Next of Kin by John Boyne Read Free Book Online Page B

serious,’ said Montignac, appalled by the man’s insensitivity. ‘He came to you with that today? And why didn’t he speak to me about it anyway?’
    â€˜Well he’d been looking for you but—’
    â€˜He couldn’t have looked very hard then, and I do think he might have waited before burdening you with it. It’s not as if there are going to be any great surprises in there. You’re not worried about it, are you?’
    â€˜No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was explained to me a thousand times how I would never be able to inherit for the extraordinary fact of my being a girl. The Montignacs always inherit on the male line,’ she chanted, looking away with a sneer. ‘Very modern of them, I don’t think.’
    â€˜You have nothing to worry about, Stella,’ said Montignac, stepping forwards and taking her hand in his. ‘You don’t think for a moment that I’d let anything happen to you, do you? What I have…’ He didn’t go quite so far as to suggest that what he had, she had too, and she noticed this and let the sentence hang in mid-air between them.
    Stella looked down and noticed the way his fingers slotted in perfectly between her own and welcomed the touch, the first time he had held her hand like that in many years now. Her eyes lifted and met his and he held them there for a moment before releasing her and turning away.
    â€˜Anyway, I told him tomorrow morning would be fine,’ she said to his retreating back. ‘He’ll be here around eleven. I don’t suppose it will take very long.’
    â€˜Fine,’ said Montignac, whose mind was elsewhere, lost in bitter memories. ‘I better go downstairs anyway.’
    The two cousins stood and walked towards the door together. ‘I’ve never understood why we have to have wakes anyway,’ said Stella. ‘Everyone gets so upset at a funeral that it seems like a pointless prolonging of the pain to invite people over for the next best thing to a party.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t have bothered if it had been down to me,’ he said. ‘But form’s form. People come over automatically. It’s not as if we specifically sent out invitations.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜We should have lunch together tomorrow,’ he suggested. ‘Just the two of us. After the reading of the will, I mean. To discuss plans. For the house and so on.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Stella, nodding her head. ‘I think some of the staff are worried. Margaret overheard Annie complaining that she was going to lose her job.’
    â€˜She would have lost it years ago if I’d had my way,’ he said quickly. ‘She drinks more than anyone else in the house and smokes like a chimney. But we’ll talk about it tomorrow, it’s not important right now. We should go downstairs and start trying to get rid of some of these bastards or they’ll never leave.’
    Stella blinked in surprise. She almost never heard her cousin use language such as that—he prided himself on his elegance and gentlemanly behaviour—and it seemed particularly inappropriate for a moment like this, when they were almost close, when they were almost talking again like they did when they were teenagers. There was a violence to the sound of the word, an anger that reminded her of things she preferred to forget.
    She stared at him now as he examined himself in the full-length mirror, pulling his jacket down to displace the creases. She remembered when he had first been brought to the house at the age of five, short for his age, slightly grubby, with freckles, buck teeth and a French accent. And that hair, of course, that unmistakable shock of snow-white hair upon his head that had made her mouth drop open in surprise when she’d first laid eyes on him. The way his blue eyes had seemed to pierce right through her. And now here he was twenty years later,