• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1153 0

line to authority, and therefore they had excluded her from the usual clubbiness of girls who lived together with their sisterly relationships and best friends. And, of course, they knew about her mother. Conversations would stop short when she entered a room and sidelong glances and whispers followed her when she left, and only afterward would she hear about the midnight feast held in the booter, or the secret daring of Melissa Carr, who’d smuggled two bottles of champagne into the sixth-form block after attending Eton’s Fourth of June celebration, Venetia had been in despair; she had longed to be part of it, and if she wasn’t to be part of it, then at least let her go back to Los Angeles—back to Jenny. But her desperate letters were answered with illogical equanimity by Jenny, who would send her another box from Theodore’s or Fred Segal’s, containing gorgeous Californian clothes that bore no resemblance to what the other girls wore. So Venetia didn’t wear them, afraid of either being laughed at or causing jealousy.

Kate Lancaster had rescued her from all this. Coming back early from a weekend out and finding Venetia alone in the rambling building that was home to them both, along with the forty other girls in Stuart House, Kate had felt a pang of pity and guilt. She didn’t know which emotion it was that made her throw down her weekend case on the bed and rush down the dorm to where Venetia sat alone on her bed.

“Oh, Vennie,” she’d cried, “I’ve had such a super weekend, masses of food, and the dogs were lovely as usual and Mummy forgot we had these French people coming to stay on Saturday night and we already had eighteen in the house. I had to give up my room and have a sleeping bag on the floor. What a laugh! Mummy gets crazier—she once forgot we had the bishop coming for lunch and we had nothing in the larder. Everything in the freezer was frozen solid and the bishop’s weakness is good food. You know what she did? She gave him an enormous gin and fled to the kitchen, quickly made some pastry, and boiled up the only thing in the fridge—the meat we get from the butcher specially for the dogs. She chucked in a few herbs and half a bottle of red wine, slapped the pastry on top, and forty minutes later the bishop was saying he’d never tasted a meat pie as good. He was eating the dog meat!” Kate laughed. “The only trouble was we had to eat it too—and we knew!”

Venetia found herself laughing along with Kate. “Did it taste awful?”

“Nothing with that much wine in it could taste awful. And what did you do this weekend?”

Kate lay back on Venetia’s bed, regarding her through half-closed eyelids. She’s really pretty, she thought, but with a mother like hers, who wouldn’t be? She considered her own mother, Lydia. A long, elegantly boned face, a wide smile, clear, direct greenish eyes and a mass of reddish hair. Attractive rather than beautiful, but though she never seemed to give it much thought, she always looked just right. Whether she was in high green Wellington boots and a padded green vest, walking the dogs at Ranleigh’s, or adorned in taffeta or chiffon for some dinner, she had a quality of “lightness.” And that was exactly what Venetia didn’t have. She didn’t fit anywhere. Was she American? Or was she English? Kate felt even guiltier—they weren’t allowing her to be English, she spent all her time here at school, and alone. Once a year Venetia spent time with her mother in California, or occasionally she met her in Europe—and her two sisters. That was all Kate knew about her.

“Vennie,” she had said, sitting up abruptly and hugging her knees, “why don’t you come home with me in Long Leave—it’s the weekend after next—right after the exams? We’ll celebrate.”

Venetia had gazed at her, dazzled. She was called Vennie, and she had a friend. Kate had invited her home for the holidays and her whole life had changed.

Venetia was still in the bath—the water was getting cold—when the sound of the doorbell intruded on her memories. She jumped guiltily. Goodness, they were here already and she wasn’t even dressed! And what was she