Free The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea by Mark Douglas-Home

his responsibilities to two women. The significant difference in the behaviour of the two men was which woman they attempted to placate with money. In Mr William’s case, it was his mistress Megan Bates – in his letters he promised the child would be his heir; the mother would be given a house and an allowance. In Robert’s, it was Mrs Anderson, the soon-to-be-abandoned wife. As was usually the case with Robert, it was an offer made in drink, late at night, circumscribed and grudging. It was limited to maintenance for the child and to ‘keeping a roof over its head’. A final similarity: in neither case did the man honour his commitment.
    As the storm of emotion subsided, it left Mrs Anderson with a legacy of anger: at the casual and capricious trail of destruction left by men in pursuit of their desires and at women who conspire with them, women like Megan Bates and Alice Forsyth, her husband’s lover who became his wife and the mother of his three children. Most of all Mrs Anderson reserved her bitterness for the loss of her baby daughter, still-born at eight months, her death the consequence she would always believe of the stress she suffered when Robert finally deserted her.
    Hadn’t that been the story of her adult life: her loyalty always rewarded by betrayal of one kind or another?
    As usual, the thought was quickly followed by a spasm of self-pity and by tears which welled at the corners of her eyes. Her hands began to shake and she placed the tea cup back in its saucer. She continued to hold it, and every time her hands trembled the cup rattled against china, a noise like a distant chiming clock marking the passage of time. She appeared deaf to it: at any rate she didn’t change or release her grip. And so the distant chiming continued as she rehearsed for the umpteenth time since Diana’s memorial service the injustices she had suffered. Having run through those, she fretted about the precariousness of her position, at the household bills which would eat into her savings and pension, at the first rental demand for £575 which was due in a few days, at the lawyer’s reprimanding tone in response to her written protests. Finally, there was the nagging worry that her anonymous letter concerning Megan Bates’s daughter was lying crumpled and discarded in some official’s waste bin.
    In one combination or another, these ghosts and fears assailed her throughout the night, until at 4.20am, exhausted, she went to bed, having set her alarm for nine to have sufficient time to be dressed and ready for Jim Carmichael who would deliver her order from the shop in Poltown around eleven. She would encourage him to divulge all the local news, the comings and goings, in the hope he would tell her whether any young woman had been in the shop asking questions about Poltown. A slice of Mrs Anderson’s chocolate cake and a cup of tea were usually enough encouragement to get Jim talking. Sometimes he became so carried away she had to remind him that others were still waiting for his deliveries and to chivvy him, either in mid mouthful or mid-story, often both. That was something she wouldn’t be doing later that morning. She’d let him talk for as long as he wanted and she’d listen to his ramblings for any mention of a last minute B&B booking, for a stranger walking the beaches, a young woman in her mid-20s. If Mrs Anderson had been the daughter of Megan Bates, she would start the search in the shop, either there or at Boyd’s Farm though she’d get no sense at all out of poor Duncan Boyd. Just before she fell asleep, Mrs Anderson wondered how Duncan would react to hearing the name of Megan Bates again.
     
    * * *
     
    Cal woke before seven, his shoulders and neck stiff after sleeping uncomfortably in the pickup’s cab. He’d dozed off six hours earlier to a radio discussion about the banking crisis and had come round to another memory altogether. During the night when he’d barely been conscious he’d heard a short