It’s a typical spring day with the mist being burned away early and the sky so high and blue it seems impossible that space is a dark domain. The stream looks clear, shallow at the edges where the gravel is clean and eddies swirl around the grasses.
On the far side of the valley the road is visible through the budding trees, curling around a church and dipping out of sight over the ridge.
‘Any bites?’
‘Nope,’ says Charlie.
I keep an eye on Emma who is playing with Gunsmoke, a gold-coloured Labrador I rescued from the pound. He is a very earnest dog who regards me as the cleverest human being he has ever met. Unfortunately, apart from loyalty, he is almost totally useless. As a guard dog he barks whenever I get home and completely ignores strangers until they’ve been in the house for upwards of an hour at which point he howls as though he has just discovered Myra Hindley coming through the window. The girls love him, which is why I got him.
We’re fishing in a stream about a quarter of a mile from the road, through a farm gate and across a field. A picnic rug is spread out on a grassy bank, just near the gravel beach.
Charlie has adopted the Vincent Ruiz mode of fishing, eschewing bait, lures or hooks. This is not for philosophical reasons (or beer drinking), it is because she cannot bring herself to putting a ‘living breathing’ earthworm on a hook.
‘What if he has a whole earthworm family who will miss him if he gets eaten?’ she argued.
At this point I tried to explain that earthworms were asexual and didn’t have families but that just confused the issue.
‘It’s just a worm. It doesn’t have any feelings.’
‘How do you know? Look, it’s squirming, trying to get away.’
‘It’s squirming because it’s a worm.’
‘No. He’s saying, “Please, please don’t stick that big hook in me.”’
‘I didn’t know you could speak worm.’
‘I can read his body language.’
‘Body language.’
‘Yes.’
I gave up after that. Now I’m fishing with bread, watching Emma, who has managed to sit in a puddle and get pondweed in her hair. The worm debate is lost on her. Gunsmoke is off chasing rabbits.
The changing seasons are more obvious since we moved out of London, the cycle of death and rebirth. There are blossoms on the trees and daffodils in every garden.
It has been six months since that afternoon on the bridge. Autumn and winter have gone. Darcy is dancing at the Royal Ballet School in London. She’s still living with Ruiz and constantly threatening to leave if he doesn’t stop treating her like a child.
I haven’t heard any news of Gideon Tyler. There has been no military court martial or official statement. Nobody seems to know where Gideon is being held and if he’ll ever stand trial. I did hear from Veronica Cray that the military chopper had to land after leaving Bristol. Apparently, Gideon managed to pick the lock on his handcuffs using the frames of his glasses. He forced the pilot to put down in a field, but according to the Ministry of Defence he was recaptured quickly.
I also heard from Helen Chambers and Chloe. They sent me a postcard from Greece. Helen has opened the hotel for the season and Chloe is going to a local school on Patmos. They didn’t say very much in the card. Thank you seemed to be the gist of it.
‘Can I ask you something?’ says Charlie, tilting her head to one side.
‘Sure.’
‘Do you think you and Mum will ever get back together?’
The question snags like a hook in my chest. Maybe this is how an earthworm feels?
‘I don’t know. Have you asked your mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does she say?’
‘She changes the subject.’
I nod and raise my face, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on my cheeks. These warm cool clear days bring me comfort. They tell me that summer is coming. Summer is good.
Julianne hasn’t filed for divorce. Maybe she will. I made a deal. A pact. I said that if she were alive, I would do anything she asked. She asked me to move out. I have. I am living in Wellow, opposite the pub.
She was still in the hospital when she told me what she wanted. Rain streaked the windows of her room. ‘I don’t want you coming back to the cottage,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you ever coming back.’
She kicked me out once before but that was different. Back then she said she loved me, but couldn’t live with me. This time she hasn’t offered me any similar crumb of comfort. She blames me for what happened. She’s right. It was my fault. I live with that knowledge every day, watching Charlie closely, looking for any sign of post-traumatic stress. I watch Julianne too and wonder how she’s coping. Is she having nightmares? Does she wake in a cold sweat, and check the locks on the windows and doors?
Charlie winds in her fishing line. ‘I got a joke for you, Dad.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What did one saggy breast say to the other saggy breast?’
‘What?’
‘If we don’t get some support soon we’ll be nuts.’ She laughs. I laugh too. ‘Do you think I should tell it to Mum?’
‘Maybe not.’
I still regard myself as being married. Separation is a state of mind and my mind hasn’t come to terms with it. Hector the publican wants me to join the Divorced Men’s Club of which he’s the unofficial president or chairman. There are only six of them and they meet every month and go to the movies or sit in the pub.
‘I’m not divorced,’ I told him, but he treated that like a minor technicality. Then he gave me the speech about getting over the shoals and heading back into the mainstream. I told him I’m not a classic joiner of things. I’ve never been a member of anything, not a gym or a political party or a religion. I wonder what they do at a divorced men’s club?
I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want the long empty moments. It reminds me too much of crappy dorm rooms at university, after I left home and couldn’t find a girlfriend.
It’s not that I can’t live on my own. I’m OK with that. But I keep imagining that Julianne is thinking the same thing and will come to realise that she was happier together than apart. Mum, Dad, two children, the cat, the hamsters, and I could bring the dog. We could shop, pay bills, choose schools, watch movies and romance each other like normal married couples, with flowers on Valentine’s Day and anniversaries.
Speaking of anniversaries, today is a special one: Emma’s birthday. I have to get her back to the cottage by three for a party. We pull in the fishing lines and pack up the picnic basket. Gunsmoke is filthy and smelly and neither of the girls want to sit next to him in the car.
The windows are kept open. There are lots of shrieks and girlish laughter until we get to the cottage, where they tumble out the doors and pretend that I’ve gassed them. Julianne is watching from the doorway. She’s put coloured balloons over the trellis and the letterbox.
‘Look at you,’ she says to Emma. ‘How did you get so wet?’
‘We went fishing,’ says Charlie. ‘We didn’t catch anything.’
‘Except pneumonia,’ says Julianne, shooing them upstairs for a bath.
There is an abstract sort of intimacy in our conversations now. She is the same woman I married. Brown- haired. Beautiful. Barely forty. And I still love her in every way but the physical one where we exchange bodily fluids and wake up next to each other in the morning. Whenever I see her in the village I am still struck by wonder: what did she ever see in me and how could I have let her go?
‘You shouldn’t have let Emma get wet,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry. She was having fun.’
Gunsmoke is tearing through her garden, chasing a squirrel and trampling her spring flowers. I try to call him back. He stops, lifts his head, looks at me as though I am extremely wise and then takes off again.
