BY THE TIME I reach the stretch of road leading into Salten village, I am hot and sweaty, and I pause under the shade of a clump of oaks by the road, feeling the sweat running down the hollow of my chest, pooling in my bra.
Freya is sleeping peacefully, her rosebud mouth just slightly open, and I stoop to kiss her, very gently, not wanting to wake her, before straightening up and pushing on, my feet a little sore now, towards the village.
I don’t turn at the sound of the car behind me, but it slows as it passes, the driver peering out, and I see who it is – Jerry Allen, the landlord of the Salten Arms, in the old flatbed truck that used to take drinks back and forth from the cash and carry. Only now it’s older and more ramshackle than ever, more rust than truck. Why is Jerry still driving a thirty-year-old rust bucket? The pub was never a gold mine, but it looks as if he has fallen on hard times.
Jerry himself is craning out of the window with frank curiosity, wondering, I expect, what kind of tourist is mad enough to be walking along the main road, alone, in the heat of the day.
He’s almost past me when his face changes, and he gives a little blast of the horn that makes me jump, and grinds to a halt on the verge, throwing up a cloud of dust that sets me coughing and choking.
‘I know you,’ he says as I draw level with the truck, its engine still running. There is a touch of sly triumph in his voice, as though he has caught me out. I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is that I never tried to deny it. ‘You’re one of that crowd used to hang around with Kate Atagon – one of them girls her pa—’
Too late he realises where this conversation is leading and he clears his throat, and covers his mouth, trying to hide his confusion in a fit of smoker’s hack.
‘Yes,’ I say. I keep my voice even, refusing to let him see me react to his words. ‘I’m Isa. Isa Wilde. Hello Jerry.’
‘All growed up,’ he says, his eyes watering a little as his gaze travels over my figure. ‘And a baby, no less!’
‘Little girl,’ I say. ‘Freya.’
‘Well, well, well,’ he says meaninglessly, and he gives a gummy smile, that shows his missing teeth, and the gold tooth that always gave me a slight shudder for reasons I could never pin down. He regards me silently for a moment, taking me in from my dusty sandals to the sweat patches staining my sundress, then he jerks his head back towards the Reach. ‘Terrible news, isn’t it? They’ve fenced off half the bank, Mick White says, though you can’t see it from here. Police teams, sniffer dogs, them white tent things … though what good they think that’ll do now, I don’t know. Whatever’s buried there, it’s been out there in the wind and rain long enough, from what Judy Wallace’s old man said. Her it was that found it, and to hear Mick’s account, their dog snapped it right in half at the elbow, brittle as a stick. Between that and the salt, I don’t suppose there’s much left of it now.’
I don’t know what to say to this. A kind of sickness is rising in my throat, so I just nod, queasily, and something seems to strike him.
‘You going to the village? Hop in, and I’ll give you a lift.’
I look at him, at his red face, at the rickety old truck with the bench seat and no belts, let alone a child seat for Freya, and I remember the way you could always smell whiskey on his breath, even at lunchtime.
‘Thanks,’ I say, trying to smile. ‘But honestly, I’m enjoying the walk.’
‘Don’t be soft.’ He jerks a thumb at the back of the truck. ‘Plenty of room in there for the pram, and it’s a good mile still to the village. You’ll be roasted!’
I can’t smell whiskey, I’m too far away from the truck for that, but I smile again and shake my head.
‘Honestly, thanks, Jerry. But I’m fine, I’d rather walk.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he says with a grin, his gold tooth flashing, and puts the truck back into gear. ‘Come into the pub when you’re finished with your shopping, and have a cold one on the house, at least.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, but the word is drowned in the roar of tyres on grit and the cloud of summer dust as he pulls away, and I wipe the hair out of my eyes, and continue on down the road to the village.
Salten Village has always given me the creeps a little, in a way I can’t explain. It’s partly the nets. Salten is a fishing village, or was. It’s really only pleasure boats that go out of the port now, although there are a handful of commercial fishing boats that still use the harbour. In tribute to this, the houses in the village are festooned with nets, a decorative celebration of the town’s history, I suppose. Some people say it’s for luck, and perhaps that’s how it started out, but now it’s kept up purely for the tourists, as far as I can see.
The day trippers who pass through on their way to the sandy beaches up the coast go wild for the nets, taking photographs of the pretty little stone and half-timbered houses swathed in the webbing, as their kids buy ice creams and gaudy plastic buckets. Some of the nets look pristine, as if they were bought straight from the chandler and have never seen the sea, but others have plainly been used, with the rips that put them out of service still visible, chunks of weed and buoys knotted in the strands.
