One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [6]
‘Tall windows too. Quite a lot of symmetry going on…’
‘It’s by a Scottish architect,’ I rushed on. ‘And if you think about it, some of those Highland piles are very French. Look at that wide bank of steps at the side, tumbling down to the gravel terrace. Just cries out for one of our distressed café tables, don’t you think? A few wrought-iron chairs, a well-placed urn…’
‘And look at your sister’s face,’ breathed Maggie, as we came to a halt in the gravel sweep at the front.
The very French double front doors had swung back and Laura appeared at the top of the steps, dressed in a gun-metal grey silk shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was shining, and her face plastered with an anxious, reproduction smile. She was flanked by another blonde, my mother, whose smile was more practised, less nervous. Behind them a pair of baying lurchers bounded out, nearly toppling my mother, and then Kit, my brother, appeared, a dog collar under his jumper. He beamed broadly from on high, a wine glass clasped to his chest. No sign of Dad, sadly.
‘Right,’ I muttered, all courage deserting me. ‘I think we just pretend we’re delivering a house-warming present – that mirror in the back will do. We’ll stay for drinks, then turn round and go home, don’t you think?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Maggie, whose professional eyes were glittering as only a true Francophile’s could. ‘This place has got the French Partnership written all over it. I thought we were coming to some mouldy English pile, not a veritable Loire Valley pastiche. If you think I’m passing up a trillion-pound contract and the chance of having my name go down in the annals of interior design history with the likes of Mr John Fowler and Mrs Nina Campbell you’re mistaken. We’re here for the duration. This is working for me, Hattie. I’ve already picked my bedroom.’
She threw open the cab door and jumped out. ‘Laura – and Mrs Carrington – how lovely! Kit, what a surprise, loving the surplice, incidentally; you carry that off terribly well. How wonderful to see you all!’
2
Laura’s hug at least was genuine, and I realized the synthetic smile was masking apprehension, not antipathy. I was aware of my own face not knowing quite how to play this either.
‘I should have rung you,’ were my first instinctive words, muttered guiltily in her ear, because of course I should.
‘You texted me.’
‘l know, but that was cowardly. I should have rung and asked, not texted and told.’ I remembered her curt little text back: ‘Well, if Hugh has asked you 2 come of course I’d love you 2.’
I should have punched out her number there and then, except I knew she’d be cool and polite down the line, but warmer in the flesh, as she was now. She looked gorgeous as ever but, close up, there were circles under her eyes.
‘Actually, I’m really glad you’re here,’ she murmured. ‘Mum’s driving me mad, and Kit could do with a little diluting.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ I glanced at my brother, beaming a canonized smile from the top step.
‘He’s on some Bible-thumping course in Oxford, so he’s staying.’
‘Ah, I wondered. He’s got that ecstatic look on his face he always gets when he’s topped up his fervour. What about Dad?’
‘Due tomorrow. There’s a strike in Geneva, would you believe, so he couldn’t get a flight.’
My father had pretty much retired as a journalist now, but sometimes took freelance assignments. Currently he was doing a travel piece for the Independent.
‘Darling!’ My mother, realizing too much chat was occurring on the gravel without her, and that if she wanted to know what was going on she’d have to drop the Norman Hartnell ex-model pose – chin up, right foot slightly at an angle and to the fore – expertly descended the steps in heels. ‘How lovely, what a surprise!’
It wasn’t, of course, but Mum was lining up with Laura, placing herself firmly in her camp. Not for the first time I felt a guilty twinge of relief that Laura now had a house big enough to accommodate my family and its foibles, all