Before and After by Laura Lockington Read Free Book Online Page A

coffee.
    “My dear,” I cried, with real concern, “I can’t tell you what caffeine does to the system first thing in the morning. Awful. Almost unimaginable . Have what I have and I promise you within a week you’ll be reaping the benefits.”
    I deftly swung into the kitchen, startling Maria at her task of kneading an unwieldy mass of dough. I waved away her offers of help and made myself at home in a stranger’s kitchen. I searched out a large thick glass, and broke an egg into it. I positively shook to death the bottle of Worcestershire sauce over the cradle of yolk and albumen, and wasn’t too stingy with the Tabasco either. I tripped back to the dining room and handed Sylvia Amble the prairie oyster.
    “Knock it back, don’t look at it for goodness sake,” I urged, wondering if I could indeed make her swallow something so noxious.
    Sylvia looked doubtfully at the concoction, and then looked back at me. She seemed to drink me in, rather than the contents of the glass. She sipped at my vitality, my flawless skin, my shining hair, a few strands of which were peeping from my black velvet beret, falling in tendrils around my face and neck. Would this really work? Would this drink transform her from her own drab little self to the glorious creature that stood before her? Of course not. But we are all thus deceived. Indeed if we weren’t, the beauty and diet business would have disappeared long ago.
    To my immense satisfaction she drank it. I shuddered internally for her. She had, quite literally, swallowed the bait.
    She had, by swallowing the medicine, accepted me. She was going to allow me to change her life. I wanted to whoop and pick my petticoats up and dance a polka, or at the very least twirl around the room, but I restrained the impulse.
    I merely remarked that the decorators would be here very soon, and that we’d better start talking colour palettes.
    “Did I hear the word decorators?” Bella asked as she shyly came into the room. “Daddy will freak out, he hates having things changed around.”
    I watched her build a raft of toast on her plate and smilingly pushed the butter towards her. Then the marmalade.
    “Oh, nothing too drastic,” I murmured, flinching at the certainty of the chaos that lay ahead.
    Sylvia seemed to rally a little at the sight of her podgy daughter. “Well darling, my room, I mean, Flora’s room does need a lick or two of paint, and the hallway could do with –“
    “I thought the whole house,” I said, quickly interrupting. “All apart from the kitchen.” I picked an orange from the fruit bowl and started to peel it. Citrus notes are very soothing in a tense situation as any amateur aromatherapist will tell you.
    Sylvia sagged a little, as if she had been dealt a body blow. Not a rabbit punch to the kidneys, but more of a quick poke in her solar plexus.
    “The whole house? Oh, I really don’t think that we –“
    “Now, I don’t want you to worry about the financial side of things, you won’t will you?” I said, laying my hand on her arm. “Promise me you won’t? And the builders that I always use are absolutely the best. We’re jolly lucky to get them.” I nibbled on a small piece of bitter orange pith. I decided to play my final card. “If it wasn’t due to a cancellation at the palace – well.” I dangled the implication over her head like a tantalisingly ripe bunch of muscatel grapes, warm from the greenhouse.
    “Buckingham Palace?” Sylvia whispered in delight, almost covering her mouth as if MI5 were in the room.
    I managed to convey that her social blunder had gone unnoticed.
    “Kensington.” I corrected her considerately.
    Sylvia’s eyes boggled. I smiled kindly at her marvelling not for the first time that the magic of royalty still works amongst the variegated classes of this small grey island. Breathing the word of the aristocracy is like unleashing a hidden password, or uncovering the secret to Aladdin’s lamp. Abracadabra. And we’re