The Country Life

Chapter Twenty-Four

That night I dreamed of Edward; but even the dream itself had the guilty atmosphere of a concession, as if my subconscious was manifesting a concern more dutiful than sincere. The dream took place in Franchise Farm, where I was attempting to show him the house and gardens and tell him about my new life. In the dream I kept forgetting him, like a reluctant promise or some newly acquired but not yet treasured object, and would experience rush after rush of anxiety as I remembered him and went chasing back to where I had left him. The most arduous aspect of this peculiar cycle was that each time I went back to retrieve him, finding him sitting helplessly as a baby in the room in which I had last deposited him, I was forced to explain to him not only what I had been doing, but how I had been able to do it. In other words, I was compelled to spell out to him over and over again the principles of will and motion, of which he did not seem to have the faintest idea. Each time he gazed at me with an expression of almost idiotic incomprehension, and I would feel a sense of intolerable pressure or enclosure; and each time, just as I felt this, I would remember something persistently forgotten and look down and see that he was sitting in a wheelchair.

Eventually this dream yielded to a mute, horrible nightmare in which I lay in my bed in the cottage while birds flew about the room, diving and pecking at my body; and I woke sweating and aching, with the sense of some imminent and unavoidable misfortune lying in wait for me. Outside the window the day wore the ripeness of mid-morning, and I could hear faint sounds of industry, the buzz of a farm engine, the distant murmur of can. A sharp consciousness of time scythed through these languorous apprehensions. I bolted up in panic, the bedclothes flying back, before remembering that Pamela had taken the boys to see Aunt Lilian and that I had the day to myself. There are few things more pleasant than this type of realization. One is acquitted not only of the original crime, but also of the suspicion that one might in fact under other circumstances have committed it and of the consequences of having done so; all of which, in addition, are washed away in a matter of moments by some anticipated pleasure. I have often wished that I could make other problems vanish in a similar way. Subsiding back into the pillows, I considered my twice-granted liberty and wondered what I would do with it. With Mr Madden occupied at the ferm, both the day and the rest of the property were mine. In my mind I toured its facilities, inspecting them anew with a proprietary gaze. I was surprised to find myself so shamelessly sizing up what did not belong to me, as if I had merely been awaiting the opportunity to do so. Dimly it struck me that this was a consequence of my disfranchised state. Those aspects of life I would previously have regarded with the mild eye of entitlement now lay tantalizingly under lock and key. With the door to privilege left ajar and unattended, I could no more prevent myself from trespassing beyond it than a pauper could stroll past a banknote lying on a pavement.

Having established what I intended to do, and made my dark commitment to it, I found myself in no hurry to begin. I lay for a further half-hour, only vaguely aware of the fugitive motion of thoughts flitting from beam to window sill; until the sudden consciousness of my empty mind seemed to invite more predatory notions. Quickly I got up to escape them; but crossing the room to find my clothes I glimpsed myself unexpectedly in the wardrobe mirror. Before I could fend it off, the sight had filled me with a sense of my destitution. Not being braced against my reflection, I had caught myself unawares and through this brief gap had seen the thing which presented the unfortunate but irremovable obstacle to my own disappearance. What surprised me was to realize how familiar this sight was. I had seen it on busy London pavements, amidst a throng of faces: one or two whose eyes looked out from their bodies as if from behind bars, as they paid for the crime of permitting their misfortunes to outweigh the space their flesh was entitled to occupy.

Some ten minutes later, I was washed and dressed, in the cut-off trousers — the only item, despite the freight of association they carried, that I did not now regard as a ‘uniform’ — and a short-sleeved T-shirt. I had become so used by now to the heat that I had stopped expecting it to change — indeed, I had forgotten the cadences of weather entirely. Even so, I was forcibly struck as I opened the cottage door by the charged fury of the day. Something brutal had invaded the air. It rushed at me, unnatural and molten, and as I stepped out into the garden I felt the agony of it on my skin, fighting it into my mouth and lungs. I was becoming frightened of the heat. It was out of control. What if it just kept getting hotter? What were we expected to do? I had a desire for some authority to whom I could report it, and wondered if I should go and tell Mr Madden. It was quite some time before the idiocy of this notion struck me. I set off down the garden in search of some shade. It was by now almost midday, and due to my oversleeping and general languor about the bedroom I had had no breakfast. The thought of food was repellent to me, but I felt this to be a trick of the heat and determined to go over to the house and find myself something to eat.

