THE FIRST THING OLIVE SAW was the sardine tin, glinting in the grass. It had clearly blown from inside the hut, and now rested several metres from where Olive stood. She switched off the torch and watched the shepherd’s hut. A faint light was showing between a hewn--out window hole and a piece of flapping oilskin. Olive crept nearer. She could hear a voice, a low murmur – Isaac’s voice. Teresa had not been lying to her, and her heart rose with joy to know he was here, and she ran forward.
But then she heard a woman’s laugh. She recognized it. She thought she was going to choke. Her throat tightened, her tongue felt too big at the back of her mouth You don’t know who else is out there.
A noise, a deep sigh, another and another from inside the shepherd’s hut. and finally Olive understood what Teresa had meant, what she had squirmed to say, resisting the outright truth, sending her here so she could see it for herself. She understood it, even as she couldn’t bear to. And there it came again – regular, deep, and unbearable; an expression of pure pleasure. As the universe above Olive’s head deepened in its darkness, she fixed her fingers on the pistol and pushed the door.
23
Sarah screamed, pushing back against the wall. ‘No dispares!’ shouted Isaac. Don’t shoot!
Olive lifted the lantern that was on the floor. Isaac and her mother were both naked, their limbs still intertwined. Sarah twisted her body away in a panic, and Olive saw the dome of her stomach clearly risen with a child.
‘Olive,’ said her mother, dumb with shock. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’
They stared at each other. Seconds passed that felt like hours. ‘Does Daddy know?’ Olive eventually said, her voice a husk, the sound robotic. ‘Does Daddy know?’
Sarah scrambled to sit up, clutching Isaac’s coat to her chest, reaching for her trousers. ‘Liv. Livvi. Put the gun down.’
Olive kept the barrel up in the direction of her mother. ‘Does he know?’
‘He doesn’t know,’ said Sarah gasping. ‘Put that down, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Is it yours?’ Olive asked Isaac. ‘Is the baby yours?’
‘It’s not his,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘It’s not.’
Isaac got to his feet. ‘Olive,’ he said gently. ‘Put the gun down. No one needs to be hurt.’
Olive felt a roaring in her ears. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why?’ The question rose and rose against the night, turning into a shout.
‘Ssssh!’ Isaac hissed. ‘Keep quiet.’
‘You hypocrite. All those words about going north, about fighting for your country, and you’re less than a mile away, here, with her—-’ Olive put her hand on her mouth, fighting back the sob that was threatening.
‘Livvi,’ said Sarah.
‘Don’t you Livvi me. Don’t fool yourself it could ever be love with her, Isaac. Is it yours? Is that baby yours?’
The look that passed between Sarah and Isaac was almost worse to Olive than discovering them. The intimacy of it, the fluency, the complicity.
‘How long have you – when did it start? What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I—-’
Isaac began to come towards her. ‘Calm down, Olive. Please. I can explain—-’
As he approached, Olive fired a shot through the thatch of the roof. ‘Mierda!’ he shouted. ‘Shit! Do you want to get us killed? Now every gang out there will know that someone is here.’
Sarah let out a low moan and began scrabbling around in the dark for the rest of her clothes. ‘I have to go. I have to go,’ she kept repeating. ‘He’ll be back.’
‘You snake,’ said Olive.
Sarah looked up at her. ‘I’m no snake.’
‘Aren’t you? I’d say you are. I never want to speak to you again.’
‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Isaac.
‘How else do you think?’
‘My sister.’
Sarah groaned. Olive closed her eyes, as if to blot out the scene before her.
‘How long has Teresa known about this?’ whispered Sarah.
‘I don’t know,’ said Olive, and it was the truth. Had Teresa’s silence until now been out of protection, or something else – the power of knowing something that Olive did not? Had they all been laughing at her, so in love with her Boris Mon--Amour? Better to have kept Isaac a figure in a book, a man in her imagination, than the monster she had created in real life. She could hear one of the last things Teresa had said to her, up in the attic: Ask my brother what it means to be in love. How could Teresa do this to her?
‘Olive,’ said Sarah, more in control now she was fully dressed. ‘I know it’s not always been easy—-’
‘Oh, God. No, I don’t want to hear it.’
‘I never meant to hurt you.’
‘And yet you always do.’
Sarah got to her feet and faced her daughter. ‘Do you think you’re the only one who’s lonely? The only one who suffers?’
‘I don’t care about your loneliness. You’re married. To my father.’
‘And do you think it’s easy, being married to him?’
‘Shut up. Shut up.’
Isaac was in the corner, hastily putting on his clothes, his face darting between the women with an expression of misery.
‘Isaac isn’t yours, Olive, no more than he’s mine,’ Sarah said.
‘He is mine – we’ve – what are you going to tell Daddy? He won’t take you back.’
Sarah laughed. ‘I never knew you were so old--fashioned.’
‘Old--fashioned?’
‘Do you think his paintings pay for all this, Liv? The finca, our travel, our lives? It’s not a question of “taking me back”. One day, Olive, you’ll understand what a mess everyone makes of their life. I don’t know a single -couple who hasn’t had their problems. Marriage is long, you know—-’
‘Stop. I don’t care. When did you first seduce Isaac?’
‘Darling, it was the other way round. In fact, not long after Daddy bought Isaac’s first painting.’
‘Just get out,’ said Olive.
SARAH BEGAN TO WALK OUT of the hut with all the insouciance of leaving a Mayfair restaurant, but she faltered at the dark. ‘I can’t see anything thing. I’ll get lost,’ she said.
‘I’m sure you know the way by now. Watch out for the wolves.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ said Isaac.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Olive said, lifting the pistol in Isaac’s direction.
‘Olive, you’re being so bloody foolish,’ said Sarah.
‘Just go.’