Jennie got wearily to her feet, looking about a hundred years old. Her face was drawn and she was hunched in her tweed coat, the one we’d thought so edgy with its frayed collar and cuffs when she’d found it in Primark, such a clever high-street find, but which now looked like a tatty old tweed coat. Archie was wailing from the kitchen, initially delighted to have been left for so long without supervision, but indignant now at being ignored. And it was time to collect Clemmie. Jennie gave a last gigantic sigh as she turned to go, her head bent, shoulders sagging. I hugged her hard.

‘Good luck,’ I muttered in her ear.

‘Thanks. I’ll need it.’ I held her close a long moment. Suddenly her voice came in a frantic rush in my ear. ‘Poppy,’ she gulped, ‘imagine if she’s four months gone, imagine if it’s too late, if –’

‘Don’t imagine,’ I said fiercely, pulling back and holding her shoulders, looking hard at her panic-stricken face ‘Don’t. We don’t know anything yet. Don’t think the worst.’

She nodded, frightened.

‘Stay calm,’ I urged.

‘I will,’ she whispered.

‘And listen to her. Don’t’ – and this was brave – ‘preach.’ Jennie could surely preach.

For a moment she seemed about to erupt, then, recognizing another truth, she nodded wordlessly, turned my Chubb key in my door, and left.




25

The following day, as I drove along the lanes to Wessington, I considered the whirlwind that had whipped through our village these past few months. First Tom had left Angie and the mini tornado had settled on her house; then Phil had died and the mistral had torn up the road to me; and now Frankie was pregnant and the twister had shot next door, spinning savagely over my friend. Was that just life, I wondered? One family lurching into crisis, then climbing out of it, only to be swiftly followed by another? Did we all take it in turns to fall into holes? It seemed to me, though, that some people never fell; led permanently gilded lives and were immune to the slipstream of life’s grimy undercurrent; never so much as felt a ripple. For some reason the Armitages sprang to mind. I sighed.

And naturally, in our close-knit little community, word spread like a bush fire. I hadn’t told anyone about Frankie, of course I hadn’t, but when Dan came home from work yesterday, and Jennie told him what she’d found out, calmly, reasonably, with neither blame nor censure, he’d had the reaction Jennie had had in my sitting room. Of course he had. He was shocked, distraught, horrified. His little girl. A fucking teacher! Fucking hell! And then Frankie had come in late from school, not at the usual time, and before Jennie could stop him, he’d lost his rag. I knew because I heard it in my kitchen. Even though I went into the sitting room and turned the television on. Put my fingers in my ears. And then Jennie had lost it with Dan and the whole thing, as she told me this morning when she came round, red-eyed, not having slept a wink, hair standing on end, had degenerated into the worst and most terrible scene imaginable.

‘I preached, I didn’t listen, I wasn’t calm, I wasn’t strong,’ she gulped, horrified. ‘Everything you said I shouldn’t be, I was.’

‘But not at Frankie,’ I said anxiously. ‘You didn’t lose it with her?’

‘No, I suppose not. Dan, mostly.’ She looked grey and defeated as she slumped at my kitchen table, still with her pyjamas under her coat. ‘Trying to fend him off Frankie. But nothing about it was very attractive, Poppy. Neither adult’s behaviour would stand up to too much scrutiny. You didn’t hear, did you?’ She passed a weary hand through her chaotic curls.

‘No, no,’ I lied.

‘Good. Only Avril Collins on the other side couldn’t have looked more delighted when I saw her collect her milk from her step this morning, and I thought: oh shit.’

‘It hardly matters who knows,’ I told her gently. Again untruthfully, because of course it did. ‘D’you know how far … you know … she is?’ I asked cautiously.

‘ “How far gone”, is the expression on sink estates, Poppy,’ she said with a flash of the old Jennie, brave eyes glittering briefly in their sleep-deprived sockets. ‘Amongst the chain-smoking teenage mothers on the eighteenth floor. And you don’t “get pregnant”, you “fall”, as in “When did you fall for Kylie?” ’ She shuddered. ‘The answer is I don’t know,’ she said in a much smaller voice. ‘She won’t tell me. Won’t say a word, in fact. Which is why Dan got so angry.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Absolutely zilch. Stared at her father’s distorted face as he ranted and raved like a madman, then ran up to her room and slammed the door. Locked it.’

‘Oh. So … what next?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Let it all calm down, I suppose. Try to talk to her tonight, perhaps. One more day isn’t going to make much difference, is it?’

I think we both knew what she was talking about.

‘I doubt it,’ I agreed.

She dredged up a gigantic sigh from the soles of her feet. ‘Anyway. Just came to check you hadn’t heard.’

‘Not a thing.’

I walked her to the door, and since she’d caught me as I was about to go out, picked up my bag and Archie too as we left. When I’d locked the front door behind me, out of the corner of my eye I saw a little huddle of raincoats and brollies outside the shop. Avril Collins, Yvonne and Mrs Fish. They glanced our way, wide-eyed, then re-huddled. I quickly positioned myself between them and Jennie.

Jennie, though, was beyond either noticing or caring. Halfway down my path in the rain, she was gazing into some private world of her own, the drizzle settling like a sparkling cobweb on her wild springy curls, slippers on her feet, coat open to the elements, like Lear on the heath.

‘I thought I’d meet her from school this afternoon. Take her to Topshop, then for a burger. D’you think she’d like that?’ She turned to look at me anxiously.

