The Right Thing (27 page)

Lily sat on the worktop with her arms huddled round her knees, munching hard and staring out across the wall at the moonlight on the sea. The wind was fiercer now, moaning through the trees. Silver-edged clouds scudded in the sky, hurtling across the moon. In the morning the sea would be high and the surf would be gnarly and difficult. Madeleine had promised to come out and watch her. She wanted to be impressive, it was important. She slid down off the worktop and went back to the bread bin, cutting another fat slice of bread. Madeleine hadn't liked her picking at food and saying she wasn't hungry all the time. She'd said it was important to keep your body warm inside. You could only do that with food. She'd said you shouldn't let the body starve and fret and crave and then pretend you were doing it to be in control of it. You didn't have the right, she'd said. Your body was there to look after your happiness so you shouldn't be ungrateful to it and refuse to give it what it asked for.

Madeleine wasn't chatty for the sake of it, not like most people which must be why Petroc had given up trying to get her to talk to him and Dad just thought she was moody. It meant though that if she
was
telling you something, it was because she really believed it needed saying and that made Lily feel special. Lily finished the bread and opened the fridge. She took out a carton of milk and drank about half of it, straight from the pack, the fridge door still open. Then she broke off a piece of Cheddar from the big slab on the top shelf. ‘You'll have bad dreams,' she could hear her mother warning.

When the kitchen light snapped on, Lily's mouth was bulging with chocolate biscuit.

‘Lily! Jeez, what the fuck are you doing?' Petroc stood blinking in the doorway, eyeing the devastation. On the table was the bread, crumbs scattered, the marmalade jar empty and lying on its side. There was a big twiggy skeleton that had once been a bunch of grapes, the chewed bones of a couple of cold chicken legs and a line-up of six cereal packets. Lily was leaning against the sink, her skinny wrist shoved down to the bottom of a tube of Pringles, sour cream and chives flavour.

‘I didn't eat the cereal. I just got the packets out.' Lily was defensive and wide-eyed. She slid her arm out of the Pringles tube and pushed it behind her onto the draining-board.

‘What for, to read the nutritional values while you scoffed your way through everything else?' Petroc picked up the chicken bones and flung them into the bin. ‘What's wrong with you, Lily? You're being scary.'

‘Nothing's wrong. Madeleine said I didn't eat enough. No-one else has dared say it, like they didn't care. She does.'

‘Oh.
Madeleine
said. Well there you go.' He wiped the crumbs from the top of the table.

‘Don't you like her?' Lily looked scared.

‘I like her, a bit. I don't know her. She doesn't say anything, not about herself. Surely you've noticed?'

‘She says stuff to me. She did when she was in my room anyway. Now she's not. She's gone over to stay in the barn.'

‘What, with George?' Petroc grinned.

‘Not
with
George. Just with more space, she said.'

Petroc reached into the fridge for a Coke and sat down at the table, tracing his finger through the damp patches the wet cloth had left. ‘She might be
with George,
you know. She comes all alive when he's around.'

‘She can't be, he's old. Anyway she came here to be with us, with her real mum, not pick up a bloke.' Lily stamped across the kitchen and looked into the fridge again.

‘Hey, don't eat any more, please. You'll explode – even precious Madeleine wouldn't expect you to go that far. And sure, he's old, but he's old and rich, old and famous. Perhaps that's what she's into. We don't know. We don't know anything.'

Lily huddled her arms round her body. She was feeling quite sick now, and starting to tremble with cold. There was a gale blowing outside and the wind was whistling under the kitchen door, chilling her feet. ‘I know we don't know. But we're
getting
to know, at least I was. I don't want her to leave before I can be sure she won't go away for ever. And imagine Mum if Madeleine just went off and left now . . .'

‘She'll go some time, Lily. You can't just keep her in a box like some stray cat that's turned up, hoping it won't remember its way home. Madeleine's got a family somewhere else. Her
real
family.'

‘I know, I know. I'm freezing. I must go to bed. Petroc, why are you so late home? Were you with Amanda?'

‘Amanda? Who's Amanda?' he grinned at her.

