“What’s been going on?” he said in a strange voice, and she knew he understood.
“Daisy,” she began. “Darling . . . she’s gone.”
His hand gripped the metal crutch the hospital had given him. It pressed into the wet soil. “Oh, Daisy,” he said. He scrunched his face up and looked at her. His eyes were dark. “What happened, Em?”
“She . . . did it herself.” She couldn’t say “killed herself,” it was so brutal. “She . . . I buried her.”
He gazed at the crumbling earth, at the crushed daisies around the long rectangular grave. He didn’t speak for a long time, but eventually he said, “Don’t you want to tell someone, Em?”
All Daisy had asked for was to be buried here, to not be bothered anymore. And Martha had felt she had to give her that. She could have rung the police, yes, of course. But since it had happened, she’d realized that she didn’t care about other people. She never had. She cared about the fact that her daughter, who hadn’t ever felt at home in this place, had wanted to stay here at last.
Don’t you want to tell someone, Em?
“I thought I wouldn’t,” she said. “I thought I’d just let everyone think she’s gone away again.”
“Yes,” he said gently.
“I . . . I think she’s happy here now. Do you . . . ?” And Martha faltered, the fatigue and sadness swamping her. She sobbed, stumbled against him, so that he supported her for a moment. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
• • •
They’d dug Daisy up. Three policemen and forensics and a pathologist, a big white tent around the daisy bank and the light of huge arc lamps flooding the side of the house, the earth churned into new banks of brown mud. She’d sat at the window, watching them, with her usual cup of tea and gingerbread, trying to tell herself they couldn’t hurt her, no one could anymore. She stood up and drew the curtains that looked out onto the daisy bank and the garden from the dining room. She kept them drawn from that moment on. She left the garden well alone.
• • •
Bill, Daisy, Florence.
He’d been eighty-two. Not young. By the New Year, Martha couldn’t bear to see anyone other than close family or strangers, because someone would say again, “It was a good run, eighty-two,” and the fear that she would turn on them in rage and lose control grew to possess her.
He didn’t tell me he was ill. I could have helped him and he didn’t tell me. I saw how he suffered. I watched him die.
So she stopped going into the village. Karen did her shopping, and then when Karen moved in with Joe in the New Year, Bill did it, Bill and Lucy.
Karen was there that day they took Daisy away, two or three weeks after the birthday lunch. She sat with Martha in the dining room. She had her laptop with her and pretended to be working, but occasionally she’d look up and ask Martha a question, get up to make some more tea, fetch a book.
There was something restful about Karen, something calm and logical about her in those days after David went, when Christmas was approaching and everything was supposed to carry on as normal. Martha was glad of her company.
But come the New Year Karen had left Bill, moved in with Joe. David, Daisy, Florence, Cat, now this little one, another grandchild, gone. Bill had known his father was ill. She knew it, she didn’t know how. To see him and think of the skinny, muddy, serious, joyful little boy he’d been, nearly, but not quite, brought her down. It would if she thought about Bill then. The little boy who’d thrown himself into her arms, who’d run along the lane with her, jumping up with questions like a kangaroo, who’d left for medical school and said in the doorway, an awkward, acned eighteen-year-old, “Thanks for a great life so far, Ma, really wanted to just say that,” then got into the car with David, waved once, and driven off.
Bill, Daisy, Florence.
• • •
Through the long, cold nights of late winter, Martha lay awake, staring at the blue-black ceiling, listening to the silence outside. Though it was never silent, not really: the owls, the dreadful sound of night murder in hedgerows, a lone dog barking somewhere, and always a blackbird, throughout it all, in the tree outside.
One night she was lying, eyes fixed on the ceiling as though a movie reel were playing there, when she suddenly turned to look at David’s side of the bed. It had been cleared, but the book he had been reading still lay there. The Day of the Jackal. The tatty green woven bookmark that Cat had made at Brownie camp when she was nine marked his place: only halfway through.
