Without Consent by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page B

the sound of the doorbell was announcing someone responding to the advertisement. People might think the hasty decision to sell was the reason why she had suddenly taken to spending hours after midnight painting the walls. That was the way it went, she chanted to herself in the same singsong rhythm she used to the agent. Once you make it nice, you don’t want to leave, do you?
    If the woman on the doorstep had said hello, extended some nice warm paw for shaking and announced herself with platitudes or small talk like the estate agent, Anna might have gone into her pre-rehearsed speech, but the visitor stood sideways on to the door, looking away down the street, one hand extended in Anna’s direction, offering a bottle of wine, which, once accepted, left Anna no option but to ask Helen in. A clever ploy, she decided later; they had not even looked at one another’s faces before they were both trapped.
    She noticed again the scar on Helen’s forehead. It curled from one eyebrow into the hairline and could easily have been covered by arrangement of her long hair, but she did not seem to mind it. Anna remembered Rose’s verdict on this woman, heard Rose’s lecturing voice, telling her: she may look buttoned up, you know, Anna, and she may talk a bit precious, but there isn’t much she hasn’t done. She didn’t get that scar in a road accident and she has been known to bite people.
    â€˜What a nice kitchen,’ Helen said, genuine enthusiasmtaking away the polite banality of the compliment. Anna looked around; it was a more than nice kitchen, full of old pine, carefully chosen pictures, dried herbs and flowers lending it a musky smell. A door stood open, leading on to a small backyard laid out with narrow flower-beds in full bloom. Pink and white geraniums prevailed in tubs; roses climbed the wall. The glass panes in the door gleamed.
    â€˜I know what I want in my kitchen,’ Helen continued, ‘just as I sometimes think I know what I want in my life, but I never quite seem to achieve it. Something goes wrong between concept and execution. I expect it always will. I’d have thought about hanging dried herbs there.’ She pointed to the wooden clothes pulley above her head, holding pans and flowers. ‘And then I would have continued to think about it. Not done it.’
    Anna fussed, uncorked the wine clumsily, poured unsteadily, the sound of it comforting. The glass she handed Helen was unusual, heavy and old; the wine cold and pale. Nothing in the kitchen was new; all of it revealed an owner who specialized in thrift as well as taste.
    â€˜I make an effort with my house,’ Anna said, choosing words carefully, ‘and I love flowers, because I can’t do much with my person. I think I do it to compensate to the world. Or myself. I’m not sure.’
    â€˜I don’t think I quite follow.’
    â€˜You should,’ Anna stated with a touch of impatience. ‘But then you probably live in a different world. Beautiful people do. I’m a rather ugly woman, in case you haven’t noticed. It follows that I feel obliged to create something like beauty around me, so that I can justify my own existence.’
    She was plain. Not plain enough to warrant the description of ugliness, but still a slab of a woman, apart from the eyes. The kind of woman who had never quite looked like a girl; too full a figure from the age of eleven. The type who would play wallflower and act chaperone for lovelier, livelier sisters or cousins. A face which had assumed responsibility as soon as other children shed it, but not, Helen thought, as plain as all that. Anna spoke of herself ironically, as if she were birthmarked or disabled to the degree that she was an assault on the human eye, instead of being on the wrong side of ordinary.
    â€˜I think you should get a new mirror,’ Helen said honestly.
    Anna rose and placed the wine in the fridge. She had the light-footed