Grace gulped down the ball of anxiety that had lodged itself in her throat. She had known for a long time that the end was coming, that one of these days Paul would present her with the final straw, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. It was time to play her final card.
‘You might think me many things, Paul, but I'm not a fool. I know about the money you have stashed away in accounts you thought I never knew existed. I know about the flat too, your little bolthole in London. So, you need to listen to me very carefully now. I am not leaving this house, Paul. It's my home, and I have loved and cared for it over many years, just as I have you. Living here is the only thing that has kept me sane in this sham of a marriage and you owe me this one courtesy after everything I’ve done for you.’
She paused, taking a big breath to steel her nerves. ‘I will make no claim on any of your assets if you walk away now and leave me the house. If not, then I will be forced to use select pieces of information given to me by Barbara to take my rightful share ofeverythingyou have.’
‘You wouldn't bloody dare, Grace. Not little Grace who wouldn't say boo to a goose. Why do you think I married you, sweetheart? Because you knew on what side your bread was buttered, and you still do. You won't create the kind of fuss you're talking about, you don't have it in you. Nice try, darling, but you're fooling no one.’ He handed the mug back to her. ‘See you tomorrow, Grace.’
‘It’s with my solicitor,’ she blurted at his retreating back, her resolve almost gone.
Paul turned slowly towards her once again. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The information from your PA. It's with my solicitor in a sealed letter addressed to Dominic, your Head of Programming. If I don't call my solicitor by five p.m. tomorrow he will email Dominic with the contents that evening and have the letter couriered over the following morning.’ She held her breath. Dominic was the last person she wanted to contact, especially given what had happened, but she really needed Paul to believe her.
A nerve twitched in the side of Paul’s jaw. He shook his head slowly. ‘Well, well, Grace. If I'd have known you had this much fight in you, I would have made much more of an effort, especially in the bedroom… Wouldn't that have been fun? You’ll be hearing from me, Grace. Meandmy solicitor. Don’t think this is over.’ And with that he stalked from the room.
Grace waited until she heard the spin of gravel on the driveway before letting out her breath, slowly at first and then in great gulping gasps. By the time her legs had buckled from underneath her and she’d sunk to the floor, her breaths had given way to choking sobs. It was tempting to stay that way but the minute the thought entered her head she realised she could not. A sudden revulsion swept over her and she held a hand over her mouth for a moment before rushing up the stairs and into their bedroom. She stared at the bed, a place she had often slept alone, assailed by memories of the past few years. And then she pulled off every stitch of clothing she was wearing and stuffed it all in the laundry basket. She had never felt more dirty than she did now.
She stood in the shower for quite some time, scrubbing furiously at her skin and her hair, washing herself repeatedly as she sought to remove the poison of her words before they sank so deep they could never be cleansed. But then, as her breathing eased, she let the silky coolness of the water mingle with her tears and wash it all away. The tears were not about the end of her marriage, not really – she had shed enough of those over recent years to know that her grieving process was almost at an end – but rather they were a reaction to the depths to which she’d had to sink to protect herself, and her home.
It had taken her a long time to plan what to say to ensure she only had to say it once. She had rehearsed her lines over and over, until it had become a part that she could play just like an actor; convincing, but not real. Notherwords, not the real Grace, just the mantle she’d had to assume to get her through the evening.
She switched off the water and stepped from the shower, wrapping herself in a plain white towel before walking back through to the peace and tranquillity of the room she had designed for exactly that purpose. The window overlooked the garden and she stood looking down on it, just as she had on countless other occasions, except that tonight she felt just a tiny bit closer to making the peace absolute. Who knew what tomorrow would bring, but she had spent a long time preparing herself for what was to come. Tonight she just wanted to enjoy her garden without worrying what mood her husband would be in when he got home. Even this small pleasure was enough to lift her spirits as relief settled gently around her like the soft evening air.
Taking a clean pair of pyjamas from a drawer, she dressed quickly, pulling the towel from her hair and letting it fall halfway down her back in long grey tendrils. And then she turned and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Her eyes were a little puffy, but her skin was still clear and almost unlined, her body slender, her limbs graceful. Grace And Decorum, she thought to herself, smiling softly as she remembered her mother’s words of long ago. Perhaps it wasn’t too late after all. Maybe there was still time to bring back to life the confident and vital woman she had once been. Her hopes and dreams might have been squashed by her husband’s bullying behaviour but there was a new future settling ahead of Grace, full of possibility, and she would navigate it as best she could. She could ask no more of herself.
