After the Fall E-Book

Charity Norman

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

In the quiet of a New Zealand winter's night, a rescue helicopter is sent to airlift a five-year-old boy with severe internal injuries. He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. For Martha, it was an escape. For her artist husband Kit, it was a dream. For their small twin boys, it was an adventure. For sixteen-year-old Sacha, it was the start of a nightmare. They end up on the isolated east coast of the North Island, seemingly in the middle of a New Zealand tourism campaign. But their peaceful idyll is soon shattered as the choices Sacha makes lead the family down a path which threatens to destroy them all. Martha finds herself facing a series of impossible decisions, each with devastating consequences for her family.

Leseprobe

CHARITY NORMAN After the Fall

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Allen & Unwin

First published in Australia in 2012 by Allen & Unwin (under the title Second Chances)

Copyright © Charity Norman 2012

The moral right of Charity Norman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Allen & Unwin c/o Atlantic Books Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

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020 7269 1610

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020 7430 0916

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 74331 096 0

E-book ISBN 978 1 74343 313 3

Internal design by Lisa White

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Paul

Hawke’s Bay TodayLocal News

In the early hours of this morning, the Lowe Corporation rescue helicopter wasscrambled to airlift a five-year-old boy from a coastal address north of Napier.He was flown to Hawke’s Bay Hospital where he underwent emergency surgeryfor extensive internal injuries.

It is understood that the child was injured as a result of a fall from afirst-floor balcony. However, hospital staff declined to speculate on the circumstancesof the incident.

‘I can confirm that a small boy with life-threatening injuries was admittedearlier today,’ said a spokesperson. ‘At this stage it would be inappropriate tocomment further. Police and child protection agencies have been alerted, andcomprehensive enquiries are ongoing. I am not in a position to release anydetails until that investigation has taken its course.’

The injured child remains in the hospital’s intensive care unit, where hiscondition is reported to be critical. His name has yet to be released.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

One

Finn fell.

I don’t think, if I used a million words, I could call up the horror. It isn’t a matter of words.

My son plunged headlong, tiny hands clutching at nothing. He never made a sound. I can see his pyjamas disappearing into the greedy dark. Mr Men pyjamas, from his Christmas stocking. I can see his pirate doll, cartwheeling out of reach.

No moon yet. In films, tragedy always strikes during a torrential storm amid lightning and thunder, and the heroine’s hair is plastered to her tear-streaked cheeks—though she’s wearing waterproof mascara so no harm done. But it was a calm night, when Finn fell. A starry winter’s night, and the hills were gentle swells against a singing sky. There was only the screech of a plover in the fields; the mother-in-law bird, bossy and reassuring. A calm New Zealand night.

And then the world exploded. I can still hear the swish of bushes. I can feel the thud as my baby hit the ground. Really, I can feel it. It shook the house. It shook the hills. It shook the heavens. I hurled myself down the stairs, trying to outrun this unholy terror.

Something lay lifeless beside a lemon tree, a dark little mound in the garden of my dream house. I thought my boy was dead. I touched the white face, feeling the miracle of his pulse, bargaining with a God in whose existence I’d never believed. You will, too. Oh yes you will, if ever your own nightmares come alive. You will pray with all your heart, and all your soul, and with some part of your brain that you’ve never used before, never even knew was there. Believe me, you will. At such a time, atheism is a luxury you can’t afford.

It took so long for them to come. So long, while Finn hung suspended over the abyss of death, and fear pressed us both into the black earth. Buccaneer Bob sprawled close by. Where Finn goes, his pirate goes too. At last I sensed the throb of rotor blades beating through the pitiless dark, the rhythm of rescue; brilliant lights rising over the hillside. The Heavenly Host. They landed in our front paddock in a hurricane of sound, sprinted towards my waving torch—two men in red coveralls, not a choir of dazzling angels—and worked with urgency and few words: fixed a line into Finn’s arm and a brace around his neck, muttering together about his spine as they lifted him across the lawn and into the helicopter.

Neither asked how it happened. Not yet. They knew—as I knew—that this could be Finn’s last journey. He’s in trouble, they were thinking. Head injury, internal bleeding, God knows what else. In all likelihood, this one isn’t coming home.

We were gone within minutes, Finn and I, lifting tail-first into the future.

Even as we landed, people and equipment appeared out of nowhere, mobbing us in an efficient scrum. Through a fog of panic I heard that Finn’s blood pressure was falling, that heart and respiration rates had increased. Figures were called out—eighty–forty; sixty–thirty—with increasing insistence. They cut away his favourite pyjamas and covered him with a worn flannel blanket. Now he was anonymous.

I was with him when they began a blood transfusion, when they fed a plastic tube through the gentle mouth and into his airways, when his lonely body moved through the massive complexity of the CT scanner. I couldn’t hold him, I couldn’t care for him. I was useless. Soon they took him away, wheeling him rapidly through impassable doors to where surgeons’ knives were waiting.

I know someone led me to this quiet cubicle and tried to explain what was happening. They’ve done their best, but my mind has seized. I’m hunched in a plastic chair, my fingers wrapped around a white mug that has inexplicably appeared in one hand. I clutch Buccaneer Bob’s floppy body to my chest. We’re trying to comfort one another.

Finn is alone under vicious white lights and the eyes of adult strangers. They’ll be discussing the weather as they cut my baby open. Hardest frost on record . . . nearly two metres of snow up at Ruapehu, going to extend the ski season. We’re losing him, says the anaesthetist.

A woman ambles past. Another patient’s mother, I imagine. She has wide hips and a comfortable bread-dough face, and she reminds me of Louisa. I’d give anything to see my sister’s matronly form in a flowered skirt, swinging solidly up the hospital corridor with her arms held out wide and love in her smile. I’d give anything to see an old friend, someone who likes and trusts me because we go back a lifetime. I’ve no old friends here. In this whole country, this whole hemisphere, there’s not one person outside my family—no, including my family—who truly knows me.

I curl my legs onto the sharp plastic of the chair, knees pulled up. I know I look a sorry sight, a bag lady on a bad day. A passing nurse obviously thinks so because she turns into my cubicle, tugging on the curtain. She’s a tidy creature with a curling fringe. When she speaks, I dully register a familiar accent. Liverpool, I’d say.

