innocent of lives.
Kitty’s skin throbbed and smarted, but Theo rang to say he felt better, and to thank her, and he would see her later at the Huntingdons. Today was a flower day and Kitty, whose skill at flower arrangement was legendary, had been invited – well, commanded – by Vita Huntingdon to arrange the flowers for the fashionable evening wedding of her daughter. And, of course, ever anxious to keep what social foothold she had gained, she had meekly agreed.
‘You will understand,’ Vita had explained, ‘that we can’t invite you to the actual do. Numbers, you know. But, please, feel free to take a peek at the buffet and presents while we’re in church.’
‘Shall we peek?’ Kitty asked Theo.
‘Will we hell,’ said Theo.
Vita had requested pink and white flowers to match the striped marquee lining and the gilt chairs. Her daughter had demanded something more exciting and original. ‘You know,’ she suggested vaguely, ‘some of those South African numbers.’ Theo and Kitty had conferred and, disgracefully, she took a small and delightful revenge by creating an undisputedly stunning but, nevertheless, predominantly yellow and white display.
‘Like the Aussie sun,’ Theo pronounced, heaving the last vase into place. ‘You can’t miss it.’
‘Have we peeked enough, Theo?’
‘Are you ever afraid,’ asked Theo, as Kitty drove him back to the hostel, ‘that one of these days I might grow violent and do you in?’
The notion had crossed Kitty’s mind more than once. ‘Not really. Provided you did it quickly enough, I wouldn’t have time to object.’ She turned into the high street. ‘Promise me, Theo, that if you do it, it will be quick.’
‘I promise.’ Shoulders hunched up to his ears, Theo stared straight ahead. ‘Fish and chips, darl?’
That night when she was half asleep, Kitty experienced what she later referred to as a vision. In it, she was floating high in the sky and looking down at a very blue, very calm sea and herself on what she presumed was a life-raft. She expected to be out of control but, strangely, she was very much in charge and heading out towards the open sea and stagey setting sun, hair streaming out behind her in the wind. Hair that – perhaps in the most telling detail of all – had reverted to its natural colour of mouse brown.
Kitty got up and had breakfast of muesli and coffee then went upstairs to change into her raspberry linen suit. She brushed her hair at the dressing-table, this way and that – one Kitty, two Kitty, three Kitty, four – and anchored it with a pair of combs.
She glanced at the bed. Julian did not sleep here often because he found the house too constricting. Instead, he slept in his own bed at Cliff House whenever possible, arranged on his right side, the pillow bunched to support his cheek. Sometimes his neck was dark with sweat, sometimes his pyjamas fell open, like those of a little boy. Sometimes, he hunched his shoulders and muttered. She had grown used to studying the language of his sleep. He muttered when he was bothered. The deep sleep of renewal came after a hard week. Or there was the heavy unconsciousness after sex.
She did not look at the bed again but concentrated on producing the Kitty she knew and trusted. At last she was done, and pleased with the results. Before she left the room, she fastened the window tight and locked it.
Kitty sat in the car and stared ahead. She placed her hands on the wheel, then removed them. She rubbed them together. She opened her handbag and reapplied her lipstick. Again she rubbed her hands. Then stretching out the right, she turned the key in the ignition.
Half an hour later, she nosed her car up the drive of Flagge House and, at the first sight of the pink brick and elegant windows, perceived at once that it was an ageing prima donna of a house demanding love and attention. It was beautiful, old and sure in itself, but in need of maintenance and a face-lift.
She lifted her foot off the accelerator. The words that had seemed so urgent and rapier sharp when she had rehearsed them were vanishing. She had been so sure when she embarked on her ‘raft’, so energized, but now she suspected she had been guilty of a terrible misjudgement and if Julian
Impatient with herself, she stopped the car in the drive and rested her head on the steering-wheel. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the deep blood-red of summer poppies blooming in the field up on the ridge. It was not a colour she liked – the blood-red of childbirth and of her own cycles, which were… coming to their end.
Kitty forced herself to look up at the house. Moss and lichen had built pathways across the flagstones and, above the front door, open windows glinted in the sunshine. There was one way out of the struggle, a way that would bring her peace. All she had to do was walk inside, up the stairs… and jump. So easy. And the grey-green of the moss would deceive her on the way down that she would land on a soft, springy bed and sleep.
The first wife offering her blood for the second – for she knew, oh, she knew, that Agnes was no ordinary threat. She wasn’t We Will Go Our Own Way For A Time. She was the darkness that Kitty must face.
Wasn’t that the way it went? First wives were supposed to go quietly, weren’t they? But she wasn’t a wife. She had been the mistress of Robin and Harry and Charles, those very married men who had kept her in the style she had demanded.
Would she look as good in death as in life? For the stones out there were hard, unforgiving and, besides, it took years of practice to be a martyr.
A car manoeuvred alongside Kitty and stopped. The driver wound down his window and asked, ‘Can I help you?’
It was Freddie who, at some cost to his Sunday beauty sleep, had come to keep his dear ladies company at lunch. He parked and introduced himself.
‘I’m not expected,’ Kitty said, as he helped her negotiate the gravel in her high heels.
‘All the better.’ Freddie rang the bell. ‘That’s what makes life interesting.’
‘I’m not quite sure Agnes will see it that way,’ said Kitty drily and looked up to the exquisite fan-light above the door.
21
Agnes stifled a yawn and glanced up from the Sunday papers at the mantelpiece on which she had arranged family photographs. There weren’t many left in their thinning family. She yawned a second time and frowned. Feeling bushed in the aftermath of a big shoot was normal but this was different. An anchor had attached itself to her body, a great hobbling fatigue. This is what ill people must feel, she thought, with a quiver of unease. Since her return from Devon her body seemed to be changing, urging itself into a different way of behaving. Even her hair felt different.
Andrew had not been too disappointed when she answered, ‘No,’ to his request to stay, but she sensed that he flinched inwardly and was sorry. As best she could, she explained it was impossible to do anything but go slowly. She had learned that a little at a time had a better chance of succeeding. Andrew had been understanding and sensible, but when she got into the car, he grabbed her hand.
‘You won’t let me down over the film.
The women were sitting in the big drawing room, which Agnes insisted they use. It was too beautiful to leave empty, she had argued. ‘We live in this house. We are not lodgers or squatters.’ Maud and she had quarrelled about it, and Maud had eventually declared that Agnes must do as she liked,
‘Time for the
Agnes cupped her chin in her hand. Maud had been a bad patient and a worse convalescent, and Agnes and Bea had been run ragged by her demands. But Agnes had felt sorry for her aunt. Maud had been terrified by her experience, and the equation had been made that once you were dead you had gone. ‘Before you are cold, you are