I have never liked them, not from the first moment I saw them. They’re somehow sad and predatory at the same time, like giant cobwebs, slowly engulfing the little houses. It gives the whole place a melancholy air, like those sultry southern American towns, where the Spanish moss hangs thick from the trees, swaying in the wind.
Some houses have just a modest skein of netting between the storeys, but others are festooned, with great rotting swags that drape from one side to the other, hoicked up above doorways, obscuring windows, tangling in pot plants and window latches and shutters.
I can’t bear the idea – of opening your window late at night, and feeling the cloying netting pushing back against the glass, shutting out the light, feeling it tangle in your fingers as you force the window open, the rip of the strands as you try to free the latch.
If it were me, I would sweep away every vestige of the sad relics, like someone spring-cleaning a room, chasing out the spiders.
Perhaps it’s the symbolism I don’t like. Because what are nets for, after all, but to catch things?
As I walk down the narrow high street now, they seem to have grown and spread, even as the place itself seems to have become shabbier and smaller. Every house is swathed, where ten years ago it was maybe half, if that, and the nets look to me as if they have been arranged deliberately to cover up the way that Salten is fading – draped over peeling paintwork and rotting wood. There are empty shops too, faded ‘For Sale’ signs swinging in the breeze, and a general air of dilapidation that shocks me. Salten was never smart, the divide between town and school always sharp. But now it looks like many of the tourists have disappeared to France and Spain, and I am dismayed to see that the shop on the corner that sold ice cream and was always bright with plastic buckets and spades is gone, its empty window full of dust and cobwebs.
The post office is still there, though the net above its entrance is new: a broad orange swag, with an old repaired tear still visible.
I look up as I push the door open with my back, reversing the pram into the tiny shop. Don’t drop on me, I’m praying. In my mind’s eye the tangling threads are engulfing me and Freya in their suffocating web.
The bell dings loudly as I go in, but there’s no one behind the counter, and no one comes as I walk to the ATM in the corner, where the pick-and-mix boxes used to be. I have no intention of taking Kate’s money, but the £100 I gave to her nearly cleaned me out, and I want to be sure I have enough in my wallet to …
I pause. To what? It’s a question I don’t quite want to answer. To get groceries? To pay Kate back for the tickets to the alumnae ball? Both of those, certainly, but they are not the real reason. Enough to get away in a hurry, if I have to.
I’m tapping in my PIN, when a voice comes from behind me, a deep raspy voice, almost like a man’s, although I know it’s not, even before I turn round.
‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.’
I take the money from the machine’s mouth, and pocket my card, then turn, and there behind the counter is Mary Wren – village matriarch, perhaps the nearest thing that Salten has to a community leader. She worked in the post office when I was at school, but now, for some reason, her appearance wrong-foots me. I had assumed that in the years since I left Salten she would have retired, or moved on. Apparently not.
‘Mary,’ I say, forcing myself to smile as I shove my purse back in my bag. ‘You haven’t changed!’
It’s both true and untrue – her face is still the same broad, weather-beaten slab, still the same small dark penetrating eyes. But her hair, which used to be a long dark river to her waist, is iron grey now. She has plaited it, the thick grey rope dwindling down into a meagre, curling end barely thick enough to hold an elastic band.
‘Isa Wilde.’ She comes out from behind the counter and stands, hands on hips, just as massive and immovable as ever, like a standing stone. ‘As I live and breathe. What brings you back?’
For a minute I hesitate, my eyes going to a pile of local weekly papers, where HUMAN BONE FOUND IN REACH still blares forth.
Then I remember Kate’s lie to the taxi driver.
‘We – I – it’s the summer ball,’ I manage. ‘At Salten House.’
‘Well.’ She looks me up and down, taking in my linen sundress, sticky and limp with sweat, Freya slumbering in her Bugaboo. ‘I must say, I’m surprised. I didn’t think as you came back here any more. Plenty of dinners and balls been and gone and no sign of you and your little clique.’
She pronounces it click and for a minute I can’t work out what she’s saying, but then I understand. Clique. It’s a loaded word, and yet I can’t deny it. We were cliquey, Kate, Thea, Fatima and I. We were pleased with ourselves, and we had no need for others except as targets for our jokes and games. We thought we could take on anything, anyone, as long as we had each other. We were arrogant and unthinking, and that’s the truth of it. My behaviour back then is not something I’m proud of, and I don’t enjoy Mary’s pointed reminders, though I can’t fault the justice of her choice of words.
‘You see Kate though, right?’ I say lightly, trying to change the conversation. Mary nods.
‘Oh, of course. We’re the only cash machine in the village, so she’s in here pretty regular. And she stuck around, when there’s plenty wouldn’t have. People respect that, in spite of her little ways.’