‘How’re you doing?’ It’s made-in-China sympathy, but better than nothing.

I shake my head, driving my teeth into my knees. I’m rocking.

‘Whoops! You’re going to spill that.’ She takes the mug from me, resting it on a stainless-steel trolley. ‘What a horrible thing to happen. He’s getting the best possible care, that’s the main thing.’

Then she asks the question. She’s the first, but I know she won’t be the last.

‘How did he come to fall?’

Honesty is the best policy! hisses Mum, right in my ear. Makes me jump. She’s long dead, my mother, but that doesn’t stop her and her clichés. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not having auditory hallucinations, nor—so far as I know—am I a medium. My mother’s personality was so assertive and censorious that she took up residence in my head when I was about three. I’ve been trying to evict her ever since. Sometimes she disappears for months at a time, but always pops up to twist the knife when the going gets tough.

The truth sets us free! she whispers now.

I think about the truth. I really do. I turn it over and over with a sense of horrified disconnection. I look at it from every angle, like a 3-D image on a computer screen. And on that screen I see police, and a courtroom, and a prison cell. I see disaster.

Finn’s a sleepwalker, I tell the kind nurse. Always has been. It’s funny because his twin brother never does it. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. I should have locked their door. It’s my fault.

That last part is true, at least.

‘Nah. Could have happened to anybody,’ she croons, in comfortable ignorance. She isn’t really listening. People don’t. ‘It’s an accident waiting to happen when they mess about in their sleep. I’ve got one who did it till he was thirteen. We lost him in a resort in Fiji, two years old!’

‘Awful.’

‘Worst ten minutes of my life. Lucky he wasn’t floating face down in the pool.’

‘Lucky.’ I think of Finn, whose luck ran out.

‘So what brought you out here?’ she asks.

It’s a perennial question. This country is home to many immigrants, and every one of us has our story. I wonder how many tell the whole truth.

‘My husband,’ I say. ‘He fell in love with the place years ago, always wanted to come back. You?’

‘Married a Kiwi. Broke my mum’s heart, but what can you do?’

I try to answer, but Finn is falling. He’s falling, and I hear the thud. The nurse pulls some tissues from a box, handing them to me with a sisterly rub of my shoulder.

‘Sometimes you have to wonder, don’t you?’ she muses, smoothing the breaking wave of her fringe. ‘You have to wonder why these things have to go and happen.’

Clattering feet, the rumble of a trolley. A baby’s fretful wail.

‘Got to go,’ she sighs, giving my shoulder one last pat. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

Ah, I think, as I watch her twitch back the curtain and hurry duck-footed to the latest emergency. There’s the question. Not how. Why.

I’m haunted by that question as the night wears on.

Why, why, and why.

Two

If I had to stick a pin in the map of space and time, marking the start of our journey, I’d choose a Bedfordshire village on a Friday in June. Our village. Our house.

I remember driving home from work through a brief summer downpour. For ten minutes I skulked in the car by our garden pond, while the cooling engine tick-tick-ticked, summoning the will to go into the house. Finally I dug out my phone. Delaying tactics.

How did physics go? xx

Immediately, the screen flashed and buzzed. dunno xxx

Very informative, I thought resignedly as I hauled myself out and up the path. My daughter was coming to the last of her fifth-form exams, and I had no idea how she’d done. I stood for a long moment in the porch, steeling myself. Then I opened our front door.

The change struck me as soon as I stepped into the hall. That morning, I’d escaped a house pervaded by the cold draught of Kit’s despair. Now I caught the cheerful whiff of toasting crumpets and his mellow voice, accompanied by the twins’ merry discordancy.

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water

I followed these sounds of revelry to the kitchen. Kit stood ironing a shirt while his sons lumbered on the tabletop among the plates. Charlie paused to give me smacky crumpety kisses, but Finn was reaching an earsplitting crescendo, shaking matted dark locks:

Jack fell down and broke his crown

And Jill came tumbling af-ter! Hello, Mummee!

Inevitably, he stood in the butter dish.

‘Yuck!’ he squawked, hopping on one narrow foot while holding the buttery one up in front of him.

‘Butter toes,’ said Kit, and flashed me a vivid smile.

Charlie pointed a chubby forefinger, delight on the cartoon-round cheeks. Fair-curled and sturdy, he was the elder by half an hour. ‘Butter toes, butter toes.’

I gave Finn a piggyback to the sink, dumped him on the draining board and doused his foot. Then I stood close behind Kit, running my hands around his waist and basking in his buoyancy. When he was on top of life, we could cope with anything at all. Sacha’s dog slithered out of her basket to headbutt my knees. Muffin has a lot of Old English sheepdog in her and a touch of something smaller, and wanders through life with an air of genial absent-mindedness, like a professorial teddy bear.

‘Hey, Muffin,’ called Finn from the sink. ‘D’you want to lick some lovely butter?’

‘You’re ironing a shirt,’ I said, watching Kit turn a crumpled rag into something crisp and immaculate. ‘Why are you ironing a shirt?’

‘Think I’ve had a bit of a break.’ Steam hissed from the iron. I could smell washing powder. ‘I’ll be taking the train to London in an hour. I called Stella Black today—remember, from way back? Graphic designer, I’ve worked with her on a couple of projects—she reckons her boss might have some consultancy work for me.’

‘That would be wonderful,’ I breathed, rubbing my cheek into the warmth of his shoulder. Consultancy work would be more than wonderful. It might even be a lifeline.

Kit was taut with hope and nerves; I could feel them jangling through his skin. He always had a deceptively lazy, understated way of moving— never seemed to pick up his feet—yet I sensed a frantic excitement that day. He finished the shirt, kissed me enthusiastically and strode off to the shower. Our house was one of the oldest in the village, the stairs steep and uneven. I sat halfway up, fretting, while the boys plotted mischief in the kitchen. My chest seemed to be squeezed in a vice, as though it was I who had the vital meeting. There was so much at stake. I had to force myself to exhale.

That’s where Sacha found me. She paused in the hall, grinning, schoolbag swinging from one shoulder. ‘Mum! You on the naughty stair?’

