Jessica Hart - Newlyweds of Convenience

‘Why do you care, anyway?’ Torr demanded, losing the battle with his temper at last. ‘You’re going back to Ellsborough, as you keep saying. It won’t be anything to do with you. But now you come to mention it, I think you’re right. Sheena would make a perfect Lady of Kincaillie. She wouldn’t make a fuss about the conditions here.’

‘No, I dare say she wouldn’t have wasted a moment’s time cleaning the bathroom or getting rid of the spiders’ webs in the bedroom, would she?’ Mallory practically spat out. ‘What a waste of time, when you could have been running up and down mountains together!’

‘Well, it’s not too late,’ said Torr, his mouth a compressed line and a white shade around his mouth. ‘I’ll invite her down for the weekend when you’ve gone.’

When you’ve gone. Funny how three simple words could twist her entrails into a painful knot that made Mallory suck in her breath. How casually Torr had uttered them, as if it didn’t matter at all whether she was there or not.

‘It won’t just be a weekend,’ she said bravely, given the fact that she was trying desperately to keep her voice from shaking. ‘Once Sheena gets a foot in the door, she’ll be here for ever.’

‘I can think of worse fates than spending my life with an attractive woman who cares about the same things I do and who actually wants to be with me.’

Torr’s eyes were cold and his voice very hard. Mallory felt sick.

‘What about the love of your life? The one you were never going to get over?’

‘She’s not attainable and Sheena is,’ he said flatly. ‘Perhaps it’s time I gave up on that dream. It was never going to come true, anyway.’

‘I thought you never gave up?’ Mallory couldn’t resist goading him, and Torr looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, before he turned away.

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘I’M TAKING Charlie to the vet.’ Mallory found Torr about to climb the scaffolding to the roofers a couple of days later.

Ever since Sheena’s visit they had been frigidly polite to each other. Mallory had been huffy all that evening, and when they’d gone to bed she had firmly turned her back to him and pretended to sleep, telling herself she would do something about another room first thing in the morning.

When you’ve gone. Torr’s words circled endlessly round her brain.

She was the one who had suggested that she only stay a year, Mallory kept reminding herself. It had been her idea to earn her divorce. So why did Torr’s casual acceptance of the fact that she would be leaving in a matter of months hurt so much?

Mallory couldn’t shake the humiliated feeling. She had been happy recently. She had let herself believe that she could live in the present and not worry about the future, and she had let down her guard. She had forgotten the reality of her marriage to Torr.

Torr hadn’t forgotten. He hadn’t lost sight of the truth. They didn’t have a relationship, they had a deal.

That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

Mallory didn’t know any more. All she knew was that the warmth of the last few weeks had evaporated, and they were back to the cold formality of the early months of their marriage.

And that she wanted to weep.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Mallory had gone back to her digging. Charlie lay in his usual place in the grass, but he’d been listless again, and when he’d turned away from his breakfast three days running she started to worry in earnest.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Torr asked now, when she told him about her decision to take the dog to the vet, but she shook her head.

‘No. I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ she said, refusing to admit to her own fears. ‘I just wanted to let you know I was taking the car.’

The stilted politeness was awful. Only a few days ago he would have smiled at her, or taken the opportunity to touch her. He might have run a hand down her arm, or smoothed her breeze-blown hair back into place. She might have leant carelessly against him. Their eyes might have met in unspoken anticipation of the night to come.

Now they barely looked at each other.

They couldn’t carry on like this for the rest of the year, Mallory realised. The tension was unbearable. She would have to find a way of sorting it out-but first she had to get Charlie better.

Torr was in the kitchen, about to order materials to be delivered by the builder’s merchant, when Mallory and Charlie came back, but after one glance he put the phone down.

‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.

Mallory’s expression was stony, her eyes stark. She put her bag very carefully on the table. ‘The vet thinks Charlie has a tumour,’ she said, in a voice held so tight it hurt to hear it. ‘He says he can feel it. But he might be wrong, mightn’t he?’

‘What if he isn’t?’ said Torr carefully. ‘Is there anything he can do?’

‘No,’ she said bleakly. ‘Nothing.’ She drew a breath and steadied the treacherous wobble that threatened her voice. ‘So I’m going to believe that he’s wrong, and even if he isn’t that doesn’t mean Charlie is going to die now. There’s no reason to think the worst. He might have a couple of years yet.’

Part of Mallory knew that she was denying Charlie’s illness in the same way that she had denied Steve’s betrayal, but she couldn’t bear to face up to losing her beloved dog. She watched him closely, and told herself and Torr that he seemed better.

Torr never disagreed with her, although it was obvious that Charlie was weaker. He still wagged his tail when a walk was mentioned, but he had lost his bounce and the bright eyes were duller now. Whenever she looked at him, Mallory felt as if there were a cruel iron fist gripping her heart. Not Charlie, she prayed. Please don’t let this be real. Make him better, make the vet wrong. Please don’t let me lose him.

For two weeks she clung to the belief that Charlie wasn’t really that ill, but he grew steadily weaker until he was sleeping most of the time. When she called him, he would struggle to his feet and come over to shove his nose in her hand, but he was very thin and his back legs were unsteady. Still, he would wag his tail feebly, and the look in his eyes told her that he would try and do whatever she asked of him.

Don’t die, Mallory wanted to say to him. That’s all I ask.

