The girls hadn’t left the house for a week, except when Isobel took Monty to the park across the square where she stood shivering under an umbrella while, with an expression of pained inconvenience, the dog hurried through his business then shot back to the comparative warmth of the house. Then, in a pointless exercise that drove Isobel’s frayed nerves to breaking point, he rushed to the window to peer out at the darkening weather and scrape his paws against the glass, as if by doing so he could somehow wipe away the torrent pouring down the windowpanes.
A dull reflection from the feeble sun cast the beautiful old house in a most unbecoming light and showed up every imperfection, especially in the French carpet that had once been their mother’s pride and had come as part of her wedding dowry. The pattern of woven pink cabbage roses against a turquoise background, once as fresh as an English garden in May, seemed now to have been battered by the bitterest of storms and left as faded and threadbare as the scene both inside and outside the window.
Violet had a mild cold, and sat slumped, still in her dressing gown, shivering before the meagre fire in a worn armchair, her feet resting on a hot-water bottle while she sipped a cup of thin beef broth.
Her face was a little pale, and her cheeks were tinted with an unhealthy flush. Despite this, she managed to look even lovelier than usual and drew vast amounts of sympathy from everyone in the house because of it. She coughed weakly, as though even that feeble effort exhausted her, though Isobel suspected there was more than a touch of drama accompanying her sister’s listless, feverish manner.
The scraping of Monty’s nails against the glass roused her now to an irrational fury, and she rushed to the little creature to stand before him and shake her finger in his reproachful face.
‘Stop it, you beast! Haven’t we got enough to plague us without you making it worse?’
Monty cringed, although Isobel was sure it was for show, then crawled to hide under the blanket covering Violet’s lap, glaring at Isobel with accusing eyes…
Leave a Reply