These past days, she dressed herself from the same collection of men’s clothes she’d taken from the previous house, plus Miss Oliver’s warm and well-worn coat. Vanity, gone. She still wore her pearl necklace, it had belonged to her mother, but her pearl ring she had pushed to the back of an empty drawer in the servants’ room where she was bunking. This morning she had glanced at herself in the mirror, hair unwashed, man’s clothing, and thought she could walk right by nearly any of her acquaintances and only those who knew her best would recognize her. And who were those people who knew her best? She couldn’t come up with a single person, not even Honoria – a paid companion, if she was honest – who understood her as well, or with whom she had such ease, as the Irishman who’d spirited her away.
Even in this house, large as it was, Agatha could hear Finbarr’s nightmares. Every night since they’d run off together, until Nan showed up, she had left her own bed to place her hands on his shoulders. Finbarr, darling, wake up. All at once his eyes would open, taking her in, and breathing in gratitude. Twice he’d put his arms around her and held her close. It was a shock to find herself clasped against him and at the same time it wasn’t. She didn’t believe in reincarnation but if she did, she would have thought they’d known each other, Finbarr and she, in a previous life. An unlikely pair in theory but in practice perfectly likely. It made her realize how large her husband had loomed. He had somehow become to her the face of all men, and the way he looked upon her reflected how she appeared to all men. Finbarr represented an entirely different species, and here she had fallen into this strange but perfectly natural step with him.
Which meant that she could fall in step with another. Her mother wouldn’t have liked the thought of her married to a police inspector. But her mother wasn’t here to object, was she? Agatha found herself laughing – horrifying and such a relief, to laugh so quickly on the heels of remembering her mother’s death.
‘Something funny?’
It was me, standing there in the doorway. Flushed from lovemaking, my hair amiss, my chin raised in near defiance. The sight of me hardly moved her at all. She didn’t envy me, or want to hurt me. She didn’t even find my presence a particular intrusion. Another fugitive. So long as I agreed to keep my silence, I might as well come aboard. She seemed to have forgotten already – the mission for which Finbarr had enjoined her.
‘Hello, Nan,’ she said.
‘Hello, Mrs Christie.’
I didn’t feel as sanguine about her, in this moment, as she did about me. It made me furious somehow. To see her at the servants’ table. She who’d grown up in cavernous houses that had names. Whose idea of financial hardship was a hundred pounds a year for doing nothing. A five-room flat with a butler and a maid. A life of wanting things – a writing career, a husband, a child – and having them delivered to her, as if the wanting naturally equalled the having. For the sake of a woman like her a hundred more always suffered.
‘Come now,’ she said. I couldn’t account for her cheery disposition. ‘Call me Agatha, would you. Surely at this point we can dispense with formality. Both of us on the lam.’
‘I’m not on the lam. I’m on holiday.’
‘It’s rather an unusual holiday. I wonder what Archie would say about it?’ When I didn’t answer she said, ‘There. I knew you didn’t love him.’
I sat down at the table as Agatha stood to get another teacup. ‘I’m afraid there’s no milk,’ she said, pouring for me.
‘I don’t suppose Archie would have any right to say anything about it, would he? Not yet.’
‘True enough.’ She could have told me about her last night with Archie but she didn’t. It was the first time she and I had been together since the artifice had finally lifted for good. I suppose she liked having a bit of her own artifice. I expected her to start straight in on demands that I relinquish Archie but she just sat there, sipping tea, watching me do the same. It softened me towards her somehow. Perhaps if I didn’t begrudge her good fortune, I’d finally be due some of my own.
‘What are the provisions like here?’ I asked. ‘Would they last a while?’
‘There’s tinned fruit. Tinned tongue and kippers. Sardines. Loads of wine, if that’s what you’re about. Finbarr’s been on some scavenges in town for fresh food. Apples and cheese. We have enough to last a while. But not forever, of course. And we don’t know when the proper owners will return.’
‘It doesn’t look like they intend to any time soon, does it?’
‘No. But there’s no predicting what people will do.’
‘There’s a part of me,’ I confided, ‘that could just go upstairs. Never eat or drink again. Wither away to a skeleton in his arms.’
‘Like Elvira Madigan and Sixten Sparre? Terrible story. If we could talk to their ghosts, I’m sure they’d tell us it hadn’t been at all worth it. I never did go in much for romances. Especially not the tragic ones.’
‘Neither did I,’ I lied. If the idea of me dead in Finbarr’s arms – dead anywhere – pleased her, paving the road back to her husband, her face did not betray it.
‘Finbarr tells me you want to be a writer.’
‘Does he?’ How humiliating. I wondered what else he’d told her. ‘That used to be true, I suppose.’
Finbarr bustled in just then. Full of business and energy. ‘Good morning, Agatha,’ he said, as if they were absolute equals, the best of friends.
‘Good morning, dear Finbarr,’ she said with authentic warmth, and I remembered how everyone always loved him. I used to think it was because of his insistent happiness. But now that was gone and still the love he inspired remained.
Several minutes of domestic exchanges transpired. Finbarr produced a loaf of bread from the pantry, and Agatha found some marmalade and poured him some tea. It was a remarkable thing to witness. I sat, not helping, and eventually food was placed before me.
‘Have you heard from our man, then?’ Agatha asked me, when all was settled again.
I glanced at Finbarr, whose face refused to darken, or to acknowledge anyone else as my man.
‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Not for days. He doesn’t know where I am.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘He’s terribly worried about you,’ I said.
‘How do you know, if you haven’t heard from him?’
‘Well, he was, last time we spoke.’
‘I might have considered that good news a few days ago. Now I find myself not much caring, if I’m to be honest.’
I had no way of knowing the smile on her face owed itself at least in part to last night’s kiss with Chilton. I only thought, Poor Archie. Last week with two women intent on his attentions, this week with none.
‘Finbarr has some things he’d like me to say to you,’ said Agatha.
‘Does he?’
‘Before I begin, I’d like to remind you. In my whole life no one’s hurt me as much as you have.’
Partly because I couldn’t bear Finbarr watching this interaction, I brought my hands up to cover my face. Agatha reached across the table and pulled them away. ‘We’re not going to do that,’ she said. ‘We’re not going to have me comforting you for all the wrongs you’ve done me.’
I looked at Finbarr. He had his eyes focused on Agatha, counting on her to say what he wanted and set everything to right.
‘There’ve been some wrongs done to me as well.’ I knew my voice sounded ominous but I didn’t care. ‘I lost something much more valuable than a husband.’