Later that same afternoon, Max Bingley was enjoying the drive back from Arundel. He’d been at an NUT conference, some nonsense about opting out of OFSTED reports. It had rained all day while Max was stuck inside, listening to a bunch of dreary, leftie graduate teachers bemoaning the state of the education system. But now that he was on his way home, free at last, the grey skies had miraculously cleared, and the still-wet fields around him glistened like emeralds beneath a bright September sun. The entire landscape seemed fresh and alive after the rains, the flint cottages of the villages washed clean, and even the winding lanes gleaming black, like newly poured rubber.
Max looked at his watch. It was still only four thirty, and he had no particular reason to rush home to Fittlescombe, other than a pile of SATs marking that could definitely wait till the weekend. On a whim, he turned left at a wooden sign for Alfriston, and soon found himself parking his Mini Cooper by the green and stretching his long legs in one of England’s prettiest villages.
Max hadn’t been here for years, not since he was a young married man and he had brought his girls to Drusilla’s zoo nearby. Happily the village hadn’t changed much. It was a more twee, slightly more touristy version of Fittlescombe, but deeply charming nonetheless, with its beamed Tudor sweet shop full of glass bottles stuffed with old-fashioned gobstoppers and sherbet saucers, its second-hand book shop and its wisteria-clad coaching inn, The George. It was the latter that called to Max, with its open front door, through which could be glimpsed both the bar and a pretty beer garden beyond. After the unrelenting tedium of today’s conference, Max reckoned he deserved a pint at the very least. Taking off his jacket, he sauntered inside.
‘What can I get you?’
The barman was young and ruddy-cheeked, a typical Sussex farm boy. Max cast his eye over the list of local ales written up on the chalkboard behind him when he suddenly froze. There, sitting a few tables away in a floaty blue dress with flowers printed on it – white daisies – and her blonde hair loose to her shoulders, was Angela Cranley. Max’s first thought, other than surprise at seeing her here, was how young Angela looked, and how happy. Moments later he saw why. A man – a young, handsome man – returned to the table carrying two glasses of wine.
Max felt as if he were watching a scene from a movie. The tableau only lasted a few seconds. The man sitting down and smiling, making a joke that had Angela rocking back in her chair with mirth. They hadn’t kissed or touched one another, but it was clear from their body language that there was a powerful attraction between them. This was a side to Angela Cranley that Max Bingley had not known existed.
An affair! Who would have thought it?
In those few seconds, Max felt all manner of things. Happiness, to see such a lovely, downtrodden woman looking happy for once; nostalgia, for his own days of passion – how very long ago they seemed now. And an uncomfortable, unwelcome emotion that he was loath to acknowledge, but at the same time couldn’t deny: envy. Max envied the young man at Angela’s table, bitterly. He wanted to be the one to make Angela smile that youthful, pretty, carefree smile. He wanted to be the one to rescue her from her ghastly husband and her lonely life, shut up at Furlings like the Lady of Shallot. Before he’d had a chance to delve deeper into any one of these emotions, Angela turned and saw him. The colour drained from her face.
‘Mate?’ The barman broke Max’s reverie. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Oh, erm … a pale ale please,’ said Max. Angela said something to her companion, who looked at Max with ill-concealed irritation. Seconds later, they both made a hurried exit.
Max felt awful. He’d clearly intruded on a private moment. Entirely accidentally, of course. But he felt guilty all the same, as if he were some sort of revolting old peeping Tom.
His beer arrived. He drank it gloomily and had almost finished when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
‘Hello.’ Angela was alone. She still looked pale, although not quite as horrified as she had done when she first saw him. ‘I suppose I owe you an explanation.’
‘My dear Mrs Cranley …’
‘Angela.’
‘Angela. You owe me nothing of the kind. I’m mortified to have intruded.’
‘You didn’t,’ said Angela, with a shy smile. ‘Shall we go outside?’
The beer garden at the back of the pub was completely deserted. Angela and Max took a seat beneath a gnarled apple tree, its trunk bent double with age, and watched two pale blue butterflies flutter and weave their way across the sky. Across the meadow behind the garden wall the river Cuckmere could be heard burbling merrily, the only sound other than the constant chirrup of birdsong and the occasional lazy bleat of a sheep from the surrounding fields. The Cuckmere met the river Swell further down the valley, which meant that the same water they were watching now would be flowing through Fittlescombe in an hour or two. For some reason the thought made Angela happy.
‘It’s lovely here,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Max nodded. You’re lovely, he wanted to add, but he was too old to make a fool of himself over a woman. Especially a woman a dozen years younger than he was, who was already encumbered with both a husband and, apparently, a lover.
‘I know what it looks like,’ Angela blurted, feeling silly and shy and a little sick. ‘But I’m not having an affair.’
‘Right,’ said Max. He hadn’t expected such a forthright declaration, and wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘I see.’