Ordinarily, yes. But under the circumstances, Jennie waiting at the school gates …

‘Maybe text her first?’ I suggested. ‘So she can think about it?’

‘Good idea.’ She whipped her phone out of her coat pocket. I gently put my hand on it. ‘And maybe go and have a think about what you’re going to say first?’

Jennie’s eyes widened and she gave me a messianic look, full of admiration and fervour. I wanted to say: no, Jennie, I’m no guru, but I do know about this. About running around like a headless chicken, charging down the church path and forgetting to bury my husband, rushing around on adrenalin following shock. Doing the first thing that came into one’s head, acting on impulse. I knew about the next bit too, the terrible depression that followed: forgetting to feed my kids, to dress them, love them. I shuddered as I pocketed my key. Almost couldn’t admit it to myself and knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I knew about doing all the wrong things, and later on wishing so much I’d done otherwise; I knew how guilt – or rather a sense of it, misplaced perhaps – can make us behave illogically, like people we don’t recognize, never thought we’d be.

I didn’t say all that to my friend, though. What I actually said was: ‘Go and have a cup of coffee, get your head together, and then text her, OK?’

She nodded obediently. Ran down my path and up hers, and it occurred to me that we were like a couple of little weather people, popping in and out of each other’s houses, broadcasting rain or shine, depending on our day, depending on the current crisis, telling the village our business. Oh, sod it, I thought, shifting Archie onto my hip as I went down the path. Who cares?

‘Morning, Avril,’ I couldn’t help calling across Jennie’s garden as her other neighbour returned from the shop, eyes darting like a magpie’s. ‘Yes, that’s right, trouble at Apple Tree Cottage.’ I glared at her and marched off to my car, thrusting a surprised Archie into his seat. Regretted it, of course. And if I could come to the boil like that, what hope for Jennie?

Now, however, as I drove along the edge of the common in Wessington, I considered it rationally; wondered if Frankie really would be stupid enough to be seduced by a teacher. I’d thought about it overnight and decided, on balance, it was unlikely. In which case, who was the boy? Some family was going to be equally shattered, surely? And for some reason hard to fathom, stemming as it did from time immemorial, and belying what had happened in the Garden of Eden when God had firmly pointed the finger at Eve as she tucked into the apple, the fault always lay with the boy. ‘He got her into trouble,’ the Avril Collinses of this world would say; not, ‘She got him.’ I glanced at my toddler son in the rear-view mirror as we sped along in the weak, milky sunshine which was struggling to make an appearance now the rain had ceased. ‘You be careful, my boy,’ I whispered. ‘You steer clear of those pretty girls.’

He grinned toothily back.

The kennels were at the far end of the common, down a bumpy little track which terminated in a farmyard. Two functional, breeze-block enclosures for the hounds ran in parallel lines down either side of a pristine yard, and a white Victorian cottage crouched at the far end. One or two dogs bayed a welcome as I arrived, but most were sleepy and silent. I drove through the yard and parked right outside the house, where I would be able to see Archie, who was now asleep. But as I got out I realized it looked a bit arrogant, parking so close to the windows. I was about to go and move the car, when I saw Mark himself was sitting on the front doorstep watching me, so it was too late. One of the hounds was upside down between his legs, and he appeared to be doing something to its paw. I approached nervously as he regarded me, tweezers poised. The hound wriggled briefly, but was instantly limp and submissive after a curt word from Mark. I stood before him.

‘I’ve come to apologize. My horse kicked Peddler and I panicked and didn’t tell anyone. I meant to, really I did, but everything happened so quickly and I realized I’d committed the worst sin and I lost my bottle. I’m so ashamed and so sorry I killed your hound.’

He continued his steady gaze, his dark eyes in his smooth brown face like two bright pieces of coal.

‘You’re Peter Mortimer’s daughter, aren’t you?’ he said eventually in his slow, country brogue.

‘That’s right. D’you know Dad?’

‘Everyone knows your dad. Where d’you think we get our horses from? That bay of yours could make a decent enough hunter, but he should have told you it kicks.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t know.’

‘It’s his job to know. I’ll take it off the price of the next one I buy from him. I’ve told him as much. It’s all right, he’s already rung.’

‘Dad has?’

He nodded. Resumed his inspection of the paw which I could see, close up, had a huge thorn in it. He removed it carefully with the tweezers and glanced back at me.

‘I appreciate your coming, love. And your dad ringing. There’s many that wouldn’t.’

‘Oh.’ I felt a wave of a relief. A slight easing from the hook. ‘But you were very fond of him,’ I said anxiously. ‘Peddler. I was told he was your favourite.’

‘Doesn’t do to have favourites. But he’d been with me the longest. Was the oldest and boldest, certainly. The most disobedient too.’ He grinned, briefly revealing very yellow teeth.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Why d’you think he was on his own? Little bugger, sloping off like that, away from the pack. Couple of weeks ago, out cubbing, we was drawing your woods near Massingham, and we lost him. Eventually found him with some scruffy mongrel with a huge plastic collar, giving her a good seeing-to.’

Blimey. Leila.

‘He was an old rogue and make no mistake,’ he told me. ‘And no doubt he’d been somewhere else he shouldn’t when he slunk back and your horse kicked him. Wouldn’t surprise me if he died with a smile on his face. Perhaps that’s why I liked him so much, the scoundrel.’ He got to his feet, releasing the hound who twisted himself the right way up and leaped instantly to put his paws on Mark’s shoulders and lick his face frantically.