The view from the bedroom window was peculiarly different in the morning. Something had changed in the night that was disorientating, as if the house had secretly shifted angles the tiniest bit. Kitty looked out and tried to work out what had changed. The sky seemed more open, bigger somehow and down the lane Rita's farmhouse was stark against clouds that were still being hurtled along by the wind. Then she realized she couldn't normally see that much of Rita's house.

‘Some of the beech tree's gone,' she announced to the dozing heap that was Glyn. ‘A
lot
of the beech tree's gone. That whole big branch, the one halfway up on the left.'

The heap heaved itself upwards and joined her to have a look. ‘Oh great. And it's fallen right across the lane.'

‘So we're stuck?'

‘We're stuck.' He laughed. ‘And not just us. Now no-one can escape. That should be jolly. We're all trapped in here together like something out of Agatha Christie. I wonder who the first murder victim will be.'

Kitty laughed. ‘You could always scramble over the top of the branches and make a desperate bid for freedom.' He might really do that, she thought, anything to get away from conflict.

‘I could take Ben with me.'

‘You could.' Then she teased, ‘But he might not want to go.' Kitty could see Madeleine down on the beach, standing still and facing the sea, her arms stretched straight out crucifix-style as if challenging the keening wind to push her over. She was wearing a hippyish long purple dress of the sort that Kitty had sent to the jumble back at the end of the 1970s. The bottom of it ended in fringing that was tangling round her ankles and her feet were bare. Kitty was entranced, taking in the way the girl's long thick hair rippled backwards, the tension in her spread fingers. She thought she wouldn't look out of place as a magnificent ship's figurehead, strong and fearsome and powerfully beautiful.

‘What the hell's she doing out there? She must be bloody freezing.' Glyn was frowning now. Kitty knew she couldn't expect him to look at Madeleine the same way that she did, but she felt mildly disappointed that he couldn't see her, just for one objective moment, as a sight rather wonderful out there alone communing with the churning waves. ‘She's supposed to be meeting up with Lily and watch her surf. The sea's horribly fierce though.'

‘That won't stop Lily.' Glyn was bustling about now, looking for clothes, picking out sweatshirts from the drawer, unfolding them, having a look, refolding and putting them back as it there was something just very slightly amiss with the first three he tried. She smiled. She was used to this ritual. Eventually he pulled out a Quiksilver fleece, gave it a brief fond hug and laid it on the bed for after his shower. Kitty wondered if Ben had odd little habits like this, and if that was partly why Rose was looking for something less predictable elsewhere. He might be one of those men who always shoves his fist into clean socks to check for holes or dozing moths or splinters – enough to drive anyone to start calculating alimony.

‘It might stop Lily,' Kitty said, ‘she's not stupid about the sea.'

‘She's stupid about Madeleine though, she's desperate to impress her. We'd better have a word when she gets up. The surfs too . . . what's the word she uses?'

‘Gnarly; though I guess we old people are still allowed just to call it “rough”. You know what she's like if we try to use unsuitably hip words.'

Kitty felt edgy. Breakfast with Ben had to be faced. Glyn would probably hover around giving her significant looks and pushing her to blurt out that by the way, perhaps Ben would like to be introduced to his own daughter? She dressed quickly and went downstairs, praying there would be time for a solitary thought-collecting cup of coffee before he emerged from the studio. The gods weren't listening: there was a rumble of conversation.

‘So you wax the top of the board like this for really good grip. The top's called the deck . . .' Kitty heard Lily from outside the kitchen door. Lily was sitting on the table, her surfboard propped against the back of a chair. Ben sat beside her drinking coffee and watching while she rubbed the board with its special wax and a broad loving movement. Her skinny arms emerging from the baggy teeshirt reminded Kitty of the kind of candlestick lamp base that's been given too big a shade. Closer inspection as she worked showed that the narrow little arms had a surprising amount of muscle tone, strength gathered from paddling so hard on the sea. The air smelled sharply of apples from the wax.

‘Hello Ben, I see you've met Lily.' He looked a lot more relaxed than he had the night before, in comfortably aged jeans and a beaten-up dark blue sweater with plenty of pulled threads. He looked younger somehow too, as if in the night he'd dreamed away some of his worries or even made a couple of positive decisions.

