Waking early, Laura wavers between continuing her attempts at tweaking home and hearth by making pancakes for breakfast, and following her own inclination, which is to go for a walk. The rain of the previous night has departed, leaving a sky so blue it almost sings above the sparkling waterlogged landscape. Opting for virtue and pancakes, Laura finds that the reward is built in – batter as illustrated in her very easy children’s recipe book only takes a moment to construct, and soon she is walking down the lane, an emancipated woman with a pug at her heels. However, being alone with her thoughts is more than Laura can bear, and she finds herself approaching Hedley’s house, hoping her brother will be up and able to divert her mind.
She hears Hedley before she sees him. ‘Get over. GET OFF. I said GET OFF, you little bastard.’ Following his voice, Laura discovers him in a small field, glaring at a very small black pony. The pony, which is wider than it is tall, has one miniature hoof placed on Hedley’s foot, and ignoring his fury, is devouring the contents of the bucket Hedley holds in his hand.
‘God, how I loathe horses. You WILL get off my sodding foot now.’ With supreme strength, Hedley pushes the pony off his boot and limps over to Laura. ‘It belongs to Venetia – it’s for the children, but it’s a surprise so I’ve got it for a few weeks until the unveiling.’
‘That was kind of you.’ Laura strokes the pony’s nose. Hedley grunts.
‘Mmm. Well, it was Tamsin. She’s been doing a lot of baby-sitting for them and she encouraged them to get a pony and she’s going to help teach them to ride it. I thought that as she was doing something positive rather than just lying around with the curtains drawn watching television, I should support her. Not that she’s pleased with me,’ he sighs. ‘She seems more removed than ever now Gina’s around, and I thought they’d get on so well.’ He looks suspiciously at his sister. ‘Why are you here? I hope you’re not trying to palm that goat off on me again.’
Laura’s face crumples.
‘No, no. It’s not that. But I don’t know what to do,’ she wails. Hedley’s jaw drops, but he pulls himself together and pats her on the back.
‘Come on now,’ he says heartily. ‘Nothing is ever that bad, is it?’
Laura does not return to the Gate House until much later in the morning. Both she and Zeus are liberally covered in mud from the long walk with Hedley across the marshes. She is restored though, and able to face Inigo without crumpling into indecision. She finds him in the shed, where he has set up a projector and is running through slides of his work with Grass as his silent audience. Laura opens the door as the lecture ends:
‘So, as illustrated by the loop which runs through all my work, there is a universal truth, and that truth is that there is no end, just continual progress towards the future.’ He glances round at Laura, and adds quickly, ‘Let’s get there together,’ but she doesn’t hear.
‘Where are Dolly and Fred? I think we need to talk to them,’ says Laura.
‘Aah yes,’ says Inigo. ‘Well, if it’s all right with you I suggest that—’
‘No.’ Laura raises her hand, speaking fast to get her point in first. ‘It’s not all right with me. I will say what I am doing now. I’ve made my decisions and I don’t want to be steam-rollered by you any more.’
Tears pour down her cheeks; she presses her fingers into her eyes to try and stop them flowing but they swell hot from her eyes and drip down her hands instead. She sniffs and wipes her sleeve across her nose. ‘I don’t want to hear what you think any more. I have decided what I am doing. I shall stay in London in the week until the end of this term and then I am coming to live here with Dolly and Fred. I know Dolly won’t like it, but at least she’s got Tamsin, and I don’t think it will ruin her life as she doesn’t like anything much anyway. You must do what you must do, but I have to do this.’
Panting slightly, Laura buries her hot face in Grass’s pungent neck. The goatiness is too much to stay like that for long. Laura rises, pats Grass and begins hanging buckets on hooks, anything to occupy her hands and the direction of her gaze.
‘Very well, Laura.’ Inigo has retreated behind a wall of icy disappointment. ‘You do as you please, and I’ll go to New York and earn some goddamn money to pay for everything.’
‘Please don’t pretend you’re being hard done by,’ Laura flashes back at him. ‘It’s what you want. You hate it here. You said so.’
Inigo’s ice wall melts for a moment. He flushes and puts out a hand to Laura but she doesn’t see because she’s folding paper sacks in the corner. Grass’s shed has never been so tidy. Unremarked, Grass placidly chews at the jacket Inigo hung on her door.
‘I didn’t mean it when I said that, Laura, you know I didn’t. It’s just – it’s just –’ He waves imploringly. ‘Well, you know. I’m a town type. This is a culture shock for me. All this business with animals and mud and picking fruit just gets in the way of life.’
Laura’s voice is small and sad, and makes Inigo want to weep when she replies, ‘But to me it is the way of life, or it could be. You just haven’t given it a chance.’
Inigo reaches for his jacket. ‘I can’t now – JESUS H CHRIST! Where’s my sodding sleeve? Look! Look, Laura! This hell fiend has eaten the whole sleeve. I tell you, goats are Satan’s children and if I have to, I’ll—’
‘Oh, for goodness sake shut up, it’s only a stupid jacket,’ snaps Laura. ‘You liked the goat fine when you were using her for art.’
‘That was the only thing she will ever do that is worthwhile in her whole life,’ snarls Inigo, hurling the jacket at Grass’s feet and marching out of the shed with his slides and his projector.
Laura and Grass look at one another. Grass takes another bite out of the jacket. ‘Since when are goats supposed to be worthwhile?’ asks Laura crossly.
