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anywhere without central heating so don’t ask me, and we could do with an en suite.” But Sam, who’d decided all along that they would, with or without his wife’s approval, told the pleasantly surprised owner they’d take it, and what’s more offered the full asking price.
    Three months later, everything done that needed to be done, they moved in, and their first night had, rather surprisingly, been one of passion. “What’s got into you, Sam?” Emmie asked, as afterwards they lay side by side smoking a post coital cigarette in their king size double bed, “We should move house more often.” Sadly it had been a one-off. No repeat performance, and as spring turned into the wettest summer there’d been in years, the river burst its banks in three places, the roof leaked and builders’ dust and rubble filled the house, things between them went from bad to worse. Their lovemaking became increasingly rare and by the coming of their first winter in Kimbleford had more or less dried up altogether. Emmie’s enthusiasm for the place, like their lovemaking, was short lived. She never stopped complaining, and by the following spring Sam realised, not without experiencing both shame and guilt, that he had begun to hate her.
    The strange thing was that as his hatred of his wife grew – perhaps hatred was too strong: dislike, exasperation, boredom, words better suited to describe what he felt about Emmie – so did his love for the place. Reared in a seaside town; most of his adult life until now spent travelling the world, he knew little of the English countryside; how it worked through the seasons; the flora and fauna inhabiting it. But walking the lanes and fields about the village, following the course of the river, wandering in the woods above the valley, he had this inexplicable feeling that not only was he part of the land around him, but in some strange way it belonged to him. Accompanying these feelings, although equally inexplicable, came the conviction that there was something that he needed to do here; something expected of him, a task of some kind. For whom or what he’d no idea, but quarrelling with his wife and trying, not very successfully, to run a shop, was not it.
    Despite their many problems, however, life, as it tends to do, jogged along somehow. They began to make a few friends locally. People came to the shop: Emmie was good with the punters, you had to give her that, Sam set up a local delivery service, which helped, and between them they managed to make the business break even, more or less anyway. From Sam’s point of view the income they derived from it plus his army pension was quite sufficient for his needs, but not for Emmie. Emmie felt cheated. Began to think that her visit to the marriage bureau had been a mistake. She’d expected more than this from an ex-army major with a bit of capital, a lot more; had reached the stage when she even began to believe she would have been a sight better off if she’d stayed single. Now and again she would escape for a few days to London to stay with friends: “If I don’t get a break from this place now and again Sam, I’ll go bonkers.” When this happened he found himself hoping that she might not return. She always did, though, probably, he thinks bleakly, because she had nowhere else to go.
    What a bloody stupid situation. The even stupider thing was he couldn’t see his way out of it. He knew Emmie wasn’t happy either. Sometimes, although he had to admit not often, he felt sorry for her. Together they’d got themselves into this mess and there it was. Divorce was an option of course, but he knew if they did divorce she’d do her best to bleed him dry, and as things are and likely to remain, he simply doesn’t have the money. He lights another cigarette; idly watches a large, white, rather flashy car (unusual for these parts) as it emerges over the rim of the valley, follows the road downhill towards the village, and once over the old stone