One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [152]
‘Bollocks, it was entirely my fault, as I’ve told him a million times. I’ve been brought up in the country, I know about guns. And I certainly know it’s a heinous crime to mess around with one, to dig it in the ground and—’
‘You didn’t know it was dangerous,’ he interrupted.
‘OK, I might not have known that, but Daddy’s always said, you never ever treat them with anything other than total respect.’
‘But you don’t shoot, like Biba.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. If I’d got just a fraction more mud in it I’d have killed you.’
‘And if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle,’ remarked Dad.
‘What?’ Daisy was flummoxed, but Luca grinned, understanding.
‘If if if – the fact is, I’m still here, eh?’ He widened his eyes at her and prodded his chest. ‘So shudda your face, as they say in Firenze.’
‘Yeah, shut it, Daisy,’ agreed Seffy, as Biba laughed.
Lunch continued then in a relaxed fashion, and as coffee appeared, the younger element drifted off into the playroom to play Ping-Pong or watch television, taking Luca and Cassie with them.
‘How extraordinary,’ Mum was the first to exclaim quietly once they’d departed. ‘He seems to have completely mellowed. It’s almost as if the blow to the head has done him some good.’
‘It’s Daisy,’ Hugh said simply. ‘She’s reached something inside him, I’m convinced. She hasn’t left his bedside these past few days, and even when he drifted off to sleep she kept talking to him, weeping a bit, too. It’s almost as if something’s thawed.’
It was true. Even when Hugh and Laura had come home at night, Daisy had insisted on staying at the hospital, talking a nurse into letting her sleep in two chairs pushed together, claiming she could sleep anywhere. But not sleeping; holding his hand, waiting for him to wake up, getting him water if he needed it. And boy, had they talked, according to Hugh.
‘I’d slip away,’ he admitted to us now, ‘or hide, embarrassed behind my newspaper. It all got far too heavy for me.’
‘What kind of things?’ Mum urged.
‘Oh, you know. Daisy asking him all about how he felt growing up. Being part of this family, but not, if you see what I mean.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That he’d felt hugely jealous. Had done all his life. This big, happy scene that he wasn’t really part of, but would have been, if his parents had stayed together, had more children. Said he resented Laura for being so maternal when Carla wasn’t, that he took it out on her by being surly and difficult. Oh God, you’ve no idea what Daisy got out of him.’
I could imagine, though. An open, warm-hearted girl, one of a pair, whom, as Luca had so rightly observed, Laura had done a brilliant job with. Charlie too. Children didn’t grow up on their own, they were brought up. And Luca had never had the benefit of that with Carla and a string of nannies. Resented his half-siblings who had.
‘When she said she wanted him to be a proper brother, and not just some random guy who appeared from Italy now and then, I got stuck firmly into the crossword, I can tell you.’
It didn’t escape any of us, though, that, despite Hugh’s protests, he’d misted up somewhat.
‘Good for her,’ said Dad, gruffly.
‘I’m amazed you stayed so long, Hugh,’ observed my mother, gently. ‘And you mustn’t blame yourself, you know. You and Laura have always bent over backwards to make him feel one of the family.’
They had, but there was no disputing how the young Luca must have felt: damaged, both physically and mentally, with the rest of the Pelham clan always before him, as a shining, undiminished foil.
‘And then they talked about the house,’ prompted Laura, who clearly already knew this story. I realized Hal was being included as family around this table,