Colouring In by Angela Huth Read Free Book Online

York but wonderfully described a fishing weekend in Canada: we made a vague plan to go together one day. When I asked what he was going to do in London he said he had no idea: there were practicalities to be settled first, buying a car and getting his house repaired. Carlotta immediately jumped in here. In one of her many careers she had been an interior decorator: she’d be willing to help in any way she could, she offered. She found it all so easy to envisage how things could be – an ability not many people had, she added. Bert thanked her for the offer and gave her a look which she probably failed to read: don’t crowd me, it said.
    After supper – Isabel had done so well, given such short notice – Carlotta stayed sitting at the table, while the other two moved to the sofa. All at once Carlotta became completely different – calm, quiet. Perhaps she was suddenly tired. She asked me how the current play was going. I answered, as I always do, that I had no idea. I loathe talking about my plays. Isabel and Bert are the only ones to whom I’ve ever expressed the endless despair they cause. Carlotta was silent for at least a minute. She sat looking down into her glass of wine, very long eyelashes (don’t think I’ve ever noticed them before) elongated by their shadows on her cheek. Then she asked, in a voice so low I could hardly hear, when I was writing, did I envisage my characters on a stage, or in real life? ‘It’s something I’ve always wondered, when I go to the theatre’, she said. How did the writer imagine them?
    ‘It’s a question I’ve never been asked before,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can answer it. I’ll have to think about it. The place my characters inhabit is, well, rather cloudy’. ‘Please let me know when you find the answer’, Carlotta said, eyelashes hitting her eyebrows as she looked up and focused her eyes hard on me. ‘I’d be fascinated’, she said.
    Then she leapt up, claimed she had to be off, she had an early start. Funnily enough, on and off during the night I kept thinking of her question. I was rather surprised that one so apparently unthinking as Carlotta is in many ways, should have asked it.
GWEN
    Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday – those are the days of the week I look forward to. Those are the days I go to the Grants and become – though perhaps I shouldn’t say this – part of the family. I’ve never really had a proper family myself, what with Bill snucking off long before he died, and the children becoming what I call unruly, out of hand at an early age, never wanting to eat round the table. So the Grants represent peace and calm and security. They seem happy. I like their sunny house and feel pride in keeping it up together. I think they rely on me in a way, just as I rely on them.
    I only live in Shepherd’s Bush – a twenty minute walk every morning, come rain or shine. My heart always lifts when I turn into their road: the plane trees, the blossoms and lilacs in the small but well kept front gardens. When I first came it was a very different place. Shabby. Dirty net curtains in the windows, battered front doors. Now – well, it’s a smart road. Not quite Notting Hill, but the sort of place a lot of young well-heeled families like to move. Someone in the corner shop told me houses in the Grants’ street were selling for a million or more. You could have knocked me down with a feather. But that’s property for you these days: lucky for those who could afford to get on the ladder in the first place.
    I could tell soon as I put my bag down in the kitchen that there had been company the night before. There were two empty wine bottles on the dresser, and another with a little under a third of red wine left. No cork. I didn’t have to ask what to do with it: throw it out. They leave things like that to my judgment which is one of the things that gives my job a sense of fulfilment. To be trusted to make decisions, and often suggestions, can give you