“Susan,” her mother called out. “I want to ask you something.” Her arm was outstretched, beckoning. “When you first saw your father with that woman,” she said. “What happened?”
Susan slowly moved towards her mother. “Nothing, but…” How could she explain? “It was just the way she looked at him, and held onto him. For too long. And then…” She remembered the woman reaching out to her father as they left the village. “It’s just the way she was with him.”
It was as her mother bent and kissed her, that Susan regretted the illicit foraging in her father’s study. Better that she had left things as they were. Now there would be more arguments late into the night. Taking Susan’s wrist in her hand, gently, her mother slid her thumb over the mark she had made earlier. “Shall we have a cup of tea?” s