Suddenly Martha saw grief, like the sky, covering everything, all over her, around her, impossible to penetrate. That feeling again, the one she’d had before. The gray mist seemed to fill up the room; it slid along the floor, up the bed, over her, covering her like water.
He’s never coming back.
He is. Don’t think about it.
He’s never coming back, Martha. You threw the earth on the coffin. You cleared out his cupboard. He’s dead. David’s dead.
She fought it, literally, wrestling with the bedclothes, scrambling out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Memories, like a vortex. David in only a pair of pants, painting the kitchen. Lying on the grass with Bill by his side, listening to the cricket game on the radio. His sweet, hopeful face, staring at her as they lay in bed. The long, sad day they brought Florence back from Cassie’s maternity ward, and his suddenly joyous expression at their hotel as he peered at the small bundle, clasped tight in Martha’s arms. His screams at night, when the bad dreams came and he’d moan and sob so loudly, sometimes wetting himself, sometimes curling up in a ball so tight she had to wake him to free him.
He needed her, wherever he was. She wasn’t there and he needed her. Who would hug him and comfort him; who would be there wherever he was to smooth his hair, to hold his hand and whisper those words; who would help him draw, help him cook, help him make a house, a home, a family together? He was alone. He had never been without her and she needed him, now more than ever. Just to see him once more, to tell him once more, one more evening together . . . Tears poured down Martha’s cheeks. She retched, her throat swelling up so much with the power of grief that she thought, then and there, she was losing consciousness. She leaned against the wall, panting, sobbing, gasping for breath. But there was no one to hear her in the empty house. No one.
Eventually her breathing returned to normal. She put her hand on her throat, wishing this thickness, this lump would go away. She leaned in and listened through the bedroom door. As if she were trying to hear something.
All was quiet again.
“He’s somewhere round here,” Martha muttered to herself. She clicked her tongue.
In the darkness, she smiled to herself. She understood now. She thought she wouldn’t say anything to anyone about it, but she knew she was right.
She just had to put a few plans in place, then, and she would see him again, when things were ready. She didn’t go back to her room at nighttime. She started sleeping in Cat’s room, hugging the old patchwork cushion with Cat’s name spelled out in blue, and which smelled faintly of Cat, close to her. She avoided Lucy’s calls, because Lucy wanted to come over to look after her, to boss her around and pry and get into things, to find out things. She mustn’t let her do that.
She couldn’t go into the village, so she went into Bath to do her shopping. She would walk through the supermarket, pushing a cart, thinking about what he would like for supper, and sometimes see another person like her. Eyes blank. Face smooth, unlined, frozen. And Martha would think: I know why they’re like that. They are waiting for someone too. I hope they come back soon.
She stopped cleaning the house, opening the post, answering the phone. She read and reread her old gardening books. She learned the name of every plant, its soil, its situation, its family. Memorizing them so that, if someone started talkin
g about him and how sad it was, or what she should do, or how plans should be put in place, she could just nod and smile and not listen, recite different varieties of forget-me-nots in her head to shut out the words so she couldn’t hear what they were telling her. Because if she couldn’t hear them, she couldn’t let them in. Since the first day, the day she’d met him and he’d worn that silly hat on his head, since the two of them walked away from the past and into their future, he had always been nearby.
Karen
“EASY NOW,” SAID Dawn, as Karen heaved her shopping bag over her shoulder. “Let me get the door for you. Where’s that Joe, then?”
“He’s up on the Levels, meeting some meat guys,” said Karen. “Thanks, Dawn. I’m fine now.”
Dawn stared at Karen’s vast, domed stomach, hidden by her coat. “Look at you. That’s a big baby in there, isn’t it? Sure it ain’t twins?” She roared with laughter.
Karen smiled and hitched her bag up again, unlocking the front door. “See you later.”
“You’re sure you’re all right up here?” Dawn persisted, peering inside at the nondescript carpeted hallway and the stairs that led up to Joe’s flat. Trying to collect information about the adulterous love nest, Karen knew, because no matter how many times she said, “We’re not together. I’m just staying with Joe for a bit,” no one believed her. That wasn’t how the story went, was it?
