The Fading of the Light

Book 0: The Spindrift Trilogy

by Charlotte Betts

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Not Yet Available

Release date: January 21, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

June 1902

Spindrift House, Cornwall

Stars still glimmered as the rising sun began to paint the sky with streaks of apricot and gold. Up on the cliffs above the sea stood Spindrift House, its thick stone walls sheltering the sleeping community of the ten artists and five children that lived within.

As the stars faded in the brightening sky, a blackbird unfolded his wings in the great copper beech beside the house. He opened his yellow bill and trilled the first liquid notes of welcome to the dawn.

It was going to be a glorious summer’s day.



Edith awoke to the sound of birdsong. Carefully untwining herself from Pascal’s embrace, she slipped out of bed. She stood for a moment smiling down at his austere features, now softened in slumber and, in a rush of tenderness, bent to kiss his dark hair. His body remained curved around the warm hollow she’d left in the mattress. For a moment, she nearly slid back under the covers. But there was something she had to do.

Shrugging on her dressing gown, she ran barefoot upstairs to the studio on the second floor. She snatched up her sketchbook and rested it on the windowsill to catch the early light. Closing her eyes, she summoned those fleeting moments when she’d drifted between the dream world and consciousness, before the blackbird’s song had woken her. Then she began to make swift pencil strokes.

A little while later, she let out a sigh of contentment. She’d captured her vision for a new painting before it evaporated like the morning mist. Lifting the sash, she leaned over the windowsill to breathe in the sea air and watch the seagulls wheeling overhead. After she’d spent several days cooped up in the studio with raindrops beading the windowpanes, the heavy showers had cleared. Beyond the undulating lawn and the grassy headland, the sapphire sea was calm again. It looked as if the weather was going to be fine for King Edward VII’s Coronation celebrations later that week, after all.

Excitement bubbled within her. She couldn’t wait to discuss her new painting with the others. The founder members of the Spindrift community had grown out of the friendships they’d made while they were students at the Slade School of Fine Art. Later, other artists joined them and the close-knit group provided each other not only with companionship and creative encouragement, but a buttress against difficult times.

Closing the window, Edith selected a primed canvas from a stack leaning against the wall. Small encrustations of paint on the dusty boards impressed themselves on the soles of her bare feet, as if she were walking over crushed seashells down in the cove. Collecting together paints and brushes, she crammed them into her old carpetbag.

She heard a footstep and turned to see Pascal’s lean figure in the doorway.

‘I guessed I would find you here, chérie.’ His brown eyes gleamed with amusement.

She ran into his arms and he slipped warm hands beneath her dressing gown and caressed her back through her thin nightgown. ‘I had an idea for my next work,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Didn’t I say it would come to you once you stopped worrying about what to paint next?’

She rested her head against his chest. ‘Whatever would I do without you, Pascal?’

‘You will never have to do without me,’ he said, combing his fingers through her black hair. ‘Not ever. Now what is this masterpiece you will create?’

‘It must have been the recent gales that made me dream about it,’ she said. ‘I’m going to paint the children flying their kites on a blustery day up on the headland. The sea will be in the background and clouds will be chasing each other across a blue sky. I can hardly wait to begin.’

‘Very good but aren’t your toes cold?’

She glanced down at her bare feet.

He nuzzled at her neck. ‘You forget everything when you are working.’

‘Except you.’ She buried her face in his shoulder. Pascal was steadfast in both love and friendship. She’d known him for ten years and they’d been lovers for five, not counting that first time.

Quick footsteps clattered up the stairs. ‘Mama? Where are you?’

Pascal released Edith as Pearl, her eight-year-old daughter, burst into the room.

‘There you are, Mama! I came to look for you in your bedroom last night but you weren’t there.’ Her face was pink with indignation. ‘I waited and waited and then fell asleep in your bed and when I woke up you still weren’t there!’

Edith bit her lip and glanced at Pascal. Creeping along the corridor to his room at night was too risky now the children were older. It would have to stop. ‘I had a marvellous idea for a painting,’ she said. ‘You shall be in it with your brothers and sister.’

‘Shall I have a new dress?’

Edith shook her head. ‘No, but we’ll make you a lovely scarlet kite.’ She ruffled her daughter’s curls. ‘It’s time we were dressed, sweetheart. Will you help Hannah get the twins ready for school?’