Inigo vents his temper by shutting himself in the kitchen for the rest of the morning with an earsplitting Eastern European opera at full volume and all the lids and doors of the Rayburn open to create a satisfactory fug in which to cook. The evisceration and jointing of the hare provides the outlet his battered pride needs, and by the time he clamps the lid on for the meat to braise, much of his usual aplomb is restored. Humming, he turns the music up, trilling along to Janáĉek, and one of Janufa’s mother’s blood-chilling arias. Laying the table with a red checked cloth, plonking yellowed half-melted candles on it and a vase of golden leaves and rose hips picked by Dolly, Inigo sings a burst of opera and thinks how nice it would be to have a parallel existence as a bistro owner in a small town in France or Italy where food is appreciated and even talked about.
He puts the food on the table and calls his family to sit down, pouring himself a large glass of red wine and gulping it down in one, as they appear in the kitchen and arrange themselves around the table. Laura tries to smile at him across the table, but is met with an impenetrable stare, so turns to Dolly, who has scraped all the meat sauce off her pasta and is fastidiously picking out the tomatoes from the salad.
‘This is horrendous, I’m a vegetarian,’ she wails. ‘And I had to have meat last night with that stew Mum cooked and now this. You’re trying to starve me. Can’t I just go and get a Pot Noodle?’
Laura winces, expecting Inigo to erupt at the mention of Pot Noodle, but he ignores Dolly’s rudeness and simply says, ‘If that’s what you want,’ before leaning back to put the kettle on for her.
Fred drops his fork in melodramatic mock amazement, and whispers to Laura, ‘Can I have one too? I liked that hare, but it wasn’t enough, and I don’t want seconds of it, I want something else.’
Wondering whether any conversation about their family will penetrate the skin of self-absorption each child displays, Laura nods, then coughs, and closes her eyes as she speaks.
‘You two need to know our plans, I think.’
Dolly groans, ‘Oh God, you’re getting divorced. I might have known it. This is what happened to Becca and she got really bad acne the next day just before the school disco and it ruined all her chances with Luke Johnson.’
‘I thought Luke Johnson was your boyfriend,’ says Laura.
Dolly throws her a withering look. ‘He is now,’ she says patiently, ‘but he used to be Becca’s.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Fred passes Dolly her Pot Noodle, and Laura blinks and inhales the plastic sweet smell of monosodium glutamate.
They can’t get divorced because they aren’t married,’ Fred points out.
Inigo stands up and begins circling the table, a knife twirling on the back of his hand. He pauses and arranges three oranges so they sit on top of one another on the windowsill. He tries for a fourth but the stack collapses, oranges squidging onto the floor. He bends to find them and tries again. He does not speak or look at the children.
‘We’re not getting divorced or whatever the non-married version is,’ Laura says. ‘But—’
‘Oh, I know what “But” means.’ Dolly pushes her Pot Noodle away and sits, arms folded, hair pinched back from her face, strumming her fingers on her arms, her gaze darting between her parents. ‘Come on then, tell us what’s wrong.’
‘Nothing is wrong, nothing will really change now,’ Laura soothes, ‘but next holidays we might come and try living here for a bit while Dad’s in New York.’
Dolly’s skin turns chalk white; her mouth wobbles. Laura gabbles to try and protect her from her shock. ‘It should be great fun and Zeus will love it,’ she finds herself saying.
Without a word, Dolly pushes her chair back and leaves the room.
‘Cool,’ says Fred, reaching for Dolly’s Pot Noodle now his own is finished. ‘Can I have another ferret then?’
Laura looks helplessly at Inigo. His mouth is set in a grim line as he pours himself more wine. Laura starts clearing the table, reflecting wryly as she washes the pasta saucepan that she will miss his culinary expertise. A tear plops into the washing up, but she blinks others away, reminding herself that she is becoming a domestic success herself.
‘I’m going to make blackberry jam this afternoon,’ she announces with this in mind. No one pays any attention. Fred is bombarding Inigo with questions he cannot answer. ‘Will I leave my school?’
‘I don’t know, I suppose so.’
‘Where will I go instead? The same one as Tamsin?’
‘Er, I don’t know, I suppose so.’
‘Will you come and live here when you get back from New York?’
‘Umm. Mmm. I don’t know.’
‘But you suppose so.’ Fred nudges him, grinning. Inigo gets up from his chair and moves over to the sink next to Laura. She gives him a clipped little smile.
‘Come on, let’s all go and pick some blackberries,’ she says brightly. ‘We need fresh air. I’ll go and call Dolly.’
Coaxing Dolly out of her room is slow work. Inigo and Fred set off across the stubble field behind the house, and are out of earshot by the time Dolly is ready, wrapped as if for the tundra in three fleeces, two hats (one a hood, the other a stripy egg-cosy type knitted by Laura when the children were tiny) and two pairs of socks inside her pink trainers, but with several inches of midriff exposed between the bottom of her fleeces and the top of her studded jeans. The long shadows of the afternoon are shot with bright sunbeams and Dolly winces when she steps out of the door, but recovers and sets off leaning on Laura’s arm. Laura decides that this invalidish behaviour is entirely acceptable, and hugs her close as they march in pursuit of the others up the cropped golden field.
The soothing quality of being out of doors is palpable, and Dolly is able to greet Inigo with a genuine smile when they catch up with him and Fred skimming stones on a pond in a derelict farmyard. She clamours for a go. Laura moves away to watch the sun as it spills liquid flame across the soft grey of a distant wood; a pheasant screeches and flies up, rewarding Zeus’s scrabbling at the bottom of a hedge; a damp scent of leaves hangs in the air. It is impossible not to feel happy in this moment.