My daughter inherited the syrup-and-caramel ringlets from me. I can’t seem to grow my hair beyond shoulder length and it sticks out like a string floor mop, but hers is glorious, rippling exuberantly down her back and around her face. She has the Norris family hooked nose, too. I’ve always thought—as her adoring mother—that her high forehead and imperfect nose are what make Sacha truly beautiful.

‘I put myself here,’ I said. ‘It’s my place in life. Now gimme the lowdown on that exam, and if you say “dunno”, I’ll tan your hide.’

She held up innocent palms. ‘Well I don’t know, do I? I think I did okay. Bastards never asked about electromagnetism though, after all the swotting I did. That was scummy.’

‘Kit might have some work,’ I blurted, and she promptly dumped her bag and sat on the stair beneath mine, resting her forearm on my lap while I told her about his trip to London.

‘How bad are things, Mum?’ she asked seriously. ‘You can come clean, now GCSEs are almost over. I know you two have been trying to cover up.’ She was right, of course. We’d been shielding her from the worst. I reached down to plait her hair, comforted by the heavy skein of it under my fingers.

‘Our lifestyle—this house, everything—it all came from Kit’s income, from the heyday of his agency before the economy melted down. My salary isn’t nearly enough. I don’t earn much more than his PA did! Pretty galling, but there we are.’

‘So we’ll have to sell this house if he doesn’t get another job?’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed cautiously.

‘And I’ll have to shift schools, won’t I?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘That means yes.’

I shrugged, wishing I could deny it.

‘Um . . .’ She began tapping a syncopated rhythm on my knee with her palm. ‘I know Kit’s drinking again.’

‘You do?’

‘I have eyes, Mum, and I have ears. Last Friday the twins told me they locked themselves out in the rain and got soaking wet while he was asleep on the sofa. Charlie said he’d “gone funny again”. Poor little beanies! No prizes for guessing what went on there. And I heard on the grapevine that you had to collect him from the pub.’

‘They don’t want him back,’ I confessed.

That call was excruciating. Our local landlord, concerned and embarrassed: I’ve had to take his car keys off him again . . . might be best if he doesn’tcome here for a while.

‘Losing the agency was his worst nightmare,’ I said now, needing to defend Kit. ‘Letting people down, when they had mortgages and school fees too. The past few months have been really rough and—well, endless knockbacks and money worries have finally worn him down. Alcohol’s a sort of self-medication.’

‘Poor Kit.’ Sacha wrinkled her nose. ‘Banned from the local? That’s pretty screwball.’

Charlie appeared in the kitchen doorway, lighting up at the sight of his sister. ‘Come and see,’ he squeaked, beckoning. ‘We’ve made a slide on the kitchen floor.’

‘A slide? How?’ Sacha sounded suspicious.

‘With loads and loads of butter. It’s really slippy.’

Sacha’s jaw dropped, but I flapped a hand in defeat. ‘Leave it for now. There are worse messes than butter.’

I found Kit in our bedroom, shrugging into a jacket and looking every inch the successful advertising guru. He had a way of wearing clothes as though they didn’t matter; it was peculiarly stylish.

‘You still scrub up good,’ I murmured, taking his arm in my hands and watching us both in the wardrobe mirror. When the man in the mirror smiled back at me, I saw the old spark dancing in his eyes. After eight years of marriage, and all our troubles, Kit’s smile still made me feel happy. I turned him to face me, took hold of his lapel and began to fuss with it. ‘The picture of civilised man,’ I said, brushing my knuckles along the firm line of his jaw. ‘Good luck.’

He caught my hand and pressed it to his mouth. I felt a small tremor in his fingers, and ached for him. ‘I’ve run out of doors to knock on, Martha. If this doesn’t come off, I’ll have failed you.’

Sacha hurried in, pretending to do a double take. ‘Wow, Kit! You look like James Bond. Well, except for that zany black mane, which is more Mumbai street urchin.’ While her stepfather made a dutiful attempt to tame his hair, she plonked newly shined shoes at his feet. ‘I gave these a quick polish for you. Found them by the back door. They’re the right ones, aren’t they?’

‘You’re a princess,’ said Kit fervently. ‘How was the exam?’

‘Murder.’

‘Oh, bugger. Really?’

‘Nah, not too bad. Only one left—and then it’s party time!’

‘I’ll bet you’ve sailed through,’ predicted Kit, sitting on the bed to tie his laces. ‘Jesus! Look at the time.’

Minutes later he’d hopped into his car and was roaring away towards Bedford. Sacha and I stood at our gate, watching that bright green blur threading between the traffic. It seemed terribly significant somehow, the only coloured dot on a sombre landscape.

‘I really hope he gets it,’ said Sacha.

I held up two sets of crossed fingers, blinking hard, overwhelmed by the strain of the past weeks. I felt Sacha’s arm around my neck.

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ she whispered, kissing my cheek. ‘Whatever happens, it’ll all come out in the wash.’

She and I spent the rest of the evening eyeing the clock, begging fate to give Kit this break. The phone rang twice. We jumped both times, but it wasn’t him. The first call was from Sacha’s boyfriend, Ivan, wondering how she’d done in physics. The next was male too, with a Dublin accent.

‘Gerry Kerr,’ he said, and instantly I remembered. One of Kit’s art college cronies, Gerry had become a dealer and swanned around the States for a few years before buying a gallery in Dublin. I had a mental image of the man at our wedding reception—an urbane figure, cornering me to swear that Kit McNamara was a fucking genius and I had to get him painting again, he didn’t care how much filthy lucre he could make in advertising.

Kit’s career was rocketing when we were married, and then the twins arrived and took up every spare second. There was never enough time to indulge his passion, unless you counted the enchantment he’d created for his family. In the boys’ bedroom it was Palaeolithic cave paintings: exquisite stags and bison chased one another all around the walls and over the ceiling, to the envy of visiting children. For Sacha he’d conjured a bewitching mural of mermaids.

‘Gerry!’ I cried now. ‘How are you? Kit’s out at the moment.’

Just touching base, Gerry said, wondering how we were doing. He’d heard about the agency going under.

