mustn’t let yourself worry; you have to be fit to sit by his bed all day. You must train yourself not to think too much.’
Nerissa laughed bitterly. ‘That would be a good trick. Tell me how I do that!’
She poured herself some coffee, took one of the apples grown in the farm orchard—an oldfashioned, crunchy, brown-skinned russet—and bit into it, very aware of her aunt watching her.
‘It isn’t just Philip you’ve got on your mind, is it? What else is bothering you?’ A pause, then Grace shrewdly said, ‘Your husband?’
‘Sometimes I think you’re a witch,’ Nerissa said, smiling wryly. ‘How can you always read my mind?’
‘I know you,’ Grace said, and sighed. ‘You should never have told him,’ she added, her voice thickening with remembered pain and angry pride. ‘I can’t understand why you did, talking about family business to an outsider like that!’
Nerissa put down the half-eaten apple, her head bent, the cloudy dark hair falling in a wave over her face, hiding it from Grace.
‘I didn’t tell him. He guessed.’
A snort. ‘How could he?’ Grace rejected. ‘He only spent two weeks up here and folk who’ve known us for years never guessed—how should he? What would he know about folk like us, and him coming from London, where they don’t even know their own neighbour, let alone give them a helping hand when times are bad? Nay, lass, if he guessed you gave it away—you must have said something to give him a clue.’
‘But I didn’t tell him,’ insisted Nerissa. ‘He just picked it up from something I said, or read it in my face, or in yours…or…’ Her voice faltered. ‘Or in Philip’s.’
Grace Thornton flinched, but said gruffly, ‘I don’t believe it. He couldn’t have.’
Nerissa said flatly, ‘Ben is very shrewd, especially with people. He’s a lawyer, remember, trained to read character, to sense when people are telling the truth or lying—whether it’s an out-and-out lie, or just not telling the whole truth. I never lied to him, I just…left out things…but all the same he guessed. It’s as if he has antennae like a radio and can pick up what isn’t being said, right out of the air.’
Grace Thornton’s face had stiffened into a pale mask; she watched Nerissa bleakly. ‘Aye, he doesn’t miss a trick! A hard man—I could tell that from the minute he walked in here with you. I reckon they grow an extra skin in big cities like London, just to get by, like. It can’t be easy living there, but I can’t say I liked him. He’s not our sort. But he is your husband; there’s no getting past that.’ She fell silent for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Are you happy with him, Nerissa?’
She didn’t ask, Do you love him, Nerissa? That was ice too thin for either of them.
Nerissa said, ‘Yes,’ quickly, too quickly.
Grace Thornton wasn’t deceived. ‘I’d feel a lot easier if I knew you were happy, love,’ she said, and sighed.
Nerissa could never fool her. She had never known another mother; the bond of affection between her and Grace Thornton was very strong and sure, based on years of caring and security. There had been a time when it had been shaken, that trust—but its roots had been too deep and in time it had been rebuilt because of that long, deep affection.
Nerissa’s parents had both died when she was very small—too young, in fact, to remember them clearly. Her mother had been Grace’s sister, but they couldn’t have been more different. Ellen had been tiny and delicate—it was from her that Nerissa had inherited her build and colouring. Ellen had died of leukaemia three years after her only child was born. Her husband, Joe, had taken Nerissa up to Northumberland to her aunt, and that was Nerissa’s first memory—of being tired and weepy after a long journey from somewhere she didn’t remember but later discovered to have been London, of wanting her mother, wanting her own home, being frightened and bewildered. Her father had carried her into the comfortable firelit kitchen and her aunt had taken her into her arms, kissed her, brushed back her black curls, murmuring to her, while over her shoulder Nerissa had stared down at Philip, who was almost a year older, but a sturdy little boy, much larger than herself, sitting on a rug playing with toy cars.
‘That’s your cousin; that’s my Philip,’ Grace Thornton had said. ‘Go and play with him, sweetheart.’ And she had set Nerissa down and given her a gentle push towards the other child.
Philip had grinned at her, silently held out one of his cars.
Nerissa had toddled over to take it and sat down on the hearthrug with a bump and had begun to push the car back and forward, making the same noises Philip was making. ‘Brrmm…brrmm…’
She had never forgotten the moment. In a sense, it had been the beginning of her life. She couldn’t remember anything that had happened before that moment, that day.
The first three years of her life had vanished—her mother’s face, where they had lived—every detail. All gone, as if they had never happened.
Except that one moment, at the beginning, when she was carried into the firelit kitchen by her father. That instant was sharp and bright in her memory, beginning her conscious life.
Her father had left the next day and never come back. He had gone to Australia, she was told, and one day he would come back for her—but he never did. When she was seven she was told he had died, in the outback, of blood-poisoning, after neglecting a cut on his arm. There had been no doctor for many miles and it was too late by the time his condition was finally diagnosed.
Nerissa had cried when they’d told her, mostly because she felt she should, and even at the age of seven she’d had a strong sense of what she ought to do, think, feel. Her father’s death had made no real difference to her life because by then she had felt she belonged here, with her uncle and aunt and Philip.
They were her family. She had forgotten she had ever had another one. Her life lay here, on the farm, in these remote, wind-blown hills. Their isolation threw them together more than most families; they had no near neighbours. There was another farmhouse half a mile away across the fields, but the farmer and his wife were old and their children grown-up and living away from home.
The nearest village was nearly two miles away, and it was tiny. It had a pub, a church which was hundreds of years old and a shop which sold anything and everything. Once there had been a school; it had closed years ago and now the children had to catch a bus to the next village which was larger and still had a school.
Nerissa and Philip had gone there, together, on the school bus which picked them up at the end of the lane running past the farm gates. In time they had both graduated to a large comprehensive, even further away, which meant a very long journey every day.
In the school holidays, and in the evenings and at weekends, they had helped on the farm, of course; Uncle John needed every spare hand he could get.
Farm work was hard, but it could be fun, toohelping to clear out ditches, cut back hedges, wheel barrows full of stones for mending drystone walls, prepare food for the various farmyard animals, muck out the stables, tramp the fields to check on sheep which had wandered and round them up with the help of the two sheepdogs.
Doing it alone wouldn’t be so great, but when there were two of you—talking, playing jokes on each other, laughing—the time flew and you hardly
