The Visitors by Sally Beauman Read Free Book Online Page A

through the door? Emerson , I heard, Stockton , Wiggins. My cheeks flamed. I imagined Madame’s scorn, poor Miss Mack’s chagrin. As I peeped out from behind the shiny ebony of the piano, I saw my guardian was agitated, and Helen Winlock had now entered the debate. Madame stood listening to both women with an expression of stone.
    ‘ Impossible ,’ I heard. ‘ Je regrette , ma chère Madame, mais votre fille–– ’
    ‘ Miss . I told you, I am Miss Mackenzie. And Lucy is not my daughter. Heavens! This is so darn difficult. May we stick to good plain English, please?’
    ‘English? But I thought you were American?’ Madame said silkily.
    ‘And so I am. A Yankee and proud of it!’ Miss Mack, who knew sarcasm when she heard it, was becoming heated. She raised her voice; her hat was now tilting dangerously over her left eye. As I shrank back again behind the piano, I felt a small hand brush my arm. Turning, I found myself face to face with Frances Winlock.
    ‘Hello,’ she said, without ceremony. ‘I’ve been watching you for a while. I was watching you this morning too, through my field glasses. I recognised you as soon as you walked in. You’re the Sphinx girl, aren’t you?’
    ‘And you’re the pyramids’ girl. You’re an acrobat. You did a cartwheel. You wore sunglasses. I was watching you too.’
    We gazed at one another warily. After a long appraising pause, Frances Winlock held out her hand, I solemnly shook it and we introduced ourselves. Close to, I could see that she was indeed younger than I’d realised at first, though she was tall for her age, almost on a level with me. Unlike her untidy mother, she was immaculately turned out in a navy blue pleated skirt and a neat, white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She wore socks and sandals identical to mine. Her shining dark hair was cut in a bob to her shoulders, parted on the side and pinned back from her high forehead with a slide or, as Miss Mack would call it, a bobby-pin. She had a clear complexion and an air of radiant health. Her eyes and the brilliance of their gaze were the first thing you noticed about her – until she smiled, that was. Her smile lit her face in a way and to a degree I’d never seen before. She smiled now, and I risked the question to which I’d longed for an answer all day: ‘I’ve been wondering – did you pass your hieroglyph test?’
    ‘Oh, you heard that?’ The smile disappeared. ‘No, I failed. One out of six. Daddy was mad at me. But they are hard – really hard.’
    ‘Never mind. You’re sure to get them right next time,’ I said. She seemed so crestfallen that I felt anxious to console her. ‘And you danced beautifully.’
    ‘No, I didn’t. Half the steps were wrong, and then I messed up that jump.’
    I glanced down at her ankle, which was visibly swollen. ‘Have you sprained it?’
    ‘I don’t think so. I can walk on it. Just twisted it – it hardly hurts at all.’
    That was untrue, I thought. Frances shuffled her weight from foot to foot experimentally, and winced. Changing the subject, she quickly asked me why I was in Cairo, how long I was staying there. She also asked why was I so thin and – peeping under the brim of my hat – what had happened to my hair? She was the first person I’d encountered who had been this outspoken and her directness undid all my resolutions: before I could stop myself, out the story came. I was just reaching the end of this blurt and had got to the ‘parcelled-up’ phase when Miss Mack, accompanied by Madame and Helen Winlock, discovered my hiding place.
    As I looked from face to face, Miss Mack’s flushed and anxious, Helen Winlock’s sympathetic, Madame’s a mask of arrogance and impatience, it became obvious that Miss Mack was fighting a lost cause. ‘Ah, Lucy,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid this is not promising. Madame’s classes are full and it really doesn’t look as if––’
    ‘This is the child?’ Cutting her short, Madame leaned forward to