like a halo. Her happiness, her optimism, seemed so light against my own heaviness.
We unpacked the shopping and put it all away in the barn, then walked down the hill to the pub-hotel where we’d spent our first night. The heat was gathering. The sunshine burning now, glancing off the dry stones and shrivelling the grass. Sheep huddled under the trees or lay along the thread of shade thrown by the walls lining their fields.
The pub garden was crowded with holidaymakers: families with young children, cyclists and hikers in thick socks and heavy boots, crammed along the benches on either side of wooden table, shaded by umbrellas, or sitting in clusters on the grass.
Inside, the thick stone walls of the pub kept the interior cool. The main lounge was deserted. Shafts of sunshine fell across the faded armchairs and worn carpet, lighting columns of dancing dust.
Anna and I ordered from the bar, then went back to the lounge to wait for our sandwiches and soft drinks, away from the crowds. I found the remote and switched the television to the children’s channel. Anna brightened and settled in front of it, ready to disappear, eyes glazed, into the programmes.
I watched her for a moment. She looked so young, so vulnerable, sitting cross-legged on a cushion, her shoes sloughed off. Buddy, her new toy, stood upright in her lap.
I leaned forward and kissed her on the top of her head.
‘Are you okay for a minute, Anna, if I go outside to make a phone call?’
She was so wrapped up in the television that she didn’t even stir.
I went back out to the garden and through the noisy crowd to a grassy mound on the far side. Two boys, three and four years old perhaps, rolled down it, then collapsed together, shrieking, at the bottom. They clambered to their feet and ran back up the slope on stubby legs to roll again. Their hair was speckled with pollen.
I sat, knees drawn up, at the top of the mound and drew out Ralph’s new phone, the one I’d taken from his pocket the night before. I pressed the button and watched the screen spring into life. No new messages. Two missed calls. From Ralph, I suspected, trying to find out where he’d left it. I stared at the screen, trying to steel myself to make the call.
The two boys came racing up the mound again, the smaller one grasping at the older one’s clothes to pull him down. They were breathless, laughing, slapping at each other, knocking into each other. Behind them, the hotel garden was vibrant with colour, from the blooming hanging baskets by the door to the red striped umbrellas, the bright cotton T-shirts.
I shook my head, wondering what these people would think of me if they knew what I was about to do.
My eye strayed to the lounge windows at the side of the building. They shone with sunlight. Anna was on the other side. I imagined her, sitting there quietly, waiting for me, trusting me. I remembered the sight of her asleep that morning, her limbs splayed, her face soft. My heart contracted and shortened my breath. Oh, Anna.
I hunched forward and punched a new number into the phone, then closed my eyes to shut myself off from the scene in front of me and waited as it rang.
Fifty-Four
I let Anna fall asleep in my arms that night.
She was delighted, cuddled up in the crook of my elbow as I lay beside her in her narrow bed. She lifted her head now and then to check my face, to be sure of me, planting little kisses on the tip of my nose, my lips, my chin, then finally settled. I stroked her back, soothing her to sleep, the same way I had when she was tiny. In those days, I fell asleep next to her most of the time, from sheer exhaustion.
It was my need, not hers. I held her against me, feeling her thin ribs expand and contract, the smell of her skin coated with lavender oil from her bath and the remnants of strawberry shampoo. She’d kicked off the duvet and the heat rising from her body warmed me.
‘I love you,’ I whispered, once I was sure she was asleep. I withdrew my arm with stealth. The bed creaked as I eased away my weight. ‘I hope you’d forgive me, if you knew. You’ve been through enough.’
I had a shower and dressed with care in a slinky dress,