‘Her ways?’ I echo back, unable to stop a slight acerbity entering my voice. Mary laughs easily, her big frame shaking, but there’s something mirthless about the sound.
‘You know Kate,’ she says at last. ‘She keeps herself to herself, living out there like she does. Ambrose was never a loner like that, he was always in the village, down the pub, playing his fiddle in the band. He might have lived out on the Reach, but he was one of us, no mistake about it. But Kate … .’ She looks me up and down, and then repeats, ‘She keeps herself to herself.’
I swallow, and try to think of some way to change the subject.
‘I hear Mark’s a policeman now, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Mary says. ‘And very convenient it is too, to have someone living local, as you might say. He works out of Hampton’s Lee, but this being his home patch, he comes through here more regular than an outsider might.’
‘Does he still live with you?’
‘Oh yes, you know what it’s like round here with the second-home owners pushing the prices up, very hard for young people to save for their own place now, when there’s rich people from London coming down, snapping up the cottages.’
She eyes me again, and this time I feel her eyes lingering on the expensive change bag, and my big Marni tote, a present from Owen that can’t have been less than £500 and was probably much more.
‘It must be hard,’ I say awkwardly. ‘But I guess at least they bring in money?’
Mary snorts derisively.
‘Not them. They bring their food down in the back of their cars from London, you don’t see them in the shops round here. Baldock’s the Butcher closed, did you see that?’
I nod mutely, feeling an obscure sense of guilt and Mary shakes her head.
‘And Croft & Sons, the bakers. There’s precious little left now, part from the post office and the pub. And that won’t be round for long if the brewery get their way. It don’t make enough money, you see. It’ll be converted into flats before this time next year. God knows what Jerry’ll do then. No pension, no savings …’
She moves closer, and tips back the hood of Freya’s pram.
‘So you’ve got a daughter now?’
‘That’s right.’ I watch as her strong, thick finger traces a line down my sleeping baby’s cheek. There are dark red stains under her nails and in the cuticles. It’s probably ink from the post-office stamp pads, but I can’t help thinking of blood. I try not to flinch. ‘Freya.’
‘You’re not Wilde any more?’
I shake my head.
‘Still Wilde. I’m not married.’
‘Well, she’s a pretty one.’ Mary straightens. ‘She’ll be driving the boys wild herself in a few years, I’ll be bound.’
My lip curls in spite of myself, and my fingers tighten on the spongy handle of the pram. But I force myself to take a breath, swallow down the biting remark I’m longing to make. Mary Wren is a powerful figure in the village – even seventeen years ago, you didn’t cross her, and I can’t imagine much has changed since, not now that her son is the local policeman.
I’d thought I’d shaken all this off when I left Salten House, this complicated web of local allegiances, the uneasy relationship between the village and the school, which Ambrose negotiated effortlessly, compared to the rest of us. I would like to pull Freya’s pram away from Mary, tell her to mind her own business. But I can’t afford to antagonise her. It’s not just for the sake of Kate, living down here, it’s for all of us. The school washed its hands of us long ago – and Salten, if you are rejected by both town and gown, can be a very hostile place indeed.
I shiver, in spite of the heat of the day, and Mary looks up.
‘Goose on your grave?’
I shake my head, and try to smile, and she laughs, showing stained, yellow teeth.
‘Well, it’s good to see you back,’ she says easily, patting the hood of Freya’s pram. ‘Seems like only yesterday you were in here, all of you, buying sweets and whatnot. Do you remember those tall tales your friend used to spin? What was her name … Cleo?’
‘Thea,’ I say, my voice low. Yes, I remember.
‘Told me her father was wanted for murdering her mother, and nearly had me believing her.’ Mary laughs again, her whole body shaking, making Freya’s pram tremble in sympathy. ‘Course, that was before I knew what terrible little liars you was, all of you.’
Liars. One word, tossed so casually into the stream of her conversation … is it my imagination, or is there suddenly something hostile in Mary’s voice?
‘Well …’ I tug gently on the pram, loosing the folds of the hood from her fingers, ‘I’d better be going … Freya will be wanting her lunch …’
‘Don’t let me keep you,’ Mary says lightly. I duck my head, in a kind of submissive apology and she steps back as I begin manoeuv-ring the pram around to leave the shop.
I’m halfway through a laborious three-point turn in the narrow aisle between the shelves, realising too late that I should have backed out, the way I came in, when the bell at the entrance clangs.
I turn to look over my shoulder. For a moment I don’t recognise the figure in the doorway, but when I do, my heart leaps suddenly inside my chest like a bird beating hopelessly against a cage.
