CHAPTER 8
Harriet
Dorset
‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ Their mother’s face was still flushed from her bath. She clasped her hands. Harriet dished out more potatoes. She doubted Mother was talking about the chicken chasseur.
‘Wonderful,’ Owen agreed, tucking in to his second plateful.
Harriet felt sorry for him and gave him the last bit of mash.
Mother was right – he must be lonely and he had been good to them.
More than that, they should be kind to him because of what he’d been through with his wife.
It was just that she found it hard to find the energy required for empathy.
Life was too full of making ends meet, paying the latest bill and ensuring that Mother was kept away from tradesmen.
It had made Harriet hard, she realised, with a slight sense of shock.
But she had never been hard, had she? Not before?
‘Sitting here, all together, like a real family.’ Mother beamed at Joanna first and then Owen. Harriet, of course, was always there, she thought morosely.
‘Pity Martin can’t join us,’ Harriet heard herself saying dryly. There she went again. Saying things she didn’t have to say, spoiling the atmosphere.
Joanna made no comment, though. She just sipped her water and gave a little nod of agreement. What was she really thinking? What had happened with Martin exactly? And why was she suddenly so interested in their ancestors?
‘How is Martin?’ Owen asked. He was such an innocent – or pretended to be.
‘Keeping well, is he?’ Obviously, he was trying to find out how the land lay in that direction.
Joanna had always been a hit with the boys working on the farm; Harriet less so.
Of course, Owen was hardly a boy working on the farm, but it was a similar situation. Some things never changed.
‘Not too bad, thanks.’ Joanna put down her glass. ‘The truth is . . .’
Harriet stared at her. Surely, she wasn’t going to spill over the dinner table, with Owen here as well? Why on earth would she do such a thing?
‘We’re having a bit of a break,’ Joanna continued. ‘From each other, that is.’
Their mother stared at her younger daughter. She looked confused and upset. Harriet searched her mind for a change of subject. ‘I was wondering, Jo . . .’ she said.
‘Yes?’ Joanna looked as if she might cry. Harriet refilled her water glass. Should she open a bottle of wine? They had some tucked away in one of the kitchen cupboards. But that might look as if she was trying to celebrate; alternatively it might bring even more emotions to the dinner table.
‘Are you free tomorrow afternoon?’ Harriet asked firmly. After all this time emailing, Hector had been very insistent on meeting without delay. And in for a penny, Harriet had thought. She might as well get it over with.
‘Tomorrow afternoon?’ Joanna blinked. ‘Yes, of course. I’ve got some calls I need to make first and some writing—’
‘Oh, Harriet.’ Their mother clicked her tongue. ‘Joanna has her own work to do, remember. She hasn’t come here just to be at your beck and call, you know.’
Harriet stared at her, speechless. Did she really have such little grip on reality, that—
‘It’s fine.’ Joanna patted their mother’s hand. ‘I want to help. What do you need me to do, Harriet?’
What did she need her to do?
‘Just stay here at home.’ Harriet waved her hand around breezily.
‘I have to go into Bridport to . . .’ To do what exactly?
How much should she tell them? And then she straightened her back.
She didn’t have to tell them anything. She could be as private as she liked. ‘On a personal matter,’ she amended.
Her mother arched her eyebrows and smiled at Joanna. ‘How intriguing,’ she said. She seemed to have forgotten Martin. She leant forwards as if to investigate further.
‘So, what else did you find in the attic, Jo?’ Harriet cut her off before Mother could ask any more. This, she thought, was what she had to go through in order to have a life of her own.
‘Oh, nothing much.’ Joanna toyed with her food. ‘A bag of old tools, a roll of carpet, some books.’
‘Father’s books?’ Harriet would like to see them restored to the study.
‘Yes. If you give me a hand, Harriet, we can bring them down.’ Joanna glanced at Owen and gave him one of those smiles she seemed to have on tap. The ones that had always sent the boys running to do her bidding.
‘Just say the word, Joanna,’ he responded gallantly. ‘Books are heavy things. I’m always happy to help.’
‘No need, thank you,’ Harriet said.
‘How kind of you, thanks so much, Owen,’ her sister said at the exact same moment.
Owen looked from one to the other of them in confusion.
Harriet shrugged. It was up to Joanna. If she wanted to be beholden.
‘And what else was up there, Jo?’ she persevered.
