I felt I was being a good girl. Trying really hard and behaving well. I wasn’t a country girl at heart, had been brought up in suburban Andover where my most rural pursuit had been to learn to ride, but I could adapt. I admired the sixty-odd sheep we seemed to have acquired from the old owners, fed the ducks, who I quite liked, the chickens, who scared me with their flutterings and peckings, gardened with Lucy, played endlessly with the other two, helping with dens and camps, praised David for being so clever and finding this place, and we even made love, for the first time in – well, a while – and it was fine. Really fine. David would probably say it was terrific. He bounced about the house and even hummed to the radio, because although I knew a lot of him was still furious with me, he was so enamoured of his new life, the one he’d always dreamed of, he forgot to be cross.
My heart ached, though. Of course the farmhouse was lovely, but it was David’s dream, not mine. And it was so remote, this valley of ours. The nearest house was half a mile away, another farm. We weren’t even on the edge of a village, which, when we’d vaguely discussed it years ago, he’d promised me. But he hadn’t had to keep any promises, had he? And I loved people. Wondered if I’d survive without them: without my lovely girlfriends, my job, the comrades I had at work, the noise, the bustle, the being-aliveness of London. More than anything, though, I missed Henri. I’d written to him, before I left, saying this break had to be permanent, final. That I owed it to David. No more texting after 16th July, no emails, nothing. He’d written back saying he respected that and although it would drive him insane, he’d do his best. My heart longed for him, though: my funny French friend, who made me laugh more than anyone else, whose lightness of soul was so different to David’s quiet thoughtfulness, whose joie de vivre just elevated my spirits. It was with terror that I felt them collapse now.
And then he contacted me. At about this time of plummeting mood, as I wondered how to rally, felt almost breathless with the effort of contemplating making yet another Victoria sponge with Minna, followed by a trip to the village fête, he sent me a text.
‘I can’t do this. I miss you so much. You became my life. My spirit. Can I just talk to you? Can I ring you in half an hour?’
I felt euphoria flood through me, almost knocking me off my feet. I was at the kitchen sink at the time, looking out to where David was overseeing a bonfire with the children, letting them throw branches on but keeping a weather eye as they pranced about. This should have been the moment to text back and say:
‘No. Absolutely not.’ No kiss.
Instead, saliva evaporating in my mouth, I texted back:
‘Yes. I miss you so much too. XX’
My breathing became desperately shallow, but I set about making the Victoria sponge on my own, without calling Minna in to help. When it was in the oven, I went outside. David was on his own now, the children having drifted off to the tennis court.
‘Darling, could you pop to the shops? I’ve got a cake in the oven and I’ve just realized there’s nothing for lunch.’
He looked irritated. ‘I’ve just started a bonfire.’
‘Well, I can watch that, from the window.’
He frowned. Fires were man’s work.
‘Can’t we just have omelettes? The chickens are laying like smoke, we need to eat our produce, Molly.’
Something sanctimonious about this annoyed me. Plus my emotions were on a knife edge. ‘We do eat our sodding produce. Every day I pull up asparagus, or new potatoes, or runner beans, and the children are up to here with eggs. Just occasionally I’d like some mozzarella, basil and a few lentils, is that all right?’
‘London food.’
‘Yes, OK, but we don’t have to be so purist, such exponents of the Good Life that we become prigs, do we? Can’t we just be ourselves? Can’t I be myself?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Molly, stop turning everything into such a ridiculous drama!’
‘Me? I just came out and asked you to go to the fucking shops!’
It was the first time we’d rowed in weeks. Since Paris. Because David didn’t argue. He kept it all in. This was big for him. It was as if one of those carefully connected fuses had popped out.
‘Right,’ he said, seething. ‘I’ll go to the bloody shops. Because if Molly wants something, Molly must have it.’
‘That is so unfair,’ I stormed as he stalked past me through the back door into the kitchen, snatching up his keys on the dresser, heading to the front drive and his car. I heard the engine rev loudly, a noisy crunch of gravel, then he roared off down the lane.
