Lost in the Green Grass

by Henry Sands

  Copyright © 2020 Henry Sands

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Matador

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  ISBN 978 1838591 649

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  To my three lovable menaces:

  Mr Digby, Django-Bear and Tilly.

  - Contents -

  - Chapter One -

  - Chapter Two -

  - Chapter Three -

  - Chapter Four -

  - Chapter Five -

  - Chapter Six -

  - Chapter Seven -

  - Chapter Eight -

  - Chapter Nine -

  - Chapter Ten -

  - Chapter Eleven -

  - Chapter Twelve -

  - Chapter Thirteen -

  - Chapter Fourteen -

  - Chapter One -

  Norfolk, England

  It was at that moment that Lucinda, looking over the breakfast counter cluttered with newspapers and some cold, uneaten toast, knew that she was going to leave her husband, Anthony Palmer.

  Anthony was sitting in his battered wooden chair, next to the back door of their 18th century Norfolk farmhouse, on the far side of the kitchen with his head buried in the weekend business supplement of The Times, oblivious to Lucinda’s watchful gaze from the other side of the room.

  After twenty-two years of marriage, this is what it had come to, Lucinda thought. Nothing. In the space where husband and wife were meant to have love and companionship, she felt only hollowness.

  But for the first time for as long as she could remember, she felt excitement again. She drew this from the idea that there could be a way for this benign, lonely existence to finally come to an end.

  It wasn’t that she hated Anthony, or had become scornful towards him in the way some wives grew to despise their husbands. She thought him a decent man and often admired his perfect contentment in life. For Anthony was undeniably both decent and content. She just could not accept that this was it.

  What a waste it seemed that her twilight years were to be spent watching her husband read the weekend magazine supplement in the kitchen, before raising his head now and again to make some innocuous comment that couldn’t possibly interest either of them. For twenty-two years, she had politely nodded along to his murmurs with a, ‘What’s that, darling?’ or sometimes, ‘Yes, dear,’ regardless of whatever the point being made was this time.

  She had to remind herself she was fifty-eight, not eighty-five, increasingly frequently. Surely, there was still some excitement in life for her out there. She would regularly scour the internet reading blogs by middle-aged women who for one reason or another had packed in their lives and gone travelling. She had read Eat, Pray, Love multiple times, regularly envisaging herself as the protagonist, Liz Gilbert. A summer spent learning to paint in Tuscany or visiting archaeological ruins, before rolling around in the sand and having a one-night stand with a mysterious and handsome young man didn’t sound too bad at all.

  It wasn’t even the idea of romance that she wanted; she hadn’t been sexual with Anthony for many years. Christ, she thought, she wasn’t even sure her body would know what to do anymore. But she longed for something unexpected and spontaneous.

  Lucinda and Anthony used to be quite a social couple. Norfolk, she felt, was good for that, with plenty of dinner parties taking place every night of the week. She had always put the convivial nature of the county down to its location; it being far enough away from London meant that daily commuting to the city wasn’t really an option, and therefore everyone lived as if they were expatriates.

  But the drinks parties and dinners that had once filled their diaries had gradually declined over the years. At first, Lucinda put it down to people getting a bit older and so entertaining less, but after a girls’ lunch a few years ago that had flowed with a touch too much white Burgundy, a close friend had revealed something that Lucinda had already suspected, deep down. Her friends’ husbands had grown rather, well, just a bit bored of Anthony and his seeming unwillingness to make an effort to strike interesting conversation.

  Not that Anthony himself would have minded at all about being branded antisocial, really. He was happy enough just pottering around making himself busy at home. An ideal morning for him would have been attentively following an instruction manual line by line, preferably one he had ordered in especially, having lost the original, and using it to fix a broken washing machine. Bleeding all the radiators in the house for the umpteenth time that month was another good option. ‘Always good to be sure,’ he would mutter.

  For many years, Anthony had been a partner in a small accountancy firm, ADR Advisors, based in London and which specialised in looking after the accounts for small and medium-sized companies, as well as individuals’ tax returns. Anthony had been the fourth partner there, but the three founders decided not to extend the name to ADRP, with the view their own three initials were quite enough. True to form, the Palmer contingent hadn’t put up much resistance and seemed perfectly happy maintaining the status quo.

  Several years later, ADR Advisors was bought by a bigger firm and, in order for Anthony to secure a reasonable payment as part of the sale, he was to continue to act as a senior adviser to the new firm, Chapman Parker.

  The new set-up had only required him to be in the office for three days a week, and the general expectation was that he would gradually scale back his workload further over time. Having cut down to just one day a week, though, he realised how much he missed the routine and the backbone that the working structure had instilled in his life, and so, to the bafflement of the more junior members of staff, he quickly upped his voluntary attendance to three days a week.