“Oh, yes. Till I work out what I’m doing next. It’s very kind of Joe to have me.”
“Hmmph,” Dawn said. “You must be lonely, what with Joe and Sheila and everything that’s going on at the pub these days.”
“I don’t mind. He deserves it. They both do.”
“It’s mad, though, isn’t it?” Dawn folded her arms and leaned against the door.
“Yes, it’s great. Please, Dawn—I hope you don’t mind if I just take that other bag and . . .” Karen began, trying not to snap. Her feet ached more each moment she stood on them, and she felt if she didn’t sit down soon she might just have to slump onto the stairs, wait for Joe to finish work so he could haul her up to his flat in a sack.
“All right, Karen?” Sheila appeared from the pub. “I’ll help you upstairs with them bags, shall I? Bye, then, Dawn, good to see you. Len’s all right?”
“Oh, he’s fine these days,” Dawn said. “Ever since the varicose veins got done, he’s a new man. All thanks to Dr. . . .” She trailed off. “Well, bye, then.”
“She’s a nice girl, but she needs more to do with her time, now Bill’s fixed Len’s legs.” Sheila huffed upstairs and into the tiny kitchen, dropping the bags on the counter, as Karen followed behind. “Only thing keeping her going before that, running around after him. Now, shall I put the kettle on? You look done in.”
Karen sat down slowly and eased her swollen feet up onto the coffee table. “That’d be great.”
“How long you got to go now?”
“I’m due end of May. I wish it was over, Sheila. Those celebrities they interview in Hello! or whatever who go on about how they’ve never felt better—what are they on about? And I’ve still got two months to go.”
“Those magazines conspire against women to keep them in their place. It’s the patriarchy’s finest work,” Sheila said grimly, and Karen looked at her in surprise. “Oh, the last bit’s the worst,” she added in a normal voice. “Everyone knows that. You got all your baby gear ready?”
The same questions, twenty times a day. How long have you got to go? Have you got everything ready? Is it a boy or a girl? How are you feeling? You look well! Karen knew from her fellow mothers-to-be in the parenting course they were doing that there were just as many questions she wasn’t being asked. Whether they were going to stay in their current home or move somewhere with more space, for example. No one in Winter Stoke asked Karen that.
“I’ve bought some things but I don’t want to go overboard till it’s here. I’m superstitious. Joe had some journalist down from London last week—she swears by IKEA. He’s obsessed with it now, keeps trying to buy stuff online, only there’s so much you have to go in the stores to buy. That’s how they make their money, isn’t it?”
“Those bloody wineglasses. Ten pounds for twelve, they do them, and those patterned cardboard storage boxes.” Sheila leaned on the counter, laughing. “Every time I go in there I promise it’s just to get a desk for the office or whatever, and every time I come out with a pile of those patterned cardboard boxes and a lorry-load of glasses and they smash on the way home and I never use those cardboard boxes, never.”
“Well, maybe you should go mad and treat yourself, Sheila.” Karen tried to reach her foot, but her bump prevented her. “Take Joe. He’s desperate to go. I can’t face IKEA, walking round like a beached whale in flats. No way.”
“You look beautiful,” Sheila said. She poured from the teapot. “Honestly, you do. Suits you, being a bit more . . .” She stopped. “Well, never mind.”
“Now you’ve got me worried.” Karen smiled. She hadn’t ever really cared about her appearance. She knew she was attractive—it was part of her pragmatic nature that she accepted it as fact—and often it was boring, men coming on to you because you were short and had big boobs. It was one of the things she’d liked about Bill, that he hadn’t minded much about her clothes or nails or hair, or that she was seventeen years younger than he. He’d liked her.
