One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [74]
‘Letty?’ I scoffed derisively. ‘She barely knows what day it is, poor thing. I don’t think I’d trust her to gauge anyone’s inner turmoil.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say inner turmoil,’ Laura said briskly. ‘Just went a bit quiet.’
I ground my teeth silently at my sister’s well-aimed parry. ‘I’m afraid that’s sold.’ This, to the blonde, who’d turned her attention to a Napoleonic jardinière.
‘Anyway, I was really ringing to see if Seffy wanted to shoot here. Hughie’s got a few locals coming on the twenty-fourth of October and thought Seffy might enjoy it. It’s a Saturday, I think.’
‘Oh, he’d love it,’ I said, instantly brightening. Seffy, under Hugh’s guidance, and after some initial sneering about it being a toffs’ sport, had recently enjoyed going off with his uncle to shoot a few rabbits for the pot, which had led to a few pheasants, and the odd day’s shooting. I had a wholly unsustainable antipathy to the whole thing, which I kept under wraps, accepting Seffy’s very valid argument that battery hens had a far worse time of it and the pheasant the best and most natural. I just knew I could never pull the trigger. Nevertheless, I loved seeing Seffy striding off with his uncle, jeans tucked into wellies, uncharacteristic flat cap on his unruly long hair: loved seeing him come back flushed from the exercise and the hunt, bubbling with enthusiasm, looking so bright-eyed and healthy and more like the Seffy of old. I grabbed at any opportunity for him.
‘Good,’ said Laura. ‘And you’ll come too?’
‘Of course.’
‘Because I’ve got Luca coming. Carla’s just rung.’
Ah. That would explain the brittle, combative tone to her voice. The needless, initial needling. A common trait in our family: lash out under pressure.
‘He’ll be fine,’ I soothed, ‘don’t panic. You said yourself the last time he was over he’d improved, and Seffy said he was easy.’
‘Seffy’s never intimidated by anyone. He’s got the in-built confidence of generations of proud Serbs behind him. The girls are still scared of him though, especially Daisy. And I hate it that she has to spend her precious few days at home wondering where he is.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ I told her. ‘Daisy’s just at an age when she’s nervous of any boy.’
I smiled an insincere goodbye at the blonde, who’d left without buying anything, and with a look that told me, before she banged the door shut, what she thought of saleswomen who sat on the phone whilst customers browsed, and wasted her time by having items already sold on display. Sold to me, some of them, if I couldn’t bear to part with them, or didn’t think they were going to a good enough home. Maggie despaired of me. Particularly when I told her I could have sold the lovely Chambéry table I’d found in Nantes, but the woman had wanted to cut the legs off and make it into a coffee table, so I’d hurriedly made up some story about ringing my partner to check its provenance, and been told, by a dialling tone, that actually it had already gone, been sold yesterday.
Making up stories. Yes, I was good at that, I reflected as I got off the phone to Laura and went to shut the door, which had bounced open with the force of the slam. Had told quite a few in my time, and indeed, had told one just now to my sister, about not having given Hal a second thought. Not quite true. I’d wondered about him over the years – of course I had – and sometimes wondered if he’d thought about me. I knew he hadn’t married, and wondered how I’d feel when he did. Sometimes I even checked the paper for an announcement. So how did it feel, Hattie, hm? Now I knew? I tried to gauge my feelings honestly, straightening up and folding my arms as I faced the street. A twinge of regret for our youthful selves perhaps – laughing our way to lectures, going to parties together in his beaten-up Beetle – a sentimental glance back in an à la recherche du temps perdu kind of way, but no more than that. Definitely no more than that.
I turned briskly and made