A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George

past in a way that painted a picture at odds with the memories he had of it, who was he—a bloody hermit in a flat he’d once shared with his wife—to deny her this? Besides, this tale she was telling got them off the subject of India and himself, so he wasn’t about to stop her.
    She wasn’t to be derailed, however. “This isn’t about me: my troubles, my concerns, my feelings,” she said. “This is about you. You are all I have now, and I can’t stand knowing you’ve isolated yourself inside this flat, and I can’t bear thinking of you here alone. If I lose you on top of everything else . . .” She began to weep, then. “I’m
sorry
. I don’t mean to cry. But sometimes . . . Here’s how it is and I know you understand: Sometimes I want to die, because how much more pain is one person supposed to deal with? What I’m saying is that I
know
what you’re feeling. I feel it as well. And if I can’t help you . . .
Let
me help you. For God’s love, tell me you’ll do something to pull yourself back together.”
    Charlie felt his gaze lock onto hers, and he couldn’t look away. Neither could he not recognise the agony that she was experiencing: a mother who had lost more than one child, and although she didn’t know he’d discovered this about her, he couldn’t tell her that now.
    He said, “I’ll try.”
    She embraced him. She said, “One step at a time is all that I’m asking, Charlie. You can do that, can’t you?”
    “I’ll try,” he said again.
    THORNFORD
    DORSET
    On its surface, an invitation to dinner was completely innocent, so Alastair MacKerron accepted it. Despite their relative positions as employer and employee, he told himself that they were really colleagues who would merely share a meal together, and if that meal was going to be served in the home of the employee instead of in a public restaurant, that was not of particular import.
    Sharon Halsey had worked for the bakery for years. Widowed far too young at twenty-four years old, she’d raised two children in straitened circumstances and against all odds but with steadfast determination and tremendous success. One—the daughter—was now a cancer specialist in San Francisco and the other—a son—was a linguist in Strasbourg, and if their mum badly missed them now, the pain of their absence actually made her an outstanding part of Alastair’s professional life. For she liked to keep busy, did Sharon, and keeping busy meant growing his business. Because of this, she was the real reason he owned seven shops across the county, each one of them highly profitable.
    She managed them, working a half day in each every week to keep in the picture of how sales were going and what was needed to supply their customers. She kept the books, she ordered supplies, she managed the wages, she hired and sacked employees. She allowed Alastair to do what he did best—the baking—and in doing so she took the burden of business ownership off his shoulders.
    He admired her greatly although “Such a mouse of a woman” was how Caroline dismissively described her. But if Sharon’s self-effacing manner and her careworn looks made her seem like a mouse, she was firm of purpose, with endless ideas and equal energy. She’d worked for the bakery when Alastair purchased it, and he’d taken the previous owner’s advice to heart: “Whatever you do, mate, keep Sharon happy. A rise in wages? A new car? A bloody flat in Paris? You see to all of it and she won’t fail you.” She had not.
    She lived in Church Road in Thornford, a village some eighteen miles from Shaftesbury. Once the ancient house of a thriving farmthat spread out behind it, her home now stood as part of a line of cottages, deceptive from the outside since it appeared too tiny ever to have housed more than a single individual. Inside, though, it stretched in both directions from a small stone-floored entry, becoming a quirky warren of rooms that, over time, had been transformed into