It was Joe she’d tarted herself up for, almost as if she knew she had to play the part of the scarlet woman to make sense of what she was doing—and the irony was, he didn’t like it. They’d only slept together four or five times, but they’d met a few more than that. In summer, going into September . . . before he’d found out she wasn’t just Karen Bromidge, the lonely girl two years older than he, who was new to the area and from the north and sexy as hell and lots of fun, whom he could talk to about his son, and the weirdness of the village, and starting over again, and then have sex with—intense, heated, silent sweaty sex that matched the wet, humid summer. He didn’t know her married name was Karen Winter, and that she lived down the road with the doctor who’d sewn up his finger. She was married, and Joe—Joe was a damn prude, she was starting to think. He’d ditched her faster than a rubbish truck at full speed, and he’d been so angry with her, so bloody furious!
“You should have told me, Karen,” he’d said gently, but his voice was cold. It was early October and chilly in his small flat, where they’d had their secret summer. But summer was definitely over now. “It changes everything.”
“What’s the difference? You weren’t into me,” she’d yelled, not caring who heard them, how mad she sounded. She’d have been pregnant then, two or three weeks, how weird to think of it now. “You didn’t want to go out with me. I know you didn’t. I’d have thought you’d have been glad, no strings attached, what’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” he’d said angrily. “Karen, you can’t just go around lying to people like that. I really liked you. I’d—if I’d known, then . . .”
It had been hard enough to get him to sleep with her, she’d thought. Then she found that if she just kept playing the part of the bad girl, she’d start to believe it, and somehow she’d be okay. But it hadn’t worked out like that. She’d engineered this whole sorry mess, and there was nothing to do but make the best of it.
The memory of it made her shiver. She took a biscuit from the tin and dunked it in the tea Sheila handed her. “This is lovely. Thanks, Sheila.”
Since Karen had moved in with Joe, just after Christmas, Sheila had been nothing but kind to her. It couldn’t have been easy, her star chef suddenly lumbered with a hormonal, homeless, pregnant ex, four weeks after that review in the Daily News.
It was funny, when she thought about it. How Lucy had babbled on for weeks about this guy at work, how he was old and sad and keen on her, how he kept saying he’d review the Oak Tree, and Karen just hadn’t believed her. She
was too worried about Lucy’s obvious crush on Joe to see any further than that.
Karen sometimes wondered if Lucy knew how profoundly she had changed everything, really. The review had run the week after David’s funeral, Saturday, December 1. A copy of it had been framed, and hung above the bar.
. . . In the cooking of Joe Thorne, the young, gentle chef who spent two years under Jean Michel Folland at Le Jardin in Leeds, we have the very best of British cuisine today. The apparent simplicity of the names of dishes belies the extreme complexity with which they are created. Pressed ham hock, salmon roulade with beetroot relish, goat-cheese ravioli—they all sound straightforward, and they are, for this is no snob’s menu, designed to dazzle and intimidate. Rather it is a menu for a neighborhood restaurant, which happens to be situated in a pub, one that is as old as the Civil War, in an idyllic little slice of Somerset just outside Bath. The food is locally sourced—in an unpretentious and sympathetically realistic way, none of your foraging for borage nonsense here. The execution is perfect. The atmosphere—under the eagle eye of landlady Sheila Cowper—is welcoming, laid-back, and yet with just a touch of magic: witness the rose hips on the table and the complimentary damson vodka offered to me after my meal. I booked another table for the following week when I left. I cannot recommend this wonderful place highly enough.
It had happened fast. Bookings started coming in that day for dinners and Christmas parties. Tables of six, eight, ten. Then weekend lunches, then requests for birthday parties, private room rental, the works. By New Year’s Eve the restaurant had been booked out for two weeks, and though Sheila and Joe both fully expected the slump in January, it never came. There were mutterings from some of the villagers about cars blocking the high street and not being able to move for Londoners up at the bar now, and there’d been some defections to the Green Man, but as Joe told Karen, he was sure he’d win them back. If necessary, they’d buy the field behind Tom and Clover’s, turn it into a vegetable patch and a car park. Maybe institute a locals-only night, where you had to have a council tax bill with you to claim your table and all you could eat for £40 for two, including wine.
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