The back door was unlocked, and as I entered the dark passage its abrupt cool and shade caused my head to spin. For some seconds I was entirely blinded by the change, and I loomed dizzily, bumping against the cold, stony flanks of the walls. I was alert nonetheless for signs of Mrs Barker, for although I was not personally troubled by my intention of scavenging for food in the Maddens’ kitchen — given that they had not yet offered to advance me any money with which I might buy some myself, nor indeed appeared to have given the matter of what I was eating for breakfast much thought at all — I recognized it to be rather indefensible — or at least to require an energy to explain it which I did not in that moment possess — to others. The house was quiet, and I deduced from the pungent scent of polish which harnessed the air that Mrs Barker had completed her morning’s ministrations and gone home. Reassured, I stole up the passage and into the empty kitchen. The room was immaculate and oddly unwelcoming without its usual occupants. The neat arrangement of chairs and table, the scrubbed surfaces and gleaming floor, had a suspicious, superintendent air, as if they were witnessing my intrusion and would register any betrayal — a stray crumb or fingerprint — of it with disapproval.

With an artificially casual motion I strolled to the refrigerator and opened it. Its contents — carefully sealed dishes of leftovers, leafy fronds of salad, silver bricks of butter, packages of raw, pink meat, a number of expensive-looking jars of relish and suchlike — seemed both horribly private and utterly inaccessible. Any incursions there would, I felt sure, be complex both in execution and concealment. My appetite began to retreat. I made to shut the door again in defeat, but as I did so a large bottle lolled forward from the bottom shelf. Anxious that it would fall, I lunged down and caught it by the neck; at which point there was a terrific explosion which almost knocked me over with fright, and a geyser of foam spurted up from the mouth of the bottle and splattered over my legs. It all happened so quickly that I could not comprehend the nature of the disaster for some seconds. My heart thudded in my chest as the sour smell of wine gave off its terrible clue. I lifted the bottle with a trembling hand. The dark green glass with its elaborate gold label confirmed what I already suspected. It was champagne, of a variety, moreover, which I knew from my previous life to be inordinately expensive. A shred or two of foil clung to the bottle’s lip, from where its cork had evidently blasted as a result of my inadvertent agitations. I was surprised to see how much remained: despite my dripping legs, the bottle was still three-quarters full.

My first thought was to retrieve the cork and attempt somehow to stuff it back in. Still holding the bottle, I began a panicked search, which eventually turned up the missing cork, still in its wire cage and cloak of foil, lying on its side beneath the table. I saw immediately that I would not be able to force it back into the bottle unless I pared it down with a knife, for it had fattened into a stubbornly flared shape. Even were I to succeed by this method, I realized, the champagne would still be ruined by the loss of pressure.

Within a short time, I had considered all my options; which were, admittedly, limited. The first was that I succeeded somehow in acquiring a bottle of champagne to replace that which I had ruined. I had, at least, the time to attempt this, but with neither money nor transportation was restricted to the faint hope that this bottle would be available in Hilltop, and available, moreover, in such a way that I would be able to steal it. The second option was that I conserved the remains of the bottle as best I could and confessed everything to Pamela — offering, perhaps, a portion of my wages in recompense — when she returned. The third was that I drank the contents of the bottle and proceeded similarly.

While the first of these two alternatives would undoubtedly result in the champagne being wasted, my response to the crisis would at least constitute an albeit futile attempt at virtue. The other was more pragmatic but easily misconstrued: I could, for example, be accused of inventing the story of the exploding cork — which, when considered in that light, did seem rather incredible — to conceal my craven theft and consumption of the champagne. The former course, though illogical, was evidently preferable. At that moment, however, I had a vision of Pamela’s face as I apologetically handed her an almost full bottle of flat champagne. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just drink it, you silly girl?’ she cried.

Being by now familiar with the vicissitudes of Pamela’s sense of etiquette, my vision struck me as a likely one. Addled, I thought the matter through again. It grew more and more irresolvable with every approach, until my mind was so knotted that I was forced to sit down at the table with my head in my hands and my eyes closed. As I did so, a notion slyly snipped its way through the tangle. I opened my eyes and regarded it with awe. What if I merely absconded with the champagne and then denied having had any involvement with its disappearance? Pamela had successfully been duped over the bottle of gin. Why should she not be again? In fact, her memory of that episode could be the very thing to undermine any conviction she might have about the champagne having been in the refrigerator when she left the house that morning. The whole affair began to gather significance in my mind, until I became convinced that I had been intended to steal the gin as a sort of foundation for the grander theft I was now designing.

