The Cartographer's Mistake

I want to start this by saying I'm twenty-nine years old and I should know better. That is the entire arrangement, truly. Twenty-nine, married four years, and still capable of making a complete idiot of myself over nothing.

It was a Saturday in October and I'd driven out to the railway museum to meet Dillon for their little autumn open day. He's a freelance cartographer, maps railway lines for a living, and he'd been volunteering there on weekends for about a year. He was thirty-one last birthday, if you're keeping track. I worked the shipping desk at a warehouse all week, so honestly the museum sounded like a treat. Trains, tea, a man who'd wear his good coat. What's not to like?

Except I got there late because a lorry jackknifed on the A-road, and by the time I pulled into the gravel lot the event was already in full swing. Kids everywhere. A man selling toffee apples out of a caravan. And there, near the big steam engine in the exhibition hall, was my husband.

He wasn't alone.

The new curator, this fellow called Frank, was standing awfully close to him. I'd only met Frank once, at the summer fete, and even then I'd noticed he was the type. Tall, dark hair going silver at the temples, a Scottish accent that made every sentence sound like a secret. Thirty-four, I found out later, not that it mattered to me at the time. What mattered was that his hand was on my husband's shoulder and his mouth was moving close to Dillon's ear.

"Emmy, don't be daft," I told myself, right there in the doorway with a toffee apple in my hand I didn't remember buying. (I kept that toffee apple, by the way. It sat in my cupboard like a monument to stupidity.)

But then I watched Frank steer Dillon away from the crowd, toward the old signal box at the edge of the yard. You know the kind, a wooden tower with levers inside, restored by volunteers. They use it as a break room now. And the glass in the windows, well, it's old frosted glass, the sort where you can't see faces, only shapes.

I saw the shapes.

Two men, close together, in a little room with frosted windows, and I don't mind telling you my blood went hot. Not sad-hot. Angry-hot. The competitive kind, if that makes sense. Like a switch flipped in me and suddenly I wasn't a wife, I was a rival in some contest nobody had told me the rules of.

Who was I competing with? A curator? For my own husband? God, it sounds mad written down. It felt less mad standing there in the cold with wet grass soaking through my trainers, I'll say that.

I crept along the fence line as if I had lost my mind. To be truthful, I actually ducked behind the defunct ticket booth. A woman my age, crouched behind a wooden booth that hasn't sold a ticket since before I was born, spying on her own husband. I could hear my mum's voice in my head saying Emmy love, use your words, and I told her voice to shut it.

The silhouettes in the signal box moved closer. Frank's hand went up, I swear it did, toward Dillon's face. I nearly marched in there. I had my hand on the door of the booth, working up the nerve, when a voice behind me nearly stopped my heart.

"You right, missus? You look like you're hiding from the police."

A volunteer lad, maybe early twenties, holding a toolbox. I stood up so fast I nearly went over backwards.

"Fine! Absolutely fine! Just looking at the booth. It's a lovely booth. Very historical."

He gave me the look you'd expect and wandered off. I turned back to the signal box and the shapes were still there, still close, and I made a decision I'm not proud of. I decided to wait him out. I'd let Dillon come to me and I'd watch him like a hawk and I'd catch him in whatever this was.

So I waited by the platform for twenty minutes, getting colder and angrier in equal measure. Frank came out first. Alone. He smoothed his hair, which did nothing for my mood, I can tell you! Then Dillon came out a full two minutes later, which felt like an hour, and walked straight past me without seeing me.

That stung, I won't lie. Four years of marriage and he walks right by.

"Dillon!"

He jumped about a foot. "Emmy. When did you get here? I didn't see you."

"Clearly. Who's after you, then, the tax man?"

"What? No. Why would the tax man be here?" He said it too fast. He rubbed his temple, which he does when a migraine's building, and something in me went soft and suspicious all at once, which is a horrible combination, believe me.

"You were in the signal box with Frank for ages," I said. "The glass is frosted, not invisible. You might as well have been puppets in a window."

He actually laughed. "Puppets?"

"Don't laugh at me, Dillon. I saw his hand on your shoulder. I saw you two whispering like a couple of schoolgirls, and then you walk straight past your own wife."