‘Ad agencies are falling like ninepins,’ I explained. ‘Kit hung on for grim death but . . . well. Advertising budgets are the first thing to be slashed.’

Gerry sounded genuinely concerned. ‘Poor old McNamara. Still, look on the bright side. That man of yours is wasting his talent. This is a wake-up call.’

I looked at the sitting-room walls, where I’d hung a trio of Kit’s paintings from college days. They were strange portraits: mud-brown, impish people with angular faces. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them. I much preferred the mermaids and bison.

‘He hasn’t really painted for years,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Bloody crime. The man’s got something, Martha, and he knows it.’

‘Yes,’ I retorted, laughing. ‘You’re right. He’s got a family to support. And he knows it.’

I tried calling Kit after that. His phone promptly trilled from under a box of cereal in the kitchen. Forgetting his phone was a habit of Kit’s.

By eight the boys were fast asleep, tangled among mounds of soft toys. At nine, I persuaded Sacha to turn in too. I could tell she was shattered. Much, much later, the house phone rang.

‘Martha,’ said Kit, and my hopes plunged. His voice was flat.

He was calling from Euston station. Stella’s company had lost a crucial contract that very day and was reeling. Kit had spent the evening in a bar in Soho, consoling Stella and the boss who were now battling to stay afloat themselves. They wanted to help, he’d be top of their list if something came up, but they had nothing for him now. Sorry, mate.

‘So that’s that,’ said Kit. I could hear the alcohol clouding his voice and his thoughts. ‘I’m bloody useless.’

‘Are you coming straight home?’ I wanted us to face this together. ‘Please don’t . . . you know. Just come home. Take a taxi from the station.’

‘Soon,’ he said quietly, and rang off.

Bed was out of the question. I’d lie there rigidly awake, anxiety ricocheting around my head like a stray bullet. Instead I grabbed the in-tray— hair-raising bills screamed from its papery depths—and sat in front of the computer. I’d have to juggle everything somehow, and buy us time to get the house on the market.

Sacha had been messing about online. She must have been distracted by Ivan’s call, and forgotten to log off. There were several websites left open: YouTube, eBay. Ah, and here was her Facebook page; never anything sinister on that. I was about to close it when a warning siren blared, somewhere between my ears.

Looking for my real father!! Name is Simon apparently, passed thruBedford 16–17 years ago. Brwn hair brwn eyes, tall. Wld be 35–40 by now?Mum swears that’s all she knows but I’m not so sure. Anyone—any ideas???Wld really lve to trace my dad.

I sat stunned, a rabbit gaping into the harsh glare of the screen. Her Facebook friends had plenty of ideas, of course.

Have u checked ur birth certificate?

Hi sash, ask everyone in your family and all your mum’s old friends, someoneknows something, lock them in a room until they spill

My dads called simon LOL we might be sisters!!! I will ask him did he shagyor mum

cld try private detective

It’s an icy shower, the moment you realise your child is an independent being who questions family mythology. Whenever she asked about her father I told Sacha the story of Simon, a pleasant young man who couldn’t be traced. Now, it seemed, she’d started digging. One day her spade would hit a landmine, and we’d all lose limbs in the explosion.

See? Mum popped up, her voice gleeful. Those chickens are coming hometo roost! One girl’s sordid secret is another girl’s father.

I staggered into the kitchen and filled the kettle, as though a nice cup of tea might somehow save us all from ruin. I couldn’t face those bills, now. The latest copy of my occupational therapy magazine lay half-read on the kitchen bench, smothered among charitable appeals. I leafed vaguely through it as the kettle boiled. Techniques in the classroom, wheelchair fitting. Several recruitment agencies advertised regularly. Jobs in Australia . . . Canada . . . New Zealand. Kit had been to New Zealand as a student, and raved about the place. Carrying the magazine back to the computer with my mug, I typed in the website address. Just for fun, I told myself. Just to pass the time until he came home.

Seductive thing, the World Wide Web. Within an hour I’d educated myself on work, education and costs of living on the other side of the world. I was scrolling my way through visa information when the little carriage clock on the mantelpiece whirred, sighed and struck midnight. The tinny chime sent fear tapping on the door of my mind, though I tried to be rational. He’d roll up any minute, and I’d give him a royal bollocking.

By the time it struck the half hour I was pacing, literally wringing my hands. Kit was wrapped around a tree—oh my God, why did I let him take the car?—brilliant eyes blank and staring, blood trickling from the corner of a mouth that would never laugh again. Perhaps he was dying alone in the rain, pulverised by thugs, his vitality flowing away down the drain. Maybe he’d thrown himself into the river.

Inactivity was unbearable. Grabbing my handbag, I scribbled a note for Sacha. Sorry gone to look for Kit. Love M x

The phone rang as I was opening the front door. Thank God. I lunged for it, expecting to hear my husband’s familiar tones—depressed, slurred, contrite. Light-headed with relief, I drew breath for a first-rate fishwife impersonation.

It wasn’t Kit.

‘Mrs McNamara? Barry Prescott, Bedfordshire police.’

The room darkened. I stared in terror at one of Kit’s paintings, and the imp smirked back at me. This was it, then: the voice of doom. I was a widow. I felt the first jolt of grief.

The voice of doom sounded matter-of-fact. ‘We’ve got your husband here. In the cells. He’s, erm, you might say he’s a little bit the worse for wear.’

‘You mean he’s drunk,’ I croaked furiously. Not wrapped around a tree, then; not pulverised by thugs or under the waters of the Great Ouse.

‘We picked him up off the High Street. Lucky he didn’t get himself run over.’

They were really quite nice about it down at the police station, though I expect they’d all been having a good laugh. Sergeant Prescott seemed positively avuncular as he led me to the cells, jingling his keys. He was well past middle age, bushy-browed and seen-it-all. ‘Your bloke’s a bit of a mess,’ he warned. ‘Bet he’ll be in hot water once he’s slept it off.’

I’ve never been so humiliated in my life—for myself, for Kit. It was like collecting a mangy dog from the pound. My beautiful husband lay sweating on a concrete bench, his once-immaculate shirt grubby and torn, reeking of vomit. Hair hung lankly over his face. At Prescott’s good-natured urging he swung his legs to the floor and sat up, pressing his head into his hands.

