Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

row took place in the kitchen and so Agatha swept a whole shelf of dishes to the floor and danced with rage on the shards.
    ‘You disgust me,’ said James quietly. And then he had walked out, leaving Agatha red-faced, panting, and totally demoralized.
    Wearily, she packed up her belongings and carried them next door to her own cottage. She went back and cleaned up the mess of broken china, boxed it up, and left it out for the rubbish collection. She counted out the same number of plates she had broken from the supply in her own cottage and placed them on James’s kitchen shelf. Then she called to her cats who followed her next door, their raised fur only just beginning to settle after the fright they had received from their mistress’s noisy scene. Once in her own house, Agatha forced herself to relax. She would apologize to James for the broken china.
    Next day she was kept busy – reporting to the shoe company, hiring a rehearsal hall and meeting the pop group. Agatha had dealt with pop groups before and found Stepping Out refreshingly pleasant. The group consisted of three young men and three girls. All were in their late teens. They had a clean-cut, happy look. Agatha felt she was on a winner. She plunged into work, but always at the back of her mind was a black cloud of misery. If only she could confide in someone – but no one, no one , must know that Agatha Raisin’s marriage was a failure.
    Several times she thought about phoning James, to clear the air, to apologize. But each time she held back. How on earth could he be so old-fashioned? And yet, and yet, she thought weakly, she had made a dreadful scene, had broken his china, behaved like a fish-wife. Why did people still blame fish-wives for violence and bad language? she wondered. What fish-wives, anyway? Probably from the old days of Billingsgate fish market.
    Harry Best studied her. She was quite a girl, he thought. Look at the way she had set to and helped load the equipment into the rehearsal room. Look at the way she had established a rapport with the young people. She wasn’t nearly as hard-boiled as he had first imagined. In fact, he thought, there were times when she looked almost on the edge of tears. Funny woman.
    Agatha was sorry when the long day was over. Two of the young men were already working on a sort of rambling pop song. ‘Don’t be scared of being old-fashioned,’ Agatha had urged. ‘Make it sound like something cheery – something people will want to whistle as they walk along a country road.’
    When she drove back to Carsely, she braced herself for a confrontation with James. But when she let herself into his cottage – she never thought of it as their home – it was to find it dark and silent. With a beating heart, she ran up to the bedroom and checked the closet. All James’s clothes were still there.
    She sat down on the bed and wondered what to do. Where would James be? Probably in the pub.
    Perhaps it might be an idea to follow him there. He could hardly make a scene in front of the villagers, thought Agatha, forgetting that she was the one who usually made the scenes.
    She went to her own cottage and changed into a blond silk trouser-suit and wrapped a deep-bronze lamb’s-wool stole about her shoulders, then walked slowly along to the pub. She would be breezy, cheerful, as if nothing had happened.
    Somehow, the fact of taking some action brightened her immensely as she strode along the lane under the heavy blossom of the lilac trees which gave it its name. Agatha’s great weakness was that not for one minute would she admit to herself that she was afraid of James. She would admit to being afraid of losing him, but to being actually scared of him was something that Agatha, who had laminated her soul over the years with layers of hardness, could not even begin to contemplate. Nor would she realize that love had made the unacceptable almost acceptable – the put-downs, the scorn, the silences, the lack of easy, friendly affection.
    She walked into the Red Lion with a smile on her face.
    Her smile faded.
    James was sitting at a corner table by the log fire, laughing and smiling at a slim, blonde-haired woman whom Agatha recognized as Melissa Sheppard. As she watched, Melissa leaned forward and squeezed James’s hand.
    As Miss Simms, secretary of the Carsely Ladies’ Society, was to describe it later, Agatha Raisin went ‘ape-shit’. Sour jealousy rose like bile in her throat. In seconds, the misery she had