Anyone else would have learned from that. Laura, crying herself to sleep, awoke to the conviction that Gerald was simply nervous. Socially not at all gauche where romance was concerned, Laura told herself, he was simply out of practice. He wanted to entertain her in his home but, the first time, needed other people present. That had been nearly a year ago. The invitation had never been repeated.
Wretchedly unhappy, needing to protect herself, Laura struggled to create in her mind an alternative situation, charting the progress of an imaginary affair to Gerald’s disadvantage. He was a rotten lover, a boring conversationalist, faddy and finicky and set in his ways. Completely self-absorbed. After no time at all, light-hearted and free as a bird, she left him. With a huge expenditure of imaginative energy Laura could hold on to this comforting fiction, sometimes for days. But then, of course, she would see him again.
Sound and light! Bathed in panic she dodged from the window and pressed herself flat against the cottage, feeling the flints jab into her back. But it was only Brian, Gerald’s nearest neighbour, putting his permanently red-nosed Volkswagen away. The headlamp’s beams were gradually eaten up. The garage doors banged shut. She heard him walk down the side of the house and go in. A bolt was shot. No doubt Sue would, even now, be making bedtime drinks. Laura felt a fleeting pang of envy. Not, God knew, that she, or surely anyone in their right senses, would want to be married to Brian. But there was undoubtedly a brand of cosiness obtainable à deux that was simply not on the menu when you lived alone.
Oh, what am I doing here? Laura pounded her gloved fist on the wall, scraping the leather. I am a grown-up thirty-six-year-old woman. I am attractive and have even been called beautiful. I am not neurotic. I have friends and I have known love. I run a successful business and have a pretty house full of beautiful things. Children smile at me. Cats and dogs give me the time of day. Men ask me out. So why am I creeping around like a criminal at eleven o’clock on a freezing February night on the off-chance of catching a glimpse of a man who couldn’t give a damn whether I’m alive or dead?
Falling in love. She had never understood before how literally, physically true the phrase was. One minute she had been choosing oranges in the village shop, the next she had stepped back and trodden on a man’s foot. A tall man with greying curly hair and rather cool hazel eyes. What happened next (the falling) was quite extraordinary. Laura had seen a film once - Hitchcock perhaps - where someone in their dreams tumbled down and down into a black and white spiralling vortex. And that’s just what it had been like. She closed her eyes, feeling again the force of it, tugging on her heartstrings like a falcon’s jesses.
Sure that he would be married, Laura had become weak with relief on hearing that he was a widower. Such a tragedy. His wife died several years ago. Leukaemia. They hadn’t been married long. He’s never got over it. And she, confident of her femininity, her lovability, thought: I will show him how to get over it. I will make him happy again. And when I do he will forget all about her.
New to Midsomer Worthy, she attended the harvest supper in the hope of seeing him. He was not present, but she did discover that the village boasted a writers’ circle of which he was a member.
Though having no talent or interest in the subject she joined immediately, under the pretence that she was transcribing a mass of letters, papers and receipts she had bought in an auction job lot. And so, once every four weeks at the very least, she was sure of seeing him. Not just to smile and wave at across the Green but truly to be with for two and sometimes nearer three hours. She thought of these periods as quality time. Time spent doing what mattered to you most in all the world. She had come across the phrase in a magazine article about parents with only limited access to their children.
Telling him was out of the question. She was not even remotely tempted. Everything would inevitably change, perhaps - no, almost certainly - for the worst. Things were easy now between them. Or at least Gerald thought they were, which is what mattered. But how might he handle a passionate declaration of undying love that he was either unable or unwilling to return? It would place him in an intolerable position. He would be embarrassed when they met. View her perhaps with distaste. Or worse, with pity. He might even drop out of the group to avoid an awkward evening. Goodbye, quality time. Hello, end of the world.
God, it was cold. Her feet, even with thick socks inside the boots, were frozen. Laura moved on to the grass at the side of the house where she could, inaudibly, stamp up and down. I must be mad, she said to herself. I’ll be seeing him in twenty-four hours.