Pearl scowled. ‘They’re seven, Mama. Can’t they dress themselves without a nursemaid to help them?’

‘Of course they can, but you know how they dawdle, and then you’d be late.’

Pascal held his hand out to Pearl. ‘Come, chérie! We will see if your brothers and sister are awake.’

‘Don’t you think I should have a new dress, Uncle Pascal, if I’m going to be in Mama’s painting?’ Pearl’s hazel eyes and dazzling smile made her look uncannily like her father, Benedict. The father who had deserted Edith and four children seven years before.

Pearl’s voice faded away as Pascal led her downstairs.

Edith shuddered. Remembering Benedict still upset her, not for his selfishness and unkindness or for their failed marriage that hung like an albatross around her neck, but for his part in the secret she loathed herself for never disclosing to anyone. Not even Pascal.



Spindrift House, formerly a working farm, adjoined a courtyard surrounded by once neglected outbuildings, now converted into studios and workshops with sleeping accommodation. One side of the courtyard was entirely taken up by a vast, ancient barn, the Spindrift Gallery, where the community sold their work in the summer season. Since the railway had been extended to Port Isaac, bringing increasing numbers of visitors to the area, the gallery and photographic studio were popular with holidaymakers seeking souvenirs of their seaside stay.

There had been such a press of customers there during the afternoon that Edith hadn’t been able to enter the sales into the ledger. She had just enough time to do the books before the children returned from school. Two of her watercolour sketches of local scenes had sold, along with one of Clarissa’s silver and sea glass pendants, a couple of Maude’s printed silk scarves and a handful of Dora’s Cornish wildflower postcards.

After she’d updated the ledger, she calculated how much was due to each artist. Even though the community had scraped together the funds to buy a substantial share of Spindrift House from Edith’s husband five years before, they were still obliged to pay him rent, together with ten per cent of their sales. In addition, Benedict had coerced Edith into making another payment that the rest of the community, except for Pascal, knew nothing about. The hateful price to prevent him from selling his share of Spindrift House, or returning from London to live there, was three of her paintings every year. Himself an indifferent, if fashionable, portrait painter, Benedict sold her canvases, signed by himself and passed off as an alternative line of his own. In that way, he’d maintained his artistic reputation but it still made Edith sick to think of it. She’d had no choice, though, if she wanted him to stay away from Spindrift – and herself.

The bell on the gallery door jangled and Clarissa entered. Slender and flaxen-haired, she was one of Edith’s closest friends and her daughter Lily was like a sister to Pearl.

‘I’ve sold one of your pendants,’ said Edith.

‘The second one this week!’ Clarissa held out a tray of bracelets and rings, many decorated with sea glass found in the cove. ‘I’ve brought some new pieces for my display case,’ she said. ‘The children are waiting for you in the garden. They’re so excited about flying their kites. I’ll lock up here, if you’d like to skip off a bit early?’

Feeling as if she’d been let out of school unexpectedly, Edith collected her sketchbook and pencils from under the counter and hurried off.

In the garden, she saw her children, together with Lily, chasing each other through the shrubbery, full of high spirits.

Pearl came running towards her. ‘You’ve been ages, Mama!’ She grabbed her mother’s hand. ‘We’d better hurry while it’s still windy. I tried my kite in the garden but the strings got in a muddle.’

Pascal, sitting on the lawn untangling the ribbons and strings of the kite, glanced up at Edith with a rueful smile. ‘I suspect we will spend a great deal of time undoing knots this afternoon. Ah, I have it!’ Triumphantly, he lifted up the kite and shook the strings free.

Pearl hopped up and down. ‘Come on then! Don’t dawdle!’

‘You,’ said Edith, tugging one of Pearl’s ringlets, ‘are an impatient little madam. Now say thank you to Uncle Pascal.’

Pearl pressed a noisy kiss on his cheek.

The children, clutching their kites, raced off towards the garden gate, while Edith and Pascal followed at a more sedate pace.

‘They’re very excited,’ she said. ‘I hope there won’t be tears before bedtime.’

‘Fresh air and exercise will make them fall asleep quickly tonight.’

Edith slipped her hand into Pascal’s. ‘You’re always so good to my children.’

‘I love them because they are a part of you.’ He sighed. ‘But still I wish we could make a child together. Sometimes I long for it so much my heart aches.’

