‘Not that the work’s a piece of cake.’
‘Of course not,’ Rita rushes to agree.
‘Houses don’t do well not lived in round here. Turn into a right shambles they do. The forest reclaims them. Damp. Mildew. Mice. Wood beetle. No point keeping the place if you don’t use it.’
Rita nods. She struggles to understand how anyone could have a whole house they didn’t use, let alone care about. What she’d give just to have a tiny flat of her own.
‘If it weren’t for me there’d be dog roses growing through the rafters.’
Rita laughs, rather liking this idea. But another loud thump from upstairs – more showering plaster – sobers her again. She needs to Teddy-proof. Check there are no low windows open. No heavy furniture leaning perilously against uneven walls. If there’s an accident waiting to happen, Teddy will find it. ‘I’d better check on the children,’ she says, picking up the suitcases again. ‘Sounds like Teddy’s making himself a bit too much at home.’
‘This isn’t an easy place to live.’ With no warning, Marge grabs the sleeve of Rita’s blouse. Her nostrils flare. She releases the sleeve, sizing Rita up. ‘Know the forest, do you?’
Rita shakes her head. Her heart starts to beat faster. If you lose both your parents on a lonely forest road, and you’re plucked from the smoking wreckage, a half-dead thing, you have nightmares about trees. But she refuses self-pity. She was six. And the memory of the car crash is, mercifully, a blank.
‘Didn’t think so. A Devon girl, Mr Harrington said.’
‘That’s me.’ Sky and ocean. Just thinking about it makes her long to look out of a window and see a paintbrush streak of horizon, the grey-green smudge where water meets cloud. She remembers sea salt, its fine crystal crust on her lips, and her mouth waters.
‘You’ll need to keep your wits about you here then. Adders. Death cap mushrooms. Ticks. As for branches in a high wind? By the time you’ve heard the creak it’s too late. Old mines open up under your feet. Oh, yes, there’s a pile of felled tree trunks near the garden gate. If Teddy climbs on that the whole lot will come tumbling. Roll him out like puff pastry.’
‘Well, it’s good to be warned,’ she manages, trying to seem undaunted. This place sounds like a nanny’s nightmare. Through the window, the green mass sways queasily.
‘Poachers. Dangerous lot. But the foresters shouldn’t give you any bother, if you leave their sheep alone. Ancient grazing rights.’ She stops. Something fires in her eyes. ‘Oh. I beg your pardon. I should warn you about Fingers Jonson.’
‘Fingers?’ She’s beginning to wonder if the woman is slightly unhinged, or if the fuggy heat and wood smoke in the room are distorting her own judgement. Also, she really needs the toilet. It was a long drive.
‘Loner. Tall. Albino. Wanders the woods. Our Green Man.’
Rita pictures the mythic man of folklore, a face formed of twisted sticks and leaves, acorns for eyes. Horrible. A large moth batters against the window.
‘Oddballs are drawn here. Always running from something. Fugitives. Druggies. Price we pay for living in the last bit of wild in England.’
Rita’s hands instinctively fist. She’d lay down her life for Hera and Teddy. ‘The children will be safe with me, Marge.’
‘You do seem very sure of yourself for such a young woman, I must say.’ Marge sniffs, irritated by this. ‘I suppose at your size you’re more than a match for any man.’
Feeling the familiar tightness in her chest, hearing the whispery chant of old school playground insults – ‘Rita Rex’, ‘Rita Heifer’, ‘Mr Rita Murphy’ – she decides she’ll have to make a break for it.
‘And it’ll shred those shoes of yours.’ Marge nods down at Rita’s feet, as she places one brown Clarks sandal on the stairs. She hates her feet. More than this, she hates people looking at them.
There’s a rush of fresh air and yellowy-green light: Rita turns to see Jeannie in the doorway.
‘I was wondering if you could be a darl–’ Jeannie stops. Her face falls. ‘Marge,’ she says, quickly rearranging it.
‘Mrs Harrington.’ Marge smoothes down her overall in rapid, jerky movements.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here today,’ Jeannie says.
‘Your husband asked me to help bed you in,’ Marge says, managing to sound both obsequious and superior.
At the mention of Walter, Rita colours. The damning words ‘our little arrangement’ start fluttering in her head again, trapped there, like the moth at the window.
‘Bed me in, Marge?’ Jeannie recovers a smile – she’s well practised at maintaining a gracious front, and then, Rita suspects, going upstairs to scream into a pillow. ‘Goodness. I’m thirty-three, not ninety.’
Marge ignores this and her eyes dart to Jeannie’s ring finger, as if to check the wedding band’s still there.
With an unpleasant bump, Rita’s mind lands back on the sleety evening in December when she’d pressed her own engagement ring into the hands of a bewildered tramp on Waterloo Bridge, then carried on walking, tears rolling down her face. Earlier, she’d called Fred to confess. She can still hear the tremble in his voice: ‘You betrayed me, Rita.’ And the pips, the line – and the future she’d thought was waiting back home – gone dead, cutting her adrift.
‘I’ve given the house a good airing,’ Marge continues. ‘The fire will help get rid of the damp, Mrs Harrington.’
‘You can call me Jeannie now.’
‘Do I have to?’ Marge says, after a beat, in a voice that could pickle onions.
Last year, returning from The Lawns, Jeannie also insisted Rita called her by ‘my name, not my husband’s’. It felt strange at first but she’s got used to it. She’s got used to many things she’d once thought extraordinary.
‘As you wish, Marge.’ Jeannie walks across the room – her patent heels clopping – and turns to the large silvered mirror above the console. She balks at her reflection, as if she were expecting someone different.
Marge hovers. ‘You’ll be happy here, Mrs Harrington. I’ll make sure of it,’ she says firmly, as though happiness were something that could be conjured with a bit of elbow grease, like shine on a parquet floor.
‘Thank you.’ Jeannie’s smile falters. A silence spreads.
‘And the children will have tree sap running in their veins before you know it,’ adds Marge. ‘The forest will knock the city out of them, don’t you worry.’
Jeannie’s eyes widen. Rita stares at the floor, hit by a sudden nervous urge to giggle.
‘Well, I’ll start on dinner,’ continues Marge, undefeated. ‘How does a bit of lamb sound? Spuds?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself. A simple nursery supper will be fine. Rita can rustle something up.’
‘But Mr Harrington instructed that I cook you supper.’ Marge shoots an offended look in Rita’s direction.
‘Well, I instruct you not to. You’ve worked very hard to get the house ready. Go home and put your feet up.’
Marge stands stubbornly in the entrance hall, as if held there by a deep taproot. ‘You look so tired, Mrs Harrington. Thin as a rake. If you’re here to convalesce you must have a good square meal.’