The Will by Jane Mann

Author:Jane Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Hannah woke from a fitful sleep, on the edge of the bed, to sunlight filtering through the rose–patterned curtain of the bedroom window. Flecks of dust stirred in the beams, hovered with hints of decay over Richard’s pristine cream suit, his carefully arranged jacket and trousers on the wicker chair. The suit drew at once the focus of eye from Hannah’s casually flung clothes, as if to a still life painting on incongruity, on assertion and decline.

What would happen Hannah wondered if it was just left there for months or years like the shawl in Virginia Woolf’s deserted house? Would it harmonise eventually with mildew and time or continue to assert itself, as Richard did, rejecting the drag of past image?

What would happen to Richard? To Richard and herself? The past, the present, which mattered more? How could one break away from the past as Richard wanted?

Uneasily as she turned back to Richard in the centre of the bed, there came back to her again the questions that had kept her wakeful: how was she going to tell him about the course, about the fact that she didn’t want to return to Hong Kong at all?

She couldn’t, not now. He’d slept in her bed, was sleeping still so soundly even as she stroked his cheek, his arm. She doubted she’d wake him even if she pinched him. Yet his face was not peaceful. There were lines of frowning on his forehead, as if he was striving even in his dreams. Even round his mouth, lines of effort were making their indelible mark.

She felt she wanted to wake him, tell him to relax in his dreams, absorb the drift of the cottage for a while instead of striving. But he needed sleep. Thirty six hours he’d gone without on the journey and he would sleep, she was sure, if left till midday. Time to see Luke and discuss with him what could be done to get back inside to the cellar.

Quietly resolved, Hannah slipped out of bed and dressed, leaving a note for Richard on his suit, and, once more closing the cottage door behind her, made her way back through the woods in the morning sunlight to Yadrahna.

There was no sign of Hugo’s Daimler in the drive, only Olga Slade’s blue Renault parked close to the back door. Reassured that there appeared to be only Olga Slade in residence, Hannah crept through the shrubbery by her usual route to the kitchen garden. The potting shed door was open and she could hear Luke whistling to himself inside, could see him through the open doorway, with his back turned to her, stacking together seed boxes and piling them on shelves. I’ll give him a surprise, she thought.

As she reached the door, she was aware suddenly of a dog barking. Turning she saw then bounding towards her from the cabbages and kale at the far end of the kitchen garden a large, dark Alsatian, its teeth bared.

An Alsatian had once bitten

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