Broken Country

Part One

Gabriel

The farmer is dead. He's dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him. Was it an accident, or was it murder? It looks like murder, they say. A gunshot wound to the heart? Too precise. It must have been intended.

They are waiting for me to speak. Two pairs of eyes fixed on me, unblinking. But how can I tell them what he wants me to say? The words we practiced over and over in the minutes before the police arrived?

I shake my head. I need more time.

It's true what they say: you can live a whole lifetime in a final moment. We are that boy and girl again, with everything ahead of us. A glorious stretch of light and wondrous beauty. Nights beneath the stars.

He is waiting for me to look at him. When I do, he smiles to show me he is fine. The briefest nod of his head.

Say it, Beth. Say it now.

I look at his face again. Beautiful to me then, and now, and always. One final glance between us before everything changes.

1968

Hemston, North Dorset

"Gabriel Wolfe is back living in Meadowlands," Frank says. The name explodes across the breakfast table. "Divorced now. Just him and his boy, rattling around in that huge place."

"Oh."

It seems to be the only word I have.

"That's what I thought," Frank says. He gets up from his side of the table and walks around to mine, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me. "We won't let that pillock cause us any grief. We'll have nothing to do with him."

"Who told you?"

"It was the talk of the pub last night. Took two massive lorries to bring all their stuff down from London, apparently."

"Gabriel hated it here. Why would he come back?"

His name feels strange on my tongue. The first time I've spoken it aloud in years.

"There's no one else to look after the place. His father long gone, his mother on the other side of the world. Up to her neck in dingo shit, with any luck."

Frank always manages to make me laugh.

"What's here for him, anyway?" Frank says casually, but I see it—the unsaid thought that flits across his mind. *Aside from you.* "He's bound to sell up and move to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo or wherever it is these…" He grapples for the word, looking pleased with himself when he finds it. "…celebrities hang out."

Frank spends all the daylight hours and quite a few at night out on the farm, caring for our animals and tending the land. He works harder than anyone I know, but always takes time to notice the beauty of a spring sunset or the sudden, dizzying soar of a skylark. His attunement to weather and wildlife is set deep in his bones. One of the many things I love about him. Frank doesn't have time to read novels or go to the theater. He wouldn't know a dry martini if someone chucked one in his face. He's the very antithesis of Gabriel Wolfe—or at least, the one we read about in the papers.

I watch my husband leaning against the doorframe, pulling on his boots. In twenty minutes' time, his skin will be permeated three layers deep with the stench of cow dung.

The door is rapped hard from the other side, making Frank start. "Bloody hell," he says, yanking it open so quickly his brother nearly falls into the room.

Our mornings invariably start this way.

Jimmy, still ruddy from last night's beer, eyes screwed half-shut, one strand of hair sticking straight up as if it's gelled, says, "Aspirin, Beth? Got a banger."

I take down the medicine box from the dresser where it lives, primarily for Jimmy's hangovers. Once upon a time, it was full of infant paracetamol and emergency plasters.

There are five years between them, but Frank and Jimmy look so similar that, from a distance, even I struggle to tell them apart. They are well over six feet tall with dark, almost black hair and eyes so blue people often do a double-take. Their mother's eyes, I'm told, though I never had the chance to meet her. They are both wearing shabby corduroys and thick shirts, soon to be covered in the navy overalls that are their daily uniform. In the village, they are sometimes called "the twins," but only in jest; Frank is very much the older brother.

"What happened to 'just going to finish this pint and call it a night'?" Frank says, grinning at Jimmy.

"Beer is God's reward for an honest day's toil."

"That from the Bible?"