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  ‘You must let her stay here, Louise,’ Miriam said firmly. ‘She told me something in confidence which I can’t tell you, but you really do have to let her stay here.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Louise demanded. ‘She’s going as soon as the gear box is fixed. That’s the agreement.’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘I want you to promise me that you’ll let her stay. I promise you she’ll not be here longer than a month. I give you my word, Louise. It’s just a month.’

  Louise put their own plates down and plonked salt and pepper in the middle of the table. She poured more wine. She looked sulky. ‘You wouldn’t be so keen if it was your garden.’

  ‘I probably wouldn’t,’ Miriam admitted honestly. ‘But she’s where she wants to be. Listen, I’m making arrangements for her accommodation. If the problem is not resolved in a month I’ll find her a place in the h …’

  ‘A place in the h …?’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘I really can’t say. But I promise you that she won’t be with you for more than a month.’

  Louise sighed. ‘I don’t want her. I don’t see why I should have her.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got her. Just put up with her for a month. Twenty-eight days. It’s not much to ask. And it’s not as if you do a lot for the homeless.’

  ‘All right,’ Louise conceded grudgingly. ‘But she’s to go in a month without fail. And if anyone tries to join her –’ Louise was thinking about Captain Frome’s warning of family camps. ‘If anyone tries to join her I’ll have them all moved on.’

  ‘She doesn’t have anyone travelling with her. She specifically told me that she wanted to be here on her own.’

  ‘All right then.’

  The two women ate in silence.

  ‘She told me a funny thing,’ Miriam said. ‘She told me I should change my own life, look at my own backyard.’

  Louise glanced up, a forkful of casserole poised.

  ‘It’s true,’ Miriam said. ‘I spend all my life organising other people and I never look at what I’m doing. At where we live. At Toby and me.’

  ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you?’ Louise had no false delicacy warning her not to tread in difficult areas. Miriam had shared the difficulties of her relationship with Toby from the very beginning. Louise’s intimacy with them both was reinforced by the fact that she always heard of every marital squabble from both sides. On many occasions she had acted as unpaid (and untrained) counsellor, explaining Miriam’s feelings to Toby and vice versa. That her insight into Toby’s feelings came from her love affair with him did not seem, to Louise, to disqualify her from taking a neutral viewpoint. And indeed, Miriam had always found Louise supportive and sympathetic. There were few things Louise enjoyed more than dissecting her lover’s psychology with his wife.

  ‘We’re all right,’ Miriam agreed. ‘But nothing more than all right. We share a house. We often eat together. We sleep in the same bed. Sometimes we make love. It’s OK but you couldn’t say it was wildly exciting. We’re not close any more, if you know what I mean.’

  Louise nodded encouragingly. ‘Is he withdrawn?’

  ‘Not him,’ Miriam said. ‘It’s me. I can’t even tell you why. I’m really busy all the time, and the work I do – well, of course it’s depressing. I’m home after him in the evening and then I spend an hour on the telephone. I’m out of the house before him in the morning. We saw more of each other when you were there, actually. We always had dinner together then.’

  Louise hid her pleasure. ‘Don’t the two of you eat with Hugh?’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘Toby doesn’t cook like he used to,’ she said. ‘Last time he did a proper meal was when you came.’

  Louise nodded her head, looking concerned but feeling exultant. It was as she had thought. The marriage was a three-way relationship. With her withdrawal everything had changed. She felt a thrilling desire to jiggle the pillars of the temple like an experimental Samson and see if the whole thing came down.

  ‘If you could have anything you wanted,’ she asked, invoking the old game they used to play when they were undergraduates and thought that everything was possible, ‘anything in the world, what would it be?’

  Miriam put her fork on her plate and rested her chin on her hands. For a moment she did not look like Miriam, thirty years old and stuck in a rut of social work and unsocial hours. She smiled. ‘I’d buy a bike,’ she said. ‘A mountain bike with loads of fancy gears and I’d pack a bag, and I’d take the ferry to Europe and I’d bike all around the world. Everywhere it was sunny. And I’d never come home again.’

  Louise smiled indulgently. ‘Lovely,’ she said.

  Saturday

  THE PHONE RANG ABRUPTLY on Saturday morning, jerking Louise from sleep. She could hear Miriam downstairs, moving around the kitchen, making coffee and toast. Miriam never slept late any more, she was out of practice. Her conscience would wake her from the deepest, most restful sleep and remind her of work she had left unfinished: work which never could be finished while men and women treated each other with contempt.

  ‘Frome here,’ the Captain’s upper-class authoritative voice boomed in Louise’s ear. ‘Sorry to call so early, I had some news I thought I should tell you.’

  ‘Oh yes, Captain Frome,’ Louise said, sitting upright and rubbing her face into wakefulness.

  ‘We had the community policeman at the Parish Council meeting last night. It seems that your old lady may be joined by some friends, just as I thought. We all felt you should be warned.’

  Louise raised herself in bed and looked anxiously out of the window. The blue van was still solitary in the orchard. The dog dozed at the steps. A small pile of wood, dead branches from trees, had appeared at the other side of the steps. Hazy violet woodsmoke shimmered from the aluminium chimney. Louise could smell the smoke, and behind the smoke the delicious smell of bacon frying. ‘Friends?’

  ‘There’s some kind of gang of travellers – the usual sort of thing. Apparently they’re headed our way. The police are keeping a general eye on things. But I told the community policeman about your old lady. He thought she might be some kind of advance guard, to soften up the do-gooders. I said you were taking a proper attitude to it. I said you were moving her on.’

  ‘I am,’ Louise assured him hastily. ‘In a month. I’ve said she could have a month.’

  ‘I thought you said she would be gone by June?’

  ‘I did … er … her plans have changed.’

  ‘Well, they’ll be here before then!’ the Captain exclaimed. ‘They’ll be here within days! The neighbourhood watch are leafleting houses, advising people to lock up their fields and paddocks. You’d be well advised to move her on and get that fence of yours repaired before they’re all camped in your orchard.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Louise said wearily.

  ‘D’you want me to come around and sort it out?’ the Captain demanded, trying to conceal his eagerness.

  ‘No, no! Thank you, but no. I have a friend, a social worker, she can find the old lady somewhere to go. She said she had a place for her. She’s staying with me. She’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Social worker, eh? I’d have thought you’d have done better with a firm word from me.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ Louise said distractedly. ‘But I really think … I’ll telephone if I need you, if I may.’

  ‘Very well, very well,’ the Captain said rather distantly. ‘See what you can do. The whole Parish Council is concerned at the line you’re taking. You don’t want to be seen letting the side down now, do you?’

  ‘No! Of course not.’

  ‘Newcomers to the country always have to be particularly careful,’ he advised kindly. ‘You think you’re doing the right thing but in fact you’re putting a lot of backs up. Take my word for it. Let’s do this as it’s always been done and get the gypsies moved on.’

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ Louise responded weakly. ‘Goodbye.’

  Miriam tapped on the door and came into the room,