It is difficult to consign any event to mere regret, no matter how unpleasant; and the thought of making simultaneous use of two of the darker episodes in my sojourn in the country in this way gathered more appeal with every moment. What, indeed, could be more pleasant on my day off than to sit in the sun and drink champagne; a plan I would never have conceived myself, but on which fate had now kindly insisted by bringing about the accident in the kitchen?

Borne along on this highly coloured wave of logic, I picked up the bottle of champagne, down whose sides chilly beads of moisture now alluringly ran, and went with it out into the garden. From the cool of the kitchen I had momentarily forgotten the heat outside, and as it bludgeoned me along the gravel path I wavered in my resolve. How pleasant could it be, sitting out in the sun? I would have to force myself to do it; and there was no point in being degenerate if it required an effort to do so. I rounded the corner and emerged on the back lawn, where the garden table and chairs sat displayed in an inviting circle. As I saw them, I had an idea. Placing the champagne on the table, I turned and retraced my steps back up the path. I was looking for the umbrella, which I clearly remembered Mr Madden producing on more than one occasion and slotting into the hole at the centre of the table. He had certainly carried it from the side of the house, but it seemed unlikely to me that such an unwieldy object would be kept inside. I guessed that it was in the shed, the door to which stood just beyond the back door at the end of the path. This process of deduction was far from arduous, but nonetheless I was gratified when I opened the shed door to find the umbrella collapsed and leaning against the wall directly in front of me. It was a clumsy object to carry, and surprisingly heavy, but I succeeded after some manoeuvring in removing it from the shed, whereupon I began to drag it along the path back towards the lawn.

At that moment I heard a faint, rapid patter of footsteps ahead of me. Instinctively I stopped short; but before I could even register the sound, a great dog came hurtling around the corner of the house, and skidded to a halt at the sight of me, planting itself in my path. I say ‘a dog’; of course, I knew it to be Roy, but detached from his owners he lost the patina of tameness and reverted to the condition of a beast. He lifted his head menacingly, ears alert. A stone of fear dropped down the well of my body. I could see the white points of his teeth flashing in his drooling muzzle. His black belly heaved surreptitiously beneath his rigid frame. The heat rained down between us.

‘Hello, Roy,’ I said.

At the sound of my voice, a terrible snarl began to emanate from within the vice of his teeth. He drew back slightly in a tensile crouch, his eyes yellow with suspicion.

‘It’s all right, Roy,’ I shrilled. ‘It’s only me.’

In a flash he was galloping towards me with a volley of savage barking, moisture flying from his gnashing jaws, his shining, muscled body madly contorted in a frenzy of attack. With the dreaminess of terror I watched him come. He landed in front of me with a giant pounce, his legs splayed, writhing as if swarmed by invisible bees, and seemed to gather himself in for another leap. What happened next was so clearly a matter of instinct rather than calculation that I cannot blame myself for it. As he readied himself to spring on me, I remembered the umbrella in my hand. In sheer self-defence I thrust it forward like a lance, rooting myself behind it. The dog leaped; and as he flew through the air, a chasm of horror and disbelief yawned open between us. I met his eyes, suspended in the moment before his collision, and saw them register the canopied pole, the unavoidability of impact. The seconds slowed to a crawl; and then snapped back with a thud as his forehead hit the metal head of the umbrella. His body gave a great flip, tossing itself high in the air and landing with a smack on the gravel, where it lay inertly on its side.

I stood, unable to move, the umbrella still gripped in my hands, for some time. The black heap at my feet was motionless, gorgeous with glossy fur and plump flesh. Roy did not, in so far as I was able to see, appear to be breathing. My fear of him dead was triple that which I had had of him alive, even during his last, brutal moments. I could not bring myself even to take a step towards him, let alone try to help or resuscitate him. Through this curious, shameful terror I tried to assess the implications of this latest and most unfortunate development. To have murdered Roy, even in self-defence, presented extraordinary, perhaps insurmountable, social difficulties. How could the Maddens comprehend, let alone forgive, it? I felt a constriction in my chest and had a sudden sensation of faintness. My entire body, I realized, was trembling. The sun seared the top of my head. Fresh cascades of sweat erupted from my pores. I had to get into the shade and sit down.

