Page 14 of Broken Country

His face is stern, a seriousness I don’t often see. What he wants to say is,Don’t get involved with this child, Beth. He’s not our boy. We’ll never get him back.

Instead he says: “Should I be worried about you spending time with Wolfe and his son?”

And I want to tell him,You risked his life. You did this, not me.

But I say: “I don’t think so. Are you worried?”

“Not if you tell me there’s no need.”

I reach for his hand and smile at him until it triggers his own reluctant grin.

“There is no need, I promise.”

Back then, at the beginning, I believe this to be true.

The Trial

Heads turned to look at me when I took my place in the public gallery. I have a new identity now. The woman who loved two men, one of them worthy of pages of newsprint, the other an ordinary farmer.

When the story first broke, photographers snuck out to the farm for shots of our beloved, ramshackle house with its peeling windows and chaotic yard until I spied them from the kitchen and ran out, screaming like a wild woman. Next day, that was the photo they chose. I learned the hard way to conceal my face and never answer the questions they hurl at me.Why did he do it?The question I’m asked most often. From reporters, villagers, friends, even my own family at the beginning.

I tell them the story we have come up with, honed, practiced, perfected, day after day after day, hoping it will be enough.

How much easier it would be if we could tell the truth.

Before

The inside of Gabriel’s tent is like nothing I’ve ever seen, it feels like entering an alternate universe. There’s a double mattress made up with sheets and blankets and a very regal-looking bedspread in red velvet; I can imagine it topping Louis XIV’s four-poster. Sheepskin rugs cover the floor, there’s a little bedside cabinet with a water decanter and two glasses; he even has a small bookcase filled with paperbacks. He has pinned swathes of bright-colored silk to the ceiling and there are candles burning in glass lanterns in every corner of the tent.

“What do you think?” he says.

“It’s likeArabian Nights. If it were me, I’d never sleep anywhere else.”

Gabriel sits down on the bed and holds out a hand to me. “Come here.”

I’ve done nothing but imagine this moment and now that it is here, I freeze.

“I can’t,” I say, in a tight voice. “I’m too nervous.”

“Don’t be. We’re just talking. We might progress to holding hands at some point. But only if you want to.”

I sit down next to him and, as promised, Gabriel begins to talk. He tells me about his dog, Molly, a Labrador who lived until she was sixteen.

“She was the soppiest dog you could imagine, loved everyone, including a couple of burglars who climbed in through the kitchen window. Just wagged her tail while they lifted the family silver.”

He picks up a novel which is open, face down, beside thebed and holds it up for me to inspect.Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s novelIn Search of Lost Time.

“I only chose it so I could show off in my tutorials next term, but it’s better than I thought. Quite funny at times.”

Now he smiles as he looks at me. “Sometimes,” Gabriel says, “it’s almost light before I fall asleep, I’m so busy thinking about you. And all the things I’d like to do with you.”

“What things?”

In answer Gabriel takes my face in his hands and kisses me. A long, slow, intense kiss. “Better?” he says, drawing back.

“Yes.”

We lie back on the bed and turn toward each other, faces inches apart.

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