AllFreeNovel
Share Us
SARAH
No one ever liked giving bad news, Sarah thought with a sigh as she drove away from the Bluebell Inn, bumping down the rutted track with a slight wince. She knew they needed to re-gravel the drive, but that was yet another thing that the budget didn’t stretch to. There was homely, she thought, and then there was just plain shabby, or even rundown, and as of late, the inn was definitely veering toward the latter, despite the changes Ellie and Matthew had made—the friendly-looking sign of white-painted wood at the end of the lane, with ‘The Bluebell Inn’ written in curly gold script, the neatly tended flower beds by the old wrought iron gate.
Sarah appreciated Ellie’s determination to do something, but at this point, she couldn’t help but wonder if anything could save the inn, a thought that tore at her heart. Over the last two years, she’d been spending more and more time there, reconnecting with her brother and mother, as well as Ellie and her nieces and nephews, treasuring those newfound relationships, even if she’d never quite been able to say as much. Sarah knew she’d never been much of anemoter, but she would miss the busyness of the inn, the guests she’d been able to meet and chat to, the sense of welcome and friendship that had been fostered… especially when her own home currently felt so unwelcoming.
Her stomach cramped as she thought about last night—Nathan hadn’t returned from his job as an investment manager in Cardiff until past ten o’clock. Both Mairi and Owen had already been in bed, Owen having been moping because his father had promised to play football with him after work. Nathan hadn’t even sent a text to warn Sarah that he’d be late, at least not until she’d texted first, when it had gone seven and dinner was already on the table. When he finally had come home, he’d been tired and irritable, waving Sarah away even though she had barely said a word.
“Don’t give me that, please, Sarah,” he’d told her wearily, despite having only said hello. “I’m sorry I’m late, but you know things are really busy at work.”
Sarah had been amazed to hear a slightly accusing note in his voice; did he actually blame her for something that was entirely up to him? And why didn’t she call him out on it? Because she didn’t, and hadn’t for months. Even when he’d seemed so irritable last night, she hadn’t come back swinging, the way she once might have, or even offered a pointed reply. No, last night she’d just heated up his supper in the microwave, and murmured something about how, yes, she knew it was a busy time.
Howpatheticshe was, she thought with a grimace, oblivious to the verdant green hills that rolled onto the horizon as she drove toward Abergavenny. It wasn’t like her, or at least it hadn’t been in the past. She’d always prided herself on being strong, self-assured, striding through life with confidence. She knew it was off-putting to some—even to Ellie, at least when she’d first moved here—but it had felt like a kind of armor to Sarah, a way to face and indeed combat the world. But somehow, over the last year, she’d become this placating and even cringing creature when it came to her husband… because, she feared, that was the only way to keep her marriage alive.
Sarah pushed away that unpalatable thought before it could fully form and focused on the road as she came to the outskirts of Abergavenny, a quaint market town at the foot of three gentle mountains—the Skirrid, the Blorenge, and the Sugarloaf. Sarah had hiked them all.
Ellie wasn’t the only one who could bury her head in the sand about the difficult parts of life, she acknowledged wryly. She hadn’t pushed too hard about talking about the inn’s finances because she hadn’t wanted to confront them herself—just as she’d didn’t push Nathan too hard, either, on why he came home so late many evenings, or what had been making him so tense. She hadn’t taken him to task about letting Owen down about the football, and last week she’d said nothing when he’d missed a family dinner on Friday night, even though he’d told her that morning he’d be home, and she’d made a roast dinner specially. It was cowardly of her, and it wasn’t fair to her children, and yet some instinct for self-preservation continued to keep her silent. If she challenged him, the way she usually did, what would happen?
It was a question Sarah didn’t want to ask, never mind answer.
A long, low breath escaped her. At some point, she knew, just like with the inn’s finances, there would have to be a facing up to reality… and a reckoning. But, she thought with a rather grim smile, not today.
Twenty minutes after leaving the inn, she reached the building on the edge of Abergavenny where the accountancy firm where she worked had its office. Sarah had been working there for over ten years, since the children had been small; she’d liked the part-time hours, earning her own wage, and having something to do besides bake cupcakes or read to reception years—that, she realized suddenly, stopping mid-thought, was Nathan’s voice, not hers.
