I tried to freeze Jonathan out, not speaking to him unless I had to answer a direct question, leaving the room when he came in, letting the two of you go to the beach without me, saying the sun was too harsh. I thought about packing up and returning to London.
After a week there was one morning when you were gone from the bed, and when I pulled open the curtains the world outside had gone, too, hidden by the mist that had come up from the sea in the night. I opened one of the windows in the bedroom and heard the tapping of your typewriter, dulled and distant, and considered whether I might have misidentified my enemy—it wasn’t other women, or Jonathan, but your writing. Perhaps, I thought, during our month alone you’d been waiting for someone else to come and entertain me, to take me off your hands so you could go back to your room and the people in your head.
I packed my belongings into a small blue case I found under the bed, not that I had many—some clothes you’d bought for me in Hadleigh, a sun hat, and a toothbrush. Outside, the mist obscured everything like the light in an overexposed Polaroid. I walked blind out of the drive and stumbled to where I thought the lane must be. The silence was a thick blanket, and even the normal morning crockery clinking and shouts from the kitchen staff in the pub were muffled as I passed. By the time I reached the bus stop on the main road, beads of water clung to my clothes and my hair.
The headlights showed first and then the bus crawled out of the fog, pulling up a little way past me. The door opened and Mrs. Allen, the pub cleaner, got off. She looked at me, shivering in my summer dress and sandals.
“Reckon this haar will blow over in an hour or two.” She gave my arm a pat. “Then the sun’ll come out, just you wait and see. Don’t you go running off so fast now.”
“You getting on, young lady?” The driver was hanging out of the bus. “Only it’s a bit miggy with the door open.”
And as I picked up my case, there were footsteps running up from the lane. Jonathan appeared out of the mist. “She’s not going,” he said, panting.
“Did Gil tell you to come?” I said.
“What do you take me for? He’s still typing. It’s me who wants you to stay.” Jonathan took the suitcase from me. “Come on, will you?”
I looked at the driver, undecided.
“You don’t get an offer like that every day,” he said, and disappeared inside his bus, the door closing behind him.
As Jonathan and I walked through the lanes, we saw that Mrs. Allen was right: the sun glowed over our heads. By the time we reached the drive the sea mist had cleared, and I felt I was coming home.