I stood for a moment, fuming. Irritated that my moment of pleasure, my first for weeks, had been spoiled. Then I felt ashamed. But not for long. I glanced at my watch. Ten to twelve. Five minutes. Tennis would occupy the children for a while. I turned and hastened inside, pulling my phone out of my jeans pocket, checking it was charged.
Up in my bedroom, he rang, and we talked and it was heaven just to hear his voice again. We didn’t talk for long because Tatiana, his youngest, suddenly appeared from a piano lesson, so we quickly signed off, telling each other this couldn’t happen again, but knowing it would. That it was the thin end of the wedge. That we were pretending. I pocketed my phone, feeling lighter, as if my feet could leave the floor, as if I’d been injected with steroids. I went to the window, threw it wide, breathed in deeply and exhaled. As I raised my face to the heavens I mouthed: ‘Thank you, God.’
It was at that point that I heard the sirens. The wail in the distance which got louder as a police car flashed past my yard at the front of the house. It was followed swiftly by another vehicle, an ambulance this time. Half an hour later, I would see another police car, when I was in the back garden, poking the fire. I’d spot it through the French windows, parked in the yard. Two policemen would come around the side of the house, and approach me at the bonfire. The older one would remove his hat, twist it nervously in his hands, and tell me David was dead.
8
As I regarded my children now, nearly six years later, I wondered if I was ready for what they were suggesting. I’d told myself I’d live at the farm for ever. Would never move. My mind, my heart and my soul had collectively made a pact. Yes, I’d effectively killed my husband, given reckless power to his habitually cautious foot on that pedal, sped his car too fast around the bend which he usually took so slowly and into the path of that oncoming tractor, but by golly I’d make amends. And never go back to what I considered to be the Good Life, the best life. Or anything similar. How could I pop to the fancy grocer’s at the end of my new road in South Kensington? How could I nip to Harvey Nichols, or have lunch in Beauchamp Place? Didn’t I know I had a project to finish? That I owed it to David’s memory? To our love?
The children were waiting: watching me closely in the small basement flat, the pedestrians passing by in the window above, their feet clicking briskly.
‘Why not, Mum?’ Lucy asked in the voice she used when she was trying not to upset me.
If only she knew. How I’d upset her. Not the bit she knew about, the bit she’d overheard, the next bit. How I’d ruined her young life. Watched, as she rebelled at her new school, got into trouble, refused to work so grief-stricken was she and then at the last moment, almost in a show of defiance, studied hard for her GCSEs and, bright girl that she was, got them all with A stars. But then regressed again, as if to prove she could turn it on and off just like that. I’d had to sit by as she’d drunk too much and come home at all hours: I recalled the shouting matches we’d have in the kitchen as I waited up for her. How she’d made the wrong friends, refused to go to university and headed instead to London, with no plan and no money, how worried I’d been. Ironically she’d found her path through her love of the country, or at least of nature and horticulture – a love so like her father’s I sometimes wondered if it was a homage to him. With no help from anyone except a bank who’d given her a loan – how I wished I’d been a fly on the wall in that meeting, witnessed her giving it what fo
r, using all the powers of her considerable persuasion – she had taken a lease on a shop in Islington and turned it into a florist. She’d never looked back. She’d made a remarkable go of her new life in London – which she’d missed, had always missed, she’d confided to me once in rare tears. Yes, if only Lucy knew.
I gazed into her beautiful blue, almond-shaped eyes, eyes full of concern for me now. ‘I … I’m not sure,’ I stuttered.
‘Come on, Mum, it’d be brilliant, you’d love it,’ urged Nico, who, by dint of knowing less, was less complicated. ‘Sell the farm and we’ll all move back.’
Minna, I noticed, was quiet. Her heart had recently been broken and the pieces were scattered back home in the valley. Ted Forrester was the culprit, a local lad she’d been seeing on and off since she was fourteen. I wondered if she’d had second thoughts, having initially been caught up in her siblings’ enthusiasm.
