Flawless

As she entered the hall, she could hear Aunt Grace’s authoritative tones issuing from the drawing-room. She pulled a small face. Her mother’s older sister held strong views on everything, from the government in power down to the deplorable attitude of today’s shop assistants. Since her only daughter’s marriage and departure for New Zealand a few years previously, she had lived in Bournemouth, which she rarely left. Carly couldn’t help wishing that she had not decided to make an exception to this excellent rule for Susan’s engagement party.

She resolutely pinned on a smile as she went into the drawing-room. ‘Hello, Mummy, Aunt Grace. How are you both?’

There was an immediate surprised silence. Carly was aware of both pairs of eyes riveted on her, taking in every detail of her appearance. She put down her case, and draped her dress-carrier over the back of a chair.

‘Is that coffee? I’d love some.’

‘Of course, dear.’ Mrs Foxcroft filled the third cup waiting on the tray and proffered it to her younger daughter. ‘Did you have a good drive down?’

‘Marvellous, thank you.’ Carly bent and kissed her mother’s cheek, and, more fleetingly, her aunt’s. ‘You’re both looking very well.’

Her mother smiled awkwardly. ‘And so are you, darling. Positively—radiant. Isn’t she, Grace?’

‘Hm,’ said Mrs Brotherton. ‘Try as I may, Veronica, I still cannot accustom myself … However,’ she turned to Carly, ‘I saw a photograph of you in a magazine at my hairdressers’ last month, Caroline. You were wearing an extraordinary garment in white taffeta, and seemed to be standing in an area of slum clearance.’

‘Oh, the Fabioni. I remember it well.’ Carly laughed. ‘It was incredibly cold that day—the middle of winter, in fact—and we were down by the river. Did you manage to count my goose-pimples?’

‘I find it very odd,’ said Aunt Grace majestically, ‘that a reputable journal should find it necessary to photograph an evening dress outdoors in broad daylight, and inclement weather.’

‘It’s because of publishing schedules,’ Carly told her. ‘Fur coats in August, and bikinis in December. The bane of a model’s life.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Where’s Susan? Resting for the big occasion?’

‘She’s gone with Anthony to look at the house his father is giving them as a wedding present. Apparently it needs a great deal doing to it, and work will have to start almost at once if it’s to be ready for them to move into after the wedding.’

‘Have they set a date yet?’ Carly asked casually. ‘I’ll need to know fairly well in advance.’

‘I believe they’re thinking of October,’ her mother returned. ‘I know Susan wants to talk to you about it,’ she added, after a pause.

‘Oh, good.’ Carly drank some of her coffee, feeling another silence about to press down on them all. She decided to prevent it. ‘How are James and Louise?’ she asked her aunt.

‘They seem happily settled. The farm is not too isolated, fortunately, so Louise can get into the nearby town for shopping, and other essentials. She is expecting another baby in July.’

‘So soon?’ That made three in just over five years, Carly thought, blinking. ‘Maybe Louise should consider spending even more time in town,’ she joked feebly.

‘Caroline, dear,’ her mother said repressively, while Aunt Grace looked more forbidding than ever.

‘I’m sorry.’ Carly drained her cup, and rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and unpack. Am I in my old room?’

‘Well, actually, dear, I was wondering if you’d mind using the nursery—just this once, of course. Jean and Arthur Lewis found they could come, after all, and as it’s such a long way for them to travel I did offer …’

‘… my room to them.’ Carly completed the hesitant sentence. ‘Of course they must have it. They’re such old friends, after all. I quite understand. Well—I’ll see you both later.’ She paused at the door. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, you only have to ask.’

‘That’s very sweet of you, dear, but everything’s under control.’

‘Yes,’ Carly said gently, ‘I’m sure it is.’

Susan’s engagement to Anthony Farrar, the son of a local landowner, had been hoped for and planned for over a very long period, she thought with irony as she climbed the broad sweep of stairs. Susan had first met Anthony at a hunt ball when she was eighteen, and had made up her mind there and then to marry him. Everything that had happened since had been like a long and fraught military campaign, with triumphs and reverses in almost equal proportions.

