Weird Sister by Kate Pullinger

gone in to buy a pound of potatoes – I was so broke that was about all I could afford – and I dreaded her asking me why on earth I was buying a couple of potatoes and nothing more, prepared for her litany about how important it was to support the village shop, had I taken to driving over to the supermarket in the next town? But she was full of her news about this new woman.
    ‘An American no less,’ she said.
    ‘Is that right?’
    ‘She’s called Agnes Samuel. You should see her Elizabeth, she’s gorgeous.’
    ‘Is she?’ It was unlike Barbara to be so gossipy.
    ‘She’s staying at the Black Hat. Robert seems to know her. Are you sure you haven’t met her?’
    ‘I’m sure.’
    ‘She’s been around for, well, it must be several weeks now.’ Barbara gave me a pitying look. I realized then that there must be something between Robert and Agnes Samuel, at least Barbara thought there was. ‘I’m sure you’ll be introduced,’ she continued. ‘Lovely, she’s just lovely,’ an enormous smile on her normally taciturn shopkeeper face. She sent me on my way, refusing to let me pay for the potatoes, which was, in itself, extraordinary.
    That evening I put on my red cloche hat and my black dress and a shawl I bought in India and some lipstick that I know becomes me. Perfume on my wrists and in the dip of my neck. I went into the Black Hat and I sat at the table next to the fire. I had a gin and tonic, and another, and there were plenty of people for me to talk to as I hadn’t been to the pub for ages. There was no sign of Robert, nor the American stranger. After a while I excused myself to go to the loo.
    The women’s toilet on the ground floor of the Black Hat is very poky and dimly lit. Over the years I had got into the habit of going up the stairs to the first floor where there is a spacious and bright loo that Jim and Lolita have tarted up for their paying guests. As I reached the top of the stairs I heard Robert’s voice coming from one of the bedrooms. It was him, unmistakable. He was moaning. Without thinking I moved across the landing to the door. I placed my hand on the door handle and I heard him again. ‘Oh please, Agnes,’ he said, his voice thick with passion, ‘please, yes, oh . . .’ and I stepped away.
    I realized it then, I realized it with an awful, doomed sense of my own bad timing: I loved Robert. I’d always loved him and I had left it too late.
    I went into the loo, closed the door, and burst into tears. I sat on the toilet and cried. After a while someone tried the door, but I didn’t get up or say anything. In the mirror I looked awful, smeared make-up, lipstick caked into the newly forming cracks around my mouth. I washed my face and patched things up, waited until my breathing returned to normal. I opened the door and went downstairs.
    Robert and Agnes were at the table by the fire where I had been sitting. They were right, everyone in the village was right, she was beautiful. And – this is what no one ever says, what everyone fails to mention – so is he. I noticed for the first time that night how his dark hair was beginning to grey and how the flecks of white set off his blue eyes. He is tall and straight and wears clothes very well, with a long-limbed elegance that seems very English to me.
    I went over to introduce myself, but as I approached they turned to each other with a look of particular intensity. That look struck me like a kind of body blow: Robert is in love, he’s in love with this woman, and not with me. I stepped back, I turned and walked unsteadily to the other side of the bar. I sat for a moment with Marlene and Geoff Henderson, Marlene has been a good friend to me. In a kind of daze, I agreed to have dinner with them Friday. After that I got up and left. Even the shock of the cold October air – it had chilled right down very early that year – did not bring me out of myself. I wandered back to my cottage.
    The next few days were the worst I’ve ever