She’ll leave it a little longer, she thinks, before worrying too much. A year ago, she wouldn’t have given the fact of John’s going back out in this weather or the length of his absence a second thought. She took for granted how much she could rely on him; she realizes that now.
She reshapes the dough, oils the bowl, and looks up when Birdie yips and wags her tail as she crowds the back door.
Maggie doesn’t look at John when he comes in. She places the dough in the bowl and holds her tongue while he hangs up his coat and cap, kicks off his boots.
He switches on the kettle.
“Where’ve you been?” She doesn’t mean to snap but she can’t hold it in any longer. Why hasn’t he greeted her? That’s another thing that’s slipped. She shuts her mouth and breathes through her nose, but her chest rises and falls with emphasis, as if her feelings are protesting her efforts to contain them.
“Seeing to things.”
“Seeing to what? To what, John?”
“I was seeing to the wall by the paddock.”
“Do I believe you?”
“I don’t know, do you?” The look he gives her is sharp. Nothing lacking in it. Disconcerting when she’s expecting vacancy. Confusing how there’s no predicting when he’s all there and when he’s gone.
Maggie eyes the bowl of dough. She wants nothing more than to throw it at him, but it won’t do any good, so she doesn’t. He only responds to a gentle approach these days. Something freezes in him if she gets angry. She’ll make him a tea, sit, and have a chat with him. While John’s upstairs, she places the bowl on the warm end of the sideboard, beside the Aga, and gently drapes a linen towel over it.
He clatters back down the stairs and doesn’t even look at her on his way outside.
“Where are you going now?” she calls after him as the back door shuts, no longer able to contain her outrage.
He doesn’t answer. Birdie whimpers. He’s left her behind again. It used to be that he didn’t go anywhere without her. He always had a dog at his feet.
Maggie wrenches the door open.
“Don’t you mess with those people!” she shouts into the gloom.She can’t see him, has no idea if he can hear her, half hopes that he can’t. But perhaps he needs to hear it. He doesn’t seem to comprehend that they need the money rental of the barn brings. They can’t survive without it.
Him acting on his vendetta against guests is something she suspects, not something she knows. In moments when her confidence in him fails, she feels as if it’s something brewing in him. When the previous guests left early it haunted her because John was out that night. She knows he was if she’s honest with herself. He got up in the early hours, thinking she didn’t notice. There, she’s admitted it now.
She didn’t confront him about it before because it was only the one set of guests, after all, who weren’t pleasant. And things have been fine since. But maybe she should have.
And perhaps, if she’s right about that, it wasn’t so bad that she just shouted after him not to mess with these new guests. Perhaps it’s time to be firm about these things, even though she doesn’t want to face up to it. But there’s no point in chasing after him now, to make the point more firmly. She’ll never find him.
She leans against the Aga, absorbing its heat. Birdie looks up at her with those crazy mismatched eyes. Maggie slips her a piece of ham.
“I don’t understand him either, Birdie,” she says as the dog eats. “But he still loves us both.”
The dog lays her head down.
I miss the man I married, Maggie thinks.
Jayne scrambles onto a rock to survey the view. The weather conditions were poor when they set out and they’re deteriorating. The rain has intensified, and visibility has reduced.
Worse, Emily has lagged farther and farther behind as theywalk, obsessively checking her phone, and they need to press on more quickly if they’re going to cover any distance and find a signal before conditions drive them back inside.
Jayne is as committed as Emily to finding reception, even if it’s only patchy. If they can get hold of one or all of their husbands, hopefully Ruth and Emily will stop worrying about the letter and they can have the weekend they all wanted.
Jayne also has another reason to be out here.
She’s looking for the ancient burial chamber, a Neolithic barrow, that’s on the edge of the Elliott land. She read about it after booking this place and couldn’t get it out of her head. And then she read something else, something apparently unrelated, but the two things knitted together in her mind with an intensity that surprised her and gave her an idea that she hasn’t been able to let go.
It was a partially formed, beautiful idea, which morphed into a plan whose details she has obsessed over. It gives her a more powerful reason to be at the barn than just the desire to spend a few nights away with friends.
The plan involves her and Mark, alone. She’ll tell him about it when he arrives. Anticipating it feels intimate to her, and exciting. What she wants to do will lie at the very core of their marriage and like the intelligence work they did, it’ll be their secret.