"You're jealous?" He said it like it was the funniest thing he'd heard all year. "Of Frank? Emmy, love, he's helping me with something. That's all."

"Helping you with what, exactly?"

He hesitated. That hesitation is burned into my memory, I swear. "I've got a splitting headache. I need to find a pharmacy. Frank knows the area."

A headache. A splitting headache. And I'd spent twenty minutes in the wet grass building an entire affair out of frosted glass and a hand on a shoulder.

"A pharmacy," I repeated.

"Yes. A pharmacy. I've run out of my tablets and the chemist in town closed last month, apparently. Frank says there's a twenty-four hour one past the village."

"Then why all the whispering? Why the secret little meeting in the break room?"

"Because I didn't want to spoil today for you," He said it with real feeling, and his face had gone pale around the eyes the way it does when the migraines get bad. "You were coming for a nice day out. I didn't want you worrying about me before you'd even parked."

Well. What do you say to that? I stood there holding a toffee apple I'd never wanted, feeling about two inches tall, and the anger had nowhere to go so it just sort of curdled into embarrassment.

"I'm still annoyed with you," I said. "But for a different reason now. You should have just told me."

"Frank said I looked rough and dragged me off to look at his phone for pharmacy opening hours. That's genuinely the whole of it."

"And the shoulder?"

"He was reading over it. Emmy, honestly, you and your imagination."

My imagination. Fair enough, I suppose, but I wasn't done being suspicious, and here's why. As we walked back toward the exhibition hall, I glanced over at the old ticket booth, and Frank was standing at its little window. Not fixing it. Not painting it. Just standing there, looking out at the yard, and when he saw me looking he gave a little wave.

A wave! Who waves from an empty ticket booth on a Saturday afternoon?

Dillon tugged my sleeve. "Come on, they've got the engine running up on steam for demonstrations. You'll like it."

"I'm coming, I'm coming. But Dillon?"

"Mm?"

"If I find out there's more to this pharmacy story than a pharmacy, I'll have your guts for garters."

"Understood," he said, and he smiled, but it was that tight smile he does when he's keeping something back, and I've known that smile since we were both at community college night classes, me doing bookkeeping and him doing technical drawing, before either of us had grey hairs or migraines or secret meetings in signal boxes.

So we went to look at the train. And I kept one eye on the ticket booth the whole time, because I'm stubborn like that, and something told me the day wasn't done surprising me yet.

The steam demonstration was actually lovely, which annoyed me because I'd wanted to stay annoyed. There's something about a big black engine hissing and panting that makes you forget you're mid-spy-operation. Dillon stood there with his hands in his pockets looking pale and pleased at the same time, and I thought, right, fine, he's ill, he's not cheating, but something still didn't add up. (It never does with me. I'll worry at a thing like a dog with a slipper.)

Then his phone buzzed. He looked at it, and I watched his whole face change.

"Who's that, then?"

"Nobody. Work thing."

"Work thing on a Saturday? You don't do work things on Saturdays, you do maps on Tuesdays and moan about them Wednesdays."

"It's the museum, actually," he said, too quick again. "Frank's got a question about the yard survey."

He pocketed the phone. And then, and here's the bit that got me, he said he needed some air and went off toward the car park. Alone. Not asking me along. Now, I've been married to this man four years and he asks me to come along to the bins. So I did what any reasonable wife would do. I followed him.

He got in his own car, the one he'd driven out that morning, and pulled out of the car park like he knew exactly where he was going. I nipped back through the yard, past the toffee apple caravan (the man gave me a look, honestly, the second time I ran past him without buying anything), and got my car out the other entrance. And then I tailed my own husband down a country lane like something off a telly programme.

Past the village, past a church, past a field of sheep who judged me silently, there it was. A little brick building with a green cross lit up in the window. Twenty-four hour pharmacy, exactly as advertised. Dillon parked right by the door and went in without a limp or a wobble, which I noted. Noted and filed.

I parked behind a hedge, because apparently I have no shame left, and gave him a minute before I went in after him. The shop smelled like every chemist ever, that sharp cotton-and-menthol smell, and there was a radio playing something soft behind the counter. And behind that counter stood a woman, early thirties I'd guess, dark plait over her shoulder, painting, actual painting, on a little