The House with Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton Read Free Book Online Page A

thigh.
    ‘Aisling hates that Claudia girl,’ said Charlotte, ‘I could tell.’
    ‘What did you think of her, wise beloved?’
    ‘I thought,’ said Charlotte, raising her head, ‘that she seemed terribly unhappy. But then who wouldn’t be, engaged to that
     awful Alex?’
    ‘He seemed sound enough.’
    ‘Exactly, darling,’ said Charlotte. The Glovers smiled at one another in the candlelight.
    Claudia had decided to tell Alex about the baby on Monday. They would go to dinner at a restaurant that Aisling had recommended
     in Landi, and she would tell him over coffee. She would say, ‘Darling, we must give Aisling a night off,’ and then she would
     tell him. Once she had done so, she thought, it would be irrevocable. Claudia had no illusions that she was doing anything
     but wrong. The baby ought to have a father, she said to herself, and Alex would do very well. He really did like children,
     always asking Jonathan about the boys, he wanted to marry her, as she had known he would the first time she had dinner with
     him, and he had not the imagination for flamboyant or humiliating infidelity. Claudia’s father had been exuberantly unfaithful
     to her mother, and though Claudia had to some extent sympathized with his motivations, theyhad caused complications. The Wessons had divorced eventually. Claudia’s mother had moved to Spain, becoming in the process,
     Claudia thought, rather vulgar, and then Claudia’s father had died. Her mind shied from that, with Alex sleeping next to her,
     his arm ironically protective across her waist. Her mother played golf a good deal.
    Alex began to snore. Snot gurgled in his throat and Claudia wanted to kick him. She lifted his arm gently away from her and
     he turned over, quiet. Claudia turned too, shoving the sheet away from her and dangling her feet into the coolness, but it
     was no good, she was awake. The wide varnished planks of the floor were cool under her feet as she found her cigarettes and
     lighter on the bureau, and crossed the landing, a spectre, she thought, in her white pyjamas. From their bedroom, three crooked
     steps twisted to the drawing room, where the balcony doors were open to the air. Claudia sat cross-legged on the broad stone
     parapet, not yet cool in the night. She was surprised by the moonlight, real silver moonlight, sharpening the white edges
     of the house and filling the lawn with deep, reptilian shadow. She could pick out the lustre on the shutters of the guesthouse,
     and beyond that the square tower of the church over the river at Castroux, backed with bright stars. There were no stars in
     London, she thought, but here she could see what few constellations she recognized, the Plough and Orion, and trails of unknown
     others, childishly abundant, so clear she thought she fancied she could see moon-dust hovering in their radiance. There were
     no lights in the valley, but the night was not peaceful. There were owls here, peacocks, Aisling said, in the garden of the
     chateau, boar and deer that sometimes came to drink from the swimmingpool, foxes. She tucked her hair behind her ears to prevent it falling into the flame of her lighter, and as her thumb clicked
     the little bevelled wheel there was a rustling from the trees at the end of the lawn. Claudia held her breath, excited. There
     was something big there. She held the unlit cigarette and peered into the trees, half expecting to see a figure emerge, some
     terrible moon-faced idiot from the village creeping around the house, or a mysterious man, secret and purposeful in the shadows.
     There was no more sound. Claudia felt foolishly disappointed, as if she were on a safari and had missed a glimpse of a lion
     or giraffe. She lit her cigarette.
    The baby would be born in March, the doctor had said. Claudia had made an appointment at a private clinic, wanting to deal
     efficiently with a stranger, and the doctor, sensing her recalcitrance, or perhaps being polite at the bare evidence of