“Poor Sophie. It does seem a bit brutal,” Maggie said, as they walked up the hill. The late January day was cloudy and cold, a light drizzle being driven toward them by the cruel east wind. But Karen needed to be away from the house. It was the morning after the reading of the will and Sophie hadn’t emerged from her room until Karen had gone to bed, when she’d heard the girl in the kitchen, banging about.
“I know. She’s a pain, but it must have been a shock. Although ten thousand is hardly nothing.”
“He’d already given her loads of money, I suppose.”
“Thousands and thousands over the years, yes.”
“So it’s not as if he cut her off without a penny.”
“Far from it. But it does seem a bit weak of Harry not to have warned her.”
They walked in silence for a while, the only sound their panting breaths as they climbed the steep path.
“Maybe he meant to . . . he just didn’t think he’d die so soon. And he was right not to leave her any more if the money wasn’t doing her any good.”
Karen sighed. “Yeah, but how do I get her to understand that and stop blaming me? I’m sure she expects me to bail her out now Daddy’s gone.”
Maggie turned to face her friend. “You’re not to, Karen. Promise? That’s your money to live on, you can’t go giving it away to Sophie. Anyway, it’s not what Harry wanted.”
“I know, but believe me, my dear stepdaughter is very persuasive when she’s broke.” She looked around. “Where’s Largo?”
They both stopped. “Largo . . . Largo.”
The dog came bounding over the crest of the hill, tail wagging, lurching his big bulk to a halt against Karen’s leg. She bent to stroke his damp fur.
“I wish she’d just go home,” she said.
Maggie was peering at her. “Apart from Sophie, how are you coping?”
“Not great.”
“You miss him.”
“No . . . well, yes, of course I do. But . . . it’s . . .” She stopped. She couldn’t say the words, couldn’t explain the misery that it had been, living with Harry, or the guilt that tormented her now. But almost worse was the feeling of discombobulation. The rug had been pulled so dramatically from under her feet that she simply couldn’t understand what was going on half the time. Nothing seemed entirely real.
“I just don’t know what’s going to happen,” she finished lamely.
Maggie grabbed her and gave her a tight hug. “Poor you, it must be so hard. I don’t know what I’d do if Raki died. But you should try not to think about the future right now. It’ll take time to work things out and you’re not in a fit state to do that yet.”
Her friend’s words slid emptily across Karen’s consciousness. She appreciated Maggie’s attempts, but without Karen telling her the truth, no comfort was available.
The view from the top of the hill was spectacular, even on such a dull day. As they stood in silence for a moment, taking in the panorama, Largo began to bark, his tail wagging furiously. Karen, turning, saw the lone figure of William Haskell, hands deep in the pockets of his donkey jacket, making his way up the steep path.
“Oh, God, it’s the bloody vicar again,” she muttered. “Seems like everywhere I go, he pitches up too. I think he’s stalking me.”
Maggie turned too. “Ah, he’s lovely, William. Why don’t you like him?”
“I do like him. But he looks at me with those zealous eyes of his, all Christian-like, and I just know all he wants is to drag me into church, despite what he says to the contrary.”
“You make it sound like he’s trying to seduce you!”
“I said ‘church,’ not bed.”
Her friend laughed. “Well, if he’s trying to turn you into a believer, he’s picked a tough nut to crack.”
They watched as the reverend sprinted up the last steep incline.
“You know he’s an archer?”
“An archer? The vicar?”
“I know, it’s bizarre. Although I’m not sure why it’s bizarre.”
“I suppose archers are sort of strong and heroic. And there’s nothing very heroic about being a vicar these days.”
“Perhaps not, but he’s only shooting at a target, not slaying mountain lions or the Normans. He’s pretty good, Jennifer was telling me. County standard in the past. He teaches disabled kids at the local club in his spare time, apparently.”
Haskell arrived beside them at the top of the path, not even short of breath, and smiling.
“Hi there, ladies.” He took a long, steadying breath. “Good workout, this hill.”
“Yes, and worth it when you get here,” Maggie replied, sweeping her arm around to show off the view as if it were her own.
“Oh, certainly.” He gazed at the distant hills, his breath smoking in the chilly air, then switched his focus to Karen. “So, how’s it all going?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said, unable to keep the wariness out of her tone. She saw his eyebrows go up, as if he knew what she was thinking, but he didn’t say anything.
“I saw Janey yesterday,” Maggie was saying. “She mentioned you were thinking of starting a women’s group.”
He nodded. “Yes, my wife’s very passionate about the idea. What do you think? Would there be any take-up in the village?”
