A cloud crosses the sun and immediately the temperature plummets.
Archie says, carefully, ‘I wish you’d let us know where you were going, Susie. We’ve all been frantic.’
‘Really? But I left you a message saying I’d be back in a couple of days and not to worry.’
‘You left a message that was pretty much indecipherable.’
‘Was it? Oh.’
‘Where did you call from?’
‘Once I landed on Mull.’
‘It sounded very windy and the signal was really bad. All I got was “Listen Archie, it’s all too much. I’ve had to go away. ... Don’t ...” Or something like that. I thought perhaps you’d headed off for good.’
‘Oh heavens, I didn’t mean to be that elusive. I said not to worry, tell the kids I’m fine. This wasn’t a ploy to punish you, Archie.’
‘I thought—’ He starts to say something, but chokes on the words.
‘What?’
‘I couldn’t help remembering – Mull. “Calgary Bay”. Your affair with Maitland Forbes.’
‘My what?’ Susie pulls away from him, shocked.
‘I thought I was going to lose you then, Susie.’
Archie is scanning the horizon, looking at the hills, looking anywhere rather than at her.
‘I didn’t think you knew.’
‘I couldn’t bear to talk about it. I thought you were going to leave me for him. I thought of rushing in and punching him, but I realised that if our marriage was to be worth anything I had to wait until you decided.’
Susie is speechless, shocked by the realisation that Archie has known about Maitland for years.
Archie’s eyes are closed and pain is etched on his face. She can see it in the tightness of his lips and in the line between his eyes, the furrow that deepens when he’s worried.
‘It was the worst time of my life.’
She gulps.
He never told me
.
‘Susie—’ He murmurs her name, so quietly she barely catches it.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry—’
‘I need to know the truth, Susie.’
‘About Maitland? It was a silly crush, that’s all. We worked out pretty quickly that it was only lust, both of us—’
‘Not that. I know that, or I would have left you.’
This possibility has never occurred to Susie and she’s stunned by it – but the words he utters next rock her to the core of her being.
‘Is Mannie my daughter?’
‘What?’
‘It’s a simple question, Susie. You were pregnant just after you came back from filming and I was never sure—’
‘You thought Mannie might be Maitland’s?’
His lips are so tightly pursed they have almost disappeared and she sees that his hands are clenched into tight fists. In an agony of pity she puts her own hands around them and tries to prise them open.
‘You thought the baby might be someone else’s and you were prepared to accept her anyway?’
‘I would have done anything for you, Susie, knowing you’d made up your mind to stay with me.
Tell me
.’
‘Mannie is your daughter.’
Tears are running down Susie’s face. She’s appalled by the damage her behaviour has inflicted on Archie across the years, how her thoughtlessness and selfishness has caused him so much pain.
‘Oh Archie, she’s yours, without a shadow of a doubt. She was my gift to you, my declaration of commitment.’
She can’t bear to think about the doubt he’s lived with all these years, the way that he has suffered in such stoical silence.
His eyes are screwed tightly shut, she feels him shuddering and realises with distress that he’s sobbing too, noiselessly. It wracks her soul. ‘Archie, she’s yours, darling, your own daughter.’
‘Her hair—’ she can barely make out the words, ‘—her eyes ... hazel ... not yours or mine ... I thought—’
‘You thought—?’
It’s true, Mannie has neither her colouring nor Archie’s. Her straight dark hair is more like Maitland’s, her hazel eyes nearer to the shade of his than her amber or Archie’s blue. Her mind is racing.
‘It never occurred to me, Archie, I never gave it a single thought, she was always just our baby, but don’t you see? Mannie doesn’t have your hair and eyes, nor mine, her coloring comes from Joyce Miles. She has inherited her grandmother’s genes.’
She sees the tension in Archie’s shoulders relax a fraction and his hand uncurls enough to allow her to slip her own inside his fingers. They sit together, wordlessly, too full of emotion to speak.
At last Susie says shakily, ‘Mannie said that knowing about my adoption would change everything. She can’t have known how right she was – but if it’s brought your doubt to light and let me set your mind to rest, then I’m glad, Archie. I’m so glad.’
For all these years, she realises, Archie has carried the burden of not one secret, but two. She drops her head into her hands and rubs her hand through her thick curls.
