Sixteen

A scream. Louise is downstairs on the sofa, her big brown eyes wide, staring at me. A musical blares from the TV in the corner.

“I’m so sorry, Louise. It’s only me. I didn’t mean to give you a fright. I just need to see your mother.”

Camilla and Stuart both appear at the bottom of the stairs, no doubt summoned from wherever they were by Louise’s reaction to my entrance.

“What are you doing?” Stuart asks me.

“I’m here to ask you both the same thing,” I say.

They look at each other, like parents silently acknowledging the best way to deal with a difficult child.

“What about the children?” says Stuart, like I’m the one wholly responsible for their brief stint home alone.

“Goldie’s there.”

“Goldie is a dog, Marie.”

“Thanks for pointing that out.”

“Mum?” says Louise.

“Everything’s fine,” says Camilla to her daughter.

“Yes, it is,” says Stuart. “Your mum and I were just clearing something up.” To me, he says, “Let’s go.”

We leave, the cold of the night air only now hitting me.

I’ve never seen Stuart angry before, but I refuse to feel like I’ve done anything wrong. He strides toward the house. I don’t even try to keep up with him.

Inside, he makes a show—in my opinion—of going upstairs to check on the children as if they’d likely have been kidnapped in the short space of time they’ve been alone.

When he returns, he appears to have regained his more usual Stuart-like composure. “I don’t like being spied on.”

“I don’t like telling someone that I’m pregnant, then having them bugger off to have a cozy chat with another woman.”

“I wasn’t going to burden you with this, but you may as well know that I’ve received more unsavory cards in the mail. It wasn’t a one-off. I didn’t want you to know. I thought that Camilla was behind it, that’s why I went over there now, but she’s assured me she isn’t. I want to put a stop to it, especially now.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Yes, I do.”

My stomach knots. “Then, who? If it’s someone local...”

“Nina was well-liked in the village,” Stuart says. “It could be a number of people who are judging our lifestyle.”

“I know.”

Nina embraced local causes, supported local businesses, raised money for charity—including the hospice where she spent her final days—even before she was diagnosed. Although I’ve tried my best, I’ve tended to focus my good deeds around school-based activities. Maybe I should cast my net further, show that I’m here to stay, put down real, long-term and well-intentioned roots.

“There was a strange photo, too...”

I unpin the photo from the corkboard and hand it to Stuart, grateful that we’re now united in a common goal as we dissect and discuss if not Camilla, then who? I insist that he show me the cards, which are not dissimilar to the one pushed through the letter box the night we slept together.