‘Sorry,’ he groaned. ‘Oh God, Martha, what the hell is happening?’

I needed to be out of that place; I needed to get my man home and clean and human. Prescott swiftly processed the paperwork and gave me back Kit’s wallet. Then he steered him outside and into my car.

‘Next time we find him in this state, we’ll have to charge him,’ the policeman said, and he wasn’t smiling any more. ‘You do appreciate that, Mrs McNamara? We can’t have people rolling around in the gutter.’

I dimly recall rain-soaked streets, the lights of McDonald’s, a black cat streaking across the road with a flash of luminous eyes—did that mean we were in for good luck or bad? Kit half lay with his head against the window, whispering hoarsely—sorry, sorry . . . Christ, I’m such a fucking fool—and I knew the morning would bring a thudding head, crippling guilt and even deeper despair. He’d try to pull himself up by the bootstraps, swear off the drink for a week, maybe three, and then the whole miserable cycle would begin again.

‘I’ve heard it all before,’ I said wearily.

‘Me too. I’m sick of myself.’

I swerved into our driveway and yanked at the handbrake. ‘This is bloody ridiculous. Okay, so your business went down. Okay, you can’t find work.’

‘And we’re broke.’

‘And we’re broke. It’s been hell. But it’s happened, and now it’s time—’

While I ranted, Kit was fumbling at his door. ‘I can’t get out,’ he said. I walked around and opened it from the outside.

‘There,’ I declared coldly. ‘You’re a free man.’

‘Am I?’ He put his arms around me, leaning his head against my waist. ‘I don’t think I want to be.’

‘C’mon. Bed.’

It was a struggle, because he didn’t have the will to move. I manhandled all six foot of him into the house and up the steep stairs. We’d almost made it when he sat down heavily on the top step, his head drooping as though it was made of stone.

‘Don’t wanna go to bed,’ he muttered. ‘Leave me here.’

‘Rubbish!’ I balanced on a lower step, bending to hook my elbows under his armpits. ‘Couple of Alka-Seltzer, good night’s sleep, you’ll be right as rain.’

His voice rose to a bellow. ‘Jesus, Martha! Leave me alone, will you?’

‘Shh!’ I was furious now, pushing and pummelling, trying to drag him to his feet. ‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together!’

I really, truly don’t believe he intended what happened next, though he called me a fucking smug bitch as he shoved me away. I remember thinking, as I fell—clutched at the handrail, missed—and rolled and hit the bottom step, that he had a deal of strength for someone so shambolically drunk.

I was still crumpled and dazed in a heap when I felt shaking hands on my face. Kit sounded stricken, breathy with panic and almost sober. ‘Martha? Look at me. Come on, Martha, look at me! Can you hear me?’

His face loomed close to mine, sheet-white, eyes wide and bloodshot as he searched my pupils for signs of concussion. I’d landed on my shoulder, not my head, but I felt as though I’d been run over by a truck. Kit abruptly pulled me to his chest and wrapped his body around mine. His voice was pitched higher than usual.

‘Christ Martha, Christ Martha, please be okay.’

‘Bloody hell,’ I moaned, feeling the slick warmth of blood seeping from my nose. ‘How much worse can things get?’

Then my self-control crumpled, and I began to cry, out of pure misery. Kit sprawled on the bottom step, his back against the wall, cradling my head and saying sorry, sorry, sorry.

It was there at the foot of our stairs—at rock bottom—that we finally began to talk, and to listen. We talked about our marriage, our past and our future. We faced the facts of our crisis: mortgage, school fees, frozen bank accounts. We worried about Sacha and about the boys. We seemed unable to stop talking, faces close together, whispering anxiously through the early hours. Then we began to look for a way out.

By the time we disentangled our limbs and stood up, our future was utterly changed. I felt stunned by the decisions we’d made, yet quietly elated. Kit brought me a cup of tea, gently wiping the blood from my face with a warm flannel.

‘Jesus, I’m an idiot,’ he murmured.

I laid my finger on his lips. ‘Enough,’ I said. ‘Enough regret. I need you whole, Kit.’

The midsummer dawn was a silver gleam at the window. A new day.

Three

My sister sat pole-axed, her eyes over-bright. ‘For God’s sake, Martha! Why?’

I’d been dreading this confrontation. My glass shook, splashing wine in a red worm over my wrist. ‘It’s not been easy,’ I said feebly.

Louisa had a baby shoved up her jersey, as usual. Well, not quite a baby; we were there to celebrate Thundering Theo’s first birthday. He had teeth. He could walk. Call me old-fashioned, but should children who wear orange Kickers still be breastfeeding? She always takes things to excess, does my sister. She had four children in five years. Excessive, I call that.

‘Martha.’ She shut her eyes. ‘Tell me you’re not serious. You aren’t going to sell your house, ditch your career and move halfway around the bloody world?’

‘Well—’

‘This is Kit’s idea, isn’t it?’

‘Not really, although he’s been really low about the agency.’

‘I thought he was sick of the advertising game. Claimed to despise every thing it stands for.’

‘Perhaps, but it was his game.’

One-handed, she pretended to play a violin. ‘I love Kit, but he’s just a moody bastard. All glittering blue eyes one day, waltzing you around the kitchen, brooding Beethoven the next. You can’t uproot your family on his whim.’ She fixed me with a suspicious glare. ‘Oh God! I get it. He’s hit the bottle again, hasn’t he?’

‘No, no.’

‘If he’s laid a finger—’

‘Christ’s sake.’ I swatted at the buzzing implication. Lou was going to get the sanitised version: I wasn’t letting any skeletons out of closets; certainly not for my effortlessly competent sister. I’d even been too proud to tell her just how desperate our finances were.

‘We can’t all run away from our problems,’ she huffed. ‘How about a career change—I thought he was a frustrated artist? Those murals are extraordinary.’

‘Aha! Nail on the head. He’s going to have a shot at painting.’

The birthday boy popped up, looking smugly moon-faced while Louisa fiddled distractedly with the strap of his dungarees.

‘Kit says New Zealand is beautiful,’ I ventured. ‘Like Ireland, but better weather and no relatives.’

‘Huh. He’s been watching too much Lord of the Rings.

