‘Wine?’ Christina offered, though he’d already begun his distracted search for the bottle that sat directly in front of him. Their fingers brushed as she handed him the glass – once, that simple touch would have sparked something. Now it was just skin meeting skin, nothing more. Apart from when Elspeth was home, they’d eaten together perhaps three times in the past month. Hamish was either absent for work, or present but distracted, buried in his medieval manuscripts. Their marriage was dissolving like sugar in the rain, making Christina desperately sad. Part of her longed to talk through her dilemma, but the other part of her knew the distance was too great to bridge. What could she say? How could she possibly explain to someone so absorbed in historical authenticity that she’d been creating historical lies? Everything felt beyond reach. Night after night, she lay awake staring at the ceiling, her mind spinning but always landing on the same desperate thought: leave. Take Elspeth north – Glasgow or Edinburgh. Get away from Ernest and force Hamish to choose. Us or them. A new life or the family that would never let him go, or let her in.
Hamish waved his free hand dangerously close to the wine glasses, nearly toppling one as he leaned forward, eyes alight. ‘It wasn’t just preservation,’ he exclaimed, his voice rising with excitement. Christina blinked, scrambling to tune into the latest Tudor topic. Oblivious to her confusion he stumbled on. ‘They layered the grain with ash – ash!’ – to keep out the weevils. What ingenuity! No refrigeration, no chemicals – just fire and instinct.’
Christina smiled faintly, instinctively nudging the glasses out of range as she listened to him orbit his latest preoccupation like a Tudor alchemist chasing the shimmer of gold in base metal.
If she told him about the forgeries, would he even hear her? Or would he just tut and go back to his manuscripts?Her practical nature warred with her creeping sense of inevitability. Sheshould drive over to the Manor right now, demand to see Ernest, and threaten to expose everything unless he called off the entire operation. But he had so much sway with Lady Flora. Christina already felt barely tolerated by her mother-in-law. What if he responded by driving a wedge between the two of them? What if Ernest cut her out of the family completely, leaving her and Hamish drifting ever further apart with nothing to anchor them?
‘Everything all right darling?’ Asked Hamish.
Her grip on the serving spoon clamped hard enough to hurt. ‘Why?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
His fingers – ink-stained from fountain pen devotion – traced absent patterns across the journal’s worn leather as he spoke. ‘You look troubled.’
‘Just tired.’ She replied.Tired of lying.What should I do?Tell Ernest I won’t do it anymore? Tell Hamish everything? Run away and leave them all to sort the mess out without her? The last option was by far the most tempting, but she knew she’d never leave Elspeth, and despite his faults, she couldn’t bear to lose Hamish, either. The sauce bubbled, filling the confined space with a savoury warmth but she suspected it would start to burn if she left it any longer. She turned away and busied herself at the stove, plating up the linguine and garlic bread as skilfully as a restaurateur.
He pushed. ‘Not sleeping well?’
She blushed. A husband shouldn’t have to ask, but they’d been sleeping in separate rooms since that ghastly row two years ago. ‘I’ve just got a lot on, and I’ve got a ... difficult client.’
‘It’s your own business – tell them to go elsewhere.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Honestly, darling’ he said, a half-smile tugging at his lips, ‘you’re too compliant. You need to confront, not placate. Catherine of Aragon knew how to stand firm against Henry – didn’t budge an inch. His last wife Catherine Parr bentwhichever way the wind blew. Don’t do that.’
She snorted. He really didn’t understand.
Elspeth clattered downstairs, trailing drama scripts and tonight’s excitement, and sat at the table, a script in one hand, fork in the other. ‘This is brilliant, Mum. We’re doing Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. ‘Out, damned spot!’ She delivered the line with theatrical flourish, and Christina gave her child a little round of applause, trying to shake off the nagging sense that those words had become shorthand for the futile attempt to wash away guilt that can never be cleansed.
‘Mrs Henderson says I have real potential for tragic roles,’ Elspeth continued, untouched by her mother’s distress. ‘Something about my eyes being naturally dramatic. Nanny Dee didn’t have dramatic eyes and nor does Grandmama – do you think I inherited them from one of my grandads?’
‘Do you know, I can’t remember much about my dad’s eyes,’ said Hamish. ‘I was very young when he died.’
‘What about your dad, mum?’
Christina flinched, then gushed. ‘Um, no. I wasn’t ... I mean, I don’t think his eyes were particularly dramatic. Now eat up, you don’t want the pasta getting cold.’
The family ate. The silence stretched between bites, filled only by logs shifting in the grate, and Elspeth reading out bits of Shakespeare. Once, this kitchen had rung with laughter – Elspeth’s giggles, Hamish’s terrible puns, Christina’s snorts of amusement. Now conversations died before they began, killed by the weight of secrets and careful distance.
‘Mum?’ Elspeth’s voice cut through her reverie. ‘You’re staring at your pasta like it’s done something wrong.’
‘Sorry, love. Just thinking.’
It looked like Elspeth was about to say something more, but then she jumped up, grabbing her coat and script. ‘I’m off to rehearsal. Dad’s giving me a lift, aren’t you, Dad?’
Hamish blinked, as if surprised to find himself in his own kitchen. ‘Rehearsal? Oh, yes. Drama. Lady Macbeth.’ He stood, nearly braining himself on the beam again. ‘Come on then, we don’t want to be late.’
They bustled out into the darkness, leaving Christina alone with the washing up and her guilty conscience.
What would Ivy do?The thought came unbidden. She wouldn’t agonize and rationalize. She’d do the right thing, regardless of the cost. But Ivy had never turned her skills to forgery to keep a roof over the heads of people who barely acknowledged her, had never felt the bitter intimacy of secretly sustaining the people who grudgingly tolerated her.
Christina stared out at the dark Devon hills. Somewhere out there, Ernest was probably planning her next forgery, confident in her complicity. Hamish was driving through the night, oblivious to the criminal enterprise funding his family’s genteel lifestyle. And she was here, washing dishes and wondering if she had the courage to destroy everything she’d worked so hard to build.
Four
The next morning, Christina drove briskly down the winding Devon lanes, past bare hedgerows and ancient stone walls weeping with winter rain. Then, like a curtain parting, the land opened up. She sailed through a pair of enormous black gates, the driveway then curving past a frozen meadow where deer picked delicately through the frost-laced grass. In front of her, Brambleton Manor rose out of the valley like something from an oil painting – golden-stoned, sprawling, and proud. The house was ancient – its origins traced back to the Domesday Book – and was a “sister house” to Brambleton Hall, which owned the land above the village, where it made fine cider and let out smart eco-friendly houses to up-market tourists. Two branches of the same ancient family, one now far more precarious than the stone walls implied. It was a shame Ernest’s money-spinning schemes weren’t as legitimate as the Hall’s.
She eased the car up the drive, the crisp February air rattling its windows. On either side, the flower borders lay dormant, a tangle of skeletal stems and brown leaves, but she could see the promise beneath the frost. Crocus bulbs were just beginning to swell, their tips daring to peek above the soil, and Christina made mental notes as she drove: time to clear the dead foliage, prune the wisteria before it leaped unchecked along the trellis and add another layer of mulch to the borders to hold warmth in the soil. Even in winter’s grip, she could almost feel the gardenstirring under her gaze, waiting for her instructions.