Edith’s heart ached, too.

He squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t look so unhappy, mon amour. You made me no false promises. I have always known that, for as long as Benedict lives, we cannot marry or have children together. Above all else, it is my joy to be loved by you.’

Her eyes smarted and she couldn’t look at him. She had no secrets from Pascal except for the one huge one that ate away at her. And every single day she delayed telling him the truth, the harder it became. She knew she must tell him. But not now. Not yet.

Running on ahead, the children dashed through the garden gate and out onto the headland.

Pascal pulled on Edith’s hand. ‘Let’s run, too!’ Laughing, they sprinted through the garden and onto the clifftop.

The children were waiting for them beside the Bronze Age standing stone, hopping up and down with impatience.

Jasper, dark eyes squinting into the sun, gasped as a gust of wind caught a corner of his kite and flipped it up against his chest.

Pascal took it from him. ‘I will help you.’ He organised the children into a row with the wind at their backs. ‘Hold the kite in your left hand and let the wind lift it, like this. That’s it! Now unwind the string a little at a time.’ He handed over control of the kite to Jasper and went to assist Nell.

The breeze teased tendrils of Edith’s hair from their confining pins and flicked them around her face. She caught her breath as, one by one, the kites flew up higher and higher. Overhead, in the blue, blue sky, a seagull circled slowly, as if investigating these strange, brightly coloured birds.

Pearl and Lily screamed with delight as the scarlet tails of their kites twisted and turned in the air.

Lucien was struggling to get his kite aloft so Edith helped him launch it. She squealed as the wind plucked it from her and it rose into the air, the string tugging at her hands as she unwound it from the spindle. Laughing, she tipped her face up to the sky. How wonderful it would be to soar silently through the air like that kite!

‘Mama! May I hold it now?’

Reluctantly, she handed the spindle to Lucien. Her reward was to see the exultation on his face as the kite danced and swooped in the wind, the scarlet ribbons on its tail fluttering behind.

Lucien’s twin, Nell, a sturdy little girl with black plaits and a gap-toothed smile, burst into tears when her kite plummeted to the ground.

Pascal ran to launch it again, guiding her hands until she had the feel of how to pay out the string steadily to keep the kite aloft.

Soon, all the children were managing with only a little help when needed.

Edith sat with her back against the sun-warmed standing stone and made lightning sketches. She captured the way Lucien braced his stocky little legs against the pull of the breeze and how the wind from the sea snatched the girls’ hair ribbons and pinafore hems into the air. The red, green and yellow kites sang out against the intense blue of the sky.

An hour or so later, she had enough sketches and the children were tired. One at a time, the kites nose-dived to the ground.

‘That was such fun, Mama,’ said Pearl, the apples of her dimpled cheeks glowing.

‘May we do this again?’ asked Lily.

‘Please?’ pleaded Jasper.

‘I’m sure we will,’ said Edith, ruffling his hair.

Lucien pulled at her skirt. ‘Mama, I’m starving!’

‘So am I!’ echoed Nell.

‘Why don’t you go home and see if tea is ready? Uncle Pascal and I will wind up the strings and bring the kites back.’

The children ran off and Edith and Pascal sat on the grass to disentangle the strings. At last the kites were stacked in a neat pile.

‘Wasn’t that perfect?’ said Edith. The coarse grass prickled her bare ankles and the sun glowed on her cheeks. ‘I felt like a carefree girl again.’

‘Happy memories are made from days like this,’ said Pascal. He wound one of her loosened curls around his finger. ‘The children will never forget this afternoon with their maman.’

‘They’ll never forget you teaching them to fly their kites, either.’ Edith was quiet for a moment. ‘Sometimes, I think you’re more of a father to them than I am a mother.’

Pascal turned up his palms and shrugged. ‘You need to work, Edith. And not only to feed your children. You must paint, to nourish your soul.’ He draped an arm around her shoulders. ‘But perhaps the children need you to enjoy their company a little more often.’

She sighed. ‘I’m always so fearful of not earning enough. Of not having enough commissions. Of not being good enough. The Spindrift Gallery is a useful sideline but even selling a hundred little watercolour sketches isn’t as profitable as one decent commission.’

‘Don’t worry so much, chérie!’

‘At least I can be happy that, this time, my urge to paint gave birth to the idea of flying kites with the children. We’ve all had a jolly time together and there are still the Coronation celebrations to look forward to.’

