The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016) Read online

  She sprang from the bed. It was so clichéd and predictable: the cruelty so casual it was almost as if Matt wanted her to know. She thought of her husband – for whom the passion had gone, yes, but isn’t that what happened seven years into a relationship, when both of you were working hard? – and wondered if she even knew him. Who was he, this advertising creative? A supposedly sensitive, Guardian reader who liked Hilary Mantel novels, Vietnamese not Thai food, cinnamon not chocolate on his cappuccino; who pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses up when he was nervous, but was irritated when she once told him he was almost too pretty. ‘So – not handsome?’ he had probed. ‘Well … yes, of course … but daintier.’ He had pulled his slim-fitting cardigan tight.

  He wasn’t some aggressive alpha male, but her friend: the person who had held her after her father died, and had proposed six months afterwards; who had helped put her back together again.

  That hair – the fact he hadn’t checked for any telltale traces; the fact he had fucked his lover here, in her bed, apparently oblivious to whether she would notice – made a mockery of them.

  He hadn’t even bothered to deny it. When he came home on Monday at lunchtime – after she’d called and said they needed to talk – she was, for some unfathomable reason, slicing peppers, thoughts tumbling with each knock of the knife. As he entered, she put it down. Her hand was quivering and the blade trembled against the slivered fans of red and orange. Please deny it, she willed him, as he took in her eyes pooling with tears. Tell me it’s a mistake, that I’ve imagined it. That there’s some other explanation for this?

  But: ‘I need some time to think,’ he said, calmly, infuriatingly, as she stood there, convulsed with sobs, just wanting him to make it better somehow. Couldn’t you just hold me? She felt like screaming, even though she knew that if he did so, she would push him away. For a moment she craved a bear hug from her tall, broad-chested farmer father: the sort of hug that made her feel as if no harm could ever come to her, as if she was buttressed against the world. Matt could never give her that: their bodies are mismatched – hers soft against his, his, too slight and slim. Insubstantial.

  At the door, he had paused.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said.

  She had gone straight to her night shift. They were too short-staffed for her to cancel, and it was her last night in a row of three. The last of five long shifts. But she was exhausted and distracted. They nearly lost a patient. Yet another extremely fragile baby: born at twenty-five weeks, clinging on for a further three. She watched this child they’d had to resuscitate: more skinned chick than baby boy, his nappy and cap dwarfing his scrap of a body: veins pumping gold beneath his translucent skin, not one ounce of fat or muscle. And, despite knowing it was unprofessional to let herself be affected, she found it hard not to cry.

  There wasn’t time to be distressed, though. She was too busy looking after two other babies. Both needed to be monitored: drugs dispensed, tubes suctioned, ventilation levels altered and assessed. Little Jacob Wright was late in having his morphine topped up – and it was then that she made her mistake.

  ‘Um, Lucy?’ Emma Parker, the most junior of her colleagues, was flushing as she double-checked the dose Lucy had measured just before the infusion was administered.

  ‘I think you’ve added 1ml of morphine not 0.1ml to the saline. Isn’t that ten times the amount it should be …?’

  The world spun: the always-stuffy atmosphere of the neonatal intensive care unit pushed down on her, bright stars crowding her vision.

  ‘I … I can’t have, can I?’

  And then she looked at the empty vial and in that split second her bowels turned cold and she could see her world come tumbling down in such a way that she didn’t know how it could be rebuilt again.

  For Emma was right. Of course she was. Out of practice at regularly making up infusions, she had filled a 1ml syringe, instead of drawing out just the 0.1ml and mixing it with 0.9ml of sodium chloride. Such a tiny, fatal difference. Such an easy, terrible mistake.

  ‘Glad we double-checked.’ Emma gave an uneasy laugh, embarrassed on her behalf. ‘No harm done.’ She glanced at her superior, chewed her bottom lip.

  Oh, but there could have been! How there could have been. If she had given it to Jacob, he would have died. No question of it. Her chest tightened at the thought of him going into cardiac arrest. Then she imagined telling his parents: his father who insists his son is a ‘fighter’, his beautiful, fragile mother. How would they react if they discovered that, through human error – through her error – their tiny son had died?

