The Soldier's Wife

by Joanna Trollope

  Alexa sat and stared at the screen. Then she scrolled the email back to the beginning and read it again.

  ‘Army marriages,’ Mo had said, ‘must be some of the strongest. They have to be.’ She had shrugged. ‘I was earning more than Baz when we met. I told him I wasn’t moving. But you have to compromise. You have to.’

  And then, Alexa thought, you get to a point where you can’t. Or you’re the kind of person, like Kate, who never could and who had struggled to try, and had been unable to struggle any longer. No mention of the new man in her email. Hardly a mention of Gus, either. Silence on the children. Did she even know Gus was staying with them? Did she know – or care – what an acute case of walking wounded she had left for them all to cope with in the aftermath of her departure? It was enough, Alexa thought angrily, to make her press the Delete button and banish Kate Melville and her bitter resentment of the Army to the great obliterating spaces of the limitless ether. What was Kate after, anyway, flattering her and beseeching her? Why should she, a relic of the old life for which Kate apparently had nothing but contempt, be of any consequence whatsoever to a reinvented shiny new Kate, occupying the spare bedroom of a junior officer’s unknown girlfriend?

  She moved the cursor and then held it there above the Delete icon. Who was this girlfriend? Freddie Stanford was an amiable young man, nice looking, nicely mannered, good with his troop, whom Alexa had hardly distinguished in her mind from all the other nicely mannered, capable captains. But Kate, instead of going to stay with a colleague when she fled, or an old school friend, or even a sister, had elected to stay with Freddie Stanford’s girlfriend. Who in turn had presumably invited her. What was going on? Why should Kate suppose that she, Alexa, would ever want to meet this girlfriend? Why?

  Alexa swallowed. She glanced at the clock. Ten minutes before she needed to collect the twins. She looked down at the keyboard and then put her finger on the mouse mat and moved the cursor from Delete to Reply. And pressed.

  Beside her, vibrating against the table top, her phone began to ring. She picked it up and looked at the screen. ‘Franny,’ it said.

  ‘Fran?’ Alexa said. ‘I’m just off to get—’

  ‘One second,’ Franny said. Her voice was unnaturally level. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Listen, Alexa,’ Franny said. ‘Listen. Go and get the twins, and then come straight to me. Don’t panic, nothing to panic about, but you need to come straight to me after you collect the twins. The thing is – well, the thing is – she’s fine and she is at this moment eating a cheese sandwich – but I have Isabel here. She just – turned up.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The twins were overjoyed. They sat leaning over the edges of their car seats so that they could touch Isabel, sitting in the space between them, and when they reached home, they wanted her to come straight to the playroom and build a castle, dress up, read to them and play hospitals, all at once. Isabel, extremely composed, seemed calmly happy to acquiesce.

  ‘Don’t grill her,’ Franny had said to Alexa. ‘Don’t fire questions at her. She’s in a funny state, but it’s not an upset one, as far as I can see. She’d worked out a route online to get home by bus, and she’d saved up until she could buy a ticket. She’d planned it. It was all organized.’

  Alexa had rung the school, before she went to collect the twins. The school secretary had sounded suspiciously as if she had no idea that Isabel was missing, and then Alexa had spoken to Mrs Cairns, who said Isabel had pleaded a severe headache and had been sent to lie down shortly after breakfast. Her absence had been noticed half an hour earlier, and a thorough search was still ongoing.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Alexa said, gripping the phone.

  ‘Mrs Riley—’

  ‘No more of that,’ Alexa said furiously. ‘No more patronizing of parents and sweeping real problems under the carpet. We need to talk. Or rather, I need to talk and you need to listen.’

  Then she had dropped her phone into her bag, seized her car keys and raced for the car, leaving Beetle in a confusion of anxious obedience, rooted miserably in his basket.

  Isabel hadn’t flung herself at her mother. She was wearing school uniform with her own hooded blue fleece over the top, and she had brought nothing but her school backpack with its jingling collection of key rings and charms. Her hair was pulled back with both a plastic Alice band and an elasticated loop, and although she was pale, she wasn’t red-eyed or visibly exhausted. When Alexa had come in, almost stumbling over the excited twins, Isabel had stood up and allowed herself to be hugged, and then she had freed herself and bent down so that the twins could thrust their morning’s artwork at her and jabber at her in competition, their voices rising almost to screams.

  ‘She’s eaten a round of cheese sandwiches,’ Franny said, ‘and a banana and a KitKat. I offered her bacon and eggs, but she said she’d wait till she got home.’

  ‘Why didn’t she come home?’ Alexa said, whispering. ‘Why didn’t she come straight home?’

  Franny looked across her kitchen at Isabel and the twins, now on the floor together admiring angel pictures decorated with tissue-paper wings. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t she say? She must have said something.’

  ‘Only,’ Franny said, ‘that she didn’t want a fuss. She thought it would be easier if I told you than if she just appeared.’

  ‘Suppose you’d been out?’