’ I sighed. ‘It’s actually me you have to blame. I was sitting in front of the computer one night, freaking out about the mortgage.’

‘Join the club.’

‘I couldn’t resist having a little peek at this recruitment agency’s web-site. I found five great jobs straightaway, so I started researching—Lou, it was like riding on a magic carpet! With a couple of clicks it flew me— whoosh—out of my gloomy sitting room and off to a promised land. Forests, mountains, pristine white beaches, all stunningly lovely. No traffic, no queues. People swimming with dolphins. Skiing. Surfing. Kayaking on crystal-clear rivers—hey, d’you know what their advertising slogan is?’

Lou looked as though I’d invited her to see my gallstones.

‘One hundred per cent pure,’ I announced, with a flourish.

She stuck out the tip of her tongue. ‘How twee. And what else did you visit on your magic hearthrug?’

‘The estate agent. A dream house in the hills—ten dream houses in our price range, mortgage free. Places for Kit to paint and me to keep chickens.’

‘Like Beatrix bloody Potter.’

‘And finally the government website. We’ll get visas if one of us has an essential skill and—hey, presto!—occupational therapists are on the list.’ I lifted the baby from her lap and pressed my nose to his. I was going to miss him.

‘Have you talked to the witch doctor?’ Lou meant our father, and she was playing her ace card. She knew the children idolised him.

‘I’ll do it tomorrow—and don’t you dare get in first.’

‘Kit’s family?’

‘Not yet.’

She buttoned her shirt, lips clamped into a line. I’d known Louisa thirty-seven years; she was a three-year-old tyrant when I was born, and the only person I ever met who could stare down our mother. She really hadn’t changed in all that time, and I loved her as much as ever.

‘What it comes down to is that you’ve let a daydream get out of control,’ she said.

‘What it comes down to is that we want a different life for our children. Oh, yuck, Theo! You’re supposed to throw up on Mummy, not me.’ I set him down on the Kickers, and he thundered off.

Handing me a bit of white muslin, Lou swayed across the kitchen in her flowery skirt. My sister is opulent, like a peony. The plumper she grows, the better she looks. I’m sure she posed for Botticelli in another incarnation. She might be his Venus, with twining tendrils of caramel hair, a slightly hooked nose and arching brows. Apparently she and I are strikingly similar— could be twins, they tell me—but I slightly resent the suggestion. Lou would never in a zillion years get into my jeans.

Upstairs, Finn and Charlie were having a barney. Howls of rage culminated in a smash, then Charlie’s agonised wailing.

‘Trouble?’ asked Lou, reaching for her cigarettes. She and smoking had a love-hate relationship. She was always trying to give up.

‘It’s not serious; I can tell from the engine note. Anyway, Sacha’s with them.’

Lou flicked her lighter.

‘Sacha’s got a new boyfriend,’ I said, hoping to distract her. ‘Did she tell you?’ She shook her head sulkily, but I persevered. ‘Ivan Jones, the garden gnome. Plays the timpani in her orchestra. He looks uncannily like something you’d find cross-legged on a lily pad.’

‘Does he wear a hoodie?’

I opened my hands, mystified. ‘Nope! No ponytail, no tattoos. Not so much as an earring. Nothing remotely rebellious. What a codswalloping yawn. He won’t get her pregnant or hooked on heroin, but what’s he got to offer a girl like Sacha?’

‘Perhaps he’s fascinating, if you happen to be sixteen.’

‘Can’t see it, myself. He’s got a silly little beard and a pink VW Beetle.’

Lou shrugged. ‘Well, there you are, then. Wheels.’

‘He’s hypnotically boring, Lou. Sits there piggling at his fingernails.’

‘Why worry? He’ll be gone by next week.’ She balanced her cigarette in an ashtray and began to chop onions for tomato salad. ‘I wish I had a Sacha—cheerful, competent and permanently available for babysitting.’

‘Ah, but you wouldn’t have enjoyed telling Mum you were pregnant at the age of twenty-one, and not a father in sight.’

‘My virginal bridesmaid, rolling along in that vile maternity dress. The shame!’

I forced a laugh. It wasn’t a happy memory. ‘She’d have put me in one of those Irish laundries if she could have.’

Slamming down her knife, Lou began to massage her temples. ‘Martha, don’t go. Why are you doing this? Aren’t we enough for you?’

I’d never refused my sister anything. I could feel knots tightening in my stomach.

‘You’ll never go through with it,’ she said suddenly. ‘You haven’t told Dad or the McNamara clan. It’ll never happen.’ With a sharp little nod of denial, she held out her salad. ‘C’mon, enough nonsense! Grab this. I’ll go and find Philip.’

I didn’t move. ‘I’ve signed a contract,’ I said sadly. ‘It’s a private rehab unit just outside a city called Napier. Head injury and spinal. I had an interview with an agency in London. I’ve . . . Lou, I’ve already given notice at work.’

She froze for a second before ramming the bowl into my midriff. ‘I wish I knew what you’re trying to prove,’ she snapped, and flounced off.

I trailed outside. It was only just beginning to sink in, what we were doing. The enormity of it left me dizzy. Finn and Charlie ran past me to join their cousins who were splashing in and out of a paddling pool, dicing with hypothermia.

Kit was lounging against the barbecue where Louisa had sent him, one hand in a pocket, sizzling sausages. ‘How’d she take it?’ he asked, and chuckled sympathetically when I imitated the face from The Scream.

As if on cue, Lou swept from the house, followed by her husband. ‘Philip’s appalled,’ she said, her voice brassy with hurt.

My brother-in-law threw me one reproachful glance as he lowered himself into a deckchair and proceeded to scuba dive in the merlot. Philip was a young man when I first knew him, with copper eyelashes and a Captain Kirk grin. We go back too far; met while I was training and had a practice placement in the unit where he was a psychologist. I introduced him to Lou, God help me. Seventeen years on there’s half the sandy hair, double the chins and plenty of regret. He works in industry, doing isometric testing on ostensibly sane people. Must be pretty depressing.

‘So.’ He made his fingers skip along the chair’s arm. ‘The rats are scurrying from the sinking ship.’

