Free Sound of Butterflies, The by Rachael King Page A

gloomy, Bear.’ Agatha stands and crosses to the window. She tugs at the drapes, letting a wash of light fall into the room. ‘And now I really must be going. I promised Mother I would help her with her sewing.’
    And she will. Later.

    Sophie stands over her sleeping husband. His tanned skin is reverting back to its paleness — too pale, really, but it could be the gloomy light of the bedroom. He sleeps on his back, with a pile of pillows beneath his head and shoulders, so that his body is bowed. His arms lie outside the bedclothes, and below the sleeves of his nightshirt his hands are still red and callused. The wound on his arm is beginning to heal, and soon she will remove the bandage altogether. His face is turned to one side. Even in sleep his lips are neatly pursed. His hair is beginning to curl awkwardly around his ear, which protrudes less obviously now that his face is filling out somewhat. He hasn’t lost his appetite at least; he eats the soup she brings him every day, and in the evening has been devouring a good-sized plate of meat and cheese and bread for supper. And yet he still looks deflated somehow, hollowed out. There is an air of sadness about him, even as he sleeps.
    She misses him more than she did when he was in Brazil. At least when he was there she knew he was thinking about her — to begin with, anyway — and she could imagine him moving through the rainforest with strong legs, his face crinkled with concentration. The day she saw him off at the station, he pulled her onto the train with him and embraced her in his empty compartment. When the whistle blew, she had to disentangle herself from his arms; the train had started to move as she opened the door and jumped back onto the platform. She was left with the smell of peppermints in her hair and the sight of his bright face at the window.
    Thomas jerks awake and for a moment she thinks he is going to smile at her, but his face remains expressionless, his head fixed to the pillow. Only his eyes dart about, as if looking for the other people she might have brought into the room with her.
    ‘Let’s go for a walk in the park,’ she says. ‘It’s a lovely afternoon.’
    Her husband draws back the bedclothes to let himself out of the bed. His thin legs, she notes, are also scarred from the insect bites. The golden hairs are caught in a chink of light from the window and they seemed to sparkle. He stands firmly on his feet — he has been kept fit with a turn around the garden every evening before supper. Sophie will not have her husband a cripple as well as a mute.
    ‘I’ll leave you to get dressed,’ she says.

    As they stroll up The Terrace, towards the park entrance, Sophie becomes aware of another problem; one she hadn’t even thought of before now. People nod at them as they pass. Some of them avert their eyes. She dreads meeting somebody they really know: not just polite strangers, or those who have heard about the strange, silent young man who has returned from the Amazon, but people from church. She’s glad they live in a reasonably big town, not a tiny village. She can sometimes go days without seeing people she knows, and in the weekends, the place is full of Londoners, so she can further sink into the background.
    They make it to the park without seeing a familiar face. Thomas’s gait is slow at first, a shuffling amble, as she imagines a sloth might move. As they pass through the gate, walking without touching, Sophie feels a cool breeze on her face. It reaches inside her and lifts her spirits. She feels it like a finger tracing circles in her abdomen. She leads him up the path towards the shady wood, where Thomas used to collect beetles and where she knows they are less likely to come across any people.
    Thomas has picked up his pace, and she feels her muscles stretch as she keeps in step with him. She misses her own walks. She doesn’t like to leave him for too long, in case he needs her, or in case he decides to speak and