Angel With Two Faces by Nicola Upson Page B

of the village. When Archie had come home to Cornwall after the war, still grieving for the loss of his closest friend and believing Jack’s death to be entirely his fault, he had gone to that cottage to heal. The feeling of peace which he found in those afternoon visits was hard to describe and, for someone who had trained in science and whose career relied on logic and analysis, hard to understand, but Morveth’s wisdom – her ability to make good, for want of a better phrase – was one of the very few things in life which he had never questioned.
    ‘How are you?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m well,’ he said, marvelling at how little she had changed in all those years, ‘but I wish we hadn’t had to meet here like this.’
    Morveth watched Morwenna as she walked back towards the house. ‘You’ll have noticed quite a change in her, I expect?’ she said, and Archie nodded. ‘It was the waiting that nearly killed her. It nearly killed us all, to tell you the truth – watching the two of them by the water’s edge every day, pale as death themselves and praying he’d be found. Loveday thought it was some sort of game, I think – best that she didn’t understand, perhaps – but Morwenna had to be half dragged away each night. First thing the next morning, though, she’d be back. Shecouldn’t rest until they’d got his body. The lake played a cruel trick in keeping him for so long.’
    Not for the first time, Archie thought about the darkness that was masked by the beauty of Cornwall. He busied himself with violence on a daily basis in London, but the close proximity to death in which people lived their lives here still had a way of unsettling him. ‘Why do you think Harry let go of the reins, Morveth?’ he asked.
    She looked at him for a long time before speaking. ‘Don’t search for things that aren’t there, Archie,’ she said at last. ‘It will only bring unhappiness.’
    Archie had searched often enough to acknowledge privately how right she was, but he was reluctant to let the subject drop so easily. ‘Unhappiness for whom?’ he asked urgently, aware that Jago Snipe was on his way over to join them.
    ‘For people you care about,’ she said, then added more quietly, ‘perhaps even for you.’
    There was no time to press her any further. He nodded at the undertaker, whose greeting – or so Archie fancied – was uncharacteristically suspicious, and they talked for a few minutes about the weather before Christopher Snipe excused them both from the effort of finding something else to say.
    ‘Dad, I need to talk to you,’ he said, and his earnestness made him look even younger than he was.
    ‘Not now, Christopher – I’m talking to Mr Penrose.’
    Archie was surprised at the response. His conversation with the undertaker was hardly too important to be interrupted, and he knew how close father and son were; their relationship had been Jago’s only solace after his wife died in childbirth.
    The boy seemed reluctant to be dismissed so easily. ‘But it’s urgent,’ he said.
    ‘Even so, this isn’t the time or the place,’ Jago snapped. ‘You’ve already done enough for one day.’
    The boy blushed and walked away. Feeling sorry for him, Archie said: ‘Loveday must be glad to have Christopher around at a time like this.’
    ‘What makes you say that?’ the undertaker asked sharply.
    ‘Nothing, really, except I noticed that he was kind to her at the funeral. With everything that’s happened, having a friend near her own age must help.’
    ‘They’re not friends, particularly, and being kind is what we do. If Christopher spent any time with her today, he was just doing his job.’
    Archie apologised without really understanding what he had said to cause such offence. Feeling more like an outsider than ever, he excused himself to go and find Lettice and her father.
    Jago and Morveth watched him walk back up the lawn. ‘Did she tell him anything, do you think?’ Jago asked.
    ‘I don’t