They ambled home, taking time to enjoy the sunshine.

Edith paused for a moment to look at Spindrift House. Built of Cornish stone and slate and clad with Virginia creeper, the spacious, sunlit rooms were comfortably welcoming. As always, there was the sound of the sea in the background – murmuring softly today, but sometimes roaring in anger. The very first time she’d seen Spindrift, as a bride ten years ago, she’d loved it. Despite all the troubles that followed, it continued to be a safe haven for herself and her friends.

Pascal placed a hand on her arm. ‘You are daydreaming, chérie.’

She smiled. ‘I was reflecting on how thankful I am to live here with everyone I most care about.’

As they were entering through the garden door, they could hear the children’s laughter and excited chatter resounding through the hall.

‘Isn’t it heartwarming to hear them happy?’ said Edith.

They followed the clamour to the dining room. The children had abandoned their half-finished plates of chocolate cake and were hunkered down in a circle.

‘What’s going on here?’ asked Edith, raising her voice to be heard over the laughter and squeals of excitement.

Pearl stood up, her arms wrapped over her chest and a radiant smile on her face. ‘Oh, Mama. Just look! This is Star. Isn’t he adorable? He’s a sheepdog.’

A pair of brown eyes surrounded by black and white fur peered at Edith from the safety of Pearl’s arms. A puppy.

Then Lucien stood up, cradling another black and white pup. ‘And this one is called Blue. Do you see, he has one blue eye! Mama, I’ve wanted a puppy for the whole of my life,’ he said, reverently. Blue opened his mouth to yawn, showing a tiny pink tongue, and Lucien kissed his boot button nose. ‘This the best thing that’s ever, ever happened to me.’

‘I don’t know where you found them,’ said Edith, hardening herself against the tugging of her heartstrings, ‘but I’ve told you before that we don’t have the time or the money to look after one dog properly, never mind two. I’m very sorry but you must take them back where they came from.’

Pearl burst into noisy tears and Lucien let out a moan.

‘Mama, please . . . ’ begged Jasper.

‘You can’t take our puppies away,’ sobbed Pearl, ‘they’re not yours! They were a present.’

Edith looked to Pascal for support but he was motionless, staring grim-faced over her shoulder.

She turned around. An imposing figure in an impeccably tailored lounge suit and highly polished shoes had been standing unnoticed by Edith in a corner of the room. He carried an ebony cane, silk gloves and a smart felt hat. As he stepped forward, light from the window gleamed on his gold watch chain.

‘Hello, Edith,’ said her husband Benedict. There was a smile on his handsome face. ‘I’ve come home.’

Edith stared at him, unable to speak for the tumult of her thoughts. He looked older, she thought, the once-firm skin slack around his jawline. He’d shaved off his beard but retained a neatly trimmed moustache.

Weeping noisily, Pearl buried her face in Star’s neck. ‘I love this puppy so much I’ll simply die if I’m not allowed to keep him!’

‘Pearl, stop that dreadful noise!’ said Edith. ‘We can’t keep two puppies.’

Outraged, Pearl howled even louder, rolling on the floor with Star clutched in her arms. Lucien sobbed and hugged the other puppy, while Nell whimpered in sympathy.

‘Please can we keep them, Mama?’ begged Jasper.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ said Edith. ‘That puppy’s had an accident. Take them into the scullery, right now!’

‘But . . . ’

‘Do as you’re told, Pearl,’ said Benedict. He prodded Lucien with his silver-headed cane. ‘Cut along, all of you. I want to talk to your mother.’

Pearl stopped crying and sat up, looking at him curiously. ‘Will you tell her we must keep the puppies?’

He smiled. ‘Of course you shall keep them!’

‘Benedict!’ said Edith.

He pinched Pearl’s cheek. ‘Go on, all of you, hop it!’

The children’s chatter faded away as they carried the puppies down the passage. Then, in the distance, the kitchen door slammed.

Benedict shifted his weight from one highly polished shoe to the other and the floorboards squeaked in the sudden silence. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guessed right then.’

Edith swallowed and glanced at Pascal, standing beside her. Was their world about to come crashing down? ‘You guessed right about what?’ she asked. Her voice didn’t sound like her own and she cleared her throat.

