The First Time I Saw Your Face by Hazel Osmond

a shot if there’s an emergency …’
    He had seen the happiness drain from her, could almost see it leave, muscle by muscle. He let her absorb the news, trying not to stare as she composed her face into one that didn’t look as if it was melting.
    ‘I’m really sorry, Tess, leaving you to mother Mum again, but you know how I need the money.’ He had watched her hands moving inside her sleeves.
    ‘I thought you hated the North,’ she’d said at last, and then, ‘it’s a bit of a bombshell,’ and finally, ‘I’m happy for you, ’course I am. It won’t make any difference here.’
    Mack had wondered how Tess was such a bad liar and he was such a good one. Probably because he got so much practice. He was about to get a lot more.
    The train was coming into Peterborough Station and Mack stopped thinking about Tess and watched the man opposite stand up, wrestle his way into his coat and weave down the train ready to get off. He waited to see whether anyone would get on and come and sit with him, but when the train pulled out again, there was just him and the three empty seats round the table. The carriage was barely half full. Why should that surprise him? Who in their right minds would be travelling north in February unless they had a gun at their head?
    He suddenly had an image of O’Dowd with a revolver. Well, it certainly wasn’t going to fire blanks; he knew that after his showdown with Phyllida, hot on the heels of his conversation with Tess.
    She had appeared inside the back door as he and Tess had been discussing how soon he had to head north, and Mack had known from the neatness of her navy skirt and gold blouse, to the way her hair was actually brushed, that she must have had a drink.
    She had levered herself over the doorstep and walkedtowards them with a slow, deliberate gait as if she had to concentrate on replicating what normal movement looked like. He remembered how, when he was little, she used to stride out and he’d had to look sharp to keep up with her.
    Ignoring Mack, Phyllida had wished Tess ‘Good morning’, and an embarrassed Tess had leaped up and offered Phyllida first her chair and then a cup of tea.
    Phyllida’s only words until Tess returned had been a pointed ‘Such a good child’, and Mack had seethed quietly. He’d seethed some more when Tess had passed the fine bone-china teacup and saucer to Phyllida – it was another fancy prop Phyllida used to convince herself she was still in control. They had all ignored the way Phyllida’s hand had shaken as she took it.
    He’d said nothing as Tess had told Phyllida in a shamingly proud way that he’d landed a job writing a travel book. Her reply, accompanied by a graceful ascent of her eyebrows, hit too many nerves.
    ‘Not your usual area of … expertise,’ she had said, ‘or will you be snooping on the locals too?’
    Even Tess’s pleading look couldn’t keep him sitting down.
    They had then had the same fight they’d been having since he had gone to work for O’Dowd, the one when he told her he knew he’d taken a wrong turning and she gave her view forcefully that he had wasted his training: O’Dowd was the worst kind of journalist overseeing the worst kind of journalism.
    ‘Sloppy, nasty, pandering to the basest instincts of the public.’ Her voice had grown harsher and harsher. ‘And you, you developed the morals of a hyena.’
    Tess had said ‘Mum’ sharply at that point, and Phyllida had stopped talking while Mack returned to his seat on the wall, outraged at the injustice. His morals! Wasn’t it her messy morals that had catapulted him back into O’Dowd’s world?
    That anger had still been there when Tess had gone off to see if she could find the article on Northumberland she’d seen in one of the magazines in Phyllida’s bathroom.
    Mack had moved towards Phyllida as soon as Tess was out of sight. There had been more coldness coming off her than the breeze. He saw the way she drew back from him, something