“Depends what it’s for,” Karen said, suspecting it would be just another recruitment drive.
“Well . . . I thought it would be good to have a forum to discuss things that mainly concern women. It could be anything from baking cupcakes to the meaning of life.”
“Aren’t they one and the same thing?” Karen asked, slightly waspishly, annoyed by what she took to be a patronizing tone.
But William just laughed, his eyes lighting up in genuine amusement. “Could be. A good cupcake certainly lifts the soul.”
“Blood sugar, more like,” Karen said.
“That too.” William wasn’t rising to any of her jibes.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Maggie said, shooting a small frown at Karen.
“Would you be interested?” His question was addressed to Maggie, but he included Karen in his encouraging, very charming smile.
“Probably. Might do us all good.”
Karen didn’t say anything, just bent to stroke Largo, who was fussing at her feet to get on with the walk.
“It’s never easy to open up if you’ve got a problem, especially in a small village. I just thought it might be helpful . . .”
Karen felt herself tensing with irritation, knowing that his remark was directed straight at her.
“We should get going,” she said, looking pointedly at Maggie.
As they began to descend the hill, William went striding off the other way, up the path which led further into the hills. Maggie dug her friend in the side.
“Did you have to be so rude?”
“I wasn’t rude.”
“Yes, you were. Everything the poor man said, you jumped on. It’s not like you.”
“Well, he’s so annoying. All that fake concern for everyone.”
Maggie looked shocked. “That’s really unfair. He obviously cares deeply. I don’t understand why you’re being so mean about him. Would you rather we had creepy Bob Parkin back, with all that pious droning and those leery smiles?”
“I just wish William’d leave me alone.”
“Well, tell him, then. Tell him you don’t need his help. He’s got a broad back.”
“I have. But he doesn’t seem to hear me.”
Maggie didn’t reply, but Karen could tell from her stiff back and the increased pace with which she stamped down the path in her red anorak that she was irritated with her.
“OK, OK. I’ll be nice to him. I just . . . I don’t feel myself at the moment.”
Maggie turned at her words, her face full of sympathy again.
As Karen drew level with her, she said, “People don’t know what to say when someone dies. They don’t know what to do for the best.”
Karen didn’t think this was the vicar’s problem, and knew Maggie was speaking more about herself.
“I know. And I’m sorry I’m being such a curmudgeon. I have no idea even how I want anyone to behave. All of it seems wrong.”
Maggie linked her arm with Karen’s. “I’m sure it does. It will for a while, I expect.”
*
Sophie was waiting for Karen when she got back from her walk, sitting at the kitchen table, clutching her phone tight in her right hand, obviously tense. Karen took a deep breath, waiting for the onslaught.
“Hi.”
“Hello, Sophie.”
“We’ve got to talk,” she said.
Karen nodded and sat down opposite her stepdaughter.
“This money thing . . . I’ve decided . . . I’m going to have to let out my flat for the time being. It’s the only way I can pay the mortgage.” Her tone of voice, surprisingly, was not hostile, just weary. “I’ve talked to Mum and she thinks it’s a good idea.”
“Right, well, that sounds like a plan,” she said, not really listening, feeling detached, uninvolved in Sophie’s problems.
But the girl looked puzzled by her reply and Karen wondered what she was missing.
“Obviously, if I rent it out, I’ll have to come and live here for a bit . . . until I’m straight. I can’t go to Mum’s.”
Karen assumed Sophie was referring to the fact that her mother lived in the Lake District.
“Here?” Karen could hear that the word sounded almost stupid, and she tried to lift herself from the lethargy that had overtaken her.
Sophie nodded.
Living here. Sophie, living here. Karen took a deep breath as the reality of what the girl was saying began to sink in.
“How will that work?” she asked. “We don’t get on.” She had never said it in so many words, but there was no point in beating about the bush, now that the catalyst for them being polite to each other was no longer around.
The dismissive shrug that Sophie gave implied that it was immaterial to her if they liked each other or not.
“I don’t have much choice, do I? I’m like totally broke. Anyway, it’s a big house, we won’t have to see each other if we don’t want to. It’ll only be till I get straight.”
She was eyeing Karen as if daring her to refuse, her stare both pleading and hostile at the same time. Is she testing me, seeing if I’ll pay her off like Harry did, just to keep her out of the house? Karen wondered.
“Fine,” Karen said eventually. She could hardly say no, but she was surprised to find that, in fact, she was strangely relieved the girl would be staying. The house felt echoey, spookily quiet, the winter nights very long and dark since the bluster and drunken boisterousness of her husband—accompanied by the relentless background noise of golf replays—had been removed.
“So it’s OK?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want.”
