by Jenny Harper
Lexie laughed.
Patrick took his child, but Keira was having none of it. She wanted her mother and was going to have her mother.
Lexie’s laughter stopped abruptly. ‘I can carry on holding her,’ she said, her voice clear, ‘while we do this thing.’
Molly stepped forward. ‘No,’ she said, ‘let me. I’ll take her out.’
She meant it as a sacrifice, a kind of personal penitence for having missed the christening. She wanted above everything to see her friend married, but godmotherly duties dictated otherwise.
‘Oh will you? Thank you, Molly.’
The child was handed over. Molly turned to walk down the aisle between the chairs so that she could find somewhere quiet outside to entertain Keira, but the moment she had the baby in her arms, there was silence.
She stopped. She looked at Keira. Keira looked solemnly back. A solitary tear sat on her plump cheek, but she squeezed no more out.
All right then, Molly thought, we’ll see, shall we? And she slipped back into her place.
Keira took hold of the gold pendant she was wearing – it was one that Adam had given her on their first wedding anniversary – and started to examine it closely.
Molly looked up. From across the aisle, Adam was staring not at Patrick and Lexie, but straight at her. She could not read the expression in his eyes.
Lexie said, ‘That was miraculous, Molly,’ as she turned down the aisle by the side of her new husband and reclaimed her child. ‘What’s your secret?’
‘I’m a fairy godmother,’ Molly whispered, as much to the child as to Lexie.
Keira gurgled and smiled, and as Lexie cradled her in her arms, she waved a chubby hand.
Molly fell in love.
Of all the emotions she had expected to feel on meeting Adam, shyness was not even on the list she had considered.
‘You’re back,’ he said, unexpectedly offering her his arm as they turned, simultaneously, out of their seats and into the aisle, one from each side.
‘Yes. Divorced, penniless and with no visible means of support.’ She smiled at him. His face was imprinted on her soul and the shyness melted away. ‘But glad to be back.’
‘What happened to the hair?’
‘Oh!’ Molly’s hand shot up to her head. ‘I keep forgetting. Don’t you like it?’
‘I barely recognised you.’ He studied her carefully, his eyes hooded so that she couldn’t read them. ‘It suits you. What prompted it?’
‘I needed a change.’
‘Change is good. Change is brave. Has it changed how you feel about yourself?’
Taken aback by his perceptiveness, she laughed nervously. ‘The photographs will take an hour,’ she said, evading the question, ‘but there’ll be champagne.’
‘We could pass on the bubbles and go for a walk.’
‘I suppose we could.’
He hadn’t mentioned the divorce. Did he even know it had come through?
They strolled round the side of the house, towards her apartment. ‘They’ll come round this way shortly,’ Molly said, ‘to take pictures in the formal garden.’
‘There’s a path towards the river. It winds through the trees over there.’
‘Yes,’ said Molly, who knew it well.
Her shoes were not suited to walking. They were satin and had high, thin heels. Half way across the lawn she took them off and carried them.
‘You all right? We can stop.’
‘No, let’s walk. There’s a sheltered bank down by the river; we can grab a seat for a bit.’
The sun was high in the sky. It was May, and unseasonably warm. As they reached the wood, they heard a babble of voices from the terrace behind them and turned to see what was happening. The wedding party had turned the corner of the house and was approaching the steps at the top of the formal garden.
‘Quick,’ said Adam.
Molly turned towards the path into the wood and ran, though why she was running she had no idea.
A few steps later, she stood on a rough pebble and cried out. ‘Ouch!’
‘Sore?’ Adam smiled in the dappled light, the shadows playing across his face so that she could not quite read his eyes. Before she realised what he was doing, he stooped and lifted her in his arms.
‘What are you – Adam?’ Molly cried, laughing.
‘Where’s this bank then?’
‘Not far. I can walk if you—’
He didn’t slow down, so she shut up. She had no real inclination to protest. She hadn’t been in Adam’s arms for – what? – four years? It felt disturbingly pleasant.
‘Down there,’ she instructed as they emerged from the wood.
He stood at the top of the bank and looked at it. ‘Can you walk? It’s quite steep. I’d hate to drop you.’
Her dress was lapis blue satin, and short. She picked her way down the grass and dropped onto the lush grass, threaded with wildflowers.
Adam slithered down beside her, then sat up and took off his jacket. ‘I didn’t think I’d have to wear a suit again so soon.’
‘I heard you’d turned to farming.’
‘Farm managing, yes.’
‘Has Jean given up?’
‘More or less. Geordie’s death hit her hard. I don’t think she had the heart for it any more.’
Molly picked a handful of daisies and started weaving them together. She said, ‘I got the divorce papers this morning.’
‘Just this morning?’
‘They’d been forwarded from London.’
‘Ah. It was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
She sat up. ‘What I wanted?’
‘You told me off for not getting the divorce through because it affected the bond on the house.’
‘Well, it was too late by then anyway, wasn’t it? So there was no need to—’
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t want to go ahead. You never said—’
Molly crunched the daisies in her hand and tossed them away. ‘I thought you wanted it.’