‘What about Granny and Grandpa?’ I objected, playing for time. My parents had rushed from Andover to be near me.
‘G and G love it down there, they won’t move,’ Lucy said. ‘But it doesn’t mean we have to stay, they’d hate that.’
It was true, my parents were independent and having been provincial were now happily rural. Like David, and like so many people, they’d dreamed of escaping to the country – had watched endless relocation programmes on the television – and were at the farm even now, feeding my flock, happily seeing to the animals, walking the dogs.
I put my head in my hands and kneaded my forehead with my fingertips. ‘I don’t know.’
I didn’t.
‘Sleep on it,’ Lucy said firmly, which seemed like the best idea of the night. I nodded, not quite trusting my voice.
And so I did. We all did. In varying degrees of discomfort. Nico declared the sofa the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever slept on in his life and why did it have to be him just because he was the youngest and the boy, which we told him was precisely why, and Minna, according to Lucy, ground her teeth in her sleep. Minna retorted that Lucy slept like a starfish and was entirely selfish in bed, but I also heard shrieks of laughter coming from their room. I was pleased for Minna. She missed her sister. And although she’d never admit it, I’d hazard Lucy missed Minna, too.
The following morning Lucy cornered me in Sophia’s bedroom. She came in and sat down on the edge of the bed with a cup of tea she’d brought me, her eyes full of even greater intent. Mine, I knew, almost matched them, but I lowered them, giving nothing away.
‘Do it, Mum.’
I looked up at her. Took the mug she handed me and gave her a small smile.
‘We’ll see.’
I sipped it silently, thereby telling her I wasn’t saying any more, and she left, casting me a final, meaningful look as she shut the door, disappearing to get ready for work.
Selling the farm of course would be the first step, I thought, as I quietly washed up last night’s supper things at Lucy’s tiny sink – Lucy had gone but Minna and Nico were still fast asleep. I raised my head from the soapsuds to stare at the woodchip wall and allowed myself to give it a moment of serious contemplation, proper consideration, for the very first time. I realized it made me feel euphoric. I felt a huge rush of relief. To release that millstone from around my neck, that terrible weight, the source of so much pain, so much anxiety: the relentless demands of the animals, the crumbling brickwork, the constant re-patching and mending of barns … yes. I could say goodbye to all that. In the knowledge that I’d given it my best shot. I hadn’t fled as soon as David had died, I’d gritted my teeth and done my best. I caught my breath as I sensed the far-off promise of possibility, the distant click of something quietly slotting into place, in the fullness of time, which was now. Everything turns at some point, and for me, that moment had arrived.
Wiping my hands, I left a note for Minna and Nico. Then, shutting the door quietly behind me and with a degree of stealth, I left the darkened flat. I walked up the basement steps into the sunshine and headed west along the Brompton Road. My destination was the little café beside the pub at the end of Lastow Mews and it didn’t take me long to walk there. Once installed at a table outside, I ordered a cappuccino, fished my phone from my pocket, and rang Peter Cox.
Peter was a sweet man: tweedy, affable and good-natured. He had indeed taken me out to supper once – he’d gone so pink when he’d asked me outside the baker’s in the village I hadn’t the heart to say no – but he was a tiny bit long-winded and very preoccupied with his orchid collection, about which he’d enlightened me at great length over supper. I hadn’t minded. I’d nodded and smiled and eaten my whitebait and chips, thinking there were worse things than sitting in a cosy pub with a pleasant enough man talking about potted plants.
I rang him now, knowing there would be no awkwardness: he was far from stupid and had known I’d been going through the motions that night. There’d been no spark and he hadn’t followed it up. His secretary put me through and I outlined my plan. There was a pause at the other end of the line.
‘Well yes, the house itself should be fairly straightforward to sell, as long as you price it right …’
‘You mean low.’
‘I do rather, in this market.’
‘OK.’
