The Well by Catherine Chanter

you’re the only person in this wonderful United Kingdom of ours who feels that way,’ he replied, sitting on the side of the bed, pulling on his jeans, shivering. Despite the cold, we had scrupulously avoided touching each other all night, so that when my knee had brushed his back, we had both recoiled like strangers.
    ‘Do you know what? I’ve had just about enough of being on the receiving end of the general public’s accusations. We did that in London and it was no fun. Now, I just want to be like everyone else. I’d actually prefer to be part of their fucking drought.’
    Mark came to me, put his arm around me. I wanted to pull away, but I thought no, if I do that now there will be no going back. He’d asked me one night after a long interview with the police about the laptop, ‘Do you find me repulsive?’ We couldn’t go back to that. But as for The Well – Mark had no answers, just platitudes. It’s not called The Well for nothing. History. Geography. Geology. Logic. The lawyer and the farmer, his alter egos kept each other company,but his schizophrenic platitudes were not for me. I pushed him away, told him to use his eyes, look at our green grass, the snowdrops under our hedges, our tight budding trees. Now look beyond our boundary, at the landscape iron-grey and stubborn in its sickness. That’s not normal, I said. That’s not logical, Mark. Nor is the rain.
    ‘What about the rain?’
    ‘The rain. Like last night, it must have rained. We hardly ever see it rain, we don’t usually hear it rain, but it has clearly rained. And just here. Nowhere else in the whole glorious country has it rained properly for almost two years, but it rained here, last night, again. Here, we have unlimited access to our best friend the Rain God and we don’t even beat drums for him.’
    Mark thundered downstairs, without replying, ostensibly for breakfast, but from the little window on the landing I watched him, in that green jumper, standing between the rows of our fledgling winter wheat with Bru beside him, looking up at him with unconditional loyalty. He crouched down and picked up a feather, brushed it across his unshaven face. When he came back into the kitchen, I didn’t know if it was rain or tears on his cheeks, but whichever it was, I wanted to kiss them away, but there was a gap between us and my love didn’t seem wide enough to bridge it.
    Instead, I wiped my own eyes and made a suggestion. Perhaps we should contact the man from the ECDR or go ahead and get a supply licence and run a pipe down to the other farmers, then at least the locals would see we were not just taking our luck for granted.
    ‘Your “locals” were so unbelievably rude last night that they can go hang themselves for all I care,’ said Mark, then he sat down heavily at the table, rubbed his head in his hands. ‘Look, one drainpipe’s not going to solve their drought, Ruth.’ He picked up the spoon as if to start eating, but paused and held it up to his face, studying his distorted reflection for a moment before continuing. ‘It wasn’t what we came here for, a load of prying bureaucrats traipsing all over our land with their measuring equipment and weatherstations and forms for this permission and data for that. The next thing you know they’ll slap a compulsory purchase order on the place. We came here to get away from all that crap and we’ve been doing so well, we’ve been doing so well,’ he said, stirring his cereal round and round. Congealed porridge. Hard boiled eggs. Burned toast. I pointed out that the crap seemed to have caught up with us and he pushed his chair back and grabbed his scarf, saying he needed time to think about things. I said fine, take all the time you need, I’m sure it’s not urgent, then fed the toast to the dog, put the eggs to one side for lunch, scraped the porridge into the bin, missed and made a filthy mess because of the rage and the tears and the hair in my face. Couldn’t be bothered to