  ‘I’ll fill out a DATIX form; tell the manager.’ She cleared her throat, tried to breathe deeply, to think clearly. Her palms were sweating; her armpits pricked.

  ‘There’s no need; I won’t say anything, I promise.’ Emma was insistent, and she could see her trying to cover up her shock at what her superior had done; was perhaps running through the consequences if she hadn’t noticed. A baby’s death meant suspension and possible disciplinary action – for both of them.

  ‘No.’ She was firm about this. As the sister on the ward, she had to set an example, however humiliating. ‘This is serious; it counts as a “near miss”.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Emma said, and she could see the relief on the younger woman’s face that she was doing the right thing.

  Lucy, shamefaced, looked away.

  It wasn’t the first time she had made a mistake, as Ruth Rodgers, the manager, pointed out when she suggested Lucy take some sick leave. She had recently placed a junior nurse with an intensely sick baby who later required resuscitation, and had made other rota errors. Nothing this serious, but still: did she feel her judgement was a little shaky, these days?

  ‘It’s not like you,’ Ruth went on. ‘You’re usually so focused, which we’d expect from a sister with your experience.’ She paused and tipped her head to one side as if the next question was delicate. ‘Can I ask: is everything all right at home?’

  And it was then that Lucy knew that their trust in her had gone; that they no longer viewed her as a conscientious, thorough, clinically safe employee. Her eyes filmed as tears began to brim.

  ‘Let’s set you up with your GP and occupational health; get you some sick leave.’ Ruth was brisk, no-nonsense. ‘Perhaps you need a few weeks off. A couple of months. Sick leave not suspension. Time to get yourself back together again.’

  Within a couple of hours, she had traded the security of the hospital she had worked in for five years for the warm anonymity of a crowded London street: her badge gone, her uniform off, her status as a nurse in question, whatever occupational health might say. The late June heat, choked with exhaust fumes, pressed against her, and she felt overwhelmed. No longer a nurse. No longer a wife. Who was she – and why was she here?

  She was drifting, rudderless, far out to sea.

  Later, safe in the privacy of her home, she dry retches into the toilet, the shock of what has happened striking her with the force of a rogue wave pounding a beach. She clutches the cold enamel, trying to calm herself, waiting for the nausea to subside. Her body shivers. She heaves again.

  It is early afternoon now. Sunshine streams in from the street and pools on the carpet. She slips onto the sagging sofa; hides herself away. Her knees curl up and she shifts so that she is lying in a foetal position, holding her grief tightly inside her so that it cannot spill into the sunny front room of her maisonette; the home that is her sanctuary from London’s hustle and bustle. The home she shared with Matt until yesterday. Was it only then? That time belongs to a different era. She wipes at the tears and the snot that keep sliding down her face.

  As the light shifts, she paces the room; her insides hollowed out at the thought of everything she has lost: husband, reputation, possibly – for she does not know how she can go back to nursing at the moment – career.

  When she comes to the mantelpiece, she turns down the smiling photos of herself and Matt, and picks up one of her father, sta
nding, beaming in front of the family farm. Dearest Dad. The last time I felt such grief was for you. Four years ago and yet, at times, it could be yesterday. She traces a face that will never age beyond fifty; peers at his eyes. Deep brown, they seem to crinkle. ‘How bloody fantastic,’ she can hear him roar.

  Behind him the sea glints against the gold of the barley, the green of the hedgerows, the soft grey of the farm. The tug of homesickness takes her by surprise. She couldn’t wait to get away from the place – ravaged by foot-and-mouth the summer she left: so desolate and boring, she felt as a teenager. Yet now, she is sick with longing for it. The only place she wants to be is standing on the top of the headland, arms outstretched, with a stiff cross onshore wind blowing, all fears and sadness buffeted away.

  Could she run back home? Help them out over the busy summer months while she licks her wounds and puts herself back together again?