Sophie looked amazed, almost deflated, as if she had been busting for a fight. She got up, muttering a grudging thanks.
“I’ve got a friend I know will take my flat for a while.” She hovered, as if there were something else on her mind. Then her face cleared. “I’ll get off then, go home and start sorting things out. It’ll probably take a few days.”
“Just let me know when you’re coming down.”
Her stepdaughter was walking toward the door when she hesitated. “Thanks,” she repeated, her expression softening for a second from its habitual wariness.
Karen smiled. “Just one thing. We’re going to have to try and get along. It’ll be hell otherwise . . . for both of us.”
The shutters were down again as the girl replied, “It’s not my fault we don’t.”
Karen had to bite her tongue.
*
Almost as soon as her stepdaughter had driven off, Karen went up to bed—despite it being only three o’clock in the afternoon—dragging one foot in front of the other, she was suddenly so tired. For nights now, she had barely slept, waking multiple times in the darkness, thinking she heard Harry calling her. Often she would forget for a moment that he was dead, and found herself leaping up and grabbing her dressing gown in order to go and help him upstairs. And with each wakening, with each realization that he was beyond her help, would come the guilt, descending on her like a pall that was impossible to shake off.
When she woke it was gone eight in the evening. Her body felt heavy and lethargic still, as if the sleep had only intensified her tiredness rather than alleviated it.
She dragged herself out of bed and went downstairs to make some tea, which she took into the sitting room. But the room seemed full of shadows and she hurried back to the kitchen. She rang Maggie, but her friend’s phone went to voicemail, then tried her brother in Canada, but his mobile also just asked her to leave a message. She had never felt so uneasy, sitting there in her own home—which she’d always considered so cozy and safe—with nobody for company but her husband’s reproachful ghost.
Even the presence of her spiky stepdaughter would have been preferable.
*
The following morning, after another sleepless night, during which she’d read an entire Michael Connelly novel cover-to-cover and only shut her eyes around six a.m., Karen knew she had to focus. She had always been a very organized person, a list person. Someone, what’s more, who actually consulted her lists, didn’t just write them and forget them. She liked to have a plan. It came from living with a mother whose ability to organize was perpetually fuddled by sherry—Karen had been in charge of the household much of the time. But currently there was no plan. Yes, she had the house. Yes, she had enough money to live on, if she continued to live in the rectory. But what would she do with her time, now there was no husband to focus on, to look after and worry about?
Back when they’d first married, Harry had been adamant that no wife of his would need a job, and she hadn’t argued at the time, not after twenty years of being at her various bosses’ beck and call, her support often going unappreciated. But she’d also known that if she sat at home while Harry worked, she would not only go stark staring mad, but she would barely set eyes on her workaholic husband from Monday to Friday. He had hired another PA when they got married, so Karen had gradually begun to take on the promotion of foreign trade—which had been largely neglected till then—liaising with companies and accompanying her husband on the trips abroad to visit them. It was work she loved, not least because she and Harry were together and made such an impressive team: he the charismatic front man, bombastic, who saw the bigger picture; Karen the finisher, the details person, who smoothed the path to contract signing and ensured the participants were satisfied. And so the company had happily absorbed most of their waking hours for nearly fifteen years. Even at home they talked about little else. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising, therefore, that things had imploded after Harry sold up three years ago.
Since then, she realized, the two of them had sunk into a mire. Harry had turned to alcohol and needed his wife to prop him up in his addiction; Karen took on the role of worried observer, monitoring each and every drink and witnessing her husband’s decline into drunkenness while at the same time being helpless to change things. There was no other focus for either of them, their world had shrunk almost to nothing. It seemed hard to believe, when she thought about it now, that their previously lively, enjoyable partnership had been reduced to nothing more than resentment and bickering.
What happens now? she asked herself as she rinsed Largo’s water bowl out and filled it with fresh water. What on earth do I do? She took a tin of dog food from the cupboard and spooned the meaty, gelatinous chunks out into the enamel dish, breaking them up then sprinkling a handful of kibble on top, taken from a large sack under the sink. Largo was watching intently, his mouth open, tongue out, tail whacking back and forth in his eagerness. What will become of me without Harry?
“Here you go, boy.” Karen put the dish down on the tiles and gave the dog a stroke, digging her fingers into his soft coat.
