One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [108]
‘I saw him,’ I managed to mutter, managing to move on, to progress the conversation as one normally would. ‘He was playing tennis with Seffy. He’s changed, for the better, I thought. Slightly less shifty? More charm?’
I reached for the Evian bottle to replenish my glass. I needed to rehydrate, to be calm: to breathe.
‘Well, he’s grown up. And he is much improved, but we’re still so polite with each other, Hatts. However much I try, he still won’t meet me halfway. Still keeps me at a distance. And of course, that puts me on the back foot and I get all brittle and insecure. And yesterday – oh God, yesterday I behaved so badly, after what was, after all, only an accident. But still. You know what Daisy’s like about those wretched bantams.’
She was at the sink now, drying up glasses in that automatic, feverish way women do when they’re trying to calm themselves: clinging to a simple domestic task.
‘What happened yesterday?’ My mind was still buzzing, and I could feel my heart pumping.
She turned. ‘Oh, of course you don’t know. Hugh took Luca for a wander with the air rifle, down by the lake. He’s shooting here next weekend and he doesn’t exactly get his eye in much in Florence. He shot one of Daisy’s bantams by mistake.’
‘Oh Lord. She’ll be devastated.’
‘She is. I rang her at school yesterday. I mean, they do drop off their perches now and then, and the fox got one last winter, but this was the mother of all the chicks. And the fact that it was Luca seemed so heinous to Daisy. “He murdered her!” she kept saying. “Mum, he murdered her!” And of course her being so upset made me upset, so when I came off the phone and he sauntered up and asked – rather nonchalantly, I thought, but perhaps he was nervous and it came out wrong, you know how he never looks at you – asked how she was, I said, “Well how d’you think? You’ve shot her pet!” And ran upstairs. Not very clever. A bantam isn’t a pet, and he didn’t do it on purpose. It didn’t make for a very pleasant evening, though. I realized I’d overreacted and came back down and fell over myself trying to apologize and Hugh tried to smooth things over, but it didn’t help that I heard Luca mutter to Seffy, who’d just arrived back with Dad, ‘It’s only a fucking chicken.’ Dad had to take me in the kitchen and talk to me, tell me to breathe, to count to ten. Where would we be without Dad?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, knowing I’d thought that exact same thing very recently.
‘Anyway, he stayed for supper which helped – Dad, I mean – and was brilliant with both boys. He doesn’t get the cold glittery eyes like I do. Luca’s OK with him, and – oh, I don’t know.’
I thought of Seffy’s glittering stare just now. And in that moment it occurred to me that these boys had a lot in common. Both somewhat displaced, not actually part of a family. Away from their home countries, cuckoos in other people’s nests. Or at least, that may be how they felt. How they’d been made to feel. A nauseous feeling rose in my throat. I thought of Seffy, in the woods behind St Hilda’s, kissing Cassie Forbes: two young people finding each other, very sweet, very special. Experiencing perhaps, those first glorious shafts of love. I shut my eyes tight, teeth clenched. My head was spinning furiously, and when the door slammed violently above us, it gave me such a start, my hand shot out, and sent my water glass flying, smashing to the floor. Granted the subsequent commotion and sound of running footsteps were urgent and unsettling too, but then I managed to knock the water bottle over. It spun around the table hideously, spilling everywhere.
‘What now?’ said Laura as she lunged to set the bottle upright. We scrambled around picking up pieces of glass, waiting for the footsteps to come inevitably closer. They did, and as the door flew open, Maggie and Ralph de Granville burst into the room.