A Rural Affair (36 page)

As I drew up outside my cottage I saw someone ringing my doorbell: a man. Oh God, had they come for me already? I got out
warily. But as he turned around I saw it was only Luke, who smiled when he saw me. I relaxed. This man, however, with a face
that lit up at the sight of me, was much more my speed. Why hadn’t I spotted it before? Because he seemed reasonably keen?
Because he
liked
me? What in hell’s name was wrong with that, Poppy?

‘Luke.’ I smiled too as I shut the car door, genuinely pleased to see him. Jeans and a navy blue jersey. Freshly washed hair.
Normal. Uncomplicated. No spurs.

I lifted Archie out of his car seat and my children ran around the back of the house to get the back-door key from under the
geranium pot. Clemmie could just about reach the lock to let them in.

‘Christ, have you had an accident?’

My heart lurched at the thought of Peddler.

‘N-no, why?’ Had he heard?

‘You’re literally covered in mud!’

‘Oh.’ I glanced down, relieved. ‘Oh no, just the detritus of the hunting field. Come in, Luke.’

‘Oh, you do that, do you?’ he said, looking surprised, and just a little defensive. Like people do sometimes, if you mention
hunting; for reasons that go beyond the prey and are more to do with class and exclusivity. I thought of Polly and Sparks
and Grant but couldn’t be bothered to argue.

‘Not any more,’ I told him. ‘How come you’re not at work?’

‘Got a day’s holiday,’ he said, lightly touching my shoulder, kissing me hello. Mr Fish, deadheading roses in his front garden,
nodded across at us.

‘Has he tossed you off, then, love?’

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Thumper.

‘Oh, no, Mr Fish, I just got a bit muddy,’ I called. Then to Luke, in an undertone: ‘Can’t move in this place. And frankly,
I’ve had a bit of a day of it. Could do with a very large drink. Will you join me?’

‘I’d love to, but I’ve got to teach in five minutes.’ He glanced at his watch.

‘Teach?’

He looked sheepish. ‘Oh, yeah I got talked into it. I give a few piano lessons in the village. Sylvia and Angus’s granddaughter,
for one.’ He scratched his head bashfully, and for some reason this endeared him to me tenfold. How sweet. He didn’t need
the money. He was in the City, in insurance, a flourishing business, yet out of the kindness of his heart … And I liked the
idea of him sitting patiently by a piano listening to scales, a small child’s faltering rendition of ‘Für Elise’. Encouraging,
enthusing. Not charging around in a pink coat on an enormous horse, glaring at people.

‘I just called by to see if supper was still on. You know you
said you’d ring me? I didn’t want to pressurize you into having it here, though, so my sister said she’d babysit. We could
go out if you like?’

He’d coloured up by the end of this. Softened? I’d melted. He’d lined up a sitter for me. How many men would do that? And,
having suggested my place, in retrospect he’d felt uneasy about compromising me in the snugness of my own home – sofas, soft
lighting, double bed upstairs, albeit horribly close to the children. I looked into his anxious face, those frank blue eyes.
Suddenly I stepped forward, reached up and curled my hand around the back of his neck, gently bringing his lips down to mine.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I murmured when we’d kissed. ‘Yes, please, to your sister. But let’s make it your place.’

His eyes didn’t so much light up as blaze like a fruit machine that’s landed a row of pears. Melons, perhaps. Because desire
was there, certainly.

‘Oh, Poppy,’ he breathed as he gazed down at me.

Oh, Poppy. You see? That was all it took.

Feeling in control for the very first time that day, I said goodbye and went up my path.

‘See you then,’ he called.

‘Yes, see you,’ I assured him over my shoulder as he went off to teach, a definite spring in his step.

As I went inside it occurred to me that I’d kissed him in full view of the village. Mr Fish was certainly standing at his
gate, mouth agape, secateurs limp in his hand, as I turned to shut the front door. It was as good as putting an announcement
in the local paper. But, actually, that was fine. Because Luke was a very nice man. In fact he was lovely. And with him by
my side, I reckoned I could face anything. Face the
music, face the terrifying women of the hunt – men too: all those who’d gladly have my guts for tail bandages.