*
The farm shop was busy. Karen wandered down the vegetable aisle, scanning the boxes of fat, shiny leeks and carrots with their green, feathery tops still attached. She had no appetite, and had been surviving for the past few weeks on scrambled eggs and tomato soup, those being the easiest and quickest things to prepare. But now she had run out of even these, and Sophie would be arriving the following day. Not merely “arriving,” Karen thought gloomily, as she pulled a brown paper bag from the string hanging beside the potatoes and began to fill it with parsnips, so much as “moving in.” Her previous notion that it would be good to have someone else in the house had quickly waned. It had been two weeks since her stepdaughter had left for London, and Karen still hadn’t fully come to terms with the fact that from tomorrow she would have to live side by side with Harry’s daughter, find some sort of harmony with the difficult girl.
Her basket now contained carrots and parsnips and a savoy cabbage, vegetables that she selected because they were virtually the only ones that Harry—not the most enthusiastic vegetable consumer—had tolerated. For years she had reached for them without thinking.
“Karen?” She looked round to see Janey Haskell smiling tentatively at her.
“Hi,” Karen said, thinking, not for the first time, that the vicar’s wife was straight from Central Casting: neat, sweet, unassuming, yet with a steely determination that you ignored at your peril. Janey’s success, for instance, at bludgeoning the village into handing over money for Children in Need was astonishing—twice as much as was raised in previous years. She was impossible to refuse.
“How are things?” Janey asked. She had an odd way of not moving about very much, as if she were trying to balance a book on her freshly washed dark hair, blunt cut to her shoulders.
“Umm, yeah . . . you know . . . getting there.”
The vicar’s wife nodded sympathetically. “It’ll take time.”
Karen gritted her teeth. If one more person said that to her she would surely stab them. Did they think that she was a complete idiot? Did they think she expected the death of a husband could be overcome in an instant? Did they really think that?
“I suppose,” she replied, trying hard to smile.
Janey just looked at her, as if she were waiting for her to confess her innermost torment. She must have learned the technique from her husband.
“Will was trying to get hold of you earlier. In fact, he tried yesterday too.”
“Really?” Karen’s voice squeaked guiltily. She’d received three messages from Reverend Haskell on her mobile and had ignored them all.
“Yes, he wanted to talk to you about the headstone.”
Karen raised her eyebrows.
“You asked him for the name of a stonemason?” Janey was clearly beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with Karen’s lack of responsiveness, because she was nervously nibbling her top lip with her small bottom teeth.
“I’ll give him a call when I get home,” she said, unrepentant. Just because my husband has died, doesn’t make it open season on sharing, she thought crossly.
Janey began to move off. “If there’s anything either of us can do, Karen,” she said, laying a gentle hand on Karen’s arm, “you know you can ring us . . . or come round . . . at any time.”
The words seemed sincere, and Karen felt mean.
“Thanks, Janey. That’s good to know.”
And she was rewarded by a relieved smile from the vicar’s wife.
*
Karen kept William in the kitchen this time. She didn’t want him to get too cozy.
“You didn’t have to come over,” she said, when she’d plunked a cup of tea down in front of him. “I know you’re busy, you could have told me over the phone.”
Will smiled. “It can be an emotive subject, the headstone.”
“Right. Well, all I wanted was a name. I can deal with them myself.”
For a minute he didn’t look at her, then he brought his gaze up to hers, his eyes suddenly very intense.
“I know you’re avoiding me, Karen, and I’m not remotely offended. But I wish you’d just let me be your friend, without being so aware of this collar here.” He touched the white dog collar he wore, almost apologetically.
“It’s not that I’m avoiding you . . .” She picked at a small splinter on the wooden table.
“Look, what you’re going through must be hard. I have no idea how hard. But bottling it all up, in my experience, makes it harder.” His tone was tough, almost businesslike. “I’m not trying to force you to tell me how you’re feeling, but I hope there’s someone you can talk to . . . Maggie, for instance?”
He burbled on, about death and bereavement, anger, regret . . . she wasn’t really taking it in. But the sound was rhythmic and oddly soothing, like the beat of a distant drum. She was so tired. Continuing to avoid his gaze, both hands around her warm mug of tea, she felt her breathing gradually slow from the shallow, snatched breaths that had become normal over the past weeks. And in her chest there was a sensation like a trip switch going, as if something taut and strung out had finally snapped. Her cold body flushed with heat and for a moment she luxuriated in the feeling, which was like a warm, peaceful blanket being wrapped around her soul.
“Karen?”
She looked up and met his eyes, not sure what he was asking. “Sorry . . .”
“Are you alright? You look quite . . . flushed.”
There was a heavy silence.
“Do I?” Then she felt her face crumple, her eyes flood with hot, stinging tears.
William, sitting opposite her, let her cry. He did nothing, made no attempt to reach over and touch her, and his inaction seemed to be giving her permission to weep, to take her time and let everything go.