‘I had the impression it was inevitable.’
‘Oh God.’
She slumped back against the bank and closed her eyes, drained. A cloud crossed the sun and she felt the change of temperature immediately.
‘How did you do that trick with Keira?’ he asked after a long silence.
‘Trick?’
‘Made her go quiet.’
‘Pure luck.’
‘You looked—’
‘I looked what?’
‘So natural with her.’
Molly half opened her eyes and turned her head towards him. ‘Really?’
‘I always thought it was a shame we never started a family. Do you think things might have been different for us if we had?’
‘You thought what?’
‘Well, you said you didn’t want children, and I—’
‘When? When did I say that?’
‘That first holiday we had. When we were students. We were sitting by the pool in that ghastly resort and you said the last thing you wanted was to have children.’
‘We were eighteen, Adam! Anyway, you said the same thing. God, it’s getting chilly.’
‘Here.’ He draped his jacket round her shoulders. ‘Or do you want to go back? Perhaps we should.’
She shook her head. Adam reached his hand up and touched her hair. ‘When did you cut it?’
‘A month or two back.’
‘And? You never answered my question.’
‘Did it change how I feel about myself?’ She forced herself to think about it. ‘It’s true I was trying to persuade myself that a new image was what I needed.’
‘Was it?’
‘No, though it took me some time to work that out.’
He didn’t ask what she did need. Eventually she said, ‘You like it?’
‘I love it.’ He picked a blade of grass and passed it through his fingers, stroking the length of it with a gentle rhythm. ‘I love you. I always have.’
Molly sat up
, her eyes wide, but Adam wasn’t looking at her. He went on, his voice a dull monotone. ‘Did you love him? Tell me it’s none of my business if you like, but—’
She didn’t need to ask who he was talking about.
They were divorced. Separate. Rent asunder. Their relationship had gone through too much ever to resurrect. So why did it feel like an important moment?
‘I thought I did,’ she said carefully, then immediately felt compelled to amend her statement. She could not betray her memories of Jamie. She had called him for help and he had died coming to her. He deserved honesty – and so, now more than ever, did Adam.
‘No, it was more than that. Jamie was a friend at first. He was funny, and great to talk to, easy to be with. I can’t deny he was attractive.’
She saw the slightest tic in a muscle in Adam’s face, but he was expressionless. Honesty. She ploughed on.
‘He offered me all the things that you were not giving me at that time. Attention. Adoration, even. Find me a woman who would not find that irresistible.’
‘So it was my fault that you had an affair with Jamie Gordon?’
‘Yes! Partly!’ She picked half a dozen daisies in quick succession, plucking them furiously out of the ground and tossing them into a forlorn heap at her feet. ‘Oh, dammit, how can I blame you when I was the one who did wrong?’
‘If it was my fault, I couldn’t be sorrier.’
Anger flared. ‘Christ, Adam, why are we having this conversation? Why are we having it now? Couldn’t we have talked when you were so busy you never had time for me? When work was the only thing that seemed to matter to you?’
‘You were always busy too. You worked all the hours. You were driven.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious,’ she said defensively, even though her opinion on ambition had changed. ‘My job always involved antisocial hours, you knew that when you married me. But I never forgot your birthday.’
‘Oh, so that was it? We got divorced because of a late birthday present?’
They were staring at each other furiously. She could see sparks of exasperation in his eyes and thought fleetingly that she liked it better than the lifelessness that had characterised them of late. But her anger collided with his fury and words exploded out of her before she could stop them.
‘It was more than that, Adam, and you know it. We’d almost stopped speaking to each other. We certainly never did anything together any more – any spare time you had you went off out to the hills.’
‘That’s because I hated being cooped up in the office. I hated law. I detested it.’
‘Really?’ The revelation stopped her dead. ‘I never knew that.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘You were so involved in everything. That’s why I was so angry when I found out I was still liable for that debt. You’d been so bloody busy lawyering that you hadn’t even bothered to make sure my interests were protected. I could have lost my career without that money.’
‘I know. That’s why I gave you my—’
He stopped abruptly.
‘What?’ Molly demanded. ‘What did you give me?’
He sighed. ‘I gave you my share of the remaining capital.’
Molly’s jaw dropped open. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You weren’t meant to.’
‘So – you’ve got – how much left?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘That’s why this job at the farm is so good. It’s come at just the right time. I had nowhere to live, no job, and not the slightest wish to carry on working in law anyway.’
‘Oh, Adam.’ Molly pursed her lips. Somewhere inside, the absurdity of it all struck her and amusement erupted into laughter.
‘What? What are you laughing at, Molly?’
‘Don’t you see?’ Tears were streaming down her face. ‘I’ve no hankie, dammit.’
He moved closer to her and hooked a handkerchief out of one of his jacket pockets.
‘Here. What is it?’
‘All that money. Everything we worked for, you and me. It’s all gone. Every penny.’
She had to hold her sides, her ribs were aching.
‘What about your investment?’
