In the months after the broken engagement, she’d barely been able to function. She delivered items that were needed when her gift demanded it, but all else – hobbies, friends, joy, or even cleanliness, were too much for her. Iris barely left the house. Her appetite disappeared and her sleep was disturbed.
The grief was overlaid by guilt. Her mother was mortified by the public termination of the match and by Iris’s gift of giving. ‘Can’t you control it a little better, dear? Maybe if you just tried …’
It was so unfair. Of all people, her mother should have understood that the gift was an affliction, beyond Iris’s control and nothing she had ever asked for or wished into being. She retreated further inside herself until her parents grew worried that she was seriously sick.
Finally, her father came up with a solution. Iris would move to the nearby town of Pendleford. He bought a cottage on the very edge, where it would be quiet for her to recover. ‘A safe bolthole for you to lick your wounds,’ he said, explaining it.
‘It doesn’t sound very proper,’ Iris’s mother said. ‘A lady alone.’ Her objections lacked conviction, however, and Iris knew that she was secretly relieved. Her mother welcomed Iris’s move, hoping that it would still the wagging tongues.
‘You’ll be able to help the people of Pendleford,’ her father had said, a small sad smile around his lips. ‘You’ve helped around here quite enough.’
So, aged twenty-one, Iris caused a minor scandal by moving into End House, Pendleford, alone. She refused her mother’s offer of a maid and set about cultivating an air of untouchable mystery.
Iris squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on relaxing every part of her body, hoping to chase away the memories with simple meditation. She began with her toes, tensing and relaxing the muscles, but by the time she’d hit her calves, James Farrier was looming over her, a lock of hair falling across his forehead and his eyes boring into hers with that intensity. The look that spoke to the quietest, most secret parts of Iris, the parts that had wanted to be wanted, to be loved and desired. James Farrier had treated her like a queen, but then she had discovered he was a monster wearing the mask of a man. The promise of that mask had been so hard to turn away.
Chapter Four
Bex picked up Carly from nursery and gave her lunch. She played games and read books and acted as if it was a normal day for the kid’s sake, and when Tarquin arrived off the school bus, she gave him a snack and monitored his screen time. He was supposed to do his homework before anything else, but Bex had worked out a deal whereby he could have half his screen time first and the rest after. Mrs Farrier didn’t know the details of this – or any of the other – deals which Bex had worked out while learning to handle Tarquin. Good luck to her replacement, Bex thought, and then felt a little guilty.
She ironed the school uniforms and made the dinner and bathed Carly, being conscientiously kind and normal. Every part of her screamed with anger at the injustice. She felt betrayed, but she refused to let even a tiny part of that spill over into the children’s lives. It wasn’t their fault.
As she sculpted a shampoo-bubble quiff for Carly and joined in a make-believe game in which the wind-up shark was having a fight with the red Teletubby over who got to pilot Carly’s sponge around the tub, Bex rehearsed arguments in her mind. It wasn’t fair to be dismissed without a reference when there was no evidence. They couldn’t just assume she was guilty; that wasn’t how people were supposed to behave. And what about the children? What about their security, continuity of care?
By the time Mr and Mrs Farrier came home, Bex had worked up a good head of self-righteous steam and was ready for the off.
She found the couple in the kitchen, large glasses of red wine on the counter with a bowl of olives between. It was such a normal post-work tableau that Bex wondered if they’d changed their minds. Perhaps they had realised their mistake and were going to apologise. Surely they wouldn’t be having drinks and nibbles with a dismissal. It wasn’t supper theatre.
Mrs Farrier asked Bex about the children and whether Tarquin had finished his homework. He was up in his room, playing on a games console, so Bex chose to say ‘yes’. If the conversation went well, she’d pop up and check that was true before leaving for the night. If it didn’t … Well, in that case, Tarquin’s academic progress would no longer be any of her business.
Mrs Farrier didn’t seem to be paying proper attention. ‘That’s good,’ she said, and took a healthy gulp from her glass. ‘You’ve been very good all round, Bex. I’m sorry to lose you.’
Bex opened her mouth to argue when Mr Farrier walked in, loosening his tie. ‘That’s Carly off,’ he said, as if he’d spent hours on her bedtime routine rather than just five minutes giving her a kiss goodnight.
‘Ah,’ he said, spotting Bex. ‘Good. Let’s get this over with, shall we?’
‘Did you find the cufflinks?’ Mrs Farrier said, sounding anxious.
‘No,’ Bex said. ‘I told you that I’d already looked. Are you sure they got lost at home? Perhaps you left them out somewhere. Or in a hotel.’ The words hung in the air and Bex realised, too late, that they could be taken as some kind of accusation regarding Mr Farrier’s extra-curricular activities. ‘When you were on holiday, maybe?’ She added, for damage limitation.
Unfortunately, Mrs Farrier had gone rather pink. Everyone in town knew that Mr Farrier was unfaithful to his wife. Bex