The air was especially fragrant tonight, a slight breeze carrying the scent from Hope Farm’s flowers up towards her and, after the heat of the day, the grass was now cool as she walked barefoot across it. She didn’t even think about where she was going, the hum of the hives drew her as surely as if she were being reeled in on a line. It would be good to talk to the bees, to put their minds at rest.
‘Good evening,’ she whispered as she neared the first of the hives. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’
After a moment, she lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged on the grass, well out of the bees’ flight path, but close enough that she could see them, still busy about their work even at this hour. There was something about keeping bees that Grace always found particularly soothing. Not that they really needed her help of course, and she never thought of them as belonging to her, more that she belonged to them. She was an honorary member of the hive, tolerated as long as she abided by their rules. Whichever way round it was, Grace enjoyed the sense of belonging that it gave her. And her bees had forever changed the way she viewed the world, and for that she would be eternally grateful.
She stilled herself and tried to empty the last of the angry and negative thoughts from her head. Some people said that bees could sense prevailing moods and, while Grace wasn’t sure whether that were true or not, she always made sure that when she invaded their space she was as calm and serene as possible. They reacted to her almost instantaneously whenever she lifted the lid of the hive. When removing the combs for inspection, it was as if a wave rippled through them, a change in their movement, a tonal difference in their humming, the machinery of the hive shifting a gear. And there were times when Grace would keep her distance, when something told her that it wouldn’t be a good time to disturb them, a darker note.
Tonight though, there was something else. She listened, sifting through the sounds she heard and discounting those that belonged outside of the hive – the birdsong, the rustle of leaves – until there was just the sound of the hive itself. They were busy; summer was at its height and the hive was hot, they had lots of nectar to cure into honey. Grace was used to this noise, the hum of a contented hive, but tonight the tone was raised up a notch; not unhappy, quite the reverse in fact. If Grace had to put a name to it, she would say they sounded excited…
Away down the slope of the hill where Grace’s garden met the field, Amos had stopped, his face turned to the sky. After leaving Hope Farm he had simply set out to walk the edge of the field, to see up close the flowers that grew there and get a feel for the space around the farm. But, as he had walked further and felt the prickles at the base of his neck, he knew he had been drawn to this particular place by something.
Sitting there for a little while, he had heard voices; not loud enough to make out individual words, but there was no mistaking the anger in the sounds he heard. Dark, almost like thunder. Amos could feel them cut through the soft summer air outside the house. He had felt torn and misplaced, almost as if he were trespassing – even though he knew he had every right to be where he was – but at the same time completely rooted to the spot.
Now, though, the air was calm once more. Whatever, or whoever, had shattered the peace was gone, but it had still left its mark on Amos. He rubbed the back of his neck. Now it was all beginning to make sense.
3
The dream was always the same. As Amos awoke drenched in sweat and clawing at the images in his head, he was grateful that while it was still a nightmare, the intensity of it was less than the last time. This dream was his weather vane, the thing that drove him onward, telling him that it was time to seek out somewhere new, someone else with a problem that he could solve to assuage his guilt. Now that he had arrived at Hope Corner he hoped its occurrence would lessen for a while.
He rolled over, shivering in the cool of the early-morning air, and got to his feet. He had slept in the field, under the edge of the hedgerow. After a bit of a walk to stretch his legs and shake off the last vestiges of the dream, he was just coming through the garden on his way to the cottage when he caught sight of Ned’s father leaning against the wall of the house. He raised a hand in greeting.
‘Good morning,’ Amos called. ‘It’s going to be another beauty!’
Fraser turned to him, lifting the mug he held in his hand as if in salute. ‘I confess I don’t much mind what the weather does these days,’ he replied. ‘Having thought at one time I wasn’t going to see another sunrise, just as long as they keep coming, I’ll keep being grateful.’
Amos gave him a quizzical look.
‘Heart attack,’ replied Fraser, succinctly. ‘Five months back, followed by a double bypass.’ He touched a hand to his chest. ‘I’ve got a scar from here… to here… And every morning when I get up and every evening as I go to sleep it reminds me to make the most of what I’ve got left.’
Amos nodded. ‘It gets you like that, doesn’t it? Nothing like a dose of your own mortality to keep you in good health.’ He joined Fraser, feeling the warmth from the brick at his back even at this early hour.
‘And what would you know about mortality?’ asked Fraser. ‘A young ’un like you?’
