the children’s beds and washing and ironing their bed linen; weeding the flower bed at the back of the kitchen door; and cleaning both the family bathroom and the en suite thoroughly, ensuring that baths, taps, sinks and loos were all shiny. Finally, before going into the village to collect eight organic salmon fillets and the accompanying veg, she had to wax and polish the parquet flooring in the hallway. It was a day like any other, but a busy day nonetheless.
* * *
Kathryn clicked the kettle on to boil. The salmon fillets were herb encrusted and roasting nicely, the asparagus and ribboned courgettes sat in their steamer and there was ten minutes before she had to make herself ‘neat and pretty’. She extracted the thin book from its hiding place between two cookery books. She knew no one would consider looking between Jamie’s Italy and Jamie Does … . Kathryn thumbed open R. K. Narayan’s Tales from Malgudi.
When he came to be named the oldest man in town, Rao’s age was estimated anywhere between ninety and one hundred and five. He had, however, lost count long ago and abominated birthdays; especially after his eightieth, when his kinsmen from everywhere came down in a swarm and involved him in elaborate rituals and with blaring pipes and drums made a public show of his attaining eighty. The religious part of it was so strenuous that he was laid up for fifteen days thereafter with fever.
The snippets of books that she managed to devour were enough to transport her, to give her the means of escape in the spare minutes of her day. The time constraints allowed her little more than eighty words at any one reading, but those eighty words were her salvation. For the next few hours, her mind would be full of questions. How old was Rao? Where did he live? How did he die and at what age?
Kathryn took her cup of tea upstairs to the dressing table and sat in front of its triple mirrors, angled to show her whichever way she glanced. There was no escape.
She placed her finger against the cool glass of the mirror and traced the reflection of her nose, eyes and mouth. She stared at the image in front of her, the face of a sad lady trapped inside the mirror who needed to practise her smile. Kathryn was unable to decide which the real image was. Was it the flat, cool face that stared back at her or the bewildered, lonely mask from behind which she viewed the world? Withdrawing her hand, she realised that it didn’t matter. The flat-featured woman that stared blankly from the glass and the veiled lids through which she saw were one and the same.
At such moments Kathryn felt she was living in a state close to madness. She figured that as long as she recognised how she lived was indeed ‘mad’ then there was always hope.
She combed her sticky hair and placed a marcasite clip in the side, to try and distract from the texture. What had Dominic said that morning? ‘You look like a mental patient.’ Any nasty statement hurt, but its impact was doubled if not trebled when it came from someone you loved.
She applied a little rouge to her cheeks and sprayed scent along her décolletage. As usual, the words of the song entered her head and spun around until she listened and gave them an audience:
For wives should always be lovers too.
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you.
I’m warning you.
Four years ago
The house on the Cornish cliff could best be described as ‘rambling’. It had been constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century when there had been no shortage of local building materials and was a collaboration between an extravagant and whimsical architect who had a fancy for New England, and a wealthy tin baron who wanted a home befitting his station. The result was corridors that led nowhere in particular and a property that boasted not one but three Gothic-style turrets and innumerable church-style windows that let little light into the small square rooms that they graced. A decked terrace ran along the front of the property, held up with thick porch posts and gabled arches that gave the whole place a feeling of New Hampshire.
A wooden swing-seat just big enough for two adults of close acquaintance had been suspended from a length of industrial rope and hung in pride of place to the left