Spilt Milk by Amanda Hodgkinson Page A

velvet he had wrapped his paper and pencils in. She picked it up and in its folds was a small brown hagstone. She held it in her palm and rubbed its smooth surface. It was the one she had given Nellie.
    The barley fields were thick with blood-red poppies as she walked home through the fields. The ears of barley crackled as Vivian’s skirts brushed against them. Stalks were crushed under her feet; petals stained her skin and clothes. She hoped she would not be seen by anybody with her hat askew, blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her cotton blouse dusted with pollen.
    Nellie met her at the cottage door, holding a black hat in her hands. Joe’s hat.
    ‘I found this,’ she said, her eyes filled with tears. She looked defeated, as if all the storm of her character had blown out of her. ‘I found it in our bed.’
    Vivian went past her into the shade of the kitchen and put the hagstone on the table. She turned and took Nellie’s hands.
    ‘Don’t cry. He’s gone now. It’s just us. The two of us. How it is meant to be. Look at me. We can forget him now.’
    ‘Gone?’
    ‘Yes. He’s gone and we are together, just as Rose said we should be.’
    That night Vivian dreamed she saw Nellie standing by the window, in her black winter coat despite the heat of the summer night. She held her suitcase in her hand. She dreamed Nellie was asking her questions, over and over.
    Why did you do it? Why, why?
    Nellie’s face swam back and forth, so full of hurt she could have made a stone cry with the pity of it. A watery light moved in the room, like a candle seen through thick tears. The dream was as slow as weeds in a river; it pressed down on Vivian like water. She was drowning in regret. She gasped for air. Slowly she turned and dragged the bed sheet across her face.
Go away
, she pleaded.
Go away
. The white linen covered her. She closed her eyes tight.
    When Vivian woke in the morning, a breeze drifted in throughthe open window, carrying the noise of insects and birdsong. Nellie’s side of the bed was empty. The brown hagstone was on her pillow. Vivian got up, hurriedly straightened her clothes, splashed her face with cold water from the bowl on the dresser and went downstairs. The door stood open and light poured into the shadows of the room.
    All day Vivian hoped Nellie might return. She imagined her coming in from the garden with a bowl of raspberries, complaining about the birds eating all the best ones. Or appearing barefoot at the gate, her hair and clothes damp, her boots in her arms. She knew in her heart that Nellie had gone. She had taken her suitcase and left the village.
    Vivian had never thought much of the world beyond the village. She remembered a trip organized by Mrs Langham for the farm workers. A trip to the seaside in a charabanc. Vivian had stood on the beach and watched the tide go out. Nellie teased her because she had not wondered where it went. She’d accepted the bowing out of the water just as she accepted its coming back later in the day. Had her whole life been like that until now? An acceptance of everything?
    She began to sing a hymn Rose liked, ‘Thy Will I All Thy Sins Forgive’, her voice weak and faltering. Nellie’s chickens came running to the door, thinking they were being called, expecting to be fed. Vivian shooed them away.
    For months afterwards, waking or sleeping, she felt the weight of what she had done. She was sick with regret, and her headaches lasted for weeks at a time. She lost her appetite and lay in bed thinking of Joe. It shamed her to feel the ache in her body when she thought of him, but she relived the days she had with him again and again.
    Sometimes she wondered if, with time and distance between them, Nellie might manage to think of her with less than hatred in her heart. Joe had said there was no wrongness in love, and she clung to that idea. After all, she loved Nellie and Joe both.
You areshameful,
the voice of Rose whispered to her as she passed her dead