exhibition he would never have gone to on his own in a million years. And then it all began to fall into place. His new interest in modern decor, the different trendy expressions in his speech, the quote the other day from an article in
For a while she sat, her head in her hands, then she straightened. The sun was still there. It had reached her bare feet and she could feel the warmth caressing her skin.
She wasn’t sure of the actual moment when she realised she was free. She ought to be distraught. She was hurt and insulted and angry but at the same time an imperceptible, almost subliminal lightness had begun to form around her heart.
There was a quiet chirrup from behind her. Sally-Su jumped onto the bed. The cat sat facing her, eyes inscrutable.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Libby spoke out loud. ‘You should have said. We needn’t have moved. We could have refused. We needn’t have made it easier for him.’
She stood up and padded downstairs, the cat, tail high, paws mincing, behind her.
‘But we don’t have to stay here. We can go home, back to our friends. It won’t be the same house, of course, but it would just be you and me. And we’d find somewhere with a little garden which we could make beautiful.’
Almost without thinking she reached into the cupboard for a tin of sardines. ‘I wonder if she really wants him. Was it just the chase, do you think? Take him away from his wife just for fun, then, when she’s got him, get bored, move on to find the next married man. Or does she genuinely love him?’
She hooked her finger into the ring pull and levered off the lid. Sally-Su was sitting on the work top only inches away. She did not move. Every muscle was tense, her eyes sapphire blue, only the tiniest black slits showing the concentration of her mind.
Libby lifted out a sardine on a fork. ‘Shall we share them?’ She licked a drop of olive oil off her finger tip. ‘Then I’m going to ring our solicitor to see what we need to do next. And then -’ she dropped the sardine on a saucer – ‘you and I are going to start to plan what we are going to do with our freedom.’
He had the grace to look abashed when she confronted him; but then the relief showed through all too soon. ‘I’m so sorry, Libby. I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world!’
But he had. He had hurt them both.
They put the house back on the market and this time Sally-Su showed no interest at all in who looked round. She did not like this London home and she did not care who walked around it. She lay curled on Libby’s bed and ignored even the most heartfelt compliments from the strangers who came to stare. Had she known how much London house prices had escalated in the intervening months she would have sat up and pricked her ears. Even splitting the value of the place she and Libby would be able to afford something deep in the country which would meet with her approval.
Libby found it just eight miles away from where they used to live. The cottage would need a lot of work and so would the garden but it had the basics – an inglenook fireplace, a lot of charm and an old apple tree with gnarled branches perfect for climbing – from a cat’s point of view – and from Libby’s it was close to all their old friends. It was like coming home. Only one thing worried her. How was she going to support herself? That was a tricky one. His job had always more than paid for them both. In fact he had actively discouraged her from working, hated her occasional part time jobs – a matter of rather strange old-fashioned pride, or even possessiveness, she thought – which was why she had spent so much time and energy on the garden. It hadn’t mattered then, the garden had been just about enough. But now suddenly her world had changed. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to support you so that you can swan around doing nothing all day in the country while I work myself into the ground up here! No solicitor would countenance that for a minute. You are perfectly capable of working. In fact you’ll probably remarry.’ He was rapidly working himself into a frenzy of self-righteous indignation at all the money he might have to give her.
There seemed no point in reminding him that her life of leisure had been his idea. And that in fact leisure had been the last thing on her mind and was the last thing on her mind now. Life suddenly was full of possibilities, limited only by the presence of one small cat.
And strangely it was the cat who got her the job. Sally-Su was ecstatic at the new house, inspecting it, her tail erect, commenting loudly on every feature, inspecting the furniture to make sure her favourite bits had arrived safely. (‘You can have that, it’s all scratched and smelly,’ Roy had said about more than one item. From the selection he rejected Libby decided his new love did not like antique furniture. Good!) While she was thus occupied, the phone had rung and it turned out to be the local antique shop with whom Libby had left her number to enquire about a small table she had seen in the window. As she was talking Sally-Su came to stand near her, voicing her own opinion loudly. The shop owner heard her down the phone and laughed. The conversation became extended. He was a cat lover; he adored gardens; he was a widower; he could show her the new restaurant that had opened in the last few months; he needed someone to watch the shop while he was out buying more stock…
Sally-Su liked the sound of this new gentleman; he was obviously a cat person and from a cat’s point of view things were shaping up rather nicely. Once she had inspected him she would decide whether he could stay in their lives. She smiled as only a cat can smile. Anyone would have thought she had arranged the whole thing.
‘You’ve Got a Book to Write, Remember?’
‘It’s a lonely house.’ Brian Foster glanced at his passen ger. ‘We only ever used it for holidays.’
Caro nodded. ‘I know. I’ve read the particulars.’
Brian had arranged to collect her from the station following her telephoned enquiry about the ad in the
‘As I told you,’ he went on, ‘it’s just too far to come often enough to justify keeping it.’ He shrugged, squinting through the windscreen at the single-track road ahead. ‘Are you planning to go back south tonight?’ He glanced towards her. She was a striking woman. Tall. In her early forties at a guess, she was staring straight ahead, seemingly uninterested in Brian or his attempts at conversation.
He swung the car onto an even narrower road. ‘I wish the weather was brighter,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But I suppose it’s better to see it at one of its less glamorous moments.’ Two other prospective buyers had already seen it at its less glamorous moments and both had high-tailed it back to civilisation.
She put a hand out to the dashboard to steady herself as the old Land Rover lurched through a pothole. He grimaced. ‘We – I – keep this car up here and fly to Inverness from London.’
‘How long have you had the cottage?’ She didn’t look across at him as she spoke.
‘Five years.’
‘And there is vacant possession?’
‘That’s right. I’m staying up here long enough to sell it; then I’m off.’ He tried to keep his voice light. She needn’t know about the heartbreak, the anger, the misery the cottage had caused. ‘You should be able to see it about now,’ he added. He pointed. ‘White blob on the shore of the loch down there.’
She sat forward and stared across the rain-soaked moor. ‘What’s that other building near it?’
‘That’s the broch.’ He slowed the car as he approached a water-filled gully which crossed the road in full spate. ‘Our local piece of heritage.’
‘It’s a ruin?’
‘For a couple of thousand years. It’s Iron Age they think.’
He did not speak again until they drew up outside the cottage. It was a charming place, Patricia had seen to that. Whitewashed with a neat fence to keep out the deer. Pointless that had been. They could jump fences twenty feet high as far as he could see and had made short work of her pretty garden. Now there was heather and bog myrtle and foxgloves in the flower beds, just as there was outside the fence. Nature’s way of telling you that you were here on her terms, not yours.
They climbed out and stood for a moment, Brian staring out across the rain-pitted waters of the loch, Caro at
