Free A Friend of the Family by Marcia Willett

half-tubs that stood between the seats. The lawnmower had been run down the ramp ready to be pressed into service along the railway track. Still Thea sat on, immobilised, half drugged by the heat of the sun, such a welcome change after a long cold wet spell. She pushed up the sleeves of George’s old tattersall shirt and stretched out her long legs in the shabby jeans. Thea had no thought for clothes beyond their ability to keep her warm and decent and she had been delighted to discover a number of old shirts and jerseys amongst George’s cast-off possessions that would keep her adequately clothed for some time to come. George, who had never lived with a woman other than his mother but had heard all sorts of stories regarding wives’ extravagances and clothes-buying sorties, was rather relieved to find that he had such a frugal wife and thought that she looked charming in his checked shirts with the sleeves rolled up and a cotton scarf at her throat. With her youth and height and glorious hair she could have carried anything she chose. And Thea chose simplicity.
    She stirred and drew in her legs and the robin cocked an eye at herand flew away. Thea sighed a little and passed her hands over her face, straining back her hair and stretching a little. There was no doubt that things seemed much better again now. George had lost that rather inward look and the ‘quietness’ which she had described to Hermione. He had come back one weekend quite his old self, if not more so. There was a kind of expansiveness about him which suggested relief from tension and he had been loving and attentive and happy. Why then was she visited with this feeling of unease? A verse of psalm slipped into her mind.
Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul: and why art thou so disquieted within me?
Why indeed? A week or two later when she told George that Felicity had dropped in he had suggested, quite casually, that they should perhaps invite her for lunch one weekend. She might be lonely, he said, as if in explanation, and it might be a kind thing to do. So Felicity had come and everything had been easy and natural and since then she’d been in several times whilst George was at home: for a cup of coffee one Saturday morning and for supper on a Sunday evening. And once she’d come uninvited on a Saturday afternoon bringing a home-made cake. On that occasion she’d seemed slightly tense and George, coming in and finding her unexpectedly in the kitchen, had behaved rather oddly, with a kind of forced jollity, and had disappeared again quite quickly. Felicity had watched him go and continued to stare at the closed door for some moments before Thea gently recalled her attention. She had left soon after, refusing a cup of tea or to share in the cake, and Thea had gone to look for George and found him standing at the window in his dressing room, jingling the coins in his pocket and staring out across the garden to the humped indigo shoulders of the moor, clear-cut against a pale twilight sky. She had slipped her arms round his waist and pressed her cheek against his throat and he had dragged his hands from his pockets and clutched her to him, kissing and touching her with such urgency that they had fallen on to the little bed in the corner and he had made love to her exhaustively, almost desperately.
    Thea knew quite well now that Felicity was the married woman with whom George had had his affair but what she did not know washow seriously to regard it. If it was all over it wouldn’t matter at all. It was in the past.
    That Felicity had been married to another man who was George’s friend was a moral issue between the three of them and nothing to do with Thea. If only George had told her they could have laid the ghost together; as it was she could only watch and wait and pray that it was indeed all over and that she had nothing to fear from Felicity. She knew that that was where the danger lay. Despite the fact that