  On Tuesday mornings, Lucinda would drop him at Downham Market station, in time for the 07.21 train. This would normally get him into the Chapman Parker office in Chancery Lane by 09.30. He had a small flat that had once belonged to his mother in Victoria, off Vincent Square, where he stayed on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, before taking the train back to Norfolk at 16.48 from Kings Cross on a Thursday.

  His three-day week in the office had earned him a rather ambiguous nickname amongst the same group of junior employees: TWAT. Rarely for Anthony, he looked almost angry on being addressed in such a manner by this year’s summer intern, before the second-year university student quickly pointed out that the term reflected his attendance in the office only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays And Thursdays. If truth be told,
the title took some getting used to, but although perhaps lacking in overt warmth, the perceived office camaraderie that Anthony felt was generated as a result was sufficient enough to enable him to decline regular office drinks and other social events, and so was worth putting up with.

  Lucinda often wondered how it was that she was more bored and lonely when Anthony was back at the house in Norfolk than when he was away in London, but it was undeniably the case. At least when it was just her at Ferryman’s Cottage, she felt she had space. She had her own privacy. But when Anthony was at home, it was his constant shadow of apathy that depressed her so. And that’s how she self-diagnosed her state of mind: depression.

  Of course, she had thought about leaving Anthony before. In her imagination, her new life was full of unexpected twists, turns and impromptu excitement. The truth, though, was that she knew she didn’t really have anywhere to go, nor many savings left to fund her escape. The money she had was largely tied up in their house and the grazing land their house backed onto, which they had since purchased separately. Though, technically, that was Anthony’s money.

  In the past, when she’d had these visions of her new life, the initial excitement hadn’t taken long to dissipate as she inevitably came back to the conclusion that she was just being silly, and there was no way it was a viable plan. Instead, it made much more sense for her to just continue ploughing on as they were, attempting to make the life they had a little more fulfilling. These attempts were initiated with gusto for several days, sometimes weeks, before she felt unable to carry the weight of Anthony’s detachment, and the whole cycle started once again.

  But this Saturday morning, it was different. She knew as she watched her husband of the last two decades that things were going to change. This time, it was for real, and she was going to leave him, once and for all. Her fantasies had been going on long enough now, and it was time to make them a reality. From somewhere inside herself, where previously the conviction to go through with it had been found wanting, she now found determination and a core of inner strength. Yes, she would leave him. But not just yet. It was the last weekend of November, and with Christmas on the horizon, plans had already been made for her children, Sophie and Jack, to come and stay. She would get through December, quietly planning the details of her escape, and be on her way in early January. New year, new start.

  The mere thought of her life ahead liberated her from the shackles of the repetitive and mundane existence she felt she lived, and gave her an additional spring in her step as she headed upstairs, leaving Anthony to his newspaper in the kitchen.

  *

  It hadn’t always been like this with Anthony. But then again, it had hardly been a relationship that had developed from raw passion.

  Lucinda had been married before, to a man she loved desperately and who loved her back. David Morley.

  Lucinda and David had first met as teenagers at a mutual friend’s 18th birthday party, in a barn in Hampshire when, after a few too many glasses of wine, Lucinda had woken up next to him in an empty stable.

  Most of their clothes were lying scattered around the stable floor and, given the lack of conventional bedding available – it had most certainly not been the intention of the host’s mother for guests to be sleeping in the stable – they had instead covered themselves in hay, which provided a surprising amount of warmth if not comfort.

  The next morning, they scarpered before the lifeless limbs of sleeping bodies, scattered around the main barn and in tents next to the parked cars, arose.

  David dropped her at Winchester train station the next morning in his father’s old Jaguar E-Type convertible that he had borrowed for the drive down from his family home in Rutland. During the drive, he had rested his hand on her lap intermittently. The whole experience made Lucinda feel incredibly grown up. At the station, he leant over and kissed her once more, before telling her that he hoped he might be able to see her again soon. She hoped so too.

  In fact, she didn’t see him again for six years. During that time, she had briefly gone to Chelsea Arts School, but dropped out on realising – thanks to some painfully unsubtle reports from her tutor, sometimes in front of the rest of the class – that she wasn’t, in fact, very good at art. With her confidence crushed, she began working for Savills in the Notting Hill office instead, quickly working her way up the hierarchy thanks to her charm and relentless energy, and her confidence ratcheted back up along with her sales figures and popularity within the team.

