Facing the Light by Adèle Geras Read Free Book Online Page A

the back of the house best of all, though. There, the kitchen garden had rows of vegetables laid out ‘like in Peter Rabbit’. She’d said that when she was not much more than a baby, and the name had stuck. It was now known as the Peter Rabbit garden. You had to walk through it to reach the Quiet Garden, which had an enormous magnolia tree in the middle of the lawn with a bench built round it that you could sit on for picnics. No bright flowers grew here. According to family legend, this was by order of Ethan Walsh’s wife, Maude, who couldn’t abide the startling yellow of daffodils, or the vulgar scarlet of certain roses. The border was filled withdelphiniums, lupins, phlox, foxgloves and hollyhocks in muted shades of pink and blue and mauve. Rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias were white. The roses twined around the trunk of every tree were peach, buff, cream and palest pink, and on the far wall fruit trees grew in fan shapes against the rosy bricks. Espaliered, Rilla told her. They’re espaliered fruit trees, she’d said, and little Beth rolled the word round in her mouth and fell in love with the music of it on her tongue.
    Adult Beth smiled to remember this. She really ought to go and pick up Alex. Efe’s younger brother had no car and she always gave him lifts when she could. He would, she knew, be waiting for her outside his flat with his rucksack and assorted carrier bags on the ground beside him, looking like a student. His wavy dark hair would be flopping over his forehead, and he’d have flung his clothes on anyhow with no thought about how he appeared to other people. Efe called his style shambolic, but Beth found it rather touching. Before she left, though, there was still the ritual to perform. She sat down with her hands folded on her lap, feeling a little foolish, as always when she gave in to this ridiculous superstition. The Russians, according to Rilla, always sat down for a few minutes before making a journey. It was considered lucky. Beth didn’t know if it really
was
a Russian tradition or if her mother had lifted it from some production of
The Cherry Orchard
she’d been in thousands of years ago. It didn’t really matter, because Beth wouldn’t have considered going anywhere for a few days without first sitting with her knees together and her hands folded, in the hard chair at the kitchen table. An armchair didn’t count, for reasons which had never been explained.
    Beth smiled, as she often did when she thought of Rilla. She’s batty, she said to herself, but fun, which is more than most people can say for their parents. And weget on, which is also a bonus. She often wondered whether it had something to do with the fact that Rilla wasn’t her real mother, but someone her father had married before she knew about things like wicked stepmothers. Maybe that was why she had no trouble at all loving her. Chloë claimed to hate her mother, and Beth remonstrated feebly with her from time to time. It was difficult to see how anyone could hate Gwen, who was a mild, gentle sort of person, but Chloë, who was spiky and aggressive and rather boringly rude these days, seemed to have a positive talent for disliking people. Beth realized that she’d been lucky, ending up with Rilla out of all her father’s girlfriends. She was warm and affectionate and funny and forever flinging together unexpected ingredients and exotic spices and making wonderful smells – and a dreadful mess – in the kitchen. Also, she was self-absorbed, which Beth never minded, because it meant that she herself had been allowed to do more or less what she’d wanted to all her life. But from quite an early age, Beth realized that Rilla needed looking after, and organizing. She was untidy, not only in her cupboards and drawers but also in her head. She’d gone down to Willow Court yesterday, and Beth imagined what her packing must have been like,