Not that day. Not the next, and then it was the weekend and they went for more energetic walks and still she did not tell him. When they were not walking or grocery shopping, Adrian slept. Paula had started to tackle the jungle that was the garden, slashing back, raking out, digging up, while he slept on. She did not mind. She liked her own company after all.
The fine weather settled in.
‘My mother wants to come,’ Adrian said.
‘She wouldn’t like it here. Yvonne likes the town. Shops. Stuff like that.’
‘Stuff like that.’
‘I just meant – what would she do all day? I’ve only done half these illustrations. I can’t leave it.’
‘She’ll come on Tuesday. You can go out with her in the afternoons, can’t you? You don’t work all day, do you?’
‘Well… most of it.’
She had not told him about the sleeping.
‘There you are, then. And take her for some walks. Do you both good.’
‘Be part of the natural world.’
‘Exactly! You see?’
His face was an open beam of satisfaction. He had taught her something. He liked to teach people.
‘Tuesday, but she wouldn’t get here till lunchtime. Give you a morning for work, won’t it?’
She was not taking Yvonne to the supermarket. ‘You need this. You don’t tell me you manage without that? You don’t tell me you have never bought…? …No, Paula, you shouldn’t ever buy that brand, they force-feed Third World babies with bottle milk… Put it back, pure waste of money, the own-brand is fine… But Adrian doesn’t like sausages…’
She went alone on the Monday morning. It was quiet. A few mothers with babies perched in the trolleys wheeled slowly round in pairs, chatting. Paula shopped without a list, without a system, enjoying the wander from aisle to aisle, looking at books and DVDs and make-up she would never buy, before homing in on all her usual stuff. She had coffee, filled up with petrol, bought a newspaper and chocolate from the kiosk. Sang on the way home.
Yvonne would be here tomorrow, but she had done the shopping without her.
Slowly the cottage had stopped being the cottage and become home. Things had found permanent resting places, the smell of mice had faded, the curtains hung straight. Adrian fell asleep during television programmes. She had begun to tame the garden. But whereas a house stayed as you left it, a garden ran away with you and after a week of hands burning from nettles and thumbs scratched with thorns, Paula lost heart and just mowed enough grass to sleep on. The rest ran riot.
‘That’s a mess,’ Adrian said. ‘When are you going to start on it?’
‘It’s nature.’
He turned away.
Five minutes later he was in bed, asleep.
There was a full moon. She sat out on the grass, looking at the pale, ghostly light on some white phlox which had appeared by the hedge. There was a night scene in the children’s book she was illustrating. She looked carefully at the white petals. Her bloodless white hand. The silver stones on the wall. Something barked. Something rustled low down among the bushes.
She felt happy.
‘I heard something,’ Yvonne said. She wore a black satin dressing gown with a scarlet dragon in raised embroidery on the back.
‘It’s always quiet here at night. Did you sleep well?’
‘Bit too quiet. You get used to traffic noise; I suppose it lulls you to sleep. But whatever it was woke me up and it was barely six o’clock.’
‘Adrian is up at twenty past.’
‘It wasn’t Adrian.’
‘What sort of noise?’
‘I wouldn’t have said it was a noise. A sound. More a sound.’
Paula set the coffee pot down on the kitchen table.
‘But you slept all right on the whole?’
Yvonne reached for the sugar. Her fingernails were painted navy blue, but the edges were chipped. Paula thought that if you wore nail varnish in startling colours you had to maintain them.
‘Adrian looks very washed out.’
‘It’s a long commute.’
‘Up so early, home so late. I don’t understand it.’
‘He loves being in the country.’
Yvonne gave her an unpleasant look.
‘We’ll go for a walk later. I have to finish something off that I left to dry last night.’
‘Oh don’t pay any attention to me. I can amuse myself.’
‘No, but we will. Go for a walk I mean.’
Paula noticed at once, as soon as she walked into the workroom. The drawing board had been moved, only slightly, but she would have noticed even a centimetre. And the side window was slightly ajar.
It was not until later that she noticed that the chocolate had gone. She had eaten two squares and folded the paper over the open end of the bar. It had been on the table, to the right of her pencil pot.
Yvonne wandered in.
‘Oh heavens, sorry, sorry. I always forget that you don’t.’
She dropped the cigarette on the brick floor, crushed it to and fro under her heel and left it there.
Paula said nothing. Adrian would, when he came home and smelled smoke in the house. She would leave it to Adrian. She was his mother.
‘Shall we go out, then?’
Yvonne lit a fresh cigarette the moment the front door closed behind them. Paula said nothing, only picked up the spent match from the path where her mother-in-law had thrown it.
‘We generally go this way – past the houses and down into the wood. Well, not much of a wood but, you know… I love trees.’
It was warm, slightly damp. Misty.
‘I’d go mad,’ Yvonne said. ‘Never seeing anybody.’
‘I like it. I like my own company.’
Yvonne looked at her sideways.
‘What do you do at the weekends, when Adrian’s home?’
‘Go for walks. You know.’
‘What will it be like for him in winter? Out of the house in the dark, home in the dark. Not much fun, you know.’
‘Moving here was his idea,’ Paula said.
Yvonne grabbed her arm as the track sloped down between the trees.
‘Where does this lead?’
‘We come out at the bottom into a clearing, then cross the field.’
‘With animals?’
‘With…’
Rabbits, badgers, foxes flitted through her mind.
‘Cows? Bulls?’
‘Oh no. It’s perfectly safe’
Yvonne stopped to light another cigarette.
‘I’m not much of a one for fields. Shall we go back?’
She walked quite smartly once they were on the level again, so that she reached the cottage gate first, just as all four of the children were sneaking round from the back. The eldest, in front, had her hands full of something; the boy behind was cramming a handful of cornflakes into his mouth from the open box he carried. The small ones came up behind. One held a packet of biscuits.
‘Oh my God!’
Paula pushed past Yvonne and put out her arm to catch hold of the girl at the front.
‘It was you,’ she said, without any anger. ‘You came and took the chocolate.’
The eyes were wary and also defiant.
‘Who on earth are these children? Do you know them, Paula? Where are they from? What are they doing coming out of your house? Why aren’t they in school? Have you been stealing? Why aren’t you at school?’ Yvonne spoke loudly, as if the children were deaf. ‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘No.’
‘They’ve been in your house. They’ve been stealing, it’s perfectly clear. Don’t just let it go, Paula. You turn a blind eye and they’ll be back.’
‘Will you please leave me to deal with this, Yvonne? Go into the house.’
The children were now pressed together as a single unit, like small animals. Their hair was matted, their faces dirty.
‘What were you doing?’ Paula said. ‘You took the chocolate, you ate the peanuts from the bird feeder, now you’ve been in and… ,’ she gestured at the food. ‘Where do you come from?’