  The idea ferments. Her mother would welcome her with open arms. For a moment, she sees Judith flying up the slate path towards her, her face an open question, as she pulls her tightly into an embrace. There would be unconditional support and love. And so what? It might be regressive. Not something someone nearing thirty-two should ever want to do. But her life isn’t what it was two days ago – and the old rules and expectations no longer hold. Skylark Farm, the home of her childhood, is the only place she wants to be.

  Trembling, she reaches for her phone.

  ‘Trecothan 87641?’ The voice at the end of the line has a Cornish lilt and is gentle.

  ‘Mum?’ Lucy says, and her voice breaks with relief.

  ‘Lucy? Is everything all right?’

  And the tears are falling now, warm and wet. She has to pause for a moment before she can get out the sentence.

  ‘Lucy?’ Her mother’s concern deepens.

  ‘Mum. Please can I come home?’

  Three

  Then: 30 June 1944, Cornwall

  The sea was a deep navy when Maggie clambered down to the empty cove for a swim, late in the evening. She was supposed to be up in her bedroom, revising for her Higher Certificate exams next week.

  She picked her way carefully, choosing the route she always used, with the fewest torturous leaps and only a smattering of mussels and barnacles to stab her feet. No gelatinous seaweed. She had scrambled over these rocks since she was little, but still feared the slip and slither of those rogue, damp strands of green.

  The tide was high and coated the rocks where they dropped, not shelved. She eased herself in gently, the cold burning as it spread over her crotch, her navel, her breasts. She ducked her shoulders, unable to bear its iciness any longer, keen to curb the sensation. If only she could disappear, be swallowed up by it, deep where no one could see her, bar the odd crab and the glimmering shoals of fish.

  She swam strongly: a brisk breaststroke, eyes wide open. The salt stung them, but she needed to immerse herself entirely. The sea silvered her ears and she blew fat bubbles that filled her head with a gurgle that would be comical were her stomach not churning with grief. She rose and swam down again, aware that she had left the cove now and was swimming out to sea and that first cave, where they had hidden; then towards the second, and the spot where they had first kissed.

  A wave lifted and dropped her. The sea was becoming choppy: the sky, a blue filleted with mackerel clouds just a few hours earlier, was turning a sheet-metal grey. The air was chill, and she trod water, bicycling her legs. Better to swim down once more, where she would be entirely hidden and where she could cry in private, her tears mingling with the salt of the sea.

  For grief wasn’t something that was discussed at home where her father might give her a sympathetic glance but didn’t know how to address the matter, and her mother refused to acknowledge it or even look at her with a smidgeon of compassion, or so it seemed. Joanna had moved to work elsewhere – She knows too much, her mother had said – and Alice had been rehoused with a family down in St Agnes. Next week, two new evacuees – brothers aged seven and eight – were moving in.

  Nothing had occurred, or so her mother would have everyone think; and yet Maggie’s world had changed entirely. She let out a howl of disbelief. The noise was pitiful: a lamb’s bleat when what she felt was a lion’s roar of rage so immense that, at times, she could barely contain it. Distress, too: that had been her overriding feeling for the past ten weeks, and a terrible deadening numbness. Guilt – sharp, relentless – and desperation. A sense of panic: that she could do nothing.

  At times, these emotions felt overwhelming. At lunchtime, she had hidden in the school music cupboard quaking, so intense was her distress. Please God, she had prayed to a Lord whose existence she increasingly doubted. Keep him safe; keep him safe. As if something terrible, at that moment, was happening to him.

  She rolled onto her back, and for a moment let herself float: watching the clouds swell and burgeon. Her curls unravelled in a halo; her limbs formed a cross as she drifted further out to sea.

  I could just let myself go, she thought, dispassionate. And then the cloud above her broke and the surface of the water began to be spattered, the drops bouncing and plashing off her face.

  The rain hadn’t yet reached the farm, and as she looked at it, high up on the hill, she saw that it was lit by a shaft of freak sunlight.

  She turned towards the shore and began swimming in.