She might be imagining it, but Joanna had that secretive look on her face that Harriet remembered so well from childhood, when Joanna had hidden one of Harriet’s schoolbooks or played some prank or other.
‘A big old trunk,’ Joanna said at last. ‘God knows how it got up there.’
‘Empty?’
‘More or less.’
Harriet gave her one of her looks. They’d always been effective in the past, but apparently were no longer, since Joanna just gave her a mysterious smile.
Her sister was hiding something, Harriet was sure, but if it was in the attic, how vital could it be?
Harriet had far more important things to think about.
Such as what was going to happen tomorrow afternoon . . .
*
Later, after Owen had gone back home and Joanna and Mother were in bed, Harriet stayed up, reflecting on her momentous decision. What was she thinking? What would they talk about? She must be mad.
Online dating had begun as a game – something to fill the lonely winter evenings.
And it had become . . . addictive. Her sessions online were her fix.
She needed them, but . . . she was aware that she was never satisfied.
Each session became more frenzied – typing out hurried emails, waiting for the replies, putting on her glasses to scrutinise the pictures more closely.
She wandered upstairs and began to get undressed.
Frenzied, but not desperate, she told herself firmly.
And yet each session online left her feeling empty.
Because, well, she wasn’t getting anywhere, was she?
Something kept stopping her. And there was so little time left.
Which was why she had decided to muster the courage, seize the moment and possibly even the man.
How had she come to be in this position?
She examined her face in the mirror. As usual, she looked tired.
Other girls met a special someone almost, it seemed, without trying.
What had stopped Harriet? That promise to Father?
Fear? Or was it isolation, lack of opportunity, being so damned busy all the time that one year ran into the next, one decade leapfrogged into another, youth had turned into middle age and would soon be stumbling past it?
She was thirty-nine years old. Had she left it too late, after all?
She realised that online dating had become commonplace in the last twenty years.
But it had never been in the least commonplace for Harriet.
She stripped off her clothes and hung them on the back of the bedroom chair as usual.
She wouldn’t sleep; she was so nervous. Wouldn’t anyone be nervous in her position?
Anyone who hadn’t . . . well, who hadn’t . . .
Right from the start she had thought Hector a possibility – if that was even his real name.
Harriet sniffed. He was forty-five, so his profile claimed, but she’d spent some time looking at his picture and there was something suspicious about the area between the upper jaw and the earlobe that said facelift to Harriet. Also, she wasn’t sure about his eyes.
They’d been emailing for months and so, predictably, Hector had sounded delighted when after weeks of making lame excuses she had emailed him after her jam-making session to suggest meeting for coffee.
I can’t wait, he told her. Tomorrow would be perfect. Drive to Bridport? I’d drive to the end of the earth to meet you.
He sounded very keen. Harriet went over to the window and drew back the yellow cotton curtain of her childhood.
The night was still, the sky thick and almost moonless, the farmyard below perfectly quiet.
It was her favourite time – a time when there were no demands for her to actually do anything; she could just be.
From her vantage point she could just see the dark shape of the pig shed at the far end of the cobbled yard, Little Barn with the chicken run behind, and in front of this, the considerable bulk of Big Barn-cum-tea room.
In front of it, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could make out the misshapen woodpile opposite the old cow shed, and the lines of the ancient blue tractor too – unused for years.
She could feel, rather than see, the mulberry tree.
She always could. It watched over the cottage, so much a part of the place, so much a part of Harriet. It must, she thought, have seen it all.
It would only be quiet for a few more hours, she thought, glancing at her watch.
She pulled it from her wrist and as she did so, a movement outside caught her eye.
The moon had edged from its cloud cover and the farmyard was revealed.
The veil lifted. She could see all the farm buildings quite clearly, even the cobbles on the yard and a wheelbarrow she’d left by the . . .
Crikey. Harriet froze. A man was standing in the farmyard by the old cow shed.
A man wearing an overcoat and glasses. He seemed to be looking up at the house, but he didn’t seem to see her.
Or had he? Ye Gods. And she was naked. Oh, my giddy aunt .
. . She shrank back to the side of the window, thrust the curtains back into place, peered round to see if she’d imagined it, imagined him.
He wasn’t a mirage. She realised that now. It wasn’t her imagination. He had been real enough. Even though the moon was still casting its white eerie light. And even though the man was gone.