‘That I might not be a welcome visitor,’ he said. ‘I hoped the children, at least, would be pleased to see me if I bought them a suitable present.’

‘Puppies are a most unsuitable present,’ said Edith waspishly. ‘Two more mouths to feed, goodness knows how much mess to clear up, and time I don’t have to exercise them. You’ve put me in the painful position of telling the children they can’t keep the puppies they already love.’

‘The children will exercise them, Edith,’ said Pascal.

She glanced at him, tight-lipped.

‘Still here, old chap?’ said Benedict. He took a step closer to Pascal and looked down at him from his superior height. ‘I thought you’d have returned to France by now. I tell you what, why don’t you go and see how the others are getting along? I want a private chat with my wife.’

Edith didn’t have to look at Pascal to feel the air around them crackle with his anger.

Straight-backed, he strode from the room. Pausing in the doorway, he made as if to close the door but then left it ajar. His footsteps clipped away down the passage.

A pulse throbbed in Edith’s temple. ‘What is it you want this time, Benedict?’ She made a vain attempt to gather up her wind-blown hair and secure it in a bun with the few remaining pins.

‘Leave it!’ he said. ‘With your hair loose, you look like the beautiful girl you were when we married.’

She twisted her tangled curls flat to her head, wincing when she jabbed her scalp with a hairpin.

He moved to the window and looked out at the garden. ‘Do you remember the first time we came to Spindrift together?’ His voice was low and seductive. ‘I stopped the carriage before we reached the house, to show you our first glimpse of the sea. You were cross with me. I can’t remember why but—’

‘You don’t remember?’ A flash of rage made her snap. ‘I was distressed because you’d betrayed me with Pascal’s sister. On our honeymoon.’

‘Ah, yes! Delphine.’ A smile flickered across his lips. ‘She was bored with that dreadful, pontificating husband of hers and so very eager for a little attention. But that was years ago, Edith.’

‘And so many women ago.’

He ignored her comment. ‘I can’t tell you how often I’ve walked through Spindrift House in my dreams.’ Smiling, he glanced around the room. ‘Nothing has changed here. There’s something so comforting about it, isn’t there? I’ve missed the soft air of Cornwall and the smell of the sea.’ He turned to face her. ‘But, most of all, I’ve missed you.’ His hazel eyes were pensive. ‘I’ve made many mistakes in life but perhaps my stupidest was leaving you.’

‘Pretty words,’ said Edith, ‘but meaningless.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, recalling their early married life. ‘Once,’ she said, ‘I felt as if a light glowed within me whenever you were near. But what I thought was true love was merely infatuation for a man who turned out to be so much less than I’d believed. Deserting me was one thing but it was unforgivable of you to abandon our children.’

He dropped his gaze. ‘Not one of my proudest moments.’ Sighing, he said, ‘I blame my mother. I could do no wrong in her eyes and was used to having whatever I wanted. And when I met you,’ he glanced at her, ‘I wanted you.’

If he’d hoped to soften her resistance to him, it wasn’t working. ‘But when you discovered the responsibilities that come with marriage,’ she said, ‘you threw my love away.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I’ve changed, Edith.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’ She’d forgotten how his presence filled a room, pervading it with his unassailable confidence and the aroma of expensive hair pomade.

‘I’m thirty-three. It’s time for me to stop racketing about and look to the future. I want to be a father to my children,’ he said, and smiled benignly. ‘They’re a fine bunch and you should be proud of them.’

‘I am.’

‘Pearl’s a lively one, isn’t she? And Jasper’s grown into a handsome boy. It’s the first time I’ve met the twins. They’re, what, six years old?’

‘Seven. And never even a birthday letter for any of them in all those years. They have no idea who you are.’

‘I told them I was their papa.’ He frowned. ‘Did you never speak of me to them?’

‘And say what?’ She balled up her fists to still her shaking hands. ‘That you couldn’t bear to be in the same room with them? That they were nothing but an inconvenience to you? That you didn’t care if they were hungry or cold and went shoeless while you enjoyed the high life in London?’

Benedict rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’ll make it up to them. And I want to be a husband to you again.’

She recoiled, her pulse racing. How could she possibly have him back now that she loved Pascal? ‘What makes you imagine I might want that?’

His eyes widened. ‘You’re my wife. You have a duty to me.’

