CHARLOTTE LAMB - The Marriage War

Just five feet tall, and built on a diminutive scale to match, with a slender body and short legs, Martha had a mobile, heart-shaped face and bobbed black hair without a trace of grey yet—although she was forty years old. She lived alone in the house across the street from Mark and Sancha and her home was a magnet for all Sancha’s children because Martha kept a cat and two dogs—sleek red setters, with gleaming manes and liquid dark eyes.

Her eyes shrewd, she refused to accept Sancha’s lie. ‘Come on, you know you can talk to me. I won’t repeat anything you tell me,’ she murmured, with one eye on Flora. ‘Having problems? Not Flora?’

Sancha laughed. ‘Flora’s always a problem!’

‘That’s true,’ Martha said, smiling. ‘But there is something wrong, isn’t there? Is it the boys? Or Mark?’

Her quick ears caught Sancha’s faint, quickly suppressed sigh.

‘It’s Mark?’ Martha deduced immediately. ‘He isn’t ill? Or is it his job? Is he having trouble at work?’

Sancha gave her a wry look. ‘What a little Sherlock Holmes you are! It’s nothing. Forget it.’

Martha studied her face. ‘You look terrible—did you know that? As if you haven’t slept a wink all night. You seemed fine last time I saw you—when was that? Couple of days ago? Nothing was wrong then. So what’s happened since?’

Sancha glanced at Flora’s small, wildly rocking body. Flora was oblivious of everything going on around her, could not hear their lowered voices, anyway.

It was tempting to talk to Martha, who had been the first neighbour to visit them when they had moved into the newly built house across the street from her, bringing a plate of home-baked biscuits and a bunch of roses from her beautiful garden. She had been a rock during the years since—had done the shopping for Sancha whenever she couldn’t get out, babysat, been ready to listen to Sancha’s problems with the children and given advice and practical help whenever she could.

Sancha had always felt very lucky to have such a good neighbour, and she, in her turn, had tried to be very supportive to Martha during her own time of trouble, when Martha’s schoolteacher husband, Jimmy, had run off with an eighteen-year-old he had been teaching at the nearby college. Their elopement had caused a scandal and the local newspapers had been full of the story; reporters had badgered Martha, waited outside her house for her to emerge, called questions through the letterbox, and photographers had rushed to get snatched photos of her if she came out.

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