“Anybody home?” Edith tried for nonchalance as she pushed open the back door of the farmhouse, but sounded timid even to her own ears. She’d been surprised, even a little aggrieved, when there’d been no answer to her knock. Knows I’m coming, don’t he?
OK, so she was late. Very late. Not her fault that her mother must have used the scooter and not refilled the tank. They were economical, but they didn’t run on thin air. Always down to Edith to do the dirty jobs.
She stepped through the mudroom into the kitchen itself, calling out again. The only response was from the old terrier, in her basket by the Aga. She lifted her head, gazed through filmy eyes, then curled up again, dismissive.
Nobody’s here, the girl thought mournfully. Nobody cares about fat, stupid, ugly Edith.
Her knees suddenly slack, Edith subsided into one of the wooden chairs by the kitchen table and stared at her shoes. Her tears, which had blown themselves out on the ride down to Grayrigg, bubbled up afresh. She tried to swallow them back into her aching throat, but little gulping whimpers escaped from her as she wrapped her arms around her skinny frame and rocked, crying, for what seemed a long time.
She couldn’t have said why she was so devastated. It wasn’t that she even liked Mr Hogg. OK, so he never shouted like her father, but he got this disappointed air about him. Took it personally when she let him down.
Some of her old teachers had tried that trick and it hadn’t worked any better when she was still at school. “Oh, Edith, if only you’d apply yourself a little harder.” But what had they to offer if she did? A bone-numbing job in telesales, or the check-out of the local supermarket? And then, at that last careers’ day, some so-called friend had blabbed about Edith’s secret dreams of fame and fortune. She’d hoped for encouragement. What she’d got was scorn.
How dare they laugh?
Edith never mentioned it again, but her resentment began to fester. She’d made her plans, quietly and without fuss, to exit this miserable existence. So when they mentioned her name in future, it would be in awed, hushed voices. And laughter would be the last thing on their minds.
Edith’s bawling subsided into sobs, which grew more difficult to sustain. She’d been hoping that Mr Hogg would walk in and find her weeping tragically, at which point he’d coax the whole story out of her, all sympathetic.
Edith comforted herself with a brief vision of her employer on the phone to her parents, berating them for how badly they’d treated their daughter, how they’d come so close to losing her.
Naturally, they’d rush down there, all full of regrets, to cosset and pamper her, to tell her she was their best girl. Like they used to back when she was almost too young to recall if it was memory or craving. Back when she had yet to dissatisfy them in so many ways.
Eventually, it dawned on Edith that if the terrier was still in her basket, Mr Hogg had likely gone further than a walk around the yard, even with him being a cripple. He could be out all morning. All day.
Edith felt her last chance for salvation slipping away from her.
She slouched out of the chair, only then catching sight of the note addressed to her in Mr Hogg’s looping hand. Hope flared again. In the time it took her to snatch it up, her imagination painted a heartrending plea not to do it. Perhaps some poetry, even a proposal.
The reality was a brusque instruction to clean the byre and give the old dairy a thorough going over before it was fit to let again. It finished: ‘We really must talk about your time-keeping, Edith!’
You’ll never get anywhere… All I see in store for you… You’re never going to be famous…
Edith’s face crumpled. She threw the ball of paper across the kitchen, causing the terrier to raise her head again briefly to see if it was worth the chase. It wasn’t.
The sight of the old dog, gazing up at her with those trusting eyes, made what she’d done yesterday even worse.
If only that farmer paid more attention to his flock…
Edith straightened. Her father might have put the AK beyond her reach, but he wasn’t the only one with a gun around here.
Still swallowing her tears, she hurried through the hallway to Mr Hogg’s study. She knocked before she went in, just in case. The room was empty.
Propped behind the door was a twelve-bore Baikal, just where she remembered. The shotgun was old, speckled with rust. She’d never seen Mr Hogg pick it up, never mind fire it. Just for a moment, she worried that it wouldn’t do the job.
Soon find that out, won’t I?
The top shelf of the bookcase yielded a dusty box of cartridges. Decisive now, Edith opened it up and took just one, right from the centre, slipping it into her pocket. She put the box back, went through the kitchen pausing only to take a bottle of cooking sherry from the pantry.
Out in the brightly sunlit yard, she hesitated for the first time. Where? She looked around. Her eye lighted on the side door to the old barn next to the farmhouse.