‘Duty! How dare you speak to me of duty?’ She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the pounding of her heart. Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘Why have you really come here, Benedict, apart from to taunt me? Are you in debt again? You told me years ago that Cornwall bored you and you needed the excitement of London.’

Pulling reflectively at his moustache, he said, ‘London is a little too exciting for me at the moment.’

‘You’re in trouble?’

‘Whatever you think of my artistic talent, Edith, I’ve achieved a certain amount of success painting portraits of society hostesses.’

‘And what about their husbands?’ she asked.

‘Painting rich old men never appealed to me.’ His eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Their delightful young wives, however, are an altogether different prospect.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Don’t look so po-faced!’

‘I’m as aware as anybody of your fondness for beautiful women.’ She sighed. ‘I suspect you flew a little too close to the flame for the husband of one of those beauties and he’s making life difficult for you. Am I right?’

‘The annoying thing is that the lovely Lucinda was as pure as the driven snow in the face of my attempts to seduce her. Despite what her jealous husband thought, I never touched her.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I didn’t try. Nevertheless, new commissions to paint a lady’s portrait will be rarer than hen’s teeth for me in London at the moment. Gossip spreads fast in the gentlemen’s clubs.’

‘So you’ve turned tail and fled?’

His lips twitched in irritation. ‘Spindrift House is still my home, Edith. I know I’ve made some mistakes but I intend to make a fresh start.’

Nausea roiled in her stomach and she sat down suddenly on a dining chair. ‘At Spindrift House?’ How could she ever be alone with Pascal if Benedict was under the same roof?

‘Where else?’

She gripped the chenille tablecloth and twisted the tasselled edge tightly round her fingers. ‘Anywhere in the world except here. You can’t possibly believe you can walk back into my life after nearly eight years, as if you’d merely gone to the village to buy a newspaper?’ Outwardly, she hoped she looked calm. Inside, she was filled with the utmost dread.

He spread out his hands, palms up. ‘Look, I’m coming home, no matter what.’ He gave the charming, false smile Edith remembered so well. ‘I understand it may take you a little time to become used to my presence here again but I’m a different person now, I promise. Everything will be fine.’

If Benedict returned to Spindrift, nothing would be fine ever again. She had to make him go away. ‘I’m different too,’ she said. ‘I’m not the bedazzled girl who fell in love with you. I’m a grown woman with a living to earn and four children to bring up by my own efforts.’ She cocked her head at him. ‘Or do you, at last, intend to carry out your duty to your wife and children and support us financially?’

His smile faded. ‘As I explained, I’m a bit pressed for funds at the moment. And you appear to have everything under control.’

‘Meaning you think you can continue to sponge off me?’

‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’

Edith noticed that he had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘Is it? There’s no room here for parasites meaning to live off the generosity of others. Let me explain how the Spindrift community works. We have only two full-time servants but we all pay a share of their wages and an allowance for our food. Everyone helps to grow vegetables and do certain household chores. We work in shifts to man the gallery between June and September. I collect the rents, a large proportion of which I send to you. Out of the remainder, I buy coal and arrange for any repairs to the house that we can’t undertake ourselves. If you were allowed to return, you would be obliged to fit in with the community’s rules.’

‘Why should I?’ He lifted his chin. ‘Don’t forget, I hold a sixty per cent share of this house.’

‘Benedict, let me speak plainly.’ Edith clasped her hands together to prevent herself from slapping his face. ‘The community exists because we all work hard and respect each other. We’ve made ourselves into a family that certainly doesn’t include you. If you force your presence upon us without embracing our ethics, you’ll be held in the greatest contempt, which will be very uncomfortable for you.’

‘You’ve become exceedingly hard, Edith.’

‘If I have, you’re the one who made me so.’

‘But I haven’t been here!’

‘Exactly!’

He heaved a deep sigh. ‘I expect it’ll all work out.’ His expression brightened. ‘And it’ll be fun to be part of an artists’ community again. I’ll take my luggage upstairs and unpack.’

‘Upstairs?’ said Edith.

‘To our room.’

‘No!’ She felt sick again. ‘You are not sleeping in my room.’

‘But you’re my wife.’

‘In name only! Look, Benedict, you’ve been paid handsomely to stay away from us. You placed me in a position where I had to compromise my principles and so I was forced to let you take some of my canvases, but I absolutely will not allow you back into my bed. Is that quite clear?’