  Lucinda often wondered what had become of David Morley, particularly after a string of uninspiring dates, and would regularly reminisce to herself about their night of frolicking in the stable. Then, six years later, almost exactly to the day, she finally found out. By chance, he walked right into her Savills office, enquiring with his self-assured charm that she remembered so clearly about a mews house they were selling just off Holland Park Avenue. Lucinda politely asked if he was already registered with the estate agent, using the opportunity to quickly check their client folders, and read that he was now an associate at a boutique macro hedge fund based just off Grosvenor Square, and making quite a name for himself in that world as an up-and-coming star of the future.

  Lucinda grabbed the keys to the house from her colleague’s desk, who, rather fortuitously she felt, just happened to have popped out of the office at that moment to grab some lunch. With her most beguiling smile, which had become something of an office phenomenon, Lucinda offered to show David around the mews house herself.

  She had recognised him immediately but said nothing, wondering if he would remember her from their summer’s night. In fact, he had instantly noticed her face on stepping into the office, but couldn’t place it until they were halfway through the tour. At that point, they both broke out into childish smiles and agreed a date to go for a drink the following week at the nearby Ladbroke Arms.

  They were inseparable from that moment. Lucinda moved into David’s newly purchased mews house four months later, and they married the following spring, at St John’s Church, off Ladbroke Grove, just around the corner from their house.

  After two years of marriage, their daughter, Sophie, was born. When Lucinda became pregnant again the following year, 32 Ladbroke Walk was starting to look a bit small. They decided to make a plan to move to Hampshire, to an Elizabethan rectory on the edge of the small village of Itchen Abbas, which had recently come on the market.

  David had an older brother, Mark, who was to inherit the family house in Rutland. He didn’t much fancy the idea of being the younger brother parked down the road, waiting for handouts like a grateful Labrador under the kitchen table. Hampshire gave them their own space, liberated from the scrutiny David had in Rutland that came with being Lord Higglestone’s second son.

  Lucinda was confident she would be able to negotiate a switch from Savills in Notting Hill to their Winchester office fairly easily, and David was happy to start commuting on the train four days a week, given that he already worked from home most Fridays anyway. They agreed it was a perfect set-up, and although Lucinda felt sad at the prospect of selling Ladbroke Walk, which she associated with David’s return into her life, she knew it was time for the next chapter. Each morning as she woke up next to David, normally resting her head on his surprisingly unhairy chest, she didn’t once take for granted just how blissfully happy she was.

  *

  When the phone rang for Lucinda that Thursday afternoon, she couldn’t comprehend the devastating magnitude of what was being said. That was probably as much to do with the professional, level tone of Alfred’s voice on the other end of the phone, as her own state of denial.

  Alfred was the long-standing porter from Boodles, David’s club, where he had been having lunch that day with Johnny, an old school friend who Lucinda had never quite taken to.

  ‘Mrs Morley, you’re needed at St Thomas’ Hospital immediately. It’s David.’ Despite the urgent words, Alfred p
ossessed a measured calmness in his voice, which you could be confident would not change regardless of whether he was announcing a birth, death or resurrection. But on this occasion, even by his standards as a stickler, his voice wavered slightly as he uttered the name of one of his favourite of the younger members at Boodles.

  Moments earlier, he had watched David stride out of the club after a good lunch, a “two bottler”. It was only a matter of seconds before a delivery truck then sped around the corner from Jermyn Street. The driver was looking to his right, ensuring there was no traffic swinging down off Piccadilly, and failed to see the young gentleman step out on the street in front of him. The driver heard the unmistakable sound of impact and a sternum crunching, before the high-pitched scream of a woman on the pavement watching the scene confirmed his worse fears.

  At eight months pregnant, it wasn’t easy for Lucinda to get anywhere quickly, but she packed up her desk in the Savills office, for she had not yet taken her maternity leave, and hailed a black cab from Holland Park Avenue. Twenty minutes later, she arrived at St Thomas’ Hospital.

  Still more curious than concerned by the call, she was surprised to find a nurse looking pensive waiting for her at the entrance to the hospital.

  ‘Mrs Morley? Please, come this way,’ the nurse said, and escorted her in silence to an office where a doctor and two surgeons were waiting with solemn expressions.

  ‘There isn’t much time, I’m afraid, Mrs Morley,’ the doctor said before opening a door. There, lying on a bed with tubes coming out of his nose, and bloodied bandages around his head and torso, was David.

  He smiled at her, like he always did, the same way he had smiled at her when he dropped her off at the train station all those years ago. Lucinda was shocked. This was the last thing she had expected. David used what little strength he had left to put his left hand on Lucinda’s pregnant stomach.