Back then, she actually wouldn’t have minded staying at home for a few more years, for the children’s sake as much as her own, but Nathan hadn’t really seen the point of it. He’d always been ambitious, and she’d matched him, as best as she could. It was futile to engage in some revisionist history, Sarah told herself rather crossly as she headed up to the office. She’d been glad to go back to work, eager for the new challenge… hadn’t she?
Sometimes she felt as if her current uncertainty—and, she thought,let’s face it, unhappiness—colored everything about the way she viewed her life, past, present, and future. It was like every photograph of her life had been washed in sepia. She needed to get a grip, get herselfback.
“All right, Sarah?” the receptionist, Rhiannon, asked cheerfully as Sarah came into the office.
Sarah forced her usual brightly determined smile onto her face. “Yes, absolutely fine,” she assured the receptionist, with perhaps just a bit too much force.
Rhiannon’s cheerfulness faltered as she glanced at Sarah striding so swiftly by.
“Glad to hear it,” she replied, and Sarah thought she sounded a bit dubious. She certainly felt more than a bit dubious herself.
It was a relief to enter her office and get down to work, not worry about what was going wrong in her life. When she had a column of numbers in front of her, her mind was able to empty everything else out and she felt as if she could breathe easier. The formless doubts and worries that had been plaguing her faded away, and she enjoyed being able to focus. There was nothing quite as satisfying as a string of figures that added up, a spreadsheet that made sense. A few hours in and Sarah felt her sense of equilibrium, fragile as it was, return.
Unfortunately, those doubts and worries crowded in the moment she let them, and they started to take alarming shape when she went to make herself a coffee in the office’s little kitchenette, or when she ate a sandwich at her desk, skimming news and struggling to push back the black cloud that kept threatening to hover over her, subsume her completely.
Get a grip, Sarah. This isn’t you. This isn’t you at all.
Except right now, it was.
When had she started to doubt Nathan? To fear her marriage wasn’t as solid or strong as she’d believed—assumed, really— that it was?
She and Nathan had met in the university’s debating society; they’d taken each other on, arguing for and against “This House would put corporate profits before individual privacy.” Sarah had lost, by only a point; Nathan had argued for the motion, she against.
He’d good-naturedly gloated about his victory and asked her out in the same breath. Now, Sarah found herself wondering what would have happened ifshe’dwon the debate. Would Nathan have even asked her out? He’d always liked to win, but then, she had, too. They’d matched each other, in so many ways… so why did she feel somismatched now? Was it all in her mind, and Nathan had just had a few late nights, or was something bigger going on?
Fortunately, Sarah thought, she had enough to distract her from her own unhappy thoughts. She left at three on a Wednesday, so she could pick up Mairi and take her to the stables outside Llandarth to groom and ride her horse, Mabel. Sarah had fallen in love with horse riding as a child, and although she didn’t get the opportunity to ride too much now, she loved being able to encourage the same passion in her daughter, who, until recently, had been absolutely horse-mad, with posters on the walls, pony books adorning her shelves, the whole lot. Then the teenaged years had struck, and Mairi sometimes seemed as if she’d rather do anything else than groom or ride Mabel. Sarah kept hoping her daughter would fall back in love with the pursuit, as well as the beloved animal she’d been taking care of for the last eight years.
“Good day at school?” she asked brightly as Mairi flung herself into the front seat; Owen had football practice and would be coming home on a later bus.
“I got a fifty-four on my maths test,” Mairi replied, leaning her head against the seat and closing her eyes. “I’m going tofailmy GCSEs.”
“It’s only October,” Sarah replied mildly, “and your exams aren’t for another six months. You’ve got time, sweetheart, I wouldn’t worry just yet.”
“You don’t know how stressed I am, Mum!” Mairi declared in an injured tone, and Sarah managed to hold her tongue. It wasn’t as ifshehadn’t taken the state exams in ten subjects that every student had to sit at the end of year eleven, or done her A levels two years later, or sat university exams three years after that, not to mention the four accounting exams she’d had to take to qualify as a CPA.Oh, no. She couldn’t possibly understand what that sort of pressure was like.
