The Well Read Free Page B

convincing; he might have had a fair hearing at the tribunal, been found innocent, but he had no hope of an unprejudiced future if we stayed. He had things to get away from; I had things to stay for. And whose fault was that, I thought, when I was at my lowest, even though that was neither true nor reasonable.
    Mark had further supporting arguments in his brief: there may have been a lack of rain for a while, but these cycles had a habitof correcting themselves, didn’t they? Money wasn’t an issue; the sale of our semi in the suburbs covered the price of a cottage in the west with land and some to spare, and his pay-off for his unfair dismissal from the local authority plus what I had inherited from my father was going to give us enough to live on for a bit; we had savings. Angie had turned out to be the cheapest of teenagers: hers was the one problem you cannot throw money at and the NHS, Social Services or HM Young Offenders had spent more time looking after her than we did. We spoiled our grandson Lucien, of course, but as I think of that word, I regret its double-edged meaning. Anyway, the theory was we would be fine for a couple of years, if we were careful, until we knew whether we could make a go of it. It, ostensibly, being the smallholding. It, in reality, being our relationship.
    We almost didn’t bother to get the details of The Well. There was no video link and anything that wasn’t instantly accessible online seemed like too much hassle. We wanted to be able to view heaven now, without an appointment.
    ‘It’s got to be worth a real look,’ Mark said.
    ‘Only if there are two or three to see on the same day,’ I replied.
    There were, but one was sold two days before and the other was taken off the market, so that left The Well. We argued about it, but went anyway. Lucien was with us. He had been staying for two or three weeks while Angie tried yet again to sort herself out. He must have been four at the time. ‘He’s a lucky little boy to have grandparents like you.’ That’s what our friends said, whenever we took him on again. I don’t expect it’s what they’re saying now.
    It was an unnaturally hot autumn day, a sort of savage last stand by the sun after what had been yet another dull, dry summer following yet another dull, dry winter – dry, that is, according to the statistics the weathermen had then. The various restrictions in the southeast had already been extended to the rest of the country, even by April, and the serious papers carried editorials onthe introduction of compulsory water meters, while the tabloids alternated between the threat of Armageddon and close-ups of celebs wearing very little in the sweltering heat. No one knew then where the downward trajectory of the rainfall graphs would eventually take us.
    The map was magnetic. The Well was on one of those pages where the red and yellow lines of the roads skirt around the edge, and everything else is white space with lanes pencilled in: lanes which skirt the boundaries of private estates of long-dead lords of the manor; lanes which make long detours seeking out old stone bridges, following the packhorse routes, from market to market. Mark preferred the satnav, but as we got close to our destination it let him down.
    ‘Where the hell are we? You’ve got the map.’
    ‘Don’t shout at me. This was your idea, traipsing around the middle of nowhere looking for a bolthole!’
    Silence.
    Me. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that.’ I turned the map upside down and squinted. ‘I think it’s back the way we came.’
    Mark attempted a three-point turn in a gateway with a ditch on either side. He wasn’t an angry person when I met him – purposeful was how other people used to describe him – but the allegations which had led to his dismissal had really got to him and his fuse was shorter, even by then. We crawled slowly back up the hill until we saw the footpath sign with just the symbol of a man with a pack on his back and a stick