usually announce it,’ said the woman. ‘They usually announce everything several times all the time. But I’ve had this one before, and he’s lazy.’
‘I’ll do it for him,’ said the other man wryly, dryly. ‘This is Totnes. Please remember to take all your personal belongings with you. And mind the gap between the train and the platform edge on leaving the train.’
‘Remember to put one leg in front of the other when walking along the platform,’ said the other man.
The three of them laughed. Sally wondered if she would ever be able to laugh again.
She stood up, and busied herself remembering to take all her personal belongings with her.
The train drew to a slightly abrupt halt. Black mark, driver.
‘Totnes,’ called out a rather pleasant, reassuring, West Country voice. ‘Totnes. This is Totnes.’
A kind man – was he really kind or was this all fake? – helped Sally with her cases. She minded the gap between the train and the platform edge, and stepped carefully out into the rest of her life, whatever that might turn out to be.
She walked along the platform, remembering to put one leg in front of the other.
Judith was standing there, elegant as ever. It was surprisingly cool on the platform; the swimmers she had seen from the train really had been pretty brave. Judith was wearing a light coat in spectacular pink. It was trimmed with fur. Sally wondered if the fur was real or fake.
Judith didn’t move towards Sally. She let Sally move towards her. That was characteristic. But she was smiling. Sally wondered if her smile was genuine or fake. If she’d been a betting woman – oh God, Barry, William Hill – she’d have said that the fur was real, but that she wasn’t so sure about the smile.
‘Welcome to Totnes,’ said her sister.
They hugged. How they hugged.
Was Judith’s hug real or fake?
Sally stood on the edge of a cliff. The sun was shining, but the breeze was cold. White horses took the edge off the loveliness of the sea, stifled its cry of ‘Come in. Come in. The water’s lovely.’ Behind her, the fields sloped sharply to the very edge of the land. Awfully tempting for a farmer with money problems to just drive the tractor over the edge. Awfully tempting for Sally to just jump. Wouldn’t reach the white horses. Would be splattered to death on the rocks below.
Did she want to be splattered to death? She didn’t know. God, that was terrifying. It would be pretty terrifying if she had known that she did. But simpler. If she’d had the courage. To want to jump, and not be brave enough, that would be bad, but to be unable to decide, to make the wrong decision, and then, halfway down, have as your last thought, ‘No! Wrong! This is a mistake’ – that had to be the most frightening thing of all.
You might think, ‘Well, if she has such doubts, she won’t jump, in the end,’ but the situation wasn’t as simple as that. There was the pull of the sea, never to be underestimated. There was the obvious fact that the state of her mind was unbalanced. There was the knowledge that only by jumping could she absolutely settle the matter. If she didn’t jump it would still be inconclusive. It would leave the possibility that later she would change her mind, and jump.
‘Come come,’ cried the sea. ‘Come and join those who have ended their days with me. You will find many friends in the deep.’
She moved away, hurriedly.
She didn’t go far. She knew that she hadn’t made up her mind, she might be back. She found a small area of grass that seemed to be free of rabbit droppings, and she sat down. She shivered. It was cold. She hadn’t enough clothes.
Four days had passed since she had hugged her sister Judith on the station platform. They’d spent much of it just wandering round Totnes. It was a delightful little town. They’d had coffees and teas and lunches and everywhere the food had been fresh and light and healthy. Judith had talked about the Transition movement, a movement which had begun there and had spread to all sorts of places, including Lewis, Whitstable and Brixton, the Valley of the River Lot in France, Monteveglio in Italy, even Los Angeles. Every bloody self-satisfied word seemed to Sally to be directed at her. Totnes is wonderful. Potherthwaite sucks. Later she would realize that Judith hadn’t meant to have that effect. It was simple pride, marbled with massive insensitivity.
Judith and Sally hadn’t exactly got on badly over the years, it was just that they had never been close. It was the age gap. Judith was eleven years older than Sally. Sally had been a mistake. In every way, she now thought. Judith, selfish though she was, had never been nasty enough to think that. She had regarded Sally as a tolerable nuisance, to be indulged and played with occasionally, but only when it suited her. Sally had regarded Judith as an extension built on to her mother. Life would have been better without the extension, but there were plenty of parts of the house in which it could be ignored. This was their first real attempt to be true, loving friends. Neither of them wanted the attempt to fail, but both of them were aware how fragile it was.
Judith had assumed that Sally’s other purpose in visiting, apart from the need for sisterly friendship in a family rather short of relatives, was to sound out the possibility of coming to live near her. But not too near. Unfortunately, though, she didn’t know of Sally’s straitened circumstances. She hadn’t been to the inquest – ‘Things may come out that it would be better for our future together if I didn’t know’ had been her ingenious excuse – or to the funeral – ‘Unfortunately it clashes with our half-marathon and I’ve promised to do it, it’s for the air ambulance which I approve of totally and I’m quite heavily sponsored and honestly, darling, there’ll be such a crowd at the funeral, all Potherthwaite will be there, I won’t be missed and I would be missed very badly here, darling, and so, difficult though it was, I’ve made my decision, and, sweetheart, I do hope we won’t fall out over it, and you know you’re welcome here any time, any time, literally any time, except for Henley week of course, but otherwise any time’ had been her almost as ingenious and considerably longer excuse.
So Judith had been very bold and very Judith and had booked with estate agents to visit four houses of different kinds near Totnes – but not too near – carefully chosen, exquisite houses, all good value, but all now hopelessly out of Sally’s reach. And Sally hadn’t mentioned her financial straits and had found that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Judith about them. She despised herself for her weakness, but then she was also despising herself for her lack of love towards Barry, her lack of understanding of him, the complete failure of her life, so her weakness at that moment was hardly surprising.
So she had been forced to agree to visit all four houses. She had already been to three of them. Judith had extremely good taste, and good judgement of other people’s taste. Sally had adored all three, and in coming up with reasons not to make an offer for any of them she had been scraping the barrel – once almost literally, when she had said that she didn’t think she’d be able to reverse out of the garage without hitting the water butt.
Now, seated uncomfortably on a sloping field, in the only patch of grass not covered in rabbit droppings, on a cold evening against