Ralph went very still.
“D’you mean me?”
Petra didn’t reply.
“D’you mean,” Ralph said, “that I’m trying to hurt you?”
Petra straightened up, a carton of eggs in her hand.
“Not trying. But it’s happening.”
Ralph said tensely, “How else do you suggest I support you all?”
“There’ll be something—”
“But not something I want to do.”
Petra found a bag of sliced bread under the newspapers on the table.
“D’you want to do this, then?”
“Yes,” Ralph said.
She looked at him. She wore an expression of complete bafflement.
“You want to wear a suit and go to London on a train and work all day in an office and never see daylight in winter?”
“Yes,” Ralph said.
“You want it to be like it was in Singapore?”
Ralph picked up the cafetière and started to pour coffee into a mug.
“Yes,” he said.
“What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been given another chance to do something I’m good at doing.”
“We had money before—”
“But I couldn’t manage myself,” Ralph said. “I thought I could, but I couldn’t. I’m not a manager. I’m good on a team; I’m creative when I don’t have to be in charge. I’ll be a bloody nuisance, but I’ll get results. I’ll get results if I’m free.”
“Free—”
“Yes.”
Petra pulled slices of bread out of the bag. She said, “You’d better be free then.”
“Thank you.” He held up the mug he had just filled. “Coffee?”
Steve Hadley had got to know Aldeburgh quite well. Ever since Petra’s card had arrived—a card on which she’d painted a male lapwing with its spiky crest, and in which she’d enclosed a ten-pound note—he’d spent a lot of his spare time in Aldeburgh, looking out for her. She’d said she had two little boys, and although he saw quite a number of smallish young women with children, not many of them seemed to have only boys. But Steve was in no hurry. He’d got all summer to patrol the coast through Aldeburgh, from the great scallop-shell sculpture to Benjamin Britten, all the way to the southern point of the town, where the tall seafront terraces petered out into the marshy stretches of mingled river and sea. He had Petra’s card in his pocket. She’d sent it to the director of the nature reserve, with the money as a donation, and the director had given the card to Steve, saying as you’re the only Steve she can have meant you’d better have it, nice little painting. It was a nice little painting. Without it, and the trouble she’d plainly taken to do it, Steve doubted he’d have bothered to try and find her. But the painting and the memory of her sleeping in the sand combined to lodge her in his mind in a way that was pleasantly intriguing. So, after work, and on his days off, Steve ambled about Aldeburgh and ate fish and chips sitting on the shingle, and waited.
He finally saw her just as he was about to go home, one afternoon of a day off, and he was standing looking at the primary school, admiring the little bright boat modeled on to the white wall, when she came past, with a buggy containing a big baby and a little boy beside her, dragging a bit on the buggy and emitting that kind of low-grade steady whine that Steve recognized from his brother’s children.
He stepped off the pavement into the road in front of her.
“Hi,” he said.
Petra looked uncomprehendingly, and then her expression cleared. She smiled at him. She was wearing an Indian embroidered tunic over jeans, and sneakers, and her hair was tied over one shoulder in a long ponytail.
“Hi—”
He put his hand out.
“I’m Steve. From Minsmere. Remember?”
She nodded. She said to the little boy, “I went to sleep in the sand and my car keys fell out of my pocket. This man found them.”
Kit paused in his whine. He looked uncertainly at Steve. Steve squatted down in the road in front of him.
“I’ve got nephews your age—”
“I’m three,” Kit said guardedly.
“I bet you are.”
“I’ve got a digger.”
Steve stood up.
“Lucky man.”
Petra said, “Why are you in Aldeburgh?”
He smiled at her.
“Looking for you.”
“Were you?”
He pulled the card with her little painting out of his pocket.
“Been carrying that around for weeks—”
“I don’t want you stalking me,” Petra said.
“No,” he said, “I was just waiting. Hoping a bit. You know.” He looked back at Kit. “What’s your name?”