Italy might be better, though, I thought, as I went slowly upstairs to run a bath. I poured the bubbles in, and as they foamed
the idea took shape. Yes, Luke and I doing up a crumbling house in Tuscany, at the top of a hill dotted with cypress trees.
Luke and I – a paint brush apiece, me in dungarees and two plaits – pausing to kiss occasionally, or playfully blob paint
on each other’s noses. The children running barefoot around an olive grove. Goats. Baby ones. And let’s face it, being an
enigma was all very well, but it might get pretty lonely. I wouldn’t have much idea how to run a chocolate shop, either. I
peeled off my filthy clothes and put a weary toe in the bath.

Later that evening, when I was putting the children to bed, the telephone rang. The answering machine was on so I carried
on with their story even though my heart was beating fast. I’d rather unwisely chosen an Aesop fable about a boy who kills
a calf, doesn’t own up, and gets chased out of town; so when I came downstairs I didn’t just have a racing heart, but was
manically humming a well-known tune from a popular Julie Andrews musical, one that was getting a lot of airing. As I passed
the machine on the dresser, with the red light flashing, I pressed play.

‘Oh, Poppy, it’s Sam here.’

The empty bottle of SMA milk slipped clean out of my hand and bounced on the terracotta tiles. My hand froze, still in claw-like
attitude.

‘Um, the thing is, something’s come to light that I’d like to talk to you about. In private, if you don’t mind.’ He sounded
uncomfortable. ‘In fact it might even be an idea if you came into my office. Say first thing tomorrow? At nine o’clock?’
There was a pause. ‘If I don’t hear, I’ll assume that’s fine.’ He finished more grimly.

I tottered into the sitting room holding on to the furniture. Made for the sofa and flopped, prone and face down. Then I covered
my head with a cushion and moaned low.

The following morning, after a terrible dream in which I was chased down the street in my bra and pants by Mary Granger shouting:
‘You beastly,
beastly
woman!’ I dressed appropriately and headed into town. Black shirt, black jacket, black suede boots. Not exactly in mourning
– although the last time I’d worn this ensemble, I realized, glancing down in the car, had indeed been to my husband’s funeral
– but sombre, subfusc: serious. I’d started the day in a more defiant I’m-off-to-Tuscany-with-my-lover kit – pink trousers,
boho shirt, high wedges – but lost my nerve halfway down the path and hurried back to change.

Archie was with me too. I could have left him with Jennie – should have done really, he was grotty if he didn’t have his morning
sleep – but somehow I wanted the protection he afforded, I realized rather guiltily. You couldn’t hit a woman with a baby,
surely? Not that Sam would hit, but verbally abuse? I recalled his grim face, the one beneath the riding hat, mobile clamped
to ear, high up on his horse, not the smiley crinkly one of the solicitor’s office, and trembled. Archie, behind me in his
car seat, blinked sleepily in the rear-view mirror. I wondered if I should carry him in, wrapped in a shawl? Really go for
the sympathy vote? The one he was sucking now, his comfort blanket, would do. I could swaddle him in it and clutch him to
my breast like a foundling, take his shoes and socks off too, so bare toes peeked out. He was
quite big for that, though; might wake up and wriggle violently, exposing jeans and a hoody. Not quite the look I was going
for.

Parking in Waitrose, I lifted my by-now-sleeping son into his pushchair and hurtled down the high street. Three minutes to
nine. But … why was I hurtling? In such a rush? Maybe I hadn’t been able to get a parking space? Maybe Waitrose had been full?
Unlikely, so early in the morning, but – OK, maybe – maybe I hadn’t got his message? Hadn’t actually played back the tape?
Or hadn’t put a new tape
in
, had been meaning to, for weeks? These, and other shallow yet plausible excuses spooled around in my head as I neared Sam’s
building. Then more punchy ones. Why on earth should I just pitch up because I’d been summoned? And why at his convenience,
why not mine? Friday week would suit me much better. Next month, even. Because I was the accused, that’s why, I thought, swallowing.
Because this was the way the justice system worked: one attended court. The judge didn’t come to yours, settle down in your
front room with a cup of tea, did he?

I was climbing the stairs now, Archie asleep in my arms, the pushchair collapsed and hanging from my wrist. I reassembled
it at the top and put Archie back in, but not as carefully as I might. With a fair amount of jostling so that … he might wake
up? Have a tantrum and go shouty-crackers, as he often did when roused from a deep sleep, so that we could surely go home?
I nudged him again. No of course I didn’t pinch him, but oh, wake up, Archie. Scream.

‘What a sweet baby,’ someone murmured over my left shoulder.

I jumped. It was the receptionist, Janice, who’d appeared
out of the Ladies at the top of the stairs, pink lipstick reapplied.