  Four

  Now: 3 July 2014, Cornwall

  Maggie, perched on her bench under the crab apple, peers up the track from the farmhouse, waiting for her granddaughter to return. The lane is empty; the air still. Only the song of a skylark and the tread of her daughter’s boots tramping down the lane break the calm of the summer’s morning. The gate clicks and Judith comes up the worn slate path.

  ‘I keep telling you. She texted at Exeter. She won’t be here for at least another hour.’ Her daughter smiles as she comes towards her, her face a mix of exasperation and concern.

  A pretty girl, Judith, though she crops her hair now for practical reasons. No good having long hair if you’re a farmer. Still, she makes an effort: small Celtic knots in her ears and a flick of mascara. When she stops doing that, they will know that something has gone very wrong.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea? I’m putting the kettle on.’

  Maggie shakes her head.

  Judith Petherick, up since a quarter to six, gives a tight, bright smile and exhales audibly. ‘Right. Well I’ve two more batches of scones and a Victoria sponge to make before she gets here, so I’d better get on.’

  ‘I’ll come and help.’

  ‘No, you stay here. I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, just sit with me for a moment.’ Maggie leans back and watches the leaves and tight green marbles of the crab apple dapple her skirt. After a pause, Judith sits down.

  ‘So she seemed in a state?’

  Judith nods, her face grim. ‘I’ve never heard her like it – well, not since Fred died. Inconsolable. Kept going on about what could have happened. Seemed convinced she wasn’t up to her job and terrified that, when or if she goes back to nursing, a baby will die.’

  ‘Was she as upset about her husband?’ Maggie has never approved of Matt. Too much of a Londoner; too scathing about Cornwall and the farm, which he barely visited. Perturbed by the reek of silage and the lack of a signal for his mobile phone.

  ‘Hard to know. But at least she can be rid of him – not like the guilt if something happens to a baby or her shame if she gives up her career.’

  ‘Perhaps she might move back here?’ Maggie voices the wish she is sure they have both had.

  ‘Oh, Mum. There’s not much to keep her here, is there?’

  ‘You don’t mean that, Judith.’

  ‘Not for us, no. But for Lucy? She’s hardly been racing to come back here before now.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but it’s like a magnet this place. Draws us back if we leave. It did with me.’

  ‘Not sure about Lucy.’

  ‘No?’ Maggie pauses. ‘Yes �
�� you may be right.’

  She takes in the view: the same as when she was born here, bar the wind turbines on the horizon. It is beautiful, yes, but a hard existence. Getting up for the six o’clock milking, day in, day out, is not for everyone – and who would want the financial burden of a farm past its best? She thinks of the latest overdraft statement that Judith had tried to hide in her pile on the dresser. The sum had shocked her. She twists her wedding ring, loose now, against her knuckles, and wonders when to bring that up again. For discussing it will mean looking at Richard’s proposal, once again.

  ‘Perhaps she will want to stay this time,’ she persists. ‘She needs us now, but we need her too. Tom must be thrilled to have the help?’

  ‘Well there is that,’ says Judith, thinking of her son, who gave up his cheffing when it was clear the farm would fail if one of her children didn’t return.

  ‘And maybe this is a chance for her to make up for not coming back four years ago,’ says Maggie, thinking of the aftermath of Fred’s death, when Judith was consumed with grief. ‘When you really needed her.’

  Oh, what is she doing? The fear that running home is a stupid idea – something regressive and infantile and pitiful – grows stronger once Lucy leaves the M5 at Exeter and ploughs down the A30. She can’t pretend she is in the Home Counties or anywhere close to her old life. With every mile, the landscape becomes more verdant, agricultural and desolate. A cloud chases across the moor, and turns the peat dark, purple and ominous; transforms luminous green into dingy grey.

  A mile from the farm, she pulls over. The anxiety is now overwhelming, clutching at her stomach so that she feels physically sick. Breathe slowly, she tells herself, but it’s no good. The panic always hits her here: when she spies the stretch of coastline where her father died.