She didn’t turn, instead pressing ‘Confirm Payment’.
Hamish emerged from the living room carrying a teacup balanced precariously on top of a teetering stack of books, each one bristling with scraps of newspaper like dispatches jutting from a general’s campaign journal.
‘Do you think Elspeth has inherited your organisational gifts?’ he asked, placing the teacup down beside her with a mild slosh. ‘She’s already annotated her history textbook in three colours. One of them sparkly. I never annotated anything as a child. I simply memorised.’
‘You also thought Edward VI was a werewolf until you were thirteen.’
‘That was speculative history,’ he said, straightening his stoop. ‘Therewererumours. And the boy had a suspicious pallor.’
Christina’s mouth twitched but didn’t make it into a smile.
Hamish hovered a moment longer, then circled the table and slumped into the chair opposite hers, one hand running throughhis thick greying curls. He smelled of damp wool and that vaguely ecclesiastical scent of old books.
She stared at her laptop screen, which now showed a cheerful message:
Thank you for your payment.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The modern yoke.’
As if Hamish would know; he’d never made an online transfer.Hamish frowned. ‘But does ithaveto be this ... daily grappling? Passwords and little codes on your phone? It’s all very Orwellian.’
‘Hamish, it’s online banking, not a dystopia.’
He looked mildly startled by her tone, as if he’d wandered into the wrong lecture hall.
‘She’s doing very well, isn’t she?’ he said, abruptly changing tack. ‘At school. I mean. She’s playing the lead role in Shakespeare’sAs You Like It,and she’s got a part inMacbeth.’
‘And Ratty inThe Wind in the Willows– she sings a solo in that.’
He scratched his temple. ‘Theatrical bloodlines, perhaps. At uni, you played Juliet to my Mercutio.’
‘You walked off halfway through Act II to find a sandwich.’
‘It was a very long production.’
Christina shut the laptop with a quiet snap. She felt oddly numb, as if their careful, clipped exchange had frozen something inside her. She desperately missed his love. Christina rose, took the kettle to the sink, filled it, and lifted the lid on the hotplate. While the kettle boiled, her eyes dropped to the worn floorboards. That was the spot where Hamish had shown how much he loved her, the first night Elspeth boarded at school, just over two years ago. After dropping Elspeth off, Christina had curled up next to the aga, listless. Then Hamish had arrived, his arms full of blankets and a bottle of wine. They’d made love righthere on the kitchen floor, the warmth of the Aga around them, then lain together, cuddling in the moonlight.
Hamish snapped her out of her thoughts. ‘What’s up? You’ve been ... quiet lately.’
She turned, dried her hands on a tea towel, then folded it with unnecessary care. ‘Have I?’
‘Well. Yes.’
She didn’t answer. The kettle began to build a quiet hiss, like a warning. ‘I’m popping out later; said I’d meet Penelope for a drink.’
‘How lovely. Do give my regards to dear Penny.’ His tone was flat, almost bored, but something in the way he said ‘dear Penny’made her pause.
‘I will,’ Christina said slowly, studying his profile. ‘She often talks about you.’
‘Does she?’ He glanced up, and there was something in his eyes – amusement? Regret? ‘How terribly kind.’
Christina felt a flutter of unease. Lady Penelope was beautiful, accomplished and lived in her inherited manor house; and she’d known Hamish since childhood. Summer parties at their parents’ houses, shooting weekends in Scotland. She knew he’d dated Penelope before he went to university, but it had never bothered her before. The thought arrived fully formed, terrible and plausible. Wasn’t that how these things worked in his world? Discreet affairs, separate lives running in parallel? Somehow, she couldn’t believe that however bad things got, loyal Hamish would ever be unfaithful, but was she being naïve? She remembered her mother’s warning when she’d told Dee she was engaged to Hamish,‘Is that wise luv? A Pemberton? Aristocratic marriages aren’t like ours, hen.’
A memory surfaced, sharp and unwelcome. A few days before Hamish proposed. She’d been searching for him in the east wing of Brambleton Manor. Lost – the house had forty-seven rooms –she had found herself outside Lady Flora’s study. The door was ajar.
‘—simply must accept it, Hamish.’ Her mother-in-law’s voice, crisp and commanding. ‘She’s pregnant. I can tell. You’ll marry her and that’s the end of it.’
Christina had frozen in the corridor, one hand on the ancient wallpaper, the other on the child that grew inside her.