‘But the question is whether you sell the land separately. Not many people want as much as ninety acres; it’s neither one thing nor another. Not enough to be a viable farm and too much for most people to manage as a hobby.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well, you do manage it, Molly, I know that, but it’s a struggle. A headache. Most people want ten acres with a paddock for a pony and that’s it. Or a thousand, of course.’
‘So you think sell the land separately?’
‘I do. The house will go much quicker.’
‘But who will want the land?’
It occurred to us both at the same time. Peter cleared his throat. He’d been one of the people at the bar that night in the Fox and Hounds when I hadn’t materialized.
‘Well, Paddy might, obviously.’
‘Yes. Obviously.’ His land abutted mine, from his cottage a mile away in the valley.
‘And he’d possibly even take the animals too.’
‘Oh, I doubt it. He’s terribly rude about them.’
‘Well yes, I have no idea, of course,’ he said quickly. ‘Not my field. And they can always go to market.’
‘Exactly.’ For what, though? I wondered. Meat? I hoped not. The lambs were obviously sold for just that, but well before I’d had time to get to know them, and for all their stress-making abilities, I was fond of my female breeding flock, my ewes. Some of them had delivered lambs for me for five years now, most producing twins, and one, Rita, always triplets. I’d been staggered in the beginning when Anna had told me her husband could tell his flock apart by their bleats but I could do that now. Particularly Agnes, who had a throaty bark, and Coochie, the oldest and slowest, who almost mewed like a cat and always came to the fence to have her head scratched. No, I couldn’t sell Agnes or Coochie. So … what, have them here? In the little back garden? I gazed down the road to the mews house, basking in the sunshine. Obviously not. Maybe Anna would have them? Anyway, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
‘Tell you what,’ Peter was saying, ‘I’ll have a little ask around and see who’s interested. There’s Adam and Jo Fox on your other side. They might well want the land.’
‘Oh yes, try the Foxes,’ I said urgently, far more keen to talk to them than the irascible Mr Campbell. ‘Try them first, Peter, would you?’
‘I will. Although, they’re getting on a bit …’
‘But maybe for their children?’
We chatted a bit more and he said how sad everyone would be to see me go but I brushed that aside with a laugh, saying that it wasn’t as if I’d been born and bred in the valley, and being a man, he didn’t push it.
Instead he put the receiver down, promising to get on to it immediately, and as I pocke
ted my own phone, I realized the die was cast. I was talking to estate agents. Only Peter, but still. My heart quickened in slight panic. Well, not entirely cast. Not until a buyer was found, contracts exchanged, and that could be – God, months, a year away. No, no, nothing was decided. I’d just inched my life forward a very tiny bit. Turned the dial, the one I envisaged unlocking a safe, until something, that click I’d imagined hearing earlier, flung wide the door.
I rang my mother next, to canvass her opinion, but got my father instead, who sounded strangely delighted.
‘Best decision you’ve made for years, love. Leave the ruddy place. It’s a burden on your shoulders, or at least it’s become one. Get shot of it. I say, good old Uncle Cuthbert! Don’t remember the fella, I must admit, but your mother told me some time ago with great excitement. Some distant relation of David’s, I gather?’
‘Not that distant, actually – his father’s brother. I’m so pleased you don’t think I’m abandoning you, Dad. Jumping ship …’ I paused, my eyes simultaneously following a black cab, which had turned left from the main road down into the mews and was slowing down and stopping now, outside the pink house.
‘Not at all, love! I think it’s a great idea. Now listen, there’s a lovely new development near Ludlow, modern houses—’
‘Um, Dad, I’m really sorry.’ I was on my feet suddenly, watching the cab door open. A moccasin appeared. ‘I’m going to have to go. See what Mum thinks, would you?’
‘Oh, she’ll agree with me. We’ve been saying it for ages, in private. The children too. It’s high time you moved on.’
‘Yes, I know, I’ve spoken to them. Um – bye, Dad, speak soon,’ I said quickly, knowing he’d hasten straight back to the test match on the telly.
About Last Night . . . Page 9