Daughters by Elizabeth Buchan Read Free Book Online

Palladian classical proportion but had deployed it to build a house on a human scale. The sort of house, Lara thought, which had nooks and crannies and places where the sun poured in through the windows.
    Sarah glanced at her watch. ‘Bill should be here any minute.’ Eager to show off her new domain, she shepherded her caravan of the hopeful towards the house. ‘Only a quick look.’
    She was halfway up the steps when Lara called, ‘Sarah, do you mind? I think I’ll go back to the garden.’
    Sarah swung round. The hand resting on the balustrade whitened.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Lara, and added silently, But I can’t quite … you do understand? ‘See you later.’
    Once at a safe enough distance, she claimed a moment to steady herself. Breathe in the icy air. Her verdict on the house? Nice.
Stupid
. It was better than nice … much, much better. But it was Bill and Sarah’s, not hers, to love …
    Leaving a trail of frozen breath, she crossed the lawn, passing a copper beech whose branches swept grandly to the ground.
    Unhappiness, fleeting or settled, is a condition of being alive, her sensible inner voice informed her.
Nothing to be done
.
    Hands dug into her pockets, she turned a thoughtful 360 degrees. The garden was brittle – that was the word – and she understood how it felt. Everything was huddled in on itself, packed down under leaf mould, dry husks and stiffened earth.
    There was one exception. In a frost pocket created by the wall, which ran from the house to the drive, a shrub poked its branches through a drift of ice. I don’t care about the weather, it seemed to say. Balled yellow blooms were held aloft on naked branches, draping like twisted ribbons over its white ice-cradle. Drawing closer, she inhaled a light, delicate, joyous scent, which stopped her in her tracks.
    Where next? By now she had reached a lawn that sloped down to the stream running through the bottom of the garden. Full-bellied with winter rain, it flowed sullenly past ice sheets as thin as gelatine leaves and over acid-green weed. The cold crept up through her feet, inching up her legs.
    Nothing much moved: the frost held everything in its grip.
    She couldn’t,
mustn’t
, love it here.
    She sensed, rather than saw, Bill come up behind her.
    ‘Not with the others?’
    ‘As you see.’
    ‘I spotted you as I came up the drive.’ He added, ‘You look lost.’
    She stuffed her hands into her pockets. ‘Sarah’s very sweet and wants me to like the house. And I do.’ Inside the pockets, her fingers balled into a fist. ‘I do.’ She paused. ‘Sarah’s very generous.’
    ‘She is.’ Bill squinted up to the terrace that ran along the house’s southern aspect. Seeking Sarah out.
    He moved along the bank. ‘I’ll show you round.’
    She didn’t like to mention that Sarah had already done so, but followed in his wake. He pointed up the bank to where it looped away and out of sight. ‘That’s the boundary.’
    They reached a tiny landing stage by the stream, which, like the garden, was rotting and neglected. Once, children might have sat there and fished. She imagined the ripple of water, the flash of blue and silver scales, a child’s excitement.
    Bill placed an experimental foot on it.
    ‘Careful.’
    ‘Don’t worry.’ He pressed into the wood and little puffs of rot rose. ‘It needs a lot of work.’
    ‘I’ve got the message,’ she said angrily.
    ‘And what message would that be?’
    ‘You need the money.’
    He was the first to drop his gaze. ‘Sorry. That was clumsy.’ He piloted her away from the stream into a small paddock, scrubby and infested with thistles. ‘I’m planning a vegetable garden near the house, and here, bees and massive compost heaps.’
    With one ear she listened to him. Plans, schedules,cultivation techniques. ‘There’s so much to do, Lara.’ This was an aspect of Bill she had not suspected. Despite the years they had been apart, the gap in her knowledge was hurtful.
    The other