After a while, she wanted badly to speak. “I let him die,” she said. “He called and called and I didn’t go to him. If I had, he might still be alive today.”
The vicar just nodded.
“Did you hear what I said? I killed my husband. I left him there . . . the stupid drunken sod. Come and get me if you want me, I thought, and I went to bed. WENT TO BED when my husband was in pain and dying downstairs.” She stared at him through her tears. “What sort of a person does that make me? Eh?”
“Human,” was his quiet reply.
“No, NO, that’s not ‘human.’ Any normal human being would have gone to him, been there when he needed me.”
“Did you want him to die?”
The question shocked her. “No, of course not.”
He met her gaze, waiting for her to go on.
“I wanted him to stop drinking,” she said, but the other words, the ones she knew she had to say, stuck in her throat. William wasn’t helping her out. “He was such a nightmare when he was drunk. Which was most of the time recently. I didn’t know what to do, how to stop him. He even hit me a few weeks ago . . . I don’t think he meant it, but still . . .”
“I’m so sorry. It must have been hell for you both.”
The word “both” brought Karen up short. Was it hell for Harry too?
“If it was such hell for him, then why didn’t he make even the tiniest effort to stop?”
William shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And why didn’t anyone say anything? You all knew, but you didn’t do a blind thing. Those friends of his at the club, watching him drink himself unconscious week after week? Why didn’t anyone help him . . . help me?” She was almost shouting now. “Why didn’t you?”
“I understand what you’re saying, but I never really saw him drunk. I knew he drank—other people said it, and his flushed face and the smell of alcohol, even at the morning service, was a bit of a giveaway. But I didn’t feel I knew him well enough to say anything yet.”
Karen slumped, her head bowed, her arms resting on the table. The anger had drained away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to attack you. I feel so guilty . . . and I suppose I want to blame everyone else.”
Silence fell on the warm room. There was just the sound of the boiler chunnering away in the utility room next door.
“Did you know he was ill?”
She shook her head. “His blood pressure was high, but he was on beta blockers, had been for years. He always said Tom had given him a clean bill of health whenever he went for a checkup. I don’t know if that was true—”
“So you couldn’t have known he was at risk.”
“Well, no. But anyone with half a brain knows that a seventy-five-year-old who puts away a bottle of whisky a day—minimum—is going to end up with health problems.”
“Was it a heart attack?”
“So the post mortem said.”
Another silence.
William’s ability to be absolutely still and thereby make silence seem alright was almost as if he were stopping time. Maybe it was the archery discipline, she thought, the need to be completely focused in order to take aim. Whatever it was, she found it calming, not feeling the need to speak. She felt they could have sat there all night.
“I’m glad you were able to talk to me about it.”
“You won’t tell anyone else about me leaving him and going to bed? Please. They’d be so shocked.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Karen. How could you know that he was about to die? But no, of course I won’t tell anyone.”
“Not even Janey?”
“Not even Janey.”
She sighed. “Thanks.”
William got up, took his mug to the sink and tipped the dregs of his tea away, rinsed it out and placed the mug on the draining board.
Karen got up too. “Listen . . . thanks . . . thanks for being so . . . for not judging me.”
He smiled. “Nothing to judge. Why don’t we meet again soon. I’m around.”
When he’d gone out into the cold February evening, Karen sat back down at the table. It had been such a relief to speak of her guilt to another human being. But although she felt calmer than she had in days, William’s insistence that she had done nothing wrong did not ring true. Not that she didn’t believe him to be sincere. She absolutely did. But he only knew what she’d chosen to tell him, he hadn’t been there. Because she finally admitted to herself, as she trawled through the events yet again, minute by minute, of Harry Stewart’s last night on earth, that part of her had known, right from the start, that there was something wrong. His cry was not that of someone just wanting attention, but a cry of real distress.
I didn’t think he would die, she told herself now. I honestly didn’t. But there had been times in the past, she knew, when the thought had crossed her mind that it would be easier if he did. Not in a serious way, she hadn’t followed it through. It had been more of an exhausted, end-of-the-road, no-other-options-left-to-her sort of thought when he was being particularly difficult. And it was quickly dismissed and accompanied by immediate shame. Shame at the thought itself and also at her own cowardice in not being able to just pack a bag and leave him.
She hadn’t told the vicar that, had she? Hadn’t told him of the burning resentment she felt each time he threatened her, or belittled her, or ordered her about in his drunken state. Nor had she mentioned that she was on the brink of leaving Harry.
What would the Reverend Haskell have thought if he knew the unedited version of the truth? she wondered. No doubt booked me a place in hell.