‘Barnaby’s keeping it. I might get it back. One day. But I might not. Oh. Oh. Ohhh!’
It was impossible not to join in, her laughter was so infectious.
At last she spluttered to a halt. Her face grew serious.
‘You did that for me?’
‘It was the least I could do.’
‘Oh, Adam. What fools we’ve been.’
She reached out her arms and he pulled her close. After a minute, he tilted her face towards his with one finger and wiped away smudges of mascara with his thumbs. When he kissed her, it was like the very first time.
‘We’ve made such terrible mistakes,’ she whispered when she could catch her breath. ‘Do you think we can ever put them right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Adam said, looking into her eyes and smiling. ‘We could try.’
Six months later
‘She’s home,’ Adam said. ‘I went round to see her today.’
‘I take it you mean Agnes Buchanan,’ Logan said evenly.
‘She’s not good. Her speech is fairly unintelligible and her face is all lopsided. Her right arm is almost useless. She has a carer in twice a day.’ Adam gave a short laugh. ‘She may not be able to say much, but boy, that woman knows how to harbour a grudge.’
Logan took a long drink from the glass of water Adam had poured for him before he said, ‘I know.’
Adam looked at him sharply.
‘Was that what it was all about? A chip on her shoulder?’
Adam had become used to long silences in their conversations. Logan had become ruminative. He accepted nothing on a superficial level; it was as though he had to digest statements, ponder them, weigh his answers. Adam didn’t mind this. In fact, he quite liked it. They weren’t fraught gaps – they had moved beyond those into a different dimension. There was time, in those silences, to reflect on things himself. So now he waited patiently for Logan’s response.
‘No-one,’ Logan said eventually, ‘understood Agnes Buchanan. No-one saw the resentment.’
‘Except you.’
‘Once I’d spotted the false entries in the accounts, it fell into place. She’d been there forty years. She knew more about that place than anyone, your father included. Yet she felt – keenly – that no-one valued her.’
‘It’s probably true.’
‘It wouldn’t have taken much. A few words of praise now and then. A bonus. A bigger-than-inflation pay rise.’
Adam looked around the small room. This was the first flat he had restored at Forgie End Farm, and when Logan was given bail while the case was put together, he had offered him sanctuary.
‘Why?’ Logan had asked him.
‘Why?’ had also been the first question his father had put to him.
Molly had simply kissed him, which had repaid the deed a hundredfold.
He’d taken to visiting Logan Keir in prison. It had started in anger. It had started with him storming into the visiting room not knowing whether he would be able to stop himself from punching the man and beating him to a pulp for the damage he had inflicted.
Logan had sat, impassive, through the long outbursts of accusation and recrimination. Mistaking his stony face for defiance, Adam had at last come to boiling point.
‘Say something, you bastard!’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Say, “I did wrong”. Say, “I was a selfish bloody idiot and I ruined the lives of a lot of people”.’
‘I did wrong. I was a selfish bloody idiot and I ruined the lives of a lot of people.’
‘Are you taking the mickey?’
Still Logan had sat, wordless. It was the nearest Adam came to hitting him – until he saw that Logan’s eyes, staring at him, unwavering, were bright wi
th tears.
Instantly, he felt his own fill, and before he knew it, they were both weeping deep, half smothered, silent sobs that they had to fight to disguise from everyone around. He had left, ten minutes later, without either of them speaking another word – but a tentative bond had been forged between them and they began to move forward.
‘She started, you know, a long time before I upped the stakes.’
‘I know.’
‘Those cash shortfalls. She’d been squirrelling away small amounts for years. I just found a way of getting more. Did she manage to communicate at all?’
‘Oh yes. I gather the police have deemed her fit to stand trial.’
Another silence, then, ‘Poor Agnes.’
‘Do you know,’ Adam said at length, ‘even though those pictures were all purchased with my money – well, the firm’s ... the partners’ – I found it strangely poignant to sit in those bare rooms. She felt it. The way she looked at those empty walls was heartbreaking in its own way.’
‘She won’t cope well with prison. But they’ll probably not send her down. There will be some kind of leniency.’
‘What will you do if they find you guilty?’
‘They won’t have to. I’m going to plead guilty.’
‘Really? A good defence might be able to pick holes in the police case.’
Logan gave a short laugh. ‘You shouldn’t really be advising me like that.’
‘Probably not. Personally, I think you’ve done your time already. What you did has destroyed you too.’
‘Yes.’
Logan finished his water and sat staring at his glass. ‘I’ll serve my sentence for the rest of my life. In my head. I’ve paid a price with Adrienne and the boys that has sucked the blood from my veins and turned me into a zombie. I have no idea if I will ever recover the ground.’
‘Your boys,’ Adam said with surprising gentleness, ‘will always be your boys. They’ll always love you. Your job is to start, when you can, to rebuild their respect.’
‘I know. I just don’t know how.’
‘As for Adrienne—’
Adam stopped. How did he know what Adrienne was going to do? How did any man know what was truly happening in other people’s marriages? Logan and Adrienne were living apart, but he knew they still talked from time to time.