The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,75
his arm round me to give my waist a squeeze.
‘Children’s bedroom,’ he’d said in a low voice. ‘The twins can share this one. Bunk beds, maybe. And the triplets can go in the big bedroom at the top.’
I’d laughed, sharing the joke, hopeful that bearing five children fathered by Ralph was a happy possibility. I always knew he was a charmer, of course I did. I just thought the charm was reserved for me.
Now, clunking across the bare boards, conscious of the dirty streaks across the painted walls, the cracks in the brickwork, life seemed impossibly different. Without us, the terraced house seemed narrow and poky.
‘Have you left him a note?’ Anna turned large, anxious eyes on me as we headed back to the hall. ‘How will he find us?’
‘Oh, Anna!’ I crouched down and kissed the tip of her nose, then took her in my arms and held her close. ‘Is that why you’re so sad about leaving? In case Daddy comes back and can’t find us? Oh, sweetheart!’
Outside, I settled her in the back seat of the hire car, hemmed in beside the bags of possessions we were keeping, including her soft toys, then went to lock the front door for the last time and post the key through the letterbox for the estate agent to find.
As we pulled out, I glimpsed a movement in the rear-view mirror, from a car which was parked a little further down the street.
I turned to look more closely. A battered saloon car with scraped paintwork. Its driver, Mike Ridge, was leaning out of the window, his hand raised in salute, his eyes on mine and a knowing smile on his lips.
Forty-Eight
Deep in the country, the roads narrowed and I scanned the horizon for oncoming traffic, hoping to catch sight of cars before they disappeared into hollows and behind tight corners, then appeared in front of me too late, forcing me hard against the verge.
The visibility wasn’t helped by the drystone walls which edged the road. They bordered undulating fields dotted with sheep and, above, rising fells, richly coloured in the dying light by bracken and heather, nippled with stone cairns.
Anna, exhausted after the emotions of the last few days and lulled by the drive, was asleep in the back. Her head drooped sideways, bouncing lightly against the hard shell of her child seat. Her lips were parted. Her hair, newly short and spiky – like mine – still surprised me.
I whispered, ‘Nearly there,’ into the empty hum of the car.
A lay-by loomed ahead, an entrance to a farmer’s field. If I’d been alone, I might have pulled in, just for the chance of surveying the valley. The hump-back bridge over the river which was streaked gold, touched with pink, in the gathering sunset. The clusters of stone cottages set along the main street. They climbed the opposite hill and forked, here and there, into more modern housing, grouped into crescents.
The long, lean pub and hotel on the riverbank with its stone arch, offering an entrance to the hidden car park behind. The church with its reaching spire, also made from the same grey Yorkshire stone as the pub, the bridge, the older houses. There were visitors too, for August. One of the farmer’s fields, close to the riverbank, had been turned over to a row of caravans and tents. Barbecues and camping stoves sent up wisps of smoke which dispersed rapidly in the light breeze from the river.
I smiled to myself. Space. Clean air. I’d been a child, not much older than Anna, when I first came to this village for a one-week holiday. We’d stayed in a bed and breakfast on the main street, with cold, dingy bedrooms and heavy quilts. Most days, I’d taken a fishing net and splashed at the edges of the river, my trousers rolled up to my knees, heaving rocks to build dams and fishing for tiddlers. There’d been picnics – wads of ham sandwiches and crisps and pop – on Dad’s tartan blanket which, however long it lay stretched in the sun, never lost the smell of his car. In the evenings, fish and chips and pies in the pub garden.
As I manoeuvred the car over the hump-back bridge and through the arch to the pub hotel car park, the sun gleamed round and red as it sank from view, as if it had seen us safely home and considered its work done. At once, as I switched off the engine and sat, rubbing