Weakly I hoisted the umbrella onto my hip, and slowly, pressing myself as far into the hedge to my right as I could, began inching my way along the path. As soon as I was past the body, I broke into a crazed, awkward run and heard a preternatural shriek stream from my lips. I scarcely felt the weight of the umbrella as I dragged it, still running, around the corner and on to the back lawn. Somehow I managed to lift it above my head and slot it into its hole. The thud it made as it fell into place provided a ghastly echo of Roy’s collision. I wrestled, whimpering, with the sprung mechanism which raised the canopy, and finally collapsed into the white plastic garden chair beside me.

For a while my thoughts thrashed about, trying to find some escape from the unalterable fact of Roy’s demise. It was becoming steadily more clear, in the oblique fashion of something profoundly denied, that I was going to be unable to do anything about the situation. My hand sought the bottle of champagne which sat before me on the table. The reminder it provided of the insignificance of my earlier crime was comforting. I drank some of it down. It was warm, having been sitting in the sun, and my empty stomach shifted queasily. After a few mouthfuls I got up again and returned to the corner of the house, where it met the gravel path. Peering around it, I saw to my disappointment that the black heap remained exactly as it had been. So incredible did the episode seem to me, and so forceful was my denial of it, that I had honestly expected to discover that I had imagined it, or at least that it had been negated by some greater and more rational force. I was troubled by the abject appearance of the body. It looked smaller than it had before. Also, something had happened to Roy’s fur. It was suddenly all rough and mangy. I wondered if this were an effect of the strong sunlight, and whether I should cover him up lest he actually begin to decompose. I went and sat down again. There was nothing else, marooned as I was in misfortune, that I could do. Tears of frustration filled my eyes and I banged my hand on the table, causing the bottle to leap in the air so that I had to throw myself forward to catch it. I broke into a fresh sweat. My bare thighs slimed grotesquely against one another, and I could feel the lagoons of moisture beneath my arms. I raised the bottle of champagne to my lips and drank thirstily from it.

Just then, the inviting turquoise of the swimming pool on the other side of the lawn caught my eye. It may seem curious that the idea of swimming had not suggested itself until that moment; but the ceaseless postponements to which I had been subject over the course of the past week had instilled their discipline in me. I had become servile; and was by now so used to regarding the pool as a mere feature of the landscape that I had more or less forgotten its purpose. I gave a yelp of joy and rose from my chair. My current dishevelment, combined with all the memories of this longed-for but withheld pleasure that I had accrued, stirred up in me an almost painful feeling of anticipation. My skin prickled and gushed at the thought of its imminent immersion. My scalp burned, yearning for the cool water. Having thought of it, it seemed unbearable that I would have to delay swimming by even one more minute; and given that any expedition in search of a costume would necessitate an encounter with Roy, not to mention trespassing into the mysteries of Pamela’s bedroom, I decided to eschew the appropriate attire and swim in my underwear. Who, after all, would see me? And even if they did, it would be with accusations of a far more serious nature than indecency that they would regale me.

With this cavalier thought, I removed the cut-off trousers and T-shirt and streaked across the lawn towards the water. As I hovered for a few seconds on the tiled brink of the pool, my certainty that in a very short time I would be in it drove my longing to such a pitch that I thought I would burst. In that charged interval, every anxiety and regret seemed to rise from viscera to skin with the expectation of being discharged and washed away. A momentary despair, like pain felt through sleep to which one briefly awakes, suffused me; and then I jumped.

How can I convey the glory of that transition from desire to fulfilment that I felt as the water closed over my head? One minute I had been diffuse, soiled, porous; the next I was purged, contained, that which had been widely strewn and trampled folded and zipped back into the bag of my body. I stayed under for a long time, flapping sideways with my arms to prevent myself from floating, until the advancing cold of the water succeeded in quenching me to the core; and then I surfaced, sleek and gasping, to feel the sun brilliant on my wet face. The Maddens’ pool was smaller than it looked, unsuited to serious swimming, and so after gliding blissfully to and fro on my side for a while I lay on my back and felt the cool tide lap against my scalp. I glimpsed the deep blue of the sky rearing above me, closed my eyes as the watery cradle bore my weight. The thread of my time in the country seemed all at once to snap, and I drifted away from the closely knitted stump of the past week, up to some higher region from where all the things of life appeared visible but remote, as the swimming-pool floor was to me now.

