THE NEXT MORNING they went to church as usual and, as usual, the Thorogood family came back for lunch. Annie was exhausted by her own deception, shocked at the risks she had taken, terrified of what she was going to do. She messed everything up that day. The lunch was awful – the meat tough and overcooked, the roast potatoes still hard in the middle and the cabbage burned where the water had boiled out of the pan. Annie could not join in the conversation, she could not keep up with it. She did not understand it; it was as if the others were speaking a different language. She kept thinking: ‘Perhaps this will be the last time I do this.’
William disappeared during dessert to answer the telephone and he was gone for a while. He had shut the dining-room door behind him but Annie could still hear his voice: Yes, he said, of course, do what you must. There was a pause. I don’t care what it takes, he said, make sure you find him, and quickly. He came back into the dining room and sat down. He wiped his hands on his serviette.
‘Any news?’ Reverend Thorogood asked and William nodded.
‘But I don’t want to discuss murder at the dining table,’ he said.
After lunch, Julia suggested a walk. Nobody wanted to climb the moor but the woods were full of new leaves and they lasted for such a short time, Julia said, it would be a sin not to enjoy them. Her husband agreed and said it would do the children good to have some fresh air. Ethel was having one of her better days. She said she would be happy to stay behind and have a nap, so Annie settled her in her bedroom and made sure she had everything she needed before closing the door.
‘We won’t be long,’ she promised.
‘Be as long as you like,’ said her mother-in-law. ‘It makes no difference to me.’
‘I’m sorry you can’t come with us.’
‘It’s all right, dear. I’ve had my time for walking on the moors. Off you go now, don’t worry about me.’
Still Annie hesitated. ‘Ethel …’
‘Yes?’
Annie wanted to say something about love. She wanted to warn Ethel about what she was going to do, she wanted her understanding and her forgiveness. She thought that Ethel, who had loved her own husband to the ends of the earth, who loved him still, would understand why she had to be with Tom. But there was too much to say, too much to explain. And Ethel’s heart, her loyalty, belonged by rights to William – not Annie.
‘I’ll see you later,’ was all that Annie said.
‘You’d better lock the door,’ said Ethel, ‘in case I’ve forgotten who I am when I wake up. You don’t want to come back and find I’ve wandered off again.’
Annie smiled. She wanted to say: I wish I’d known you when you were young and healthy, but she felt that would be too cruel. ‘Are you sure you want me to lock the door?’ she asked and Ethel said: ‘I’m senile, dear, not stupid,’ so Annie had locked the door.
The two families, the Howarths and the Thorogoods, walked across the home meadow, past the very spot where Annie had met her lover the previous evening, past the cows with their slippery jaws and their attendant flies, their swishing tails, and through the gate at the far end. They climbed the path up to the woods and it was beautiful up there. Annie took off her cardigan and looped the arms around her shoulders. William was wearing a golf shirt. He was breathing hard and there was colour to his cheeks. Elizabeth swung from his hand.
‘It’s a shame we don’t have a dog,’ William said suddenly. ‘I miss Martha. Especially when we’re out.’
‘I miss her all the time,’ said Elizabeth.
‘We should get a puppy.’
It was such an un-William thing to say that Annie stopped in her tracks. Elizabeth stared up at her father. ‘Really?’ she asked and then, realising that she had better wrestle a guarantee from him before he changed his mind, she began a barrage of questions and demands for promises, confirmation that a new puppy would come. Annie smiled at Julia as if she too thought a puppy would be a good idea, when really, in her heart she was thinking how difficult it would be to leave a puppy behind with William when she and Elizabeth fled to Ireland, and how cruel to take it from him; that it would be one more life to consider, one more future for which she would be responsible.
‘I think we should think about it before we decide,’ she said to William.
He smiled. ‘My wife spends half her life telling me I should be more spontaneous,’ he said to Julia, ‘and then when I am, she reins me in.’
‘That’s women for you,’ said the vicar. Even Julia frowned at that comment.
That evening, Annie bathed Elizabeth and then brought her downstairs, flushed and powdered and ready for bed, for a snack. The television was on in the living room and Annie heard the theme for the local news. She went into the room to watch.
A young woman was being interviewed on screen. She must have been standing at the top of the road that led out of Matlow, with the moor and the colliery in the background behind her. Annie thought she looked familiar, but she did not have a local accent. Her eyes were red and teary and she had to stop speaking to dab her nose with a tissue.
‘She was lovely,’ the woman said. ‘She was beautiful and popular and talented. But,’ she paused and took a gulp of air, ‘but most of all she was my sister and I loved her.’ She started to sob and Annie held tight to Elizabeth and tried to turn her from the television so she would not see the woman’s distress. She reached down to turn the channels over to something less terrible, only as she did so she paused. A photograph of the second murder victim had appeared on the screen and this time Annie did recognise her. She even knew her name.
It was Selina Maddox, the girl who had played guitar in the bar at the Haddington Hotel, the girl who had been with Tom at the pub by the river; the girl who lived in the flat beneath his, the girl who had called him babe.
Annie waited until William was asleep and then she crept from the bedroom. She walked carefully down the stairs, treading softly so as not to make the boards creak. She checked her watch in a shaft of moonlight; it was gone 3 a.m.
She knew she would not sleep again. She was twisted by anxiety. Where was Tom now? What was he doing? Had he found a safe place to sleep? Did he know that Selina was dead?
She went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap. She stood at the window to drink it. Outside, the moon was casting shadows in the garden and on the moor. She didn’t like to think of Tom out there in all that darkness, on his own.
It would be better, she thought, safer for him if he were to go right away; leave Yorkshire, leave the country. But how would she ever find him then?
She jumped as the light went on, spilling water down her nightgown. William was standing at the kitchen door. Her mind was so full of Tom that it took a moment for her to recognise her husband.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I came down for a drink.’
‘You’re always wandering about in the dark these days, Annie.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
Annie tipped what was left in the glass into the sink, rinsed it and put it on the drainer. William stood, watching. She dried her hands on a tea towel.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, squeezing past him at the door. She went back upstairs, not waiting to see if he was following, and tucked herself back into the bed, wishing she were anywhere but where she was.
In the morning she returned to Occupation Road, hiding her face behind sunglasses and a scarf. She walked up to the door and she rang the bell to Tom’s flat. Nothing happened. She pressed the other buttons, the bells to the other flats, her palm flat against the buzzers ringing them all at once. At last the door opened. It was the Indian woman, she was holding a little boy’s hand.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m looking for Tom Greenaway. The tenant in the second-floor flat.’
‘He’s not here,’ the woman said. ‘He won’t show his face round here again. And if he does, the police will have him.’ She nodded in the direction of a saloon car parked on the other side of the road with two men inside. ‘It’s been a nightmare,’ the woman hissed. ‘That poor girl murdered, him gone, the police and press all over the place. We don’t want him back here. We hope he never comes back, the bastard. And if you know what’s good for you, you’d better stay away too.’
She closed the door with a bang.