––––––––
Sunday morning. A quiet day in the vineyard. A day when other vineyards were busy with tourists and wine tasters, Pitt’s business took a day off. None of the staff worked, not even Jenkins. The house echoed only with the footfalls of Pitt, his wife and his mother-in-law. At just before ten-thirty, Mrs Cromwell would take herself off to the local church. She would lunch with conspiratorial old friends and return in the late afternoon.
The day would be free for Pitt and Daisy to spend together.
*
Daisy was at the sink. Pitt was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Neither of them had spoken in forty-three minutes.
The door opened; Pitt did not turn, assuming Mrs Cromwell would be ghosting through the kitchen to spray the room with her odour of maliciousness and spite. However, the cold air of malice did not arrive and Ju drifted slowly into his line of vision. Head down, shoulders stooped slightly lower than they had been the previous day.
When she hadn’t been there at seven in the morning, Pitt had assumed she must have stayed away for the night.
Daisy turned and looked at Ju, whose eyes stared at the floor. Daisy hadn’t known when to expect her back; the insecurity that churned in her stomach had half expected Ju not to return at all. And then Daisy could have been relieved at being released from her mother’s torments, while being subjected to her cruel self-righteousness.
Slowly, Daisy stepped away from the kitchen sink and Ju, as if she had been stuck in a holding pattern above an airport, moved forward into position.
Pitt watched her for a few moments, and then looked away in case Daisy should see anything in his eye that betrayed him.
*
Sunday afternoon, Pitt found a dead finch at the foot of the trees that surrounded the side of the farmhouse. It was a bullfinch, although Pitt’s knowledge did not stretch that far. It was the second dead bird he’d found that week. Jenkins had brought him another.
Pitt held his breath and lifted his head. There was a slight breeze and the leaves of the trees swayed and rustled quietly. A fraction of a sound, not the great all-encompassing noise of trees in a high wind.
A few insects buzzed. Pitt moved his head, changed the angle of his hearing. A sleepy summer calm. Not a bird to be heard.
He looked down at the small bird, began to run his fingers through the feathers. He studied it more closely than he had the previous two, interested at last to see if there was any obvious reason why the bird was dead. Like an ancient, enclosed tomb, it did not give up its secrets. It looked unharmed. Even to Pitt’s eyes it looked like a young bird, and it lay dead in his hands.
Once again, with a look around him to see if anyone might be watching, he closed his fingers around the bird and slipped it into his pocket. However much he wanted to, he wasn’t going to be able to ignore it for much longer.