Northern Spy(29)

“He’s punishing you,” says Tom, “for leaving him.”

“I didn’t leave you,” I tell Finn. “Your da took you to visit your grandparents. I missed you so much.”

“He’ll never trust you again,” says Tom, and I burst into tears. “Jesus, Tessa, I’m joking. He’ll be over it in an hour.”

While Tom carries in the bags, I split blueberries in half and feed them to the baby. “What are you doing?” asks Tom.

“Rebuilding our bond.”

“By bribing him?” he asks, and I shrug. Finn opens his mouth and I feed him another blueberry half.

Tom’s parents gave him a train set, and the three of us sit together on the living-room carpet assembling the wooden tracks.

“I need to talk to you,” I say. “I want to move.”

Tom places a bridge over the tracks. “You want to take him away from me?”

“No, of course not. We can pick somewhere together. You used to talk about London all the time.” His architecture firm has an office in London, he could ask to be relocated.

“Briony can’t leave. Her father has MS, she’s the one looking after him.”

“Her father can come, too,” I say. “We can all talk about it together.”

Tom reaches for another length of track. “Is this about Marian?”

“No.”

He sets a red station house along the tracks. “Were there any signs?”

“Are you asking me if I knew?”

“Don’t get defensive. I mean now, looking back. Did she ever act strange?”

“No. There was nothing.”

“And this is your solution?” he asks. “For all of us to move abroad?”

“It’s not because of Marian. There was a bomb scare in Belfast on Sunday. Why are you not worried for Finn?”

“How often do you bring Finn into Belfast?”

“It could happen here,” I say, as Finn lifts the station house and begins to chew on it. “What about a trial run? We could go for six months.”

“Do you think the conflict will be over in six months?”

“It has to end at some point, doesn’t it? Then we can come back.”

Tom fits the carriages together and begins to push them around the track, over the bridge, past the stand of painted trees. Finn watches, transfixed, rising onto his knee and raising one arm.

“This is my home,” I say. “I don’t want to leave either, but I don’t think Finn’s safe here.”

“If we moved, you’d find something else to worry about.”

“That’s not fair.” I rub my forehead. “What if just me and Finn go? You can visit.”

Tom looks down at Finn before answering. “If it were you,” he says, “how would you feel about visiting?”



* * *



—

After Tom leaves, I strap the baby into his carrier and we walk down the lane. Finn doesn’t seem to be giving me the cold shoulder anymore. I snap off a wheat chaff and offer it to him, and he grips it in his fist while we walk.

The soles of my shoes lift eddies of dust from the lane. I have on an old pair of denim overalls from my pregnancy and my hair is up in a knot, the sun warm on the back of my neck. I look at the beach roses, the potato fields, the row of tilting telephone poles, the lighter wash of sky to the east, above the sea.

I want Tom to be right about Greyabbey, that we’re safe here, that this village is different from the city. It is different. We have a microclimate, to start. The air feels warmer here in the summer and colder in the winter. We have thicker fogs and heavier snow. Our nights are darker, pitch-black. Our shops sell different things, you can buy mismatched silver at our antique shops, or a set of enamel coffee spoons, or a vintage steamer trunk, and across the street, you can buy turf bricks at the farm shop.

Our storms are worse, blowing straight in from the sea, and sometimes the roads flood. Sometimes the wind rips branches from the trees. Last winter, an ice storm knocked down a power line. The storm came fast, I remember worrying about the fishing boats that had been caught at sea. One of them had to be rescued by the coast guard. Those are the kinds of problems we have here. We’re closer to a coast guard post than to a police station.

We don’t have crime. We have tense council meetings about building extensions and roadworks, we have feuds between rival antique-shop dealers. This village is safe, relatively speaking. Maybe Tom is right, maybe if we move to London, I’ll start worrying about knife crime, or international terrorism, or air pollution. If we stay here, Finn can have a canoe, and a dog, he can swim in the sea even on schooldays, he can grow up near his extended family.

Though even places like this have been targeted in the past. No one really knows of our village now, but it could be notorious one day.

Marian said they’re close to a cease-fire. She said dozens of people are working in secret to end the conflict. A twinge pinches my side, which I ignore. The sun is behind us now, sending our shadows ahead of us on the dirt lane. I wave my hands and Finn laughs at the jumping shadow.

I walked on these lanes all through my pregnancy, which from here seems like such an easier time. I feel nostalgic for it, for my concerns then, their simplicity. All I had to do to be a good mother then was, what, take a prenatal vitamin. Not smoke. Maybe buy some nappies.