  ‘She’d thought of that. She was going to go to Mo, and if Mo was out, to Mary or Claire, and if they were out, she was going back to Mo because she’d have come home some time, to feed the dogs.’

  Getting them all into the car, Alexa had tried to hug Isabel again. ‘Darling, I am so thankful to see you.’

  Isabel merely stood in her embrace. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you tell me? Will you tell me later why you did it? Will you tell me why you didn’t telephone?’

  Isabel began to get into the car. ‘I can’t keep saying.’

  ‘But you haven’t said anything to me yet!’

  ‘I said something to Fran,’ Isabel said. She climbed past Tassy’s car seat and settled herself in the middle. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Please.’

  And now they were home, and the three girls were in the playroom, and Dan and Gus were not back, and she was roaming agitatedly round the kitchen, picking up the packet of mince she had got out of the freezer to thaw and putting it down again, and replaying in her mind the second conversation with Mrs Cairns in which she had reiterated that Isabel would not be returning to school before they were sure what had impelled her to run away, and even more sure of her reception if – if – she returned. It was impossible to settle to anything sensible. She got items out of the fridge to give the twins lunch, and found she had weirdly put a jug of stock, a leftover stuffed pepper and a jar of olives on the table. She would ring Jack, she thought. She would ring Jack and tell him what had happened and he would say how awful, poor kid, don’t let her anywhere near that place again, d’you want me to come down? And she’d say no, not really, and he’d say, where’s Dan? and she’d have to say out, out with Gus and I don’t know when they’ll be back, what’s new? and Jack would get that anxious, defensive tone in his voice and she’d realize that she shouldn’t have rung, that there was nobody to ring, that the only other person who would have felt as she did about Isabel – her father – was dead, and that Isabel was her problem, hers, and she had failed her, and made her stay in a place that she had hated and feared so much that she—

  ‘Mummy?’ Isabel said.

  Alexa looked up, startled. She indicated the table, vaguely. ‘I was just …’

  ‘I’m starving,’ Isabel said.

  Dan and Gus were in high spirits when they returned. They had had a reassuring visit to the school – the boys, Gus reported, were being absolute bricks – and had paused on the way home for a late pub lunch of beer and pies and were in a mood to treat Isabel’s appearance as a marvellous and unexpected
treat. They both hugged her and picked the twins up and turned them upside down until Flora’s glasses fell off, and generally created enough noise and exuberance for it to be a full five minutes before Alexa could say, almost despairingly, thrusting herself into the mêlée until she was almost nose to nose with Dan, ‘Dan. Dan, listen. She’s not here on an exeat. She’s not here with anyone’s permission. She ran away.’

  Dan lowered Flora slowly to the floor. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. She ran away.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Isabel said. ‘I walked down the drive. Then I got three buses. Then I walked to Fran’s house. I had a timetable. And I’ve got three pounds forty left. I didn’t run!’

  There was a silence. Gus put Tassy down too. Dan looked at Isabel. Then he looked at Alexa. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘She hasn’t told me. She won’t—’

  Dan turned to look at Isabel again. He said, quite gently, ‘Won’t you?’

  Isabel flipped her Alice band down on to the bridge of her nose, and then pushed it back again. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ Isabel said steadily, ‘I want to tell you.’

  ‘Right,’ Dan said, ‘here I am. Fire away.’

  Isabel looked round her bedroom. It was – though very neatly – definitely overlaid by Gus. His boots and shoes were lined up by her bookcase, his clothes hung from her cupboard, there was a tidy stack of his shirts and sweaters on the chair where she usually piled her soft toys, and her bed had a tight, flat, alien look, with a folded T-shirt and boxer shorts on the pillow and a battered clock radio on the table beside it.

  She sniffed. ‘It smells funny.’

  ‘We’ll move him,’ Dan said. ‘He can sleep on the sofa. We’d have moved him already if we’d known you were coming.’

  Isabel sighed. She sat gingerly down on the edge of her bed. She said, ‘If you’d known, you’d have stopped me.’

  ‘We might not, you know. We’d have wanted to know why.’

  Isabel said simply, ‘I hate it.’

  Dan lowered himself to the floor and put his arms around his bent knees. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what Mum says. Homesickness.’

  Isabel laced her fingers together. ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

  ‘Maybe I do.’

  ‘If you do,’ Isabel said clearly, ‘you chose to be away. I didn’t choose. I was sent.’

  ‘We thought it was better. We thought you’d had enough of chopping and changing.’

  ‘Not my family,’ Isabel said. ‘That doesn’t chop and change. All the other stuff doesn’t matter. I can do that, if I can be at home.’

  Dan looked up at her. ‘What other stuff?’

  Isabel shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does, Izzy. It does. What other stuff?’

  Isabel took off her Alice band and bent the two ends together. ‘People not talking to me,’ she said. ‘Whispering about me. Not sitting next to me. Not wanting me in their team.’