‘You know, ever since I discovered you knew about my adoption, my trust in you was destroyed.’ Archie’s hand stiffens and she adds quickly, ‘But now I understand at long last that keeping the secret wasn’t a betrayal but a supreme act of love.’
How can she convince him how much she loves him?
‘You know I came over to the studio before I went away? You know I was desperate to talk to you?’
‘Why didn’t you, then?’
‘It was locked and there was a huge Keep Out notice. The only person in the world I needed to be with was you, and you’d barred my way. I felt utterly alone.’ She tightens her grip on his hands. ‘I can’t function without you, Archie. I never have been able to.’
Archie jerks his hand free, finds a handkerchief and blows his nose noisily.
He says, ‘I’m glad,’ and she understands he means,
for everything
.
How long passes? Five minutes? Ten? Half an hour?
Tick. Tock.
For the moment, time is vanquished because the peacefulness seems to last for ever.
Archie breaks it at last.
‘There’s something else you need to explain, Susie.’
He pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and passes it to her.
Dear First Minister
I have given this a great deal of thought, and it is with much sadness and regret that I write to you to tender my resignation as an MSP. As you know ...
‘Heavens, Archie, where did you get this? I thought it was in my handbag.’
His voice is still thick, but he’s speaking more normally now. ‘My guess is you left it on the dresser when you found there were no stamps – and saw the hotel voucher Mannie and Jon gave us for our wedding anniversary.’
‘
Eh bien
, M. Poirot, have you wax enough for the moustaches you disguise as antennae?’
‘Well?’
He looks at her appraisingly. She can read relief there and a love so deep it makes her want to wail.
‘Will I give you a stamp?’
She takes the letter from him.
‘Would you like me to resign, Archie? Politics is a grimy business, with every Tom, Dick and Justin poking their nose into your private life and trying to make it public. Maitland has offered me a part in his film, you know. I could take up acting again.’
‘Susie, you do nothing but act. Do you want to do the film?’
‘Yes – and no. It’s mostly being shot in the States and I don’t really want to start all that peripatetic living out of suitcases again. It’s bad enough that you’ll have to do it when Celtic Rock hits the charts again, as it will when you release the album. If I were to go back into the business too, we’d never see each other.’
‘And you enjoy the work in the Parliament? Despite the pressures?’
‘I did enjoy it when I felt I was able to make a difference – and before weasel-face Thorneloe started poking his pointy little nose in. I found it absolutely hellish when I couldn’t come home and chew the fat with you, Archie.’
‘And if I make the great sacrifice of giving up my lumpy sofa bed in the studio and move back in with my wife?’
‘Then perhaps your wife might carry on for a while.’
She folds the paper again, then tears it in strips.
Somewhere in the depths of his pocket, Archie’s mobile buzzes. ‘Karen? Hi. Yes, I found her. She’s here. Want to speak to her?’
Susie takes the phone. ‘Yes. Yes, everything’s fine. Do you know who was just here, hounding me? Justin Thorneloe. Yes. Yes I am serious. I’ll tell you all about it later. Did Mo get my stories off okay? Great. Yes. What? What?’ She starts to laugh. ‘Really? You’re joking. You’re not joking. Yes. I’ll call him right away. Yes, I promise. Bye.’
She hands Archie’s phone back to him.
‘What was all that about?’
‘I don’t have to rush back. The First Minister has side-stepped the confidence vote with a reshuffle. Joe Shearer’s been downgraded to Communities.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s made you Education Minister. That would be funny.’
‘Not Education, no. He wants me to call him.’
Susie’s mind is whirling. This is Tom Coop’s revenge – not to sideline her, but to muzzle her in a different way.
‘Karen says the rumour is out that he wants me to be Culture Minister.’
Archie starts to laugh.
Hearing his laughter fills Susie’s heart with blind joy, but she says, ‘Stop it, you horrid man. It’s not funny!’
‘Culture Minister,’ he chortles. ‘Culture Minister! You!’
‘Beast!’
But it’s too infectious to resist, and in minutes, Susie’s laughing too.
‘Susie Wallace, oh, ow,’ Archie is howling now. ‘A Minister! Ow, oh!’
She’s hitting out at him and laughing and angry and annoyed and unbelievably relieved all at the same time.