Presently, as is in the nature of even the most pleasurable experiences, I felt the compulsion to conclude my swim; if only so that I could swim again at some future point. I heaved myself dripping over the side of the pool and made my way back across the lawn. Roy was as I had left him when I went to the side of the house to look. A blackbird was pecking at the gravel beside his body. I felt a sense of frustration at the resilience of this obstacle to my happiness, for again I had entertained the curious hope that the incident would have been erased, and indeed might still be if I waited long enough. Returning to the table, I sat down and drank some more of the warm champagne. The taste of it in my mouth released a memory, which moved elusively around my thoughts, just out of reach. Even in the shade, I was already beginning to get hot again. The sun had moved a considerable way to the left, so that blocks of shadow were advancing across the lawn, but its heat did not appear to have abated. I was dimly aware of my strange appearance, which was mostly owing to the extreme variations in skin colour on different parts of my body, but seemed exacerbated by the peculiar sight of my underwear in such a public setting. Anxieties began to stir and scuttle about my mind. I wondered what time it was and when Pamela would appear, whether I should return the umbrella to the shed immediately so that I would not forget to do so later, what I should do about Roy, how I was to manage the lesser concealment of the champagne; until all in all I began to feel fraught with worry, adding the curdling of my afternoon idyll to my catalogue of problems.

It required a considerable effort of will to drive these concerns from my mind, for their power was merely enhanced by the fact that I recognized the pattern of their invasion from my previous life and regarded it with fear. It was precisely to escape this kind of anxiety that I had come to the country in the first place. I determined to think about nothing whatsoever until I had at least had another swim. Drinking down the last of the champagne, which by now tasted really rather disgusting, I got unsteadily to my feet and made my way across the lawn to the pool. The combination of alcohol and heat immediately had a stunning effect on me, and I stood swaying by the side of the pool for some time, my toes gripping the edge to prevent myself falling in. The sun pounded on my shoulders and the back of my neck. I was beginning to feel distinctly unwell. My eyes sought some object on which to focus, but when I looked up the garden seemed to take a great tilt. I staggered to one side, the blood pounding in my ears, the fuzzy outlines of trees spinning about me, and everything seemed suddenly to rush upwards at an impossible speed as I lost my balance and plunged head-first into the water.

I have very little recollection of what happened next, and believe I must in fact have fainted as I fell. I tumbled down what seemed to be a very long way, and then met with something hard which I dimly understood to be the bottom of the pool. I could only have stayed there a few seconds, but the interlude had the framework of a dream, in which everything real is replaced by an entire and quite illusory memory designed to support the thing experienced. It seemed to me, in other words, that I had always lain at the bottom of the pool: its profound silence was the sound of myself, its lovely columns of watered sunlight utterly familiar. On and on I lay; until suddenly I was rushing upwards, and was jerked forcefully from the water by something clamped painfully around the tops of my arms. I could hear a woman’s voice saying ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ over and over; but again, in this dream-state, it seemed to me that she had always been saying that.

At the sound of the woman’s voice, in any case, something peculiar happened. I was in one way quite aware of it, and yet at the same time it was remote and beyond my control. It was as if I were on a train, watching the landscape fly past; and just as the appearance of houses and telegraph poles might have told me that I was about to arrive at my station, so the woman’s voice seemed to signal that I was going to wake up. But although the sound itself was clear, the words immediately sent my train lurching off course; so that suddenly I found myself speeding far away from where I wanted to go, on and on with everything around me a blur, until gradually, after some considerable time, it began to slow down. I felt the heat pulsing on my head and the pressure of something hard pushing against my stomach. Far away I could hear the sound of traffic, its faint cries rising discordantly from the steady buzz. Someone was saying ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’; but it was a man’s voice this time, which for a while seemed to have nothing to do with me. Presently I realized that it was Edward’s voice, and he kept saying it over and over again; so many times, really, that eventually I wanted to tell him just to be quiet and go away. It was impossible for me to do this, however. My physical predicament would not allow for it. I appeared to be upside-down, and even though I was too frightened to open my eyes my gradual recollection of events, as well as the sound of traffic from far, far below, told me that I was very high up and could fall at any moment.

