Nadine stared at her.
‘I said I was sorry. I am. I’m very sorry.’
‘I don’t care,’ Becky said.
She moved over to the refrigerator and opened the door. Inside were a few things in brown paper bags, a cracked egg on a saucer and a carton of long-life apple juice.
‘What are you going to do?’ Nadine said.
Becky slammed the refrigerator door shut again.
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Will you stay?’ Nadine said. Her voice had an edge of real anxiety. ‘Will you stay and keep me company?’
Becky glanced at her. She touched the breast pocket of her denim jacket and let her hand linger there for a moment. On the journey, Josie had stopped for petrol, and when she got back into the car, after paying, she’d handed Becky a packet of Marlboro Lights. She hadn’t said anything. Nor had Becky.
‘I’m going out,’ Becky said.
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. A walk maybe.’
‘Will you be long?’
‘No,’ Becky said.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Nadine said. ‘We need to talk all this through.’
‘Sorry,’ Becky said. She went across the kitchen to the door to the outside. ‘I’ll stay till you’re better. I said I would. But I didn’t say I’d talk.’
‘You’ve been here a week,’ Mrs Huntley said now.
‘I know.’
‘What about your schooling?’
‘It was the end of term today. Anyway, I’d been off school—’
Tim Huntley dropped a wedge of bread on to his cleared plate and began to push it round with the fork.
‘What about your dad lending a hand with all this?’
‘He can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Becky looked straight at him. ‘She wouldn’t let him.’
He put the wedge of bread in his mouth. ‘So it’s down to you?’
Becky shrugged. She stood up, holding the edge of the table.
‘That’s not right,’ Mrs Huntley said. She looked at Becky. ‘You’ve got your schooling to think of.’
‘I’d better be getting back,’ Becky said.
Tim Huntley stood, too.
‘Give us a call. Any time.’
‘Thanks,’ Becky said.
She went out of the farmhouse, while they watched her, and then, at a safe distance, past the barking dogs and over the sleeper bridge to the road. The stream was full – late-winter rains coming off the mountains, the postman had said – and was really running, and the hawthorn hedge was frosted with bright-green leaves, each one neatly cut out, as if with embroidery scissors. Becky took her cigarettes out of her pocket and put one in her mouth. It was the last but one in the pack that Josie had given her a week ago. She paused, in her tramp down the lane, to light up, and then walked on, heavily in her boots, blowing blue smoke into the clear air above the stream and the hawthorn hedge.
Nadine was sitting on the grass in the cottage garden, under a three-quarters-dead apple tree. She had her glasses on, and, in her lap, a pile of ‘Teach Yourself Greek’ books she’d found in the local junk shop. She looked up as Becky came in through the gate.
‘How was that?’
‘OK,’ Becky said.
‘Are you going to tell me about it?’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Becky said. She leaned against the apple tree. ‘Tim was eating and they asked how you were.’
Nadine took her glasses off.
‘I’m fine.’
‘For now,’ Becky said. She put her hand on her jacket pocket. One left. Save it for later. She slid down the tree and sat with her back against it, holding her knees.
‘No, I really will be fine now. I will. I promise. Summer’s coming—’
‘You shouldn’t live alone,’ Becky said.
‘What?’
‘You heard me. You shouldn’t live alone. You can’t cope.’
Nadine turned on her a gaze full of distress. ‘Oh Becky—’
‘You can’t,’ Becky said. She looked up at the sky, through the apple tree’s black, gnarled branches. ‘And—’ She stopped.
‘And what?’ Nadine said, her voice sharp with apprehension.
‘And,’ Becky said, her gaze still on the sky, ‘I can’t live with you any more. Not permanently. I can’t cope with you either.’
‘I haven’t got it,’ Matthew said.
Josie turned. He leaned in the kitchen doorway, still in his jacket and tie from work, but the tie was crooked and loosened.
‘They made me a long speech,’ Matthew said. ‘One of those speeches where you know they hope you won’t spot that the truth is the last thing they’re going to tell you.’
He came slowly forward into the room, pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Josie pushed another chair next to him and slipped into it. She took his nearest hand.
‘Oh Matt.’
‘They said that, although I had all the required experience and qualifications, they felt that because of my family circumstances this wasn’t a good moment in my life for me to take on extra responsibility. They said that kind of thing several times over in various ways until I felt so dysfunctional by implication I could hardly sit up. The injustice of it—’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t mean the injustice of not giving me the job, I mean the other injustice, the weaselly insinuation that my family circumstances are too much for me now when they used to be far, far worse. And the cowardice of not being able to tell me I’m just not good enough.’
Josie lifted the hand she held and put it against her face.
‘Nobody can do that unless they’re sadistic. Nobody likes that.’
He looked at her.
‘I can’t bear it that the first thing I try and do after marrying you is a failure.’
He leaned forward and kissed her.
‘We needed this promotion,’ he said. ‘We needed something positive to happen, something to show us we’d turned a corner.’ Gently he took his hand out of hers. ‘Where are the children?’
‘Out,’ Josie said. ‘Clare and Rory are next door and Becky’s gone to see a friend.’
‘Is – is it any better since Becky came back?’
‘It’s quieter,’ Josie said.
‘Only that?’
She looked down at her hands. Something had arisen in her mind during that drive back from Herefordshire, something that was preoccupying her, she found, a great deal and which she was not yet ready to tell Matthew about. Something had changed, something in her perception of Matthew’s children had altered; there’d been a small but powerful shift of emphasis and while she considered it, and what to do about it, she found she wanted to keep it private. She’d thought, often and often, of Becky’s face as she got out of the car, outside Nadine’s cottage, of Becky’s figure dwindling in the driving mirror as she drove away after that hideous scene. She had not expected Nadine to be so violent. Nor had she expected her to be beautiful. Nor – and this was the most astonishing nor of all – had she expected there to be a real, a palpable reluctance between herself and Becky to part. You could give a dozen reasons for the reluctance, explain it away in terms that in no way diminished the established antagonism between them, but still there remained, after all the explaining, a persistent sense that, in the momentary dropping of guards and attitudes, a glimmer of hope had flickered, faint but unquestionably there.
‘Josie?’ Matthew said.
She looked up at him.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.
‘I know. So am I.’ He stood up. ‘I just feel—’
‘Please,’ Josie said, interrupting. ‘Please don’t say any more. Please don’t. This is a disappointment, but it’s not something worse than that, it’s not as bad as things have been.’
He gave her a small smile.
‘Maybe.’
He went out of the room. She heard his tread going up the stairs and into their bedroom and then the sound of a drawer being opened while he looked for a sweater to wear instead of his jacket. Then his feet went out on to the landing again and she could hear the clatter of the extending ladder being pulled down, to give him access to the attic.