His clothes are stained and crumpled, as if he’s slept in them, and there is a bruise on his cheekbone, cuts on his knuckles. But what strikes me, like a blow to the centre of my chest, is how much he has changed – and yet how little. He was always tall, but the lanky slenderness has gone, and the man standing there now fills the narrow entrance with his shoulders, exuding, without even trying, a sense of lean, contained strength.
But his face, the broad cheekbones, the narrow lips, and oh, God, his eyes …
I stand, stupid with the shock, trying to catch my breath, and he doesn’t see me at first, just nods a greeting to Mary and stands back, waiting politely for me to exit the shop. It’s only when I say his name, my voice husky and faltering, that his head jerks up, and he looks, really looks, for the first time, and his face changes.
‘Isa?’ Something falls to the floor, the keys he was holding in one hand. His voice is just as I remember it, deep and slow, with that strange little offbeat twist, the only trace of his mother tongue. ‘Isa, is it – is it really you?’
‘Yes.’ I try to swallow, try to smile, but the shock seems to have frozen the muscles in my face. ‘I – I thought you were – didn’t you go back to France?’
His expression is rigid, impassive, his golden eyes unreadable, and there is something a little stiff in his voice, as if he’s holding something in check.
‘I came back.’
‘But why – I don’t understand, why didn’t Kate say …?’
‘You’d have to ask her that.’
This time, I’m sure I’m not imagining it, there is definite coldness in his tone.
I don’t understand. What has happened? I feel like I’m groping blindly in a room filled with fragile, precious objects, tilting and rocking with every false step I make. Why didn’t Kate tell us Luc was back? And why is he so … But here I stop, unable to put a name to the emotion that’s radiating from Luc’s silent presence. What is it? It’s not shock – or not completely, not now the surprise of my presence has worn off. It’s a coiled, contained sort of emotion that I can tell he is trying to hold back. An emotion closer to …
The word comes to me as he takes a step forward, blocking my exit from the shop.
Hate.
I swallow.
‘Are you … are you well, Luc?’
‘Well?’ There is a laugh in his voice, but there’s no trace of mirth. ‘Well?’
‘I just –’
‘How the fuck can you ask that?’ he says, his voice rising.
‘What?’ I try to step back, but there is nowhere to go – Mary Wren is close behind me. Luc is blocking the doorway, with the pram between us, and all I can think of is that if he lashes out, it will be Freya who gets hurt. What has happened to change him so much?
‘Calm down, Luc,’ Mary says warningly from behind me.
‘Kate knew.’ Luc’s voice is shaking. ‘You knew what she was sending me back to.’
‘Luc, I didn’t – I couldn’t –’ My fingers are gripping the handle of Freya’s pram, the knuckles white. I want so badly to get out of this shop. There is a buzzing in my head, a bluebottle battering senselessly at the window, and I am reminded suddenly and horribly of the mutilated sheep, the flies around its spilled guts …
He says something in French that I don’t understand, but it sounds crude, and full of disgust.
‘Luc,’ Mary says more loudly, ‘step out of the way, and get a hold of yourself, unless you want me to call Mark?’
There is a silence, filled with waiting and the noise of the fly, and I feel my fingers tightening on the handle of the pram. And then Luc takes a slow, exaggerated step back, and waves a hand towards the doorway.
‘Je vous en prie,’ he says sarcastically.
I push the pram roughly, bashing the front against the door frame with a jolt that makes Freya wake with a startled cry, but I don’t stop. I shove us both through, the door closing behind us with a jangling in my ears. And I storm up the street, putting as much distance as I can between us and that shop, until village buildings are just distant shapes, far off through the heat-hazed summer air, before I pick up my crying baby and hold her to my chest.
‘It’s OK,’ I hear myself muttering shakily in her ear, holding her to my shoulder with one hand, as I steer the pram jerkily along the dusty road back to the Mill. ‘It’s OK, the nasty man didn’t hurt us, did he? What do they say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? There, there, sweetheart. Oh, there, there, Freya. Don’t cry, honey. Please don’t cry.’
But she won’t be comforted. She cries and cries, the wailing siren of an inconsolable child, woken with a shock from contented sleep. And it’s only when the drops fall onto the top of Freya’s head that I notice I am crying myself, and I don’t even know why. Is it shock? Or anger? Or just relief that we are out of there?
‘There, there,’ I repeat, senselessly, in time with my feet on the pavement, and I no longer know if I’m talking to Freya or myself. ‘It’s going to be OK. I promise. It’s all going to be OK.’
But even as I’m saying the words, and breathing in the scent of her soft, sweaty hair, the smell of warm, cared-for baby, Mary’s words come back to me, ringing in my ears like an accusation.
Little liar.