The wife of Tam Lin has dropped the bewitched husband. Not when he was a snake or a white-hot poker, but when he was nothing but a pail of water. That’s when she couldn’t recognize him as her husband.

Full, empty, full, empty.

Say she’d married this locum instead. Would she not have ordered things in their house with equal perfection? Would they not, she and Donal, just with their daily rubbing against each other, have scuffed each other’s flaws to the surface? Would not one of them, now, be here in this forest, lying down with a lover? How could she think she’d be happier with Donal, when she can’t be happier with herself? Empty, full, empty, full.

She is crying now, and he notices.

Oh Jules, he says, kissing her tears, what’s wrong?

I’m so lonely, she says, weeping properly now that she’s heard her own words.

Her tears excite him.

I’m here, he says, rhythmically, I’m here.

And for one shuddering moment, he is.

‌Deer

Finally, the words grow blunt. His daughter’s name is no longer a blade. The severed artery of his life is stitched back together. His tongue staggers but does not trip over the past tense. For hour upon hour, he endured emotion thundering through him like an endless goods train. Now it is clanging its ghost down the distant track. Inside him, at last, it feels still and silent. Not like peace, but like a warehouse that has been emptied.

He responds to a muffled sound on the landing. A tray outside his door; Jules sock-footing away from it down the stairs.

Jules, he says, and she looks up, bright as a deer. It’s kind of you. Shall we eat together?

She is awkward with him. Over-talkative. Apologetic. Her conversation is like a person painting an unstable plaster wall, over and over, though flaws keep appearing. There is a small purple smudge just beneath her right ear, like the burn of a rope.

No.

Like the suck of a man.

Where’ve you been today? he asks.

All over, she says. Fordingbridge. Ringwood. New Milton.

Family visits? he says.

That kind of thing.

Car behaving itself?

No problems, she says, and her hand slides up to rest on her neck, over that bruise. It’s a little bit funny when you accelerate, though. Sort of juddery. Maybe I should take it back in.

Is that it? Something to do with the car? He struggles to imagine Jules with a mechanic. She isn’t the sort to tolerate oily hands.

I’ll give Ray a ring tomorrow, he says.

Okay.

Meek as a lamb. So not the mechanic.