Carly herself had wondered more than once if Anthony was worth all this agonising over. He was attractive enough in a fair-haired, typically English way—certainly better-looking than either of his sisters, she allowed judiciously—but she’d always found him humourless, and suspected as well that he might share his father’s notoriously roving eye.

But Susan clearly regarded her engagement as a major victory, Carly thought wryly, as she went up the second flight of stairs to the old nursery quarters. So, heaven forbid that she should be a dissenting voice amid the jubilation.

Not that Sue would listen if I was, she thought with a sigh, as she opened the nursery door.

It was hardly recognisable as the room she and her sister had once shared. All the old furniture had gone, and so had the toys—the doll’s house, the rocking-horse, and the farmyard animals. It was now, very obviously, a very spare bedroom, she thought, dumping her case down on the narrow single bed, furnished with unwanted odds and ends from the rest of the house. Only the white-painted bars across the windows revealed its original purpose.

She opened her case and put the few items it contained into the chest of drawers.

The photograph, as always, was at the bottom of the case. She extracted it, and placed it carefully on the dressing-chest next to the mirror.

She stood for a long moment, staring at it. The child’s face looked back at her, its eager brightness diminished by the heavy glasses, and the protruding front teeth that the shy smile revealed.

Slowly, her hands curled into taut fists at her sides, and as gradually relaxed again.

An object lesson in how not to look.

And one, she thought, that she would never forget.

CHAPTER THREE (#u1af7ac8e-d8f1-5a34-bbc6-a32f6a869863)

CARLY ADJUSTED THE neckline of her dress, and gave it a long, disparaging look. As a garment, she supposed it was adequate. The material was good—a fine, silky crêpe—and it had been competently put together. But the Puritan grey did nothing for her, and with her hair twisted up into a smooth topknot she looked bland and unobtrusive, like a Victorian governess.

But that, of course, was precisely her intention.

It had been a long afternoon. She’d made another diffident offer of help downstairs which had been kindly but firmly refused. Instead she’d found herself being subjected to an exhaustive commentary on the problems of sheep farming in New Zealand by Aunt Grace.

In the end she’d taken refuge in a sunny corner of the garden, so far untouched by the demands of the party, with an armful of books from her childhood which she’d rescued from the attic. It had been wonderful to discover that The House at Pooh Corner had lost none of its old magic and step once more into Tom’s Midnight Garden. She found a new serenity burgeoning within her as she relaxed with them.

Over tea in the drawing-room she’d looked at the multitude of snapshots Aunt Grace had triumphantly produced of James, Louise and the children, and said all the right things. Or she hoped she had.

James looked flourishing, tanned and handsome. The kind of man who’d be an achiever whatever he set his hand to. But Louise, she thought privately, looked weary, her radiant blonde prettiness muted somehow, as if the everyday demands of babies and farming were becoming too much for her.

But then Louise had always enjoyed the urban life—London with its buzz, its theatres and parties. For her, the country had been somewhere to spend the occasional weekend. Strange then that she should have married James, and accepted the radical change of life-style he was offering, rather than one of his wealthy and sophisticated friends.

Of course, Louise might consider that the world she was used to was well lost for love, but Carly didn’t think so. Not on the evidence of these photographs, anyway.

As soon as she could, she escaped upstairs again, and had a lingering, scented bath, mindful of her mother’s adjuration to vacate the bathroom in good time, ready for Susan’s use.

‘It is her night, after all, dear.’

Carly felt that the reminder was unnecessary. She was conscious too of a nagging disappointment that Susan’s house-viewing trip was taking so long. It had been ages since she’d seen her sister—talked to her. In fact, it was Christmas, she realised. Each time she’d been home briefly since, Susan had been preoccupied with Anthony.

She took one last look at herself, and turned away from the mirror, glancing at her watch. Well, Sue was bound to have returned by now. She could go down to her room and chat to her while she got ready, as they’d done when they were younger.

She went down the short flight of stairs, and walked along the passage. As she lifted a hand to tap at the door, it occurred to her that once she would simply have barged cheerfully in.

‘Come in,’ Sue called, and Carly turned the handle and walked into the room.

Sue swung round on her dressing-stool. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Her smile was perfunctory. ‘How are you, Caro?’