Chapter 10
Mandy
By Monday afternoon, I have cleaned a kitchen that is already clean, answered three emails that could have waited until I’m back at work tomorrow and reorganised the drawer beside my bed.
Twice.
This is not because I am avoiding thinking about Peter.
Obviously.
It is because the drawer contained outdated hand cream, three loose buttons and a charger for a phone I have not owned since 2018. Any sensible person would have addressed that eventually.
After the second reorganisation, I put on my boots and leave the house.
The air has the damp softness that comes after rain, and St Claire smells of wet stone, cut grass and somebody’s wood burner starting too early in the day. I walk without deciding where I am going, which is how I end up on the path behind the church, heading towards the old mill.
It is quiet here. A few birds in the hedges. Water moving somewhere beyond the trees. No Peter. No Alexandra. No chef with opinions about my cooking.
Turns out, peace and quiet are considerably less useful when your own brain is the problem.
That’s the problem with having my surgery closed on Mondays. Too much time for my mind to go off and conjure up all sorts of memories.
I keep thinking about Peter standing in my bedroom doorway, trying to make his face behave.
Maybe we should tell Alexandra.
Not an accusation. Not even a demand. Just a sentence with more hope in it than I had expected and more disappointment afterwards than I wanted to see.
I walk faster.
The path curves past the old stone wall where the moss grows thick between the cracks. Ahead, by the bench under the sycamore, Mrs Higgins sits with Bernard collapsed at her feet in a patch of weak sunlight.
He is not lying beside the bench.
He is occupying the path.
All of it.
Mrs Higgins sees me coming and lifts one gloved hand. “Afternoon, Doctor.”
“Afternoon.” I slow as Bernard opens one eye and does not otherwise acknowledge my presence. “Is he all right?”
“He has discovered sunshine.”
“Dangerous.”
“Very. We may be here until Tuesday.”
Bernard sighs through his nose and stretches one paw without moving the rest of his body.
“Has he walked far?” I ask.
“From the cottage to here.”
“That is not far.”
“Do tell him. He believes he has crossed the Alps.”
Bernard closes his eye again, apparently satisfied that his suffering has been recognised.
Mrs Higgins pats the empty space beside her. “Sit a minute, love. Unless you are on a mission.”
“No mission.”
“Good. Missions are tiring.”
I sit.
The wood is slightly damp beneath my coat, and the air smells of leaves and river water. Bernard’s lead lies loose across Mrs Higgins’ purple walking boots, which are bright enough to startle livestock.
“He has a better routine than most people,” I say.
“Bernard?”
“Yes. Morning walk, afternoon walk, pub appearances, regular snacks, village attention. He is practically the mayor.”
“He would accept the office, but not the responsibility.”
“He refused to move at least twice during the last Ramblers walk.”
“Boundaries,” Mrs Higgins says. “Very important.”
I look down at Bernard. “He has excellent ones.”
“He also has selective hearing and no shame.”
“Also useful.”
Mrs Higgins laughs, the soft, throaty sound of a woman who has enjoyed the same joke in many forms for years.
For a while, we sit without speaking.
That is one of the things I like about Mrs Higgins. She can talk enough to fill a church hall, but she can also let silence sit between people without poking it to see what falls out.
A robin lands on the wall opposite, tilts its head at us, then thinks better of the company and flies away.
“Alexandra tried to set me up with Mark,” I say.
I have no clue why I mention it other than that I was looking for a fairly safe topic to fill the silence. In hindsight, the weather would have been a better option.
Mrs Higgins does not turn her head. “I know in total four blokes with the name Mark in St Claire. You have to help me here?”
“The new chef at Morton Hall.”
“Oh nice fellow. Met him once at the pub. Alexandra mentioned he was settling in.”
“Of course she did.”
“And that he was single.”
“Also, apparently, a personality trait.”
Mrs Higgins’ mouth twitches. “For some people.”
“She brought him to my house yesterday morning.”
Now Mrs Higgins does look at me.
“Did she?”
“For a cooking lesson.”
“That is bold.”
“It was an ambush with onions.”
“She means well.”
“She usually does. That is what makes her so difficult to object to.”
Mrs Higgins nods as though this is a known and serious condition. “Good intentions can be very bossy.”
“She thinks I need sorting.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
The answer is immediate.
Too immediate, perhaps, but true.
“I like my life,” I say. “I like my house. I like my work. I like deciding what I do with my evenings. I am not sitting around waiting for a man to make it all bearable.”
“No,” Mrs Higgins says. “You never have looked like a woman in need of rescue.”
“Then why does everyone assume single means available for improvement?”
“Because people are lazy with other people’s lives. A pair looks tidier to them than one.”
I let out a laugh, sharper than I mean it to be. “That is depressingly accurate.”
“Does not make them right.”
“No.”
Mrs Higgins reaches into her coat pocket and produces a small tin. Bernard’s head lifts immediately.
“You are so easily pleased,” I tell him.
“He is alert to opportunity.” She opens the tin, takes out a tiny dog biscuit and gives it to him. “There you are, darling. Sustenance for the journey.”
“He is not on a journey. He is horizontal.”
“All the great journeys have resting points.”
I smile because how can you not?
Mrs Higgins produces a wrapped ginger biscuit from another pocket and offers it to me. “Human biscuit?”