“Kit.”
“And his?”
“Barney,” Kit said, and then, “He’s always eating.”
Steve laughed.
He said, glancing at Barney, “Looks it.”
Petra was studying him. She said, as if she had suddenly decided something, “We’re going to my allotment.”
Steve nodded. He said hesitantly, “Can I come along?”
“Okay—”
He motioned to Barney’s buggy.
“Shall I push him?”
Petra moved sideways.
“Okay,” she said again, and then, “I’m married.”
“I thought you would be.”
Petra took Kit’s hand.
“Four years—”
“It’s not a problem.”
“A problem?”
Steve began to push Barney towards the footpath to the allotments.
“I mean, I like you anyway. I like you for going to sleep in the sand and painting the lapwing. You’re different.”
“It’s not a help,” Petra said, “being different. Kit’s different, too. Aren’t you, Kit?”
Kit looked across his mother at Steve pushing the buggy. He thought that he couldn’t usually hold her hand because of the buggy, and he liked holding her hand and he liked it that there was nothing in her other hand either. He regarded Steve with approval.
“Yes,” he said to his mother.
“I don’t want to talk about liking,” Petra said to Steve. “I don’t want anything like that. I’m not in a good place right now. I was just going to the allotment because I feel better there, it settles me.”
“Fine by me,” Steve said.
Barney twisted round in his pushchair and noticed that his mother had been replaced by this stranger. He began to roar.
Petra bent sideways. Kit could see where her free hand was going. She said helplessly, “Oh Barn—”
“Come on,” Steve said suddenly. “Tally-ho! Race you!”
He set off at a surprisingly fast run down the path, neatly skimming and swerving the buggy to avoid the bumps. Barney’s roars almost immediately subsided into squeals and then shouts of delight.
“Come on!” Kit cried to Petra. “Come on, come on!”
And he began to run forward, tugging her, and she came stumbling behind him, and he knew she could feel his excitement because she was laughing too—in his charge, and laughing.
Steve was very helpful in the allotment. He mended the bolt on the gate, and dismantled the canes supporting the sweet peas that had died from lack of water, and dug a root or two of early potatoes, and stopped Barney from eating some woodlice, and made Kit a track for his digger with a line of old bricks he found on someone else’s allotment, which they plainly didn’t want, he said, because the whole thing was so overgrown and gone to seed. He didn’t bother Petra with talking, he just took the fork from her to dig the potatoes, and mended the gate with the screwdriver on the Swiss Army knife he had in his pocket, and crouched down wordlessly beside Barney and fished the woodlice out of his mouth without drawing attention to what he was doing. When they left at last, Barney without protest allowed him to strap him into the buggy and steer him out through the gate, and Kit waited until Petra was t
hrough before he slid the mended bolt into place, and took her hand again, and this time her free one held a bunch of sweet williams, which was fine, because they were only flowers.
And when they got to the school, Steve stopped pushing, and said, “Well, I’ll say good-bye now.”
“D’you want a coffee?” Petra said.
He shook his head.
“I’ll be on my way, thanks.”
She held out the flowers. He shook his head again.
“I’m not much of a flower man, me—”
Petra laid the flowers across the handles of the buggy. She said, “Thanks for your help.”
“Thanks for your company.”
Steve looked down at Kit.
“See you, digger man.”
Kit said, “Are you coming to my house?”
“No, mate. I’m not.”
“Yes!” Kit said.
“Tell you what,” Steve said, still looking at Kit and Petra, “you could come to mine, though. You could come to my house.”
“Yes!” Kit shouted.
“There’s enough stones at my house,” Steve said, “to fill a million diggers.”
He glanced at Petra. She was looking at the sweet williams.
“How about it?”
She lifted one sneakered foot and kicked off the brake on the pushchair.
“Okay,” she said.
