Max Bingley watched the raindrops racing one another down his kitchen window, pushing the tension and anxiety out of his mind. He was alone at Willow Cottage this Saturday morning. Stella had gone to stay with her sister in Suffolk, ostensibly a painting trip, but they both knew it was more than that. She needed some time away from him, away from Fittlescombe and the school and the cottage and their life together. Or, as she would put it, his life.
‘I feel like a guest here,’ Stella told Max the day before she left. ‘Like a visitor in my own marriage.’ It hadn’t been said in anger. One of the things Max loved most about Stella was her calm, even temperament. Theirs was a relationship that had begun quietly and without drama. If it ended, he hoped and believed it would end the same way. Not much of a silver lining, perhaps. But where there had been no great, passionate love, at least there could be no agonizing, passionate parting. Wagner’s The Valkyrie was on Radio 3, its sweeping, triumphant refrain filling the tiny cottage with sound. Perhaps, if I’d never been married to Susie, Stella and I could have worked. But having tasted real love, no imitation would do. Max and Susie had both adored their opera. Rosie had been conceived to Wagner, if Max remembered correctly. Stella had tried to take an interest for his sake, but it was obvious opera didn’t move her. When he’d taken her to Covent Garden to hear the sublime John Tomlinson as Hagen, Max had turned to Stella at the end of the G?tterd?mmerung, tears of emotion streaming down his face, only to find her fast asleep and snoring beside him.
He couldn’t blame her for not being Susie. Stella was a wonderful, talented woman in her own right. Max respected her as much as anyone he’d ever met. The problem was he wasn’t in love with her, nor she with him. Not really. They’d married to save themselves from loneliness, and because Max’s daughters had so wanted them to. But the irony was they both felt lonelier now than they had before. Something had to change.
The knock on Max’s kitchen door was so faint at first that he didn’t hear it over the radio. It soon grew louder, however, an insistent banging that demanded an answer. Biting back his irritation – as headmaster of a village primary school, one was always on duty – Max turned down the Wagner and opened the door.
‘Angela!’
His irritated frown vanished instantly.
‘Come in, come in! You look like a drowned rat.’
This wasn’t true, of course, and Max instantly regretted the turn of phrase. Mrs Cranley looked as beautiful as ever, her skin sparkling wet beneath a mask of raindrops and her blonde hair sticking to her cheeks and neck like a mermaid’s tresses. She was wearing a scruffy old pair of corduroy gardening trousers and an army green macintosh coat that seemed to have done little to protect her from the elements on this foul, rainy morning. But even in her bedraggled state she was radiant, her smile lighting up the room and Max’s heart in the same, glorious instant.
‘Thanks.’ She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. ‘Sorry to drip all over your floor. I wanted some advice.’
‘Of course, any time. And don’t mind my floor, it could do with a wash.’ Taking her wet coat he dashed into the downstairs loo for a towel. ‘Here. You can dry yourself off with this.’
Angela took it gratefully, rubbing her wet hair beside the Aga.
‘I thought you’d be packing,’ said Max, filling an ancient cast-iron kettle and putting it on the hot ring of the Aga to boil. ‘The whole village is agog about the new tenants taking over Furlings. Rumour has it you’ve let it to some pop star. Please tell me that’s wide of the mark.’
‘Actually, that’s what I came to talk to you about,’ said Angela. She pulled a letter out of her trouser pocket, carefully wrapped in a clear plastic sandwich bag to protect it from the rain. ‘This came this morning. I’d like your opinion.’
Max took the letter and read it, slowly.
‘But, that’s wonderful!’ he said to Angela. ‘You’ve been accepted onto a Masters course in art history. The department at Sussex University is one of the best in the country. Congratulations!’
‘Thank you.’ Angela smiled shyly. ‘It’s rather a long commute from New York, though.’
‘Ah.’ Max put the letter down on the table. ‘Yes.’ He thought for a moment. Then, trying his best to sound upbeat, he said, ‘Perhaps you can transfer to a US college? A lot of the universities have reciprocal arrangements these days. The main thing is that you’re doing something for yourself. Something unconnected to Brett or the children. You deserve that, Angela.’
The kettle started to boil, a loud hissing sound that made them both jump. Max made tea and cut the last of Stella’s home-made fruitcake into slices. He cleared a space at the table amidst the paintbrushes and newspaper supplements and they both sat down.
‘I don’t want to go,’ Angela blurted. ‘I … I think I’ve changed my mind.’