‘Oh. Thank you.’

‘It’s Mrs Shilling, isn’t it?’

‘Er, well …’ I eyed the stairs longingly.

‘Nine o’clock with Sam? He’s in there, waiting for you.’ She beamed at Archie. ‘Would you like to leave him with me?’

‘No, no, I’ll take him in.’

‘He’ll be no trouble?’

‘He might. He’s a bit of a monster.’

‘He looks jolly placid to me.’

‘Please take your hands off my buggy.’

She blanched, surprised. Then: ‘I quite understand,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ve lost your husband and one does become terribly
protective.’

Casting me a sympathetic look, she ushered us through into the reception area; and then there was nothing else for it because
she was bustling to open another door, into Sam’s inner sanctum.

The room had remained as neat and tidy as on my last visit, which didn’t bode well somehow. The man himself was installed
behind his desk, suit jacket and tie in place, no casual shirt sleeves rolled up, and on the telephone, communicating by way
of an elegantly raised finger that he wouldn’t be a moment. His face was stern, stony even. It was with a sinking heart that
I sat down opposite him, drawing Archie’s buggy very close beside me. No, in front of me.

‘I see,’ Sam was saying gravely. ‘Yes, I suspected as much.’ He massaged his brow with his fingertips, elbows on the desk,
face to his blotter. ‘Thank you for confirming it.’

His dark hair was just slightly flecked with grey at the
temples, I noticed. Distinguished. Handsome. An officer’s face, my father would say; he’d been one himself, many years ago,
in the cavalry. How could I ever have thought him a foot soldier like me? Suddenly I felt angry. This whole set-up, the whole
up-the-wiggly-backstairs-to-a-provincial-solicitor’s-practice, had been a front, a smokescreen, an attempt to appear a man
of the people. But I’d seen him outside his manor on a horse, in a pink coat. Oh, yes. I knew better.

‘Overwhelming evidence,’ he was saying. ‘I agree. Circumstantial as well as actual. And such obvious guilt at the time. Fleeing
the scene of the crime for one thing.’ He looked up at me. Hard. I flushed. Shit. He was talking about me. ‘She doesn’t have
a leg to stand on,’ he went on. My thighs felt gripped in the frozen lock of my tights, which seemed to shrink like a vice.
I waited, paralysed.

After a moment he said goodbye. His face was grave as he put down the phone. But then an odd thing happened. He got to his
feet, beamed, came around his huge leather-topped desk, and bent to kiss me on both cheeks.

‘Poppy. How lovely to see you. You survived, I see! I must say I thought you were tremendously brave sailing over those hedges
and ditches when I gather you hadn’t ever hunted before. Everyone was terribly impressed, and old Gerald Harper even went
so far as to tell me in a very loud voice that he thought you had spunk!’ He threw back his head and laughed.

I blinked, confused. I thought I had hours to live; a condemned woman. But apparently I had spunk? Could he have been talking
about someone else on the phone? Another client?

‘And let me tell you, that wasn’t an easy meet. Sometimes we toddle around the woods for hours on end and bugger-all
happens; but we had a five-pointer yesterday, and there you were, galloping away at the front with the best of them!’

‘Yes, just … a little too much at the front sometimes,’ I managed to stammer, wondering what was coming next.

‘Oh well, that happens to everyone. When I first went out I overtook the master, the hounds and even the bloody fox! Ended
up sinking a lonely pint in a pub miles away with my heaving horse tied up outside, too bloody frit to get back on again!’

‘Excellent, excellent,’ I croaked, baffled. His eyes seemed to be glowing at me in a rather admiring way and he was still
standing quite close; he was leaning back on his desk, his crotch at eye level.

‘Is this Archie?’ He crouched down to the pushchair and gazed equally admiringly at my son. ‘Isn’t he sweet?’

Now he was admiring babies? Like a politician, I thought suddenly. Is that what this was? A softener, before the killer blow?
Was ‘bigot’ privately on the tip of his tongue? Or ‘dog killer’, with a sensational snarl and a deft spit in my eye?

‘Um, Sam, why did you ask me here?’

He looked surprised. Taken aback, even, as if he’d overstepped some kind of mark.

‘Oh. Yes. Sorry.’ He straightened up. Went back to his desk and looked serious again as he sat down. He shuffled some papers
about. Then he looked up at me. ‘Poppy, something rather interesting has come to light.’