Rachel sent Ralph the particulars of a house in Ipswich, by e-mail. It was semidetached and unremarkable, but it had three bedrooms, a hundred-foot garden, and was seven minutes from the station. She attached, also, a train timetable of services from Ipswich so Ralph could see how early he might get into the office and how late he might be able to leave, since the journeys either end of the train travel were negligible.
Ralph thought the house looked fine. It had probably been built between the wars, but it had the space, and the location was perfect. Rachel said, in her accompanying e-mail, that she and Anthony could probably find a way to help with any shortfall in buying a house more expensive than the one they were selling. They hadn’t discussed it yet, but she was sure that it wouldn’t be a problem, Anthony could sell some paintings or sign a new contract, Ralph wasn’t to worry. And she’d researched schools and there was a good Church of England primary half a mile away, and two preschools nearby with vacancies for the autumn term. The garden had plenty of space for Petra to grow vegetables. Should she go and view it, on his and Petra’s behalf?
“Do. Thanks,” Ralph replied laconically, and clicked “Send.” Having been so hard, and painful and frustrating, life suddenly seemed to be smoothing out, rolling away in front of him in a manner it hadn’t done for ages. He didn’t actually want to live in a semidetached house in a featureless street near Ipswich station, but that prospect, at the moment, seemed merely dimmed by the brightness of all the other things on offer that were suddenly, wonderfully, making him feel that he was being released into an immense space of brilliant blue air, where he could soar and spin and dive. He thought that, with lungfuls of that liberty and energy and chances for achievement inside him, he could well endure reducing himself to weekends in a mildly unsympathetic place. Anyway, there was a hundred-foot garden. In Aldeburgh, they had no more than a scruffy little yard, backing onto a pebble-dashed garage wall. A hundred feet of garden was enough to kick a ball, hit a ball, have more vegetable space than there was in the allotment.
He put Rachel’s e-mail printout down in front of Petra.
“What d’you think?”
Petra peered at it.
“It’s okay—”
“It’s seven minutes’ walk from the station.”
Petra nodded. She stopped looking at the house particulars and picked up her trug. There were new potatoes in it, whitish yellow and the size of walnuts.
“There’s a hundred-foot garden,” Ralph said. “For a football goal. And veg. South-facing.”
Petra tipped the potatoes into the sink.
“Nice,” she said.
“Want a beer?”
“No thanks.”
“It’s not especially attractive, I know, but the location’s perfect. Schools, station, everything.”
Petra ran water into the sink. She said, “Have you said good night to the kids?”
“Yes,” Ralph said.
Petra turned round.
“You haven’t—”
“Okay,” Ralph said, “but I will.”
“Stop looking at that stuff—”
“I was just thinking—”
“Don’t,” Petra said. “Go and see Kit. He’s in bed. He’ll be waiting.”
Ralph stood up. He was wearing, Petra noticed, a T-shirt she had never seen before. It was bright white, with a little discreet dark logo on the left breast. And he’d shaved. Petra hadn’t seen him this clean-shaven in months.
“Hon, just think about this—”
Petra turned back to the sink. She said, “We had a good end to the day. At the allotment. It was a relief, after what happened.”
Ralph wasn’t listening. He was standing by the table, in his white corporate T-shirt, lost in some place other than the one he was actually in.
“Kit pulled my hair,” Petra said, rumbling the potatoes round the sink to rinse off the earth, “really hard. I mean, it really hurt, he pulled it so hard. I don’t know if he meant to, maybe he just wanted to see how you get hair out of a head, or something, but I screamed, and I must have frightened him because he rushed across the room and pulled Barney’s hair, and then Barney screamed. So I picked Barney up and cuddled him, and I ignored Kit, and then Barney got furious and I could see he was furious with me for not punishing Kit, just ignoring him. What do you think I should have done?”
“Um?” Ralph said absently.
“I mean,” Petra said, “you could see Barney wanted justice, you could see he really wanted it, he wanted me to—to stab Kit, or something.”