‘I certainly have met Lily. I wandered into the kitchen and the first thing she said to me was “Hi, pass over that block of sex wax.”'

Lily giggled. ‘Mr Zog's finest sex wax. It's only what it's called. It's just to make you buy it.'

‘Well, for those of us ignorant of the arcane culture of surfers I can tell you it came as a shock before nine in the morning.'

Lily was looking pleased with herself. ‘Ben said he's one of your old boyfriends,' she said, interested but slightly disbelieving.

‘I did have one or two you know, romance isn't something your lot invented,' Kitty told her.

‘No, exactly,' Ben agreed, ‘
our
lot invented it.'

‘Don't tell me. Gross.' Lily did an exaggerated shudder.

Kitty made coffee and delved into the freezer, pulling out a bag of the kind of croissants Julia Taggart would certainly scorn to serve to guests. She shoved a trayful of them into the Rayburn and set the timer, knowing she'd completely forget them otherwise and later be faced with a dreadful smell and an oven full of what would then look like a set of earth-brown dog turds.

‘You're not actually surfing this morning though, are you Lily? I mean have you seen the state of the sea? And the wind's still howling and gusting.'

Lily looked astounded. ‘Of course I am! It's pumping out there! There's an onshore wind on a falling tide, no problem. I promised Madeleine I'd give her a sort of land lesson, show her what I'm doing and explain what it's all about.'

‘Who is Madeleine?' Ben asked. Lily looked at Kitty as if asking permission to tell the truth.

Kitty got in first. ‘She's staying here, over in the barn with George Moorfield.'

‘The writer? Good grief. I thought he'd got a posse of wives already.'

‘She's not . . .' Lily cut in. She'd stopped the waxing and was looking at Kitty oddly, wondering, calculating. The oven timer bleeped and Kitty bent to take the croissants out and then assemble butter, knives and all the various jams and marmalades that were in the cupboard. ‘Lily's right, Madeleine's definitely not one of George's famous conquests. She's helping him out with phone calls and mail, so he can get on with his book. That's what we're supposed to be selling to writers who come here, the chance to put a good big space between themselves and the day-to-day hassles.'

‘Then they give a few chosen people the phone number and the world follows them down the satellite rays or whatever they are. Morning Ben, sleep OK?' Glyn wandered into the kitchen and picked up a croissant on his way to the coffee.

‘Fine thanks. Though I did wake up early and wonder why I couldn't hear the thrum of traffic.'

Kitty opened the back door and went outside to the sea wall. The wind was strangely warm as if it had ventured too fast across the sea from a much hotter place and hadn't yet run out of energy. The scudding clouds were parting fast now, showing smeared trails of vibrant blue. Madeleine had gone from the beach, leaving a trail of splayed footprints on the damp sand leading to the water's edge. Closer to the wall the wind had blurred the tracks she'd made in the soft dry sand up above the high-tide mark. Kitty walked down the steps and across the gritty foreshore, kicked off her shoes and planted her feet squarely in a pair of the wet prints, feeling the shape and size of them compared to her own. Madeleine's were bigger, squarer and Kitty's toes fitted so neatly inside the outline that it looked as if someone had drawn a line exactly an inch all round her own feet. She pictured soft plump baby feet with tiny fairy nails, imagined Madeleine's adoptive mother buying her first baby shoes. She wondered if she'd kept them, as she had kept Lily's and Petroc's. The two pairs of blue T-bar Start-Rites, Lily's a couple of sizes smaller than Petroc's, languished carelessly at the back of her underwear drawer. Madeleine's mother might be the type who'd preserved hers in a specially made display case, or, worse, had them cast in bronze, mounted on a plinth and displayed in a glass cabinet. Or she might just have sent them to the Oxfam shop.

‘I'll be off in about ten minutes.' Kitty jumped. Ben was suddenly there beside her, the sand having silenced his footsteps. His feet were bare, unexpectedly tough-looking and with a trace of a tan. She'd forgotten that he was a practised sailor and had him firmly categorized as a city-street man, pale-footed and tender-skinned. ‘I suppose I'd better go and find Rose and have it out with her. It's what I came for.' He looked terribly young and rather foolish, Kitty thought.