‘Rats, are we?’ Kit laughed. It was a long time since I’d seen him so carefree. His eyes seemed almost electric blue. ‘Don’t beat around the bush, Philip. If you’re not entirely impressed, why not say so?’

‘Your scheme is hare-brained. What are your children going to be— Irish? English? New Zealanders?’

‘Happy,’ retorted Kit. ‘Untroubled. Unhurried. Uncrowded.’

‘Uneducated and uncultured.’

‘Ooh, you old snob!’ I wrapped a towel around Charlie, who’d bumped his nose and was screaming loud enough to rouse my mother from her grave. ‘Shh, Charlie . . . They don’t wear grass skirts over there, Philip. They have excellent schools. Rutherford was a New Zealander. You know, the atom man.’

‘Well, hurrah.’

‘You’re jealous,’ proclaimed Kit, hitting the bullseye.

‘Bollocks, man!’

Philip’s disgust merely widened Kit’s smile. Sparks quite often flew between the two of them. Kit thought Philip was pompous and self-absorbed, which was undeniable; but it wasn’t the whole picture.

‘We’re off to Hawke’s Bay,’ said Kit, ‘where that wine you’re drinking comes from. While you’re shivering in your thermal undies, we’ll be wearing t-shirts and taking little dips just to cool off.’

‘What gives you the right to run away?’ Philip turned to me. ‘Martha, where’s your bloody loyalty?’

I sighed. ‘Look. We’re really going to miss you, but we rats just want out of the race.’

‘Sacha!’ he exploded, slapping his knee. ‘You’re surely not going to turn that wonderful girl’s world upside down?’

‘She can’t stay at her present school, anyway. We can’t afford the fees.’

‘So move her. Don’t cart her off to a third world country.’

‘Philip! It’s not a . . . Look. I’ve sussed out the schools where we’re going, and there’s a choice of several good ones. Their academic year starts in February so she’ll be able to settle in before the sixth form.’

‘It’s all a question of balance,’ said Kit. ‘Ouch.’ He’d burned his fingers on the barbecue, and sucked them. ‘We have to balance everybody’s interests.’

Philip snorted. ‘You mean it’s all right to sacrifice Sacha’s wellbeing if it suits you?’

‘No, that’s not what he means,’ I interrupted firmly, before Kit could reply. ‘We think she’ll love it. Skiing, surfing, riding. It’s . . . well, it’s Eden.’

‘Eden.’ The deckchair groaned as Philip leaned back. ‘Didn’t turn out too well for poor old Adam and Eve, did it? One temptation too many, as I recall. Bit of a cock-up.’

Kit rolled his eyes.

‘Lucky for you she’s got no father,’ persisted Philip. ‘Might jam a spanner in the works. He might even want what’s best for his daughter.’

That was below the belt, and everyone knew it. There was a moment of charged silence. Louisa froze in the act of lighting another cigarette, her gaze swivelling towards Kit, but he was unruffled.

‘She has got a father,’ he responded affably. ‘Me.’

‘Where is she, anyway?’ Philip looked around. ‘Where’s my favourite niece? She’s the only one of you with two brain cells to rub together. Sacha! You coming out?’

Answering voices floated from the house. There was a moment’s cessation of hostilities while we waited. Lou lived underneath the flight path to Heathrow and all day long jets floated majestically overhead, trailing white chalk scribbles on powder blue.

Fast, light footsteps. Lou’s six-year-old, Lily, whirled out and showed us her sparkly fingernails before charging into the pool. Sacha followed her out of the house, wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a slogan scrawled across the bust: ALL THIS, AND BRAINS, TOO! She was curvy, maybe even carrying an extra pound or two, and it suited her just as it did Lou. Nor did she see the point in pretending she was a modern, androgynous beauty. Around her head dangled several braids, beaded in fluorescent pink. Theo clung to her hip like a baby baboon.

Instantly the garden was brighter, the sun warmer. No really, it was. Bubbly, dazzling Sacha, my best friend. Only she was refusing to talk to me at the moment.

She focused cross-eyed on one of the braids. ‘Lily did my hair.’

‘Sacha.’ Philip patted the empty chair beside him. ‘Sit. We need a bit of sanity.’

Putting Theo down, she flopped gracefully into the seat, long legs stretched out—I envied her those legs—glowing with youth.

‘That’s unusual.’ Lou leaned across and fingered a silver oval that hung around her niece’s neck.

‘My boyfriend gave it to me. It’s an antique locket. There’s his picture, and mine—see?’

Lou made enchanted noises. Privately, I thought it was all a bit nauseating. I mean, what modern youth gives a girl a Victorian locket with their photos? What’s wrong with an MP3 player, or maybe a pair of funky bed socks?

‘I know what you’ve been talking about.’ Sacha shot me a glance of disgust. ‘Mum and Kit’s epic pioneering scheme. All aboard the Mayflower!’ Lou tutted in mutinous sympathy. ‘There’s a big orange for sale sign by the front gate,’ Sacha continued. ‘And what’s for sale? My home!’

‘Already on the market?’

‘Oh, yes. If we so much as put a mug down, Mum grabs it and starts fussing about with a tea towel. Crowds have been streaming through all week, led by a geek called Dave from Theakston’s Realty. Poking about in my bedroom, raving on about how much they love my mermaids. Loud-mouthed kids climbing the twins’ apple trees. We should start doing Devonshire teas.’

Lou laid a hand on Sacha’s knee. ‘We don’t want you to go, darling.’

‘Yeah, well. Mine not to reason why.’

‘I don’t believe all this, you know,’ said Lou, scowling as she looked from Kit to me. ‘This press release about the mortgage and lifestyle, and Kit’s career. It’s all shit.’

Her outburst was oddly shocking, because my sister never swears when there are children within earshot. Coarse language, Mum said once, when I was ten and she padded up the stairs and caught me cursing. Only those with an impoverished vocabulary resort to profanity.

‘You’ve given us a whole stack of reasons.’ Lou downed her glass. ‘A mile-high pile of excuses. And not one of’em was the real one.’

Four

Dad was working when I tapped on his open door. He handed me a mug of something he called tea, and pottered back to his patient. Today it was his old friend Flora. She ran the garden centre and kept putting out her spine.

