‘So how are you?’
He pours milk into the jug her mother always used. He did not appear to notice that the floral pattern on the china has begun to twist and grow over his fingers. Them’s cornflowers, campions and ivy, says Mrs Morle. Her voice has churning around Amy’s head all day. It’s annoying, sometimes frightening but it won’t stop.
‘You haven’t forgotten it’s my birthday?’ her father says lightly but he sounds concerned.
‘Course not, Dad.’
She digs in her bag for the card she’d bought in a rush at the railway station and hands it to him. There is the dirt etched like spider’s webs on her hands. She carries the farm with her.
‘And I made this for you.’
She pushes something wrapped in brown paper and decorated with coloured dots to make it pretty. It’s a jar of pickled onions, his favourite.
‘Thank you, love. I’ll open these later. Vi’s coming over here to celebrate. We’ll open a bottle of wine, perhaps. That’s alright with you, isn’t it?’
It is not a question. The tea scalds her throat.
‘I’ve got some news for you, Amy, and I hope you’ll be happy for me.’
She stares fiercely, willing him to stop speaking. ‘I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.’ Nervously he fingers the envelope she gave him.
‘I’ve asked Vi to marry me and she’s accepted. We’re engaged. To be married. Maybe next year, I don’t know when exactly.’
The words, proud and solid, hit her one by one like physical blows. Her throat constricts. His mouth is moving, producing words and phrases that she only half-registers. Something about there not being bridesmaids, a ceremony ‘in a register office but it will be nice’.
‘But it’s hardly a year since Mum died, Dad. How can you forget her so quickly, fall in love with someone else and get married? It’s…it’s wrong.’
‘Why can you not be happy for me?’ he replies hotly.
‘How could you?’
Choosing each word carefully, searching as though if only he could find the perfect one to fit, he would make her understand, he says: ‘I have not forgotten your mother, not at all, Amy. But what you do not know, can’t know is, how terribly lonely I have been without your mother.’
‘How can you talk such rubbish?’ she roars back.
‘Don’t spoil everything. Mum loved you. That should be enough. There were the three of us, our family and that’s just the way it should stay.’
Her father shakes his head. He tears at the envelope and opens the birthday card. A picture of a fried egg and across the yellow yolk are written the words ‘Dad, you’re a good egg’ is written across the bottom.
‘You don’t understand,’ he says quietly.
Her lips buzz like they’d been stung by a thousand bees. The room, once blurry round the edges, comes into such sharp focus that she jumps.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he repeats dully, his face in his hands.
Amy begins to hum fiercely. Outside the window, she senses the world has not stopped, for a car drives by and a skipping child flashes by the window. Through her finger-clamped ears, her father is talking.
Amy lurches from the room. She runs upstairs, flings herself on to the bed and screams into the pillow.
Lynn has finished the milking. She takes the pail of milk to cool on the larder shelf. She likes being in the farmhouse. Amy asked her to do the milking. The cow is awkward, Amy explained, won’t let down her milk for a man.
‘Don’t blame her, men are all fingers and thumbs. I’ll do it for you,’ Lynn had said. ‘She’ll get mastitis if it’s not done proper. Then you’ll need a visit from the vet and that costs a bomb. Mr Stratton won’t like that, will he? Not on his economy drive.’
Lynn heard someone moving about behind the half-open door of the sitting room. Some might think it inappropriate for her to have peeked inside. She did not. And if the person in the room asked Lynn to come and join him, what earthly reason would there be for her to refuse? Music, wine and a little conversation are ways to fill a long lonely evening. Some might ask why Lynn was in the farmhouse for so long, returning to the cottage after her mother, assuming her daughter was asleep upstairs, turned out the cottage lights. But who was there to ask?
23
Amy counts again on her fingers. The bleeding should have started five days ago. She winds the mechanism on her jewellery box; the ballerina pirouettes but the music does not play. She will call Seymour after six pm when calls are cheaper and before her father returns from work. She wonders what Seymour will say.
The assistant drops the light diffusor umbrella and picks up the ringing phone. ‘Reception says it’s Naresh Rao for you on line two,’ he says.
Seymour points to the sleeve of the model’s jumper. ‘It’s in shadow,’ he hisses, then beams at the model. ‘Give me a mo’, darling, I must take this call. Don’t move, you’re looking wonderful. Hallo, Naresh. How are you? Yes, in the middle of this and that. Sunil passed his exams? That’s fantastic news.’ He winks at the model. ‘Naresh, I have a friend with a law practice in Norwich. Not talked to him in a while but I’m sure he can help, perhaps get Sunil articles in his practice. I’ll call him later, alright? Good. No hassle. Now, sorry about that, love. Turn to the camera. Smile…’
Dart pulled tourists in a carriage around Bath for years. But when the black gelding could no longer manage the hills, his owner abandoned him. The half-starved
