morning, Ellis broke free to run inside his classroom, book-bag knocking against the back of his knees. He came home each afternoon happy, exhausted, starving and with shoes like mini Saharas from the sandpit corner. His ’Splorer Stick had been abandoned somewhere in the garden, his Octonauts lunch box the first thing he now looked to grab each morning.
Carly was proud of his fortitude. He was her steadfast, aloof little loner, who didn’t entirely fall into step with the group of grazed-knee bruisers who charged around together at break time in a boys-only mob – his closest friendship so far was with a girl called Jazmin – but he was sleeping better, talking more and seemed to have been accepted. The first birthday party had been clocked up, the slice of cake carried home in a Disney Cars napkin. Carly found it just as hard to relate to the other mothers, away from the hug and dash of drop-off and pick-up. She wasn’t a natural fit. She sensed they looked straight past her as much as she did them, those competitive wives who talked about house, hair and nail extensions. Most were already friends from NCT, toddler groups or social circles, and the undercurrent of one-upmanship left Carly feeling judged. While they boasted of careers and devoted their weekends to taking their kids to swimming lessons, music, karate and football, Carly worked back-to-back shifts at Le Mill and the farm shop, her weekdays spent cleaning with Janine’s team and keeping on Ash’s case to get to college on time.
To Carly’s consternation, Ash’s late-night boozing and insomnia hadn’t stopped when his course had started. If anything he was worse, the opposite of Ellis and his energy-burning embrace of routine. Ash flew as rebelliously close to the wire as possible, pushing his body as far as he could, testing its limits and powers of recovery. It seemed to be the only way he could make the adrenalin still pump.
She’d been doing a lot of reading about animal behaviour in recent weeks, seeking answers to why Pricey behaved as she did, and what made Spirit so different from the rest of the stud’s herd even as a baby. What she’d discovered had given her as much insight into Ash as into dogs and horses.
She’d borrowed a book from the library about retraining dogs. One chapter described the symptoms of working dogs that had undergone intense trauma, abuse or near-death experiences. They could be aggressive, changeable, unco-operative or even devious. They had trouble sleeping, were prone to obsessive repetitive behaviour and some simply shook uncontrollably, often for hours on end. So like Pricey. So like Ash. Their rehabilitation had to be taken slowly and patiently, according to the book. There was no quick fix, just as the sanctuary kept telling her. Cognitive therapy helped, finding positive associations with those things previously linked with extreme, life-threatening anxiety. Pricey’s handlers were taking her out for more walks in open spaces, after dark as well as in daylight, and she was being carefully introduced to more male handlers and other dogs and animals. Carly didn’t know how to help Ash get over what he’d seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was taking himself back into the war zones in his games, finding the camaraderie with his friends, but it didn’t seem to be helping. Last week he’d suffered one of the worst nightmares she could remember, waking screaming beside her, drenched in sweat, but when she’d gently suggested looking into some sort of counselling for ex-servicemen, he’d bitten her head off, demanding to know why she thought he was some sort of wimp who couldn’t handle it.
‘I’m out of that now. I’ll be fine.’ He’d stormed off to take a shower. Afterwards he’d wanted sex. It had always been his pacifier.
Last night, on an equine web page, Carly had read that geldings were passive-aggressive and mares were dominant-aggressive, but that nothing would stand between a stallion and the thing he wanted: he would fight to the death to get it. Ash could lose perspective just as quickly. When he wanted to game, you walked in front of the television at your peril. When he wanted to large it with his mates, he’d climb through a window to get out and join them if he had to. When he wanted sex, he made it hard to say no. It helped that he was so beautifully put together, but this meant that from the early days of their marriage there had been plenty of others circling around him who would put out if she didn’t.
Last night he’d woken her up with his hard-on already gloved up, manoeuvring her into position like a sandbag. It wasn’t the sort of love-making Carly craved, the languorous, sensual connection between husband and wife, lovers and parents stealing an early night. It had been a long time since Ash had had the inclination to give her clitoris more than a quick thumbs-up during sex. She could date it back almost to the day he’d left the army. He’d always been one of the lads, and soldiers weren’t saints, but here in the Comptons there was no code of conduct, no garrison order around them, just a small village containing a gang of Ash’s single and divorced bad-lad friends and a male-dominated family with a bad reputation.
Colts and young stallions run in ‘bachelor packs’ until they are mature enough to break away and take on the herd stallion in a fight for mares, she’d read on the equine website. It said nothing about them returning to that pack years afterwards.
Spirit’s little herd were partying elsewhere today. Pushing the buggy homewards, Carly’s resolve hardened. She was going to make Ash fight for this mare again.
You left for work yet? she texted him.
Going now! Get off my back, gorgeous. x
A positive flipside of being flipped over for sleep
y sex was that he was always chipper the next morning, even if he overslept.
She scrolled through her other messages: Janine on her case, her waitress mate from Le Mill checking lifts and the Son of a Gunn asking advice: Hey, fam. Going into German class AF. Slaflosigkeit over puma out of my league, ikr? B-a-d me.
Carly had no idea what he meant. It was the first time Fitz had made contact since the weird Greek-hero stuff, although he’d waved at her from the bus stop a couple of times, looking hopelessly preppy among all the toughened-up Turner kids who went to the academy. She didn’t bother replying.
He messaged again as she rolled the buggy alongside the Green. Ignore that. Someone hijacked my BB, bastards. Bitte verzeih mir. He’d attached a funny GIF of a guilty-looking dog.
She bit a smile, guessing he was being given a hard time. You shouldn’t be using your phone in class, poshboy. Are any Turners giving you grief? Shout out if you want them sorted.
Reaching the Green, she passed three riders talking to a woman in the orchard, crossing the road as she recognised the little runaway grey horse, which was boggling at the buggy.
‘Horsies!’ Sienna was thrilled.
Nah. We’re good. But if you know someone who can take out my dad...
She snorted with laughter, making the grey horse rattle backwards on the opposite side of the lane.
*
Ronnie wasn’t entirely surprised to find her friendly dog-walking ally hiding from Gill Walcote behind a wall. She could remember the vet’s pushy daughter as a girl, always barging ahead at hunt jumps, singing too loudly in church and roping villagers into sponsored charity hikes to raise money for African orphans, a classic do-gooder who made everyone feel rather bad for disliking her. Ronnie would be tempted to jump out of sight too, but Gill had already spotted her.
‘Good morning, Ronnie!’ She manoeuvred her big bay close to the wall. ‘Trying to beat the storm too, I see. Windy day!’
‘Yes!’
‘Lucky my chap’s hurricane proof.’