Dad lives on the outskirts of Bedford, three streets away from the house where I was brought up. In spite of being on the wrong side of seventy, my father is still a great chiropractor. In fact, he’s the only man I know who can manipulate my neck and stop a migraine in its tracks. Kit tried, once. Big mistake. Nearly wrenched my head off. I couldn’t reverse the car for a week.

I waited in the kitchen, listening to the rise and fall of voices and dutifully drinking the undrinkable: one of Dad’s herbal brews. It tasted like an infusion of silage. Bernard, the rusty black cat, sat neatly on a rag rug by the stove like a small, curved vase.

My dad’s eccentric, I’ll admit. The kitchen walls were painted in blurred gradations of gentle colour, and bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling. There were crystals and an oil burner lined up along the dresser. And all this new-age mumbo jumbo worked, that’s the beautiful thing. It did the trick. Dad’s kitchen always felt serene. Wacky, but serene. I loved it in there.

He’s into the Steiner thing; didn’t discover it until middle age. Now he’s quite a big cheese in the movement. I never argue with him about it. Mum did though, and eventually—once Lou and I were grown up and off her hands—she left him for Vincent Vale, a widower who owned an upmarket country pub. Vincent, she said, was reassuringly dull. He made her happy for the last ten years of her life, so perhaps she was right to go.

Once Flora had limped out, Dad stood by the stove, stretching the kinks in his own spine. He doesn’t look like a witch doctor; he’s more of a fox terrier—wiry and tough, with curly grey hair and eyes that miss nothing. ‘And what brings you here on a Monday?’ he asked.

I told him. He didn’t respond at all, at first. Didn’t recoil in horror or fire off a round of reproach; just crouched down and riddled the stove, which banged and sputtered. I watched a twirl of vapour rising like a genie from his oil burner.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘I see. It makes excellent sense.’

I’d never felt so grateful. Having Dad’s blessing changed everything. ‘You’ll come and visit?’ I asked.

‘Hope so, if I can square my conscience with the carbon output. In the meantime, let’s organise one of those terrifying video internet things. Then I’ll be able to see the boys’ cheeky grins, and my Sacha becoming the woman who’s going to save the world.’

‘Our house is on the market.’

‘I know.’ Dad plonked the kettle onto the stove, and crystal spheres bounced across the cast iron. ‘I saw a bloomin’ great orange sign.’

‘You saw . . . when?’

‘Um, let me see . . . Thursday last week? I dropped by. There was nobody in.’ He bent to stroke Bernard’s smooching little body, and the cat licked his hand. ‘So I’ve been waiting for you to visit.’

I felt terrible. We should have fronted up days ago but initially it hadn’t seemed real; more like a computer-generated cyber adventure.

‘How are the children?’ asked Dad, sitting down opposite me. ‘Excited?’

‘Sacha’s not.’

‘No.’ He smiled gently. ‘She’s sixteen, never known any other life.’

‘But New Zealand is a teenager’s paradise! Beaches, mountains, athletic young hunks who surf and play rugby and generally live life to the max.’

‘Perhaps she’d rather have Ivan.’

I harrumphed. ‘Have you met Ivan?’

‘I have, actually. She brought him here. A steady young man, I thought.’

‘Steady! Yes, that’s a good, limp-wristed word, Dad. I like that. It encapsulates everything about Ivan Jones.’

Dad tapped the table. ‘You should be grateful for steady, Martha. You’re much too quick to dismiss people. It isn’t wise. Be careful what you wish for.’

I forced back another mouthful of his brew, making a face. ‘This is vile.’

‘Dandelion root. Marvellous for your liver.’

‘Yeuch. Look, Ivan is a nice lad. I bear him no ill will. If he was my babysitter I’d break out the chocolate Hobnobs. But he has all the charisma of a supermarket trolley and he does not figure in Sacha’s future.’

Dad just chuckled.

‘I caught her smoking the other day,’ I said. ‘She came back from Lydia’s house smelling like a hobo. I found some cigarettes in her pocket.’

‘You searched her pockets?’

‘Kit thinks I should turn a blind eye. He says Sacha has never rebelled before and a little bit of acting out is a good thing—we don’t want her to be a prig.’

‘Smart lad! I’d add my sixpence to that and ask you, Mrs Goody-Two-Shoes McNamara, to explain what you were doing in my potting shed at the age of fourteen.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Martha, you used to sit in my deckchair and puff away like a dark satanic mill. I know for a fact you took a cup of cocoa so you could drop your fag in it if anyone came along.’

‘Says who?’

‘I took a swig one time. Not a mistake I’d make twice.’

I grimaced. ‘Okay, fair cop. Did Mum know?’

‘Don’t be silly. Why would I tell her? When did you give up?’

‘Pretty quickly. Couldn’t afford it.’

‘There you are, you see? If I’d burst in like the drug squad, it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference. You had your waltz with nicotine and moved on—unlike Louisa, admittedly. Sacha will do the same if you leave her be. Probably has already.’

I sighed. ‘God help her if she turns out like me. What a blueprint.’

We fell into companionable silence. A blackbird warbled, out in the rain. It was a wonderfully English sound. Bernard’s tail flicked.

At length, Dad stirred. ‘Had any interest in the house?’

‘Some.’

‘Offers?’

‘Nope. Sacha must be telling everyone the place is haunted.’

‘Martha.’ He regarded me carefully. ‘D’you want this?’

‘Kit—’

‘I didn’t ask what Kit wants.’

‘I’m terrified,’ I confessed, sagging. ‘I’ve worked in the same unit for ten years. I’m team manager, I’ve got my friends and my little power base. I know everyone around here and they know me: the lady in the post office and the GP and the man at the fuel station who’s only got one arm. In a crisis there are twenty people I could call on. I’m so comfortable here.’

He listened without comment, head tilted, grey eyes fixed on mine.

‘On the other hand, that’s just the point,’ I said. ‘We’ve had it good. Too good. I hate smug people who can’t see that their world is very small. I think we all need a shake-up.’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘Right. But Martha, don’t go if it’s only because you’re running from something.’

‘What would I be running from?’

‘Everyone has their demons.’

‘Not me.’