‘Beast, beast, beast!’
He tries to catch her wrist and she ducks under his guard to attack his ribs, and then they’re tangled on the dunes like teenagers in love. The relief at rediscovering Archie is profound.
‘Archie,’ she says at last, detaching herself from his embrace with some reluctance.
‘Mmm?’
‘I do hope Skunk Thorneloe hasn’t got a long lens.’
He reaches up and pulls her back down. ‘Even a politician is entitled to a private life,’ he whispers.
Susie rolls onto her back, her head on Archie’s shoulder, his arm tucked round her with comforting familiarity. Above her, small wisps of cloud scud across a blue sky that seems to stretch for ever. All she can hear is the sound of the waves rolling across the sand and splashing onto the rocks and the bubbling call of a curlew, calling to its mate.
They are mere dots, she and Archie, in the enormity of mountain and moorland and shore.
Privacy it isn’t.
She smiles and squeezes his hand. Let Thorneloe take photographs if he’s still around. Let him publish pictures if a fond embrace with her husband is what the world really wants to see. Nothing can hurt her now that Archie is by her side again.
Some months later
Be careful
, Callum said to Mannie once,
what you wish for
. Would things have been different if she’d heeded him, if she’d reined back her impulsiveness and let her mother take things more slowly?
Mannie pours herself a glass of cold white wine and sits down at the kitchen table in Cairn Cottage. A plateful of melting nanoseconds has been set out in the centre, where a jugful of late summer roses, heavy with scent, hang red and rich above the polished wood.
You can’t change things. A few short months ago she had a job she excelled at and a boyfriend she adored and life seemed full of promise. Now she’s struggling to achieve her targets and keep on top of her work, and Callum is ... well, the best she can say is that the nature of her relationship with Cal has changed.
She reaches for a biscuit and bites into it.
I wanted to know about my genetic inheritance and all I got was heartbreak.
It doesn’t seem fair.
The biscuit is finished. Absently, she reaches for another.
What cruel chance led Brian Henderson to my stand at the trade fair in London?
Mannie still hasn’t entirely conquered her feelings for him. Understanding that you have been swept away like matchwood in the ferocity of a flood you are powerless to resist is one thing: being able to swim against the tide is another completely.
I don’t love him. I never have. But I was obsessed by him.
She polishes off two more biscuits in quick succession and glances at the clock on the wall. Where is everyone? They’ll have to leave soon, surely.
There’s a stir on the stairs and she hears the sound of Jonno’s voice.
‘I know we’ve all got to meet up tonight and okay, he’s crap as an uncle,’ Jonno is saying, ‘but you’ve got to admit, it was brilliant that he wouldn’t let me resign.’
Mannie’s heart lurches and the old nausea returns. They’re talking about Brian. She still hates herself for what happened.
I should have been able to control it.
Alex appears, her hair hanging loose this evening and falling around her shoulders like soft ripples in a pond. The friendship between Alex and her brother has blossomed into a relationship that’s promising to become a fixture. Alex seems lit by an inner radiance and Jonno, following her into the room, looks more relaxed and happier than she has seen him in years.
‘Oh sorry,’ Jonno says, ‘didn’t see you there, Mannie.’
Alex smiles apologetically at Mannie, understanding. She’s good at intuition. ‘That’s all over now.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Jonno says, his eyes like a dog’s, loving and happy.
‘Bleh,’ Mannie says dryly, miming retching. ‘Pass me the sick bag.’
Jonno ignores her. ‘Any sign of the old folks yet?’
Mannie shakes her head. ‘Should we shout?’
‘Let’s give them five minutes.’ He opens the fridge and examines the bottle nestling in the door. ‘Mmm, Sancerre. Want one, Alex?’
It’s business as usual – except that it used to be her and Cal raiding the fridge, now she’s sitting there like a gooseberry while her brother makes eyes at his girl.
In the whole of her life, she has never felt lonely, until now. It seems to Mannie that she had lost everything: Callum, Brian, even her job is hanging by a thread. Knowing, as she now does, that she can never be with Brian Henderson, she is battling as valiantly as she can against the ferocious power of her feelings. Sticking a label on them has helped, a bit. It makes her feel marginally less insane, but does little to lessen the intensity of her emotions.