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By Root 1058 0

upstairs to freshen up, at Richard’s suggestion. I must have looked as if I needed it. Certainly I felt sticky and wilted. (“Dew’s off the rose,” was his comment.) My hat was a wreck; I flung it onto the vanity. I splashed my face with water, and blotted it on one of the white monogrammed towels Winifred had set out. The bedroom looked out over the back garden, where nothing had been done. I kicked off my shoes, threw myself down on the endless cream-coloured bed. It had a canopy, with muslin draped around as if on safari. This, then, was where I was to grin and bear it – the bed I hadn’t quite made, but now must lie in. And this was the ceiling I would be staring up at from now on, through the muslin fog, while earthly matters went on below my throat.

The telephone beside the bed was white. It rang. I picked it up. It was Laura, in tears. “Where have you been?” she sobbed. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“What do you mean?” I said. “This is when we were supposed to come back! Calm down, I can’t hear you.”

“You never answered!” she wailed.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Father’s dead! He’s dead, he’s dead – we sent five telegrams! Reenie sent them!”

“Just a minute. Slow down. When did this happen?”

“A week after you left. We tried to phone, we phoned all the hotels. They said they’d tell you, they promised! Didn’t they tell you?”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “I didn’t know. Nobody told me anything. I didn’t get any telegrams. I never got them.”

I couldn’t take it in. What had happened, what had gone wrong, why had Father died, why hadn’t I been notified? I found myself on the floor, on the bone-grey carpet, crouching down over the telephone, curled around it as if it were something precious and fragile. I thought of my postcards from Europe, arriving at Avilion with their cheerful, trivial messages. They were probably still on the table in the front hall. I hope you are in good health.

“But it was in the papers!” Laura said.

“Not where I was,” I said. “Not those papers.” I didn’t add that I’d never bothered with the papers anyway. I’d been too stupefied.

It was Richard who’d collected the telegrams, on the ship and at all our hotels. I could see his meticulous fingers, opening the envelopes, reading, folding the telegrams into quarters, stowing them away. I couldn’t accuse him of lying – he’d never said anything about them, these telegrams – but it was the same as lying. Wasn’t it?

He must have told them at the hotels not to put through any calls. Not to me, and not while I was there. He’d been keeping me in the dark, deliberately.

I thought I might be sick, but I wasn’t. After a time I went downstairs. Lose your temper and you lose the fight, Reenie used to say. Richard was sitting on the back verandah with a gin and tonic. So thoughtful of Winifred to lay in a supply of gin, he’d already said, twice. Another gin was poured ready, waiting for me on the low white glass-topped wrought-iron table. I picked it up. Ice chimed against the crystal. That was how my voice needed to sound.

“Good lord,” said Richard, looking at me. “I thought you were freshening up. What happened to your eyes?”They must have been red.

“Father’s dead,” I said. “They sent five telegrams. You didn’t tell me.”

“Mea culpa,” said Richard. “I know I ought to have, but I wanted to spare you the worry, darling. There was nothing to be done, and no way we could get back in time for the funeral, and I didn’t want things to be ruined for you. I guess I was selfish, too – I wanted you all to myself, if only for a little while. Now sit down and buck up, and have your drink, and forgive me. We’ll deal with all this in the morning.”

The heat was dizzying; where the sun hit the lawn it was a blinding green. The shadows under the trees were thick as tar. Richard’s voice came through to me in staccato bursts, like Morse code: I heard only certain words.

Worry. Time. Ruined. Selfish. Forgive me.

What could I say to that?

The eggshell hat

Christmas has come and gone. I tried not to notice it. Myra, however, would not be denied. She