  ‘Since …’

  Isabel put the end of the Alice band in her mouth and clenched her teeth on it. Through her teeth, she said, ‘Worse since then.’

  ‘Have you told anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one at school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you told Mum?’

  Isabel removed the Alice band from her mouth. She said softly, ‘Not really.’

  Dan leaned forward. ‘Why not?’

  ‘No point.’

  ‘No point?’

  ‘No,’ Isabel said, ‘there’s no point. It makes her feel awful and there’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing anyone can do, except – except you.’

  There was silence. Then Dan got off the floor and came to sit beside Isabel on her bed. He didn’t touch her. He looked at her for a long time and then he said, ‘Is that why you wanted to talk to me?’

  Isabel nodded.

  ‘Could – could you make yourself completely clear? Can you tell me what you think I’ve done?’

  Isabel spun her Alice band away from her across the room. It landed with a light clatter against Gus’s Army boots.

  ‘OK,’ she said. She sounded quite composed. ‘OK. We live here because of you. We lived in all the other places because of you. We stay here, waiting, because of you. We’ll probably have to move again, quite soon, Mum says, because of you. I’m at boarding school because of all this moving, because of you. So, if you’re the one making all these changes happen, you can make them stop, too.’ She flicked a glance at him and then she looked down at her feet. ‘Can’t you?’

  Morgan Longworth had long considered, privately, that the secret of a successful married retirement was for one of you to be an owl and the other a lark. Many years of diplomatic entertaining had reinforced his own owl tendencies, so that the late night hours, after Elaine had gone to begin the lengthy ritual of the end of her day, had come to represent something almost luxurious, something certainly to be looked forward to. The television, carefully considered – for the elegance of the jokes and the moderation of the political opinions – emails to ex-colleagues around the world, books and a leisurely whisky and soda combined to give each day a particular beckoning charm, because the conclusion, however tiresome the preceding hours, was so very pleasurable. He thought he also detected a certain relief in Elaine, when she stood up from her chair on evenings when they were at home together and announced that she would turn in. She was, he suspected, as thankful to be leaving him for a few hours as he was to see her go.

  So when he got up from his own chair at the same moment as she did from hers and announced that he’d like to say something to her, she had looked quite annoyed for a few moments, before she recovered her habit of perpetual courtesy.

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes, dear, please.’

  He could see her picturing the bath in which she liked to lie for the length of the Radio 4 bedtime serial. If he delayed her, she’d miss it. He said, modulating his voice in the way he used to when using the official telephone, ‘It won’t take a moment.’

  Elaine flounced back down into her seat. ‘You’ve had all evening—’

  ‘We were listening to the Bach.’

  She gave a little exclamation of annoyance. ‘Morgan, you can be so affected.’ She turned to look briefly at him. ‘What is it?’

  He removed his patient smile and said, in far more straightforward a tone, ‘Alexa.’

  Elaine flung her hands up in the air and let them fall heavily into her lap. ‘As if I’ve thought about anything else for days!’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘I have a plan.’

  Elaine didn’t turn to look at him. She was staring across the room at the photograph of Richard Maybrick. She said, almost sarcastically, ‘Do you now?’

  ‘Yes, actually, I do. I think George was right.’

  Elaine said nothing. Morgan knew she had a soft spot for George and Eric Riley, a soft spot he had no intention of indulging as a general rule. But in this case, George had given Morgan both an idea and an opportunity.

  ‘I think he’s right,’ Morgan repeated.

  Elaine smoothed her skirt over her knees. ‘In what way?’

  ‘His suggestion that we should go down there.’

  ‘Oh,’ Elaine said in exasperation. ‘Oh, well done.’

  Morgan allowed a small reproving silence to fall. Then he said, ‘Except that I think that I should go.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I think,’ Morgan said, ‘that I should drive down to Larkford and see Dan. Talk to Dan. By myself.’

  Elaine at last turned to look at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that I should encourage Alexa to bring the twins here to London, to stay with us. Even for a night.’

  Elaine began to play agitatedly with her pearls. �
��But they should be together, Alexa and Dan. They’ve been apart so much. They should be together now.’

  Morgan cleared his throat. He looked at the ceiling. ‘Or maybe not.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean to surprise them,’ Morgan said. ‘I mean to surprise Dan, especially. I mean to be …’ he paused and then he said, ‘a thoroughly unexpected element in an apparently intractable situation.’

  ‘I should leave,’ Gus said.

  ‘No, mate, no. It’s fine. As long as you don’t mind the sofa for a night or two.’

  ‘Course not. Great sofa. But I think I’m in the way.’

  Dan handed him a beer bottle. ‘The reverse is true. Anyway, you’d upset Alexa.’

  ‘She’s pretty upset already.’

  ‘It would be worse,’ Dan said, ‘if you left now. She’d feel terrible.’

  ‘She’s got enough to cope with.’

  ‘Actually,’ Dan said, flipping the top off his own beer, ‘I’m dealing with that.’

  ‘With what?’