Still Waters by Katie Flynn

peace and quiet. She knew the lane wound down from the main road – well, as main as roads got round here – until it stopped when it met the Broad, and there were only four houses down it. One was a tied cottage where the Ropes’ ploughman and his family lived, another was the Throwers’ waterside cottage and the third belonged to the Beaumonts. They were brother and sister, both in their seventies. Mr William Beaumont was a botanist and Miss Ethel Beaumont was an artist, and together they wrote and illustrated books on the wildlife to be found on the Broads.
    But Marianne was only interested in the fourth dwelling. She had come down Deeping Lane before the sun was up, when the Broad was covered with a gentle white mist and a gold line on the eastern horizon was the only sign that the sun was about to rise. On reaching the first dwelling she dismounted and walked slowly along, pushing her bicycle, pretending to herself that she was just admiring the countryside. When she got to the Old House she pushed her bicycle deep into the woods opposite – for all the dwellings on Deeping Lane were on the right side of the road as you came down towards the Broad; the left side was woods which gradually gave way to marsh, to reed beds and finally to the Broad itself – and hid it in a copse of young willow trees. Then she took off her waterproof jacket, folded it and laid it on the mossy ground, sat down on it, and produced from the bag at the back of her bicycle a flask and some sandwiches.
    I’m a holidaymaker who has just happened to find this remote spot, Marianne told herself. Presently, when the sun comes up, I may stroll down to the water, chat to anyone I happen to meet . . .
    But she knew she wouldn’t, not really. Because that might easily ruin everything.
    She unscrewed the lid of her flask and was pouring herself some coffee when the child came running down the path from the Old House, then dashed down the lane towards the gleam of water which Marianne could just see through the trees. A small, dark girl, skinny and plain. Not a bit like . . . Marianne cut the thought off short; she was a stranger, a holidaymaker, she didn’t know anyone here – remember?
    She had drunk the first cup of coffee by the time the child came back and when the carrier’s cart arrived she was cross, uncomfortable, and beginning to regret the impulse which had caused her to get up literally at the crack of dawn and arrive here so very early. After all, what had she gained? She felt like a spy, an intruder, and what was more the damp was beginning to seep insidiously through her waterproof jacket and, by the feel of it, into her very bones. No good would come of catching a chill . . . but she was stuck here, now. There were too many people about to allow her to move, because she knew very well that, if she was spotted by the child or the neighbours, she would have a great deal of explaining to do.
    Peter had never pretended, he had always made his feelings clear.
    ‘You are my Hickling Water Frolic, my shooting trip to Scotland, my fishing weekend in Wales,’ he had told her. ‘My darling, darling Marianne, that is all I can offer you. Is it enough?’
    ‘It’s enough,’ she had whispered throatily, that first time. ‘Oh my darling, darling Peter, it’s enough!’
    But it wasn’t, of course. It hadn’t been enough once she’d really fallen in love with Peter. The hunger to be with him always, to be acknowledged, had almost driven her crazy. She had plotted, planned, persuaded . . . but she had not thought of the obvious.
    Until now. And because she felt that the battle was all but won, she had come extra early to the Old House, as a spy admittedly, to see the child who was so precious to her lover that he would not risk allowing her to meet his mistress. So precious, in fact, that he would not remarry, simply dismissed such an idea out of hand. Yet he loves me, Marianne told herself petulantly, as the laden carrier’s cart