Lovers they were. Edmund a married man, and the father of a wee baim.
Edmund and Pandora. If it was true, Virginia knew that she had never imagined nor suspected for a single instant. In her innocence, she had not watched for evidence, had read no inner meaning into Edmund's casual words, his easy demeanour. "Pandora's home," he had told her, pouring himself a drink and going to the refrigerator to search for ice. "We've been asked for lunch at Croy." And Virginia had said, "How nice," and gone on frying beefburgers for Henry's supper. Pandora was simply Archie's errant young sister, back from Majorca. And when the great reunion happened, she had paid little regard to the brotherly kiss Edmund had planted on Pandora's cheek, their laughter, and the understandable affection of this greeting. And as for the rest of the day, Virginia had been more interested in the croquet game than curious to know what it was that Edmund and Pandora, watching from the swing seat, were talking about.
And what did it matter what they talked about? Be sensible. So what if they had had a wild and impetuous affair and ended up in Pandora's bed? Pandora at eighteen must have been sensational, and Edmund at the height of his virility. This is today, and adultery is no longer called adultery but extra-marital sex. Besides, it was all a long time ago. Over twenty years. And Edmund had not been unfaithful to Virginia, but to his first wife, Caroline. And now Caroline was dead. So it didn't matter. There was nothing to agonize over. Nothing…
They all knew. All thick as thieves. Didn't want me around. I knew too much.
Who knew? Did Archie know? Did Isobel? Did Vi know? And Edie? Because if they knew, they would have been watching, fearing perhaps that it was all going to happen all over again. Watching Edmund and Pandora. Watching Virginia, their eyes filled with a pity that she had never seen. Did they worry for Virginia as they must have worried for Caroline? Did they talk amongst themselves, like conspirators, agreeing to keep the truth from Edmund's second wife? Because if they had, then Virginia had been betrayed, and by the very people she was closest to and most relied upon.
And why do you think your husband's suddenly taken himself off to America? He'll make a fool of you, same as he did his first wife, poor lady.
This was the worst. These were the most dreaded doubts. Edmund had gone. Had he really had to fly off like that, or was New York simply a trumped-up excuse to get away from Balnaid and Virginia and to give himself time to work out his problems? His problems being that he loved Pandora, had always loved her, and now she was back and as beautiful as ever, and Edmund was once more trapped in marriage with yet another woman.
Edmund was fifty, a vulnerable age for restlessness and mid-life crises. He was not a man for showing emotion, and most of the time Virginia had no idea what he was thinking about. Her own self-doubt grew to terrifying proportions. Perhaps this time he would cut his losses and run, leaving Virginia with her marriage and her life tumbling in ruins. Leaving her and Henry lost in the rubble of what she had once thought totally impregnable.
It did not bear thinking about. She rolled over, burying her face in her pillow, shutting out the ghastly prospect. She would not acknowledge it. Would not let it be true.
You are lying, Lottie.
This is where we came in. Back to the beginning.
7
Tuesday the Thirteenth
The rain was cruel, relentless, and unwelcome. It had started before daybreak, and Virginia awoke to the sound of it, and had known a dreadful sinking of the heart. As if things weren't bad enough on this dreaded day, without the elements turning against her. Perhaps it would stop. But the gods were not on anybody's side and the downpour continued, monotonously streaming down from a charcoal-grey sky, right through the long morning and the early afternoon.
Now, it was half past four, and they were on their way to Templehall. Because she had the two boys with her, and all their clobber-trunks, tuck-boxes, duvets, rugger balls, and book-bags- Virginia had left her own little car in the garage, and instead drove Edmund's Subaru, a four-wheel-drive work-horse that he used when he went into rough country, or up the hill. She was not used to driving this vehicle, and its unfamiliarity and her own uncertainty only served to heighten the sense of doom and hopelessness that had dogged her for nearly twenty-four hours.
Conditions were miserable. What light there had been was already seeping from the sky, and she drove with headlights on and the windscreen wipers working full tilt. Tyres hissed on flooded patches of road, and oncoming cars and lorries sent up great waves of blinding mud. Visibility was almost nil, which was frustrating, because under normal conditions, the road that led from Relkirk to Templehall was an exceptionally scenic drive-through prosperous farmlands, alongside the banks of a wide and majestic river famous for its salmon, and past large estates, with distant glimpses of stately homes.
It would have eased the atmosphere had they been able to observe any of this. Remarking on beauty spots, pointing out some distant peak would have given Virginia something to talk about. As it was, she had tried engaging Hamish in lively conversation, hoping that this would divert Henry from his speechless misery, and that he might even join in. But Hamish was in a bad mood. Knowing that the freedom of summer holidays was over was bad enough, but worse was having to go back to school in the company of a new boy. A babe. That's what they called the little ones. The babes. Travelling with a babe was beneath Hamish's dignity, and he just prayed that none of his contemporaries would be around to witness his humiliating arrival. He was not going to be made responsible for Henry Aird, and had made this fact vociferously clear to his mother while she helped him lug his trunk down the stairs of Croy, and flattened, with a brush, his gruesome short haircut.
Accordingly, he had decided upon a course of non-communica-tion, and had soon put a stop to Virginia's advances by answering her in a series of non-committal grunts. She got the message, and after that the three of them had lapsed into a stony and wordless silence.
Which made Virginia wish that she hadn't brought the wretched boy; had let Isobel drive her own sulky son. But without him there, Henry might well have succumbed to tears, sobbed throughout the journey and arrived at Templehall sodden with weeping and in no fit state to deal with the rigours of his new and daunting future.
The prospect she found almost unendurable. I am hating this, she told herself. It is even worse than I imagined it would be. It is inhuman, hellish, unnatural. And worse is to come, because the moment waits when I have to say goodbye to Henry and drive away, and leave him standing, alien and alone. I hate Templehall, and I hate the headmaster, and I could strangle Hamish Blair. I have never had to do anything in my life that I have hated so much. I am hating the rain, hating the entire educational system, hating Scotland, hating Edmund.
Hamish said, "There's a car behind us. It wants to get past."
"Well, it can bloody wait," Virginia told him, and Hamish was silenced.
An hour later, she was back on the same road, driving the empty vehicle in the opposite direction.
It was over. Henry was gone. She felt numb. Non-existent, as though the trauma of parting from him had robbed her of all identity. Just now, she would not think about Henry, because if she did she would weep, and the combination of tears, half-darkness, and relentless rain would most likely cause her to drive the Subaru off the road, or into the back of a ten-ton lorry. She imagined the crunch of metal, her own body flung like a broken doll to the side of the road, flashing lights, the howl of ambulances and police cars.