“Thank you.”
“Always best to keep the supplies separate. Bernard has strong opinions about ownership.”
Bernard crunches his biscuit with the solemn focus of a dog conducting important business.
Mrs Higgins brushes a crumb from her glove. “It is a good thing, knowing you are enough on your own.”
I look down at the ginger biscuit in my hand.
“Yes,” I say.
“But it can make sharing feel like surrender.”
The path goes quiet around us.
Quiet enough for the words to reach me.
“I am not surrendering anything,” I say.
“I did not say you were.”
“No.”
She closes the tin and rests it in her lap. Bernard’s nose follows the movement with deep professional interest.
“I only mean,” she says, “there is a difference between somebody barging in and somebody sitting beside you.”
I swallow.
Of course I think of Peter.
Peter in my kitchen, sleeves rolled up, telling me cottage pie is mince with a hat. Peter on my bed, fully dressed, holding my hand like it was neither a question nor a claim. Peter suggesting we tell Alexandra and trying not to look hurt when I said no.
Mrs Higgins looks at Bernard, not at me, which makes it easier to breathe.
“You do not stop being yourself because someone shares your bench, love,” she says. “You just have somebody who knows where you keep the biscuits.”
The words are so simple that I almost dismiss them.
Almost.
“That sounds like Bernard’s philosophy.”
“Bernard has wisdom when food is involved.”
“He has food-based priorities.”
“Most honest creature in the village.”
Bernard thumps his tail once, as if accepting the compliment.
I eat the rest of the ginger biscuit, though I barely taste it.
Someone sharing your bench.
Someone knowing where you keep the biscuits.
It should be ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Mrs Higgins is talking about companionship as if it is a tea break with a greedy beagle and a tin of dog biscuits.
Still, the words find a place to sit.
“I do not want somebody moving the biscuits,” I say.
“Quite right. If they start rearranging cupboards without permission, show them the door.”
I glance at her.
She smiles. “But if they only remember where things are because they pay attention, that is different.”
I have no answer to that.
Fortunately, Bernard chooses that moment to attempt to put his nose directly into the tin.
“Absolutely not,” Mrs Higgins says. “We discussed portion control.”
Bernard looks betrayed.
“He has never discussed portion control in his life,” I say.
“He was present.”
“Presence is not consent.”
“Very true.”
Mrs Higgins tucks the tin away and begins the elaborate process of convincing Bernard that the constitutional right to sunshine does not override the need to go home before dark.
“Come on, darling,” she says. “We cannot live here. The council would object.”
Bernard does not move.
Mrs Higgins reaches into her pocket again.
Bernard stands immediately.
“Shameless,” I say.
“Effective,” Mrs Higgins replies.
They leave slowly, Bernard trotting with sudden purpose for a dog who had been close to announcing his final wishes two minutes earlier. Mrs Higgins lifts a hand without looking back.
I stay on the bench.
The path is empty now. Quiet again.
I think about Karim.
Only the lesson he left behind.
A relationship can be real and still belong to the wrong version of your life.
That is the thing I have not said out loud. Not to Peter. Not to Alexandra. Possibly not even to myself.
With Karim, it was not that love vanished. It was that ordinary life asked questions our marriage could not answer. What are we without the urgency? What are we when nobody needs us at midnight? What are we when the day is quiet and all that is left is us?
Peter is different.
That is what scares me.
With Karim, the ordinary exposed the cracks.
With Peter, the ordinary is where I keep forgetting to be careful.
Sex with him is easy to put in a box. It has heat, rules, locked doors, texts I delete and jokes that make everything feel less dangerous. I understand that version of us.
But Peter cooking in my kitchen is not in the box.
Peter knowing which drawer holds the knives is not in the box.
Peter falling asleep beside me without asking for anything is so far outside the box that pretending otherwise is becoming insulting to both of us.
I stand too quickly.
Bernard’s sunny patch is empty now, the grass pressed flat where he lay. The bench beside me feels colder without Mrs Higgins there.
I start walking.
The fear is not that Peter will make my life smaller. I do not think he would. He has not pushed. He has not demanded space. He has only turned up, hungry and hopeful and infuriatingly easy to let in.
The fear is that I will make space for him and then discover I was wrong.
Wrong about him.
Wrong about myself.
Wrong about whether I can have someone beside me without slowly becoming less myself.
I walk past the old mill and turn back towards the village.
By the time the church tower comes into view, my decision has settled into something that feels sensible enough to trust.
I need to keep Peter at a distance.
I do not need to cut him off or punish him for wanting something I never promised. I simply need to remember what this is and stop letting it become something else by accident.
No more sleeping over.
No more meals that turn into conversations.
No more letting him look at me as if he can see the version of myself I keep for rooms with locked doors and no patients.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I stop beneath the churchyard wall and take it out.
Peter
I have survived my meeting at Morton Hall. There were even sandwiches.
I stare at the message.
Then I smile.
Small at first.
Then not so small.
I type before I can talk myself out of it.
Me
Congratulations. Did Rachel demand complicated spreadsheets?
His reply comes quickly.
Peter
No spreadsheet’s too complicated for me, baby.
I laugh alone on the path like an idiot.
Then I remember my decision.
Distance.
Sensible distance.
I put the phone away without replying.
And carry on walking home, still smiling.