and not realising what a treasure she had, a treasure that she’d stupidly lost.
She thought of all the Saturday nights she’d invited Nell over to the cottage for dinner, making it sound as if they were three friends sharing a meal instead of a happily married couple reaching out the hand of friendship to a widow who might be sitting on her own at home otherwise. Eric, Nell’s husband, had died ten years previously, and since then Anneliese had tried so hard to include Nell in their lives. Anneliese had meant it as pure friendship, but perhaps Nell had seen it as something else: as pity? Or as Anneliese showing off, as if to say, I have a husband and you don’t. Come and eat with us and feel jealous, why don’t you? What else had Nell misconstrued?
‘I thought you knew me well enough, Nell, to know that if I’d realised you and Edward were –’
Saying it was hard.
‘– having an affair, I’d have said something. I might have a lot of flaws, but I know that I’m honest. Remember how many talks we had about the value of friendship where honesty mattered? How we hated fake friends, people who said the right things at the right time and meant none of it?’
The anger that hadn’t been there suddenly blazed to life in Anneliese’s heart. They’d lied to her. They’d both said they valued truth, and now it transpired that truth had been missing for such a long time. Worse, Nell was trying to put the blame on to Anneliese.
‘I didn’t have a clue what was happening,’ she went on in a harsh voice. ‘It might make you feel better to think I did and that I was giving you tacit approval to steal my husband, but I didn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, Anneliese.’ Edward stood in the doorway, the small plastic container of Anneliese’s migraine medicine in his hand and a look of desolation on his face. ‘I knew you didn’t know. I wanted to think you did because it would be easier, but I knew you didn’t.’
‘How long has it been going on, this thing between you two?’ Anneliese asked, purposely not looking at Nell any more.
‘Not that long,’ said Edward.
‘Since the fundraiser for the lifeboat,’ Nell interrupted, obviously not keen on the damage limitation of breaking it all to Anneliese gently.
Well over a year, Anneliese thought to herself.
‘I presume you were waiting for a nice time to break it to me, then. My birthday? Christmas?’
‘It had to come out sometime,’ Nell said coolly. ‘Might as well be now.’
Both women looked at Edward, who shrugged helplessly.
Anneliese felt another surge of anger, white hot this time.
The words were in Anneliese’s mouth before she had time to think about them: ‘You should pack, Edward. Nell, I’d like you to wait outside, please. I don’t want you in my house any more. You could always go home and wait for Edward to come. He’ll need space for his things.’
Somehow, Anneliese got up and went into the living room, where she broke with the habit of a lifetime and poured herself a strong brandy from the stupid globe drinks trolley that Edward loved and she’d always hated. He could have that, for a start.
She heard muffled talking from the kitchen, then the sound of the kitchen door closing and the revving of Nell’s car. That was some relief.
She couldn’t bear Nell being in the cottage now. Her very presence was poisonous: the worst sort of poison, the sort you hadn’t known was dangerous.
After the first drink, Anneliese had a second. Ludicrous to be drinking now, but she needed something to numb her. She sat on the window ledge looking out at the bay and tried not to listen to the sounds of Edward’s packing.
When Beth had been a teenager, Anneliese became very good at listening. It was different from listening to a small child messing round in the kitchen: hearing the fridge opening, the milk bottle top being laboriously pulled off, the glug of milk and the intake of breath when some spilled. That was a sort of innocuous listening.
But mothers of teenagers had to listen in a different way; what CD was being played was an excellent gauge.
Oasis and Counting Crows were good signs. Anything slow and dreamy might mean Beth was in a relaxed mood. But Suzanne Vega was fatal. A signal that Beth was in turmoil.
She’d have to tell Beth about this, of course. Anneliese closed her eyes at the thought of that conversation.
The back door banged and she jumped at the noise. Edward had gone. She rushed to the side window to see him put one suitcase and a gym bag into his car. He could have taken very little, just his clothes, she decided. Did that mean he wanted to stay after all, or was he so desperate to be with Nell that he didn’t care about his belongings? Who knew?
Evening was casting its greying spell over the beach and despite the old padded jacket, Anneliese shivered. The beach was bleak when the promise of sun had gone: like a wild kingdom that showed a softer side during the day but, when evening arrived, it was time for humans to clear off so the place could revert to its feral, untamed state.
The tide was coming in, slowly, inexorably. Anneliese stood at the edge of the water and watched as the waves lapped in and swept out, surging further and further up the darkening sand every time. It was relentless. In and out, on and on. Like life, coming at her endlessly, when she wished it would stop.
She watched as if hypnotised, until the water seeped into her shoes and then she moved back, startled.
If anyone could see her now, they’d think she was crazy, and perhaps she was: a lonely woman standing half-crazed at the shoreline, stuck in every sense of the word. Then she turned and walked home, leaving the dark of evening behind her.
The cottage was scarily silent and she went around turning on all the lights, anything to create a sense of warmth. In the sitting room, she picked up her knitting bag and looked forlornly at the tumbled skeins of coloured wools that perched on top.
She couldn’t bear the thought of the television or even the radio. But she might knit. Knitting somehow soothed her mind. It was a newish hobby. Newish in that she’d knitted things years ago: slippers, baby clothes, blankets for Beth’s dolls. But she’d never been much of an expert. She’d come back to it a year ago, after she stopped working in the garden centre and knew she needed something to occupy herself.
She’d toyed with the idea of learning another language or learning the computer, and then Marcus, her son-in-law, had helped by giving her an old laptop. Even though he apologised endlessly for its age and decrepitude, it still worked and Anneliese was thrilled with it.
‘It’s obsolete,’ he’d said apologetically.
‘It’s wonderful,’ Anneliese smiled.
‘It’s ten years old. That’s practically a dinosaur in computer terms,’ he’d gone on.
‘Like myself,’ Anneliese added, patting him on the arm.
She loved it, and surfing the Net – how she loved to say those words! – had taken her down a strange path one day to a craft site where she found all types of knitting that had nothing in common with the lumpen slippers and baby cardigans she used to make.
This