I remembered that I had been standing on the balcony of our hotel room, looking down at the busy street several storeys below. In my mind I appeared to be standing there again. The noise filled my head like the sound of an argument. The sun hammered on my shoulders. Edward wasn’t there. I remembered then that he had gone out on some forgotten business, but my thoughts were dark with the threat of his return. This was my honeymoon, perhaps the third or fourth day of it, and the fact of my marriage still clung to me like an ugly, ill-fitting suit. I had woken each morning with the hope that it would have softened, loosened, accommodated me; but its tight, itchy grip, the shame of it, was unrelenting. I knew myself to be in the wrong place as surely as if I were looking at it on a map; and my head was filled only with panicked thoughts of escape and extrication, which as yet had found no outlet. It was with these thoughts that I leaned over the iron railing of the balcony. The deep, foreign chasm with its indifferent swarm of traffic opened itself to me with the promise of my own insignificance. I realized that there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It wasn’t that I liked it here; merely that at the invitation of this cruel vista I had searched, frenzied, for a sense of my own belonging, for my home, for somewhere I might be wanted more, and found nothing. There was no secret comfort, no lodestar, in my empty heart. I was merely lodged at the inconvenient junction — this small, crumbling balcony — between a past I had been glad to leave and a future whose alien prospect seemed to provide the proof that I would never visit it. It was at this moment, in my high, hot imprisonment, that I wanted to fly; that I knew it, indeed, to be my only course. And it was at this moment that I understood, as if I had conducted a scientific experiment, that the weight of my life would not be enough to stop me.

In the event, the iron railing of the balcony saved what I had become convinced I did not want; for as I stood there, the shock of my discovery combined with the strong sunlight to bring about a sudden giddiness and I appeared briefly to faint. When I came to, with the sound of Edward’s monotonous exclamation in my ears, I was collapsed in a kind of V over the balustrade, which, had it given way, would certainly have resulted in my death.

How long this unfortunate recollection endured I could not say. After I had gone through it in my mind, I was awash with strong emotions, which sluiced over me in inarticulate waves. Everything became very confused; but presently I began to come to my senses there in the garden of Franchise Farm. My eyes were closed, but I felt the warm, prickly grass beneath my back and legs and realized that I was lying down.

‘She’s still unconscious,’ said a man’s voice. ‘I think she’ll be all right, though.’

I opened my eyes a crack. The man was crouched beside me. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and was looking away so that I couldn’t see his face.

‘Are you sure we shouldn’t call an ambulance?’ said the woman, whom I couldn’t see without moving my head. She sounded young and was well-spoken.

‘Maybe. I don’t know. She vomited a lot of water, which is the main thing.’

I snapped my eyes shut again, fully alert now.

‘Perhaps she banged her head.’

‘Might have. Doesn’t look like it. I’m sure she’ll wake up in a minute.’

‘God, where on earth is Daddy?’ cried the woman impatiently. ‘He’s never around when you need him! I don’t even know who she is or anything.’

‘She’s probably his mistress,’ said the man with a laugh. ‘Running around the place in her knickers.’

I felt a blush begin to suffuse my cheeks. Now I dared not open my eyes, and began wondering how long I could reasonably prolong my coma.

‘Mark!’ said the woman reproachfully. I could hear a smile in her voice. ‘Thank God we were here to pull her out, though. A minute later and she’d have drowned.’

‘She was pretty lucky.’

The woman giggled suddenly. ‘She does look terribly odd. Look, I’m just going to run back over to the house and make sure he hasn’t slipped in the front way.’

‘OK.’

There was silence. The man cleared his throat once or twice beside me. I was beginning to feel an uncontrollable desire to move. The sun was burning my face.

‘Mark!’ shouted the woman just then, from a distance. ‘Look at this!’

‘Jesus!’ he said after a pause. ‘That explains that, then. She must have been pissed. No wonder she’s out cold.’

‘I’ve just realized,’ said the woman, closer now. ‘She must be Martin’s au pair. What a scandal! Mummy’ll be furious.’

I opened my eyes. The woman — girl, really — was standing above me to my left. She wore a short red dress with no sleeves.

‘Oh look!’ she said, meeting my eyes, ‘She’s waking up! Hel-lo.’ She knelt down beside me, suddenly solicitous, and put her hand on my arm. ‘How are you feeling? You nearly drowned, you know.’

I couldn’t take my eyes from her face. She was around my own age and quite beautiful, dark and slender with a mass of black ringlets. Her expression was tender. Around her neck was a delicate gold chain. I don’t think I have ever hated anyone in my life as much as I hated this girl in that moment.

‘Welcome back!’ said the man cheerfully, kneeling down and putting his arm affectionately around her brown shoulders.

As soon as I saw his face, I knew that everything was over. I sat up abruptly and our eyes met.

‘Stella?’ he said.