THE MORNING AFTER the storm, Annie took Elizabeth to school as usual. She said nothing about Ethel’s wandering to Mrs Miller. She could not settle to anything. It was a cold, gusty day, with more rain in the air. Branches were swaying like dancers shaking their skirts. Annie wrapped herself in her coat, hid beneath the hood then went outside and kicked an old tennis ball about the lawn. She wanted rid of this restlessness. She wanted to feel calm.
She went over to the gamekeeper’s cottage and pushed the front door with her shoulder to check if the lock would hold; it did not. The screws that held the lock-hinge pulled out of the wood on the frame and the door swung open. Inside, it was dark and there was a strong smell of rot. Annie stepped forward. The room to her right was just a shell with the timber lathes exposed on the walls and ceiling where the plaster had crumbled away; the room to the left had once been the kitchen, but now it was only a jumble of collapsing cupboards and timbers. She climbed the staircase, which creaked and moved beneath her feet. There was no bathroom and only two small rooms upstairs. Annie went into the larger one and sat on a damp windowseat. Although the windowpane was cracked, the sun was coming through and the room was almost warm. There was a stink of mice. Dead leaves were piled in one corner, floorboards were missing and strips of paper bleached of their pattern hung in peels from the walls. Annie sat and looked out of the window. She stared at the black and white cows in the home meadow; watched the cloud shadows on the moor. She did not know what to do with herself. She did not know how to turn off this thirst that had been switched on, this longing for Tom.
She remembered one of their last days together. It had been summer, a hot spell – Matlow had been dusty and dry. Tom had arrived unexpectedly at the door of the house on Rotherham Road. She was sitting on the doorstep, reading in the sunshine. Tom stood in front of her and smiled. Even back then, his hair was long enough to provoke Denis’s disapproval. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet. ‘We’re going for a swim.’
He put his arm round her shoulders, his fingers resting on her bare skin. They walked together the whole length of Occupation Road, up to the bridge, and then he helped her over the wall and they scrambled together down the bank. She had tied her cardigan around her waist by the arms. They took off their shoes and left them in the long grass and the lacy cow-parsley that lined the river. She had a nettle-sting on her knee and he insisted on finding a dock leaf and rubbing its green juice on the little bumps. Then he kissed her knee and Annie pushed him away. They tussled for a while. And then the two of them moved on again, jumping from stone to stone downriver, as they used to when they were children, holding on to willow fronds, splashing one another, laughing. The water was icy cold; it looked so clean and pure.
Annie had gone ahead, Tom had followed. The green cardigan bounced behind her as she jumped. Her legs were pale, her ankles and feet white beneath the glassy water. She held out her hands to balance herself. Laughed when she slipped and her hair came loose from its clip and was tangled about her neck and shoulders.
That day, the day she was remembering, they had gone as far as the place where they used to swim; a man-made pool at the side of the river held back by a weir. It used to seem such a long way away, a million miles from Matlow town, but it was probably only a mile or so. Annie and Tom sat on the riverbank, watching the flies dance on the surface of the water. The sun was low in the sky and everything was coloured golden; the light was in her hair and she stretched out her legs and the skin was honey-brown.
‘I’ve nearly saved enough money to buy a car,’ Tom said, ‘and once I’ve got a car, we can drive away from here.’
Annie shielded her eyes from the sun and turned to look at him. ‘How come you’ve saved so much so quick?’
He had a stalk of grass in his mouth. He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter how,’ he said. ‘What matters is that it’s for us, Annie Jackson, you and me. It’s our escape fund.’
‘Tell me where the money’s come from,’ she persisted.
She remembered the conversation because of Tom’s reaction. He had looked – what? Awkward? Ashamed? At any rate, he had lost his composure.
‘Mrs Wallace gave it to me.’
‘You can’t take money off an old woman, Tom!’
‘I told her that. I tried not to take it, but she insisted. She says she’d rather give it to me than it go to her good-for-nothing granddaughter. Sadie never does anything for her. She never visits.’
‘Even so …’
‘Even so what? It’s Mrs Wallace’s money. She’s got all her marbles. She can do what she likes with it.’
‘I suppose,’ Annie said doubtfully. Then she added: ‘I’m not going anywhere with you unless we’re engaged.’
‘All right,’ said Tom. ‘Let’s get engaged.’
‘We’ll need a ring.’
‘We don’t need a ring.’
‘We do. It’s not official without a ring.’
‘Christ, you’re never satisfied,’ Tom said, and he’d rolled her over in the grass and kissed her neck and they’d laughed.
They swam that day, that summer’s day, and afterwards she, shivery and damp-haired, put on her cardigan and they walked back up the riverbank. Tom held her close to him and she leaned against him and he kissed her head and told her that he loved her. ‘We’ll get ourselves a Ford Capri and a ring,’ he promised, ‘and we’ll drive away. We’ll keep driving until we get to wherever it is we want to be, and when we get there we’ll raise a glass to Mrs Wallace.’
‘Will we invite her to the wedding?’
‘Of course we will.’ Then Tom had stopped and looked serious. ‘Don’t tell anyone about the money, will you, Annie? Sadie would kick up a right stink if she found out. She could cause all kinds of trouble for us.’
Annie had promised that she would not say a word. And she hadn’t – not until she’d been forced to, in the courtroom.
In the gamekeeper’s cottage, ten years later, Annie sat in the sunshine and she closed her eyes. The day she and Tom had gone swimming had been one of their last days together. One of the last days before poor Mrs Wallace was found dying in her bungalow. One of the last days when Annie had been completely happy.