There was a silence. Then Ralph said, from far away, “You could hardly do that, could you?”
Petra pulled the plug out of the sink.
“I went on cuddling Barney and then Kit started whining. He whined all the time, for hours, until we went to the allotment. Then he was okay.”
“Oh, good,” Ralph said.
Petra picked up a tea towel draped across the back of a chair. She said, looking at the e-mail printout on the table, “It’s no good.”
“What isn’t?”
“I’m not living there.”
Ralph gave her a wide smile.
“It’s pretty ordinary, I know. I’m sure we can find something else—”
“I’m not living in Ipswich,” Petra said.
Ralph said patiently, “I need to be near a station.”
Petra dried her hands. Then she draped the tea towel back over the chair.
“I can’t,” she said.
Ralph looked right at her.
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t,” Petra repeated. “I can’t leave it. I can’t leave the sea.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Charlotte’s mother was at her painting table, with a dahlia. Dahlias had fallen so far out of fashion, it seemed, that they were now on trend, bang on trend. At least, that’s what Charlotte had told her when she brought a bunch of them the day before, a gaudy strident bunch of them, orange and purple and scarlet and yellow. Charlotte had bought them, she said, in the flower market near their flat, which was apparently a famous Sunday flower market where you could also buy the world’s best bread, and coffee, and cupcakes, and Charlotte said she couldn’t get enough cupcakes just now, and Luke had bought her a whole box, and then a hat from the next-door shop because he said a hat would still fit her, however huge she got. And then Charlotte had burst into tears all over her mother and told her what Luke’s mother had said to her, and how she hadn’t been able to sleep the night after, and she still didn’t know whether to be more hurt than angry.
Marnie had, after giving the dahlias a long drink, laid a
single yellow one on a piece of white paper in order to examine the extraordinarily precise structure of its petals. It was as if it had been made of origami, so symmetrical and deeply three-dimensional was it. It would be a challenge to draw it, but a pleasurable challenge. When she had had a long and careful look, she would put the dahlia into the special small bronze clamp that Charlotte’s father had designed and had made for her, and begin on the lengthy and exact process of drawing the flower before she painted it. She had been painting flowers since before Charlotte’s sisters were born. She had started because Charlotte’s father, although generous to a fault, had preferred to support her entirely, but had also acknowledged that she must, of course, have a life of her own outside the house and garden. Marnie, pregnant with Fiona, who was now thirty-five, had enrolled in a course that taught botanical drawing. She had been the best in her class. Charlotte’s father had been so very proud of her. He had also, Marnie was aware even if she did not say so, felt justified; if she had been working, she would not have had the chance to be the best botanical artist in her area. Would she?
Charlotte’s father was called Gregory, and he had been ten years older than Marnie, and a partner in a local firm of solicitors that he had joined as soon as he qualified. He was eager to have children but disappointed not to produce sons. He was extremely kind to Marnie after each of his three daughters’ births, and gave her carefully chosen special pieces of jewelry to commemorate the occasions—garnets, for Charlotte, which were possibly Marnie’s least favorite stone—but she knew he was disappointed. He never said so outright, but he was the kind of man whose conduct and vocal inflections carried far more meaning than his words, and Marnie knew that he was longing for another Gregory to take his place, as he had taken his father’s, and his father had taken his own father’s: four generations of Gregory Webster-Smiths with deep and affectionate links to the beech-covered hills of Buckinghamshire.
Even during his long last illness, during which Marnie had nursed him tirelessly, he repeated frequently that he was dying a happy man, in the tones of a defiantly dissatisfied one. He even said, once, after a day in which the pain had been hard to manage and they were both worn out by it, that he knew that it was not her fault that all their children had been girls. But he managed to say it in a way that induced only guilt and regret in Marnie, and she had wept helplessly into the chicken consommé she was heating up for him in the hope that he would accept even a spoonful of it.
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