She looked up one day from caressing his head to find Torr watching her. ‘He doesn’t seem to be in pain, does he?’ she asked, pleading for him to agree.

‘He’s a brave dog’ was all he said, deliberately not answering her directly, and Mallory’s eyes filled with tears.

‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’

Torr nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said gently, giving her the honesty she needed then. ‘Yes, he is.’

At least Charlie’s illness had broken down that awful formality between them. Mallory couldn’t even remember now why she had been so upset about Sheena. What did Sheena matter compared to Charlie? Why had she been so angry with Torr?

They hadn’t made love since then, but Torr had been there, a strong, steady presence, giving her the space and the quietness she needed, treating her with a gentleness that Mallory wouldn’t have known that he was capable of before.

‘All you can do for Charlie now is to decide when he’s had enough,’ he told her quietly.

Mallory looked down at Charlie, who had lain down with his head on her feet, and thought that her heart would break. ‘How will I know?’

‘You’ll know when you’d rather lose him than see him suffer,’ said Torr. He hesitated. ‘I know what it’s like, Mallory. I know how hard it is. When Basher fell ill, my father told me that he was my dog, and that made him my responsibility, so I would have to decide whether to have him put to sleep or not. I was only sixteen.’

Mallory tried to imagine Torr as a boy. He would have been lanky, probably, with features that were too big for a young face. ‘That was a hard decision for a boy to make,’ she said softly.

‘The hardest I’ve ever made,’ he agreed. ‘I wanted to keep Basher with me as long as possible, so I kept putting off the decision, but there was a day when I looked at him and realised that I was being selfish. I knew I had to say goodbye.’

He looked back at Mallory. ‘That was the worst day of my life,’ he told her, ‘but I knew I’d done the right thing. I missed him so much I’ve never had a dog since.’

It was a bright, sunny morning when Mallory opened the door to the garden and called Charlie, as she always did. She would dig a little and keep him company as he lay in his favourite place in the long grass under the apple tree.

She waited for him to get up and sniff the air, the way he always did, but Charlie didn’t move from his rug. ‘Charlie,’ she called, her voice breaking, and his tail thumped feebly at the sound of her voice. Struggling, he managed to lift his head to look at her, but the effort was clearly too much and after a moment he simply laid it back down on the rug.

The claw around Mallory’s heart squeezed so hard that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Torr had told her that she would know when the time had come-and sure enough, here it was. Dropping to her knees beside him, she stroked his wiry head.

‘You’ve had enough, haven’t you, Charlie?’ Her voice was cracked and painfully constricted.

Behind her, Torr dropped a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll ring the vet,’ he said.

He drove her to the vet’s surgery in Carraig. Mallory sat in the back, with Charlie’s head in her lap, and didn’t say a word. When they got there, it was Torr who lifted the dog out of the car, carried him into the surgery and explained, but then he stood back so that Mallory could stroke Charlie as he lay on the table. She talked to him brokenly, her voice wobbling up and down, as the vet gently shaved a small patch on his leg, and she stayed there, holding her dog and still murmuring softly, long after Charlie had fallen completely still.

She was hardly aware of Torr talking in low voices with the vet. They went out together, leaving her alone, and it was only afterwards that she realised that he must have paid the bill. At the time, though, all she could think about was the familiar feel of Charlie’s soft bristles beneath her hand. He was still warm, and it was impossible to believe that he would never again come rushing to greet her, never bound into the sea, barking with excitement, never again rest his head against her knee and close his eyes ecstatically as she pulled his ears.

Then Torr was there, taking her gently by the elbow. ‘It’s time to go, Mallory,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll take Charlie for you.’

Mallory sat in frozen silence as Torr drove her back to Kincaillie. When they got there, Torr went without a word to find a spade, and dug a deep hole in Charlie’s favourite patch of the kitchen garden. Very gently, he laid the dog in it, still wrapped in a blanket.

‘Wait,’ said Mallory suddenly, as Torr began to fill in the hole. Running into the kitchen, she found Charlie’s bowl and dropped it into the grave with him. She watched numbly as Torr finished filling in and then manoeuvred a large, flattish stone on top.

When Torr straightened at last, he looked at Mallory, standing rigidly, her face empty of all expression and her dark eyes stark. ‘Come on,’ he said, thrusting the spade into the earth. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

Moving like an automaton, she followed him inside and sat on the edge of one of the armchairs. Unthinkingly, her eyes went to the rug where Charlie always lay, and the grief gripped her so hard she had to bend over to stop from crying out.

Torr hesitated, then put down the kettle he was filling and went over to Mallory instead. Taking her by the hand, he pulled her to her feet so that he could sit down, and then he took her on his lap as if she were a little girl.

‘You can cry this time,’ he said, as she tensed. ‘There’s no shame in crying for Charlie.’

For a moment more Mallory resisted, holding herself rigidly, but Torr’s arms were safe and strong around her, and all at once something broke inside her and she succumbed to the terrible temptation of letting herself be held while she cried and cried and cried for the dog who had been such a loyal and loving companion for so long.

It was a long time before she was able to speak, but when she could she rested her face into Torr’s throat with a juddering sigh. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you for everything you did today.’

‘I know how hard it is,’ he said, ‘but you did the best thing for Charlie.’

Mallory’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I hope so. I just…I’m going to miss him so much,’ she said unsteadily, and Torr tightened his arms around her.