She forced Kate into a bony hug. Kate had to close her eyes to prevent herself from rolling them.
‘It’s so lovely to see you,’ Annabelle said, looking at Jake from behind Kate’s shoulder. ‘Come in, come in.’
The hug ended abruptly and Annabelle walked into the house.
‘Lovely to meet you too,’ Kate replied to her receding back.
The hallway was cool, the floor tiled in a reddish-brown pattern that reminded Kate of boarding school. In the dim half-light, she was able to look at Annabelle properly for the first time. She was a tall woman, upright and elegant. Her body was strong rather than willowy. She had large hands, with long fingers encircled by thin gold rings. She was deeply tanned and on the right side of her face, two livery splotches had formed a pale brown archipelago. Her eyes were the clearest blue, like shallow sea-water you can see sand through. She was wearing a white floaty linen cardigan over a sage-green camisole and white linen trousers and pale purple Moroccan slippers, the leather folded down at the back so that her ankles were exposed.
‘Hi Dad,’ Jake said, and Kate noticed a slight figure emerging from a doorway. Chris shook his son’s hand and then came across and kissed Kate lightly on both cheeks. He had kind eyes and wore a burgundy jumper with elbow patches.
‘Nice of you both to make the trek,’ he said, his voice immediately getting lost in the echoing gloom of the house. He beckoned them intothe drawing room, as he called it, which was light and floral, the plump sofas upholstered in a lily-of-the-valley pattern. ‘Now: drinks.’
Chris pottered off to the drinks cabinet beneath the wall of bookshelves. Kate spotted a copy ofCivilisationby Kenneth Clark and several silver-framed photographs of mop-haired children. She realised she was still holding the bunch of tulips she had brought from the local Battersea florist. The stems had pressed against the brown paper wrapping, making it soggy.
‘Oh, I meant to say, Annabelle. These are for you.’
Annabelle looked at her oddly. She reached across in her billowing linen and took the flowers, holding them out slightly as if they might stain her. She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
‘Kate, thank you,’ she purred. ‘I was going to tell you we don’t stand on ceremony round here and you must call me Annabelle, but I’m so glad you felt comfortable enough to do it straight away.’ She lowered her head to breathe in the scent of the flowers. ‘You are clever to find these. I don’t normally bother with cut flowers – we’ve got so many beauties in the garden, you know. Oh!’ She gave a short burst of laughter. ‘Of course you don’t know. You’ve never been here before, have you? Forgive me, darling, I lose track of all of Jakey’s friends.’ The way she said ‘friends’ implied quotation marks. ‘I’m such an idiot. We’ll have to show you around later, won’t we, Jakey? You can see the little cottage we’ve just done up in one of the outbuildings. Yes. Lovely.’ She lifted the bunch of tulips, wilting now under the pressure of her gaze. ‘But these are just …gorgeous. Now I must try and remember where the vases are. Sit, sit, please!’
Annabelle gesticulated towards the chairs.
They sat. She slid out of the room, giving Jake’s shoulder a squeeze as she went and kissing the top of his head like he was a toddler. Kate caught Jake’s eye. He winked at her. She inhaled, slowly. Just a couple more hours and then they could get out of here.
‘Here you go,’ Chris pressed a giant tumbler of gin and tonic into her hand. She took a large sip just as Annabelle re-entered the room with a glass of white wine and launched into an impromptu toast. Kate swallowed her gin as quietly as she could.
‘I just wanted to say what atreatit is to have Jakey home, and to meet the ever-so-stylish Kate.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Chris said, raising an even bigger glass of gin towards the centre of the room and smiling with a vagueness that suggested this drink had not been his first of the day.
Annabelle sat on the sofa next to Jake, placing her free hand proprietorially on his knee. Kate, in an upright armchair on the other side of the room watched as Chris bent to sit on a battered leather stool by the fireplace. He was interrupted by Annabelle saying, ‘Nuts, darling!’
‘Oh yes, my mistake,’ Chris said, straightening up from his half-squat, bones creaking as he did so. He walked back to the drinks cabinet, took out a jumbo-sized packet of peanuts and poured a measly handful into a tiny crystal bowl, which he brought back with great ceremony and placed on a low coffee table filled with back copies ofHouse & Garden. The table was too far away for Kate to reach, so she drank her gin and her head became light. Chris had made it exceptionally strong.
‘So,’ Annabelle said, leaning back on the sofa, her legs crossed at a graceful angle. Kate had read somewhere that high-society women crossed their legs in this way so as not to leave red patches on their skin. ‘How did you two meet?’
‘I gatecrashed Kate’s thirtieth birthday party,’ Jake said, looking over the room at Kate and grinning at her.
‘Goodness,’ Annabelle said. ‘How rude!’
‘It was fine, Annabelle. He came bearing champagne, so I let him in.’
She decided she was going to use Jake’s mother’s name as much as possible in conversation.
Chris tittered.
‘Sensible,’ he said.
Annabelle did not laugh but gazed levelly at Kate, a slight smile shadowing her mouth. She said nothing more, and there was power in her silence. Kate felt the back of her neck prickle. She drank more gin and didn’t try to move the conversation on as she might usually havedone. She sensed Annabelle was testing her, and Kate refused to give in. The silence stretched outwards until Jake reached forwards for the nuts and walked around to offer her some.
‘You can’t get at them from over there,’ he said and Kate was happy he’d noticed.
They had lunch in the kitchen (‘No point in the dining room when it’s just the four of us, don’t you agree?’ Annabelle said) at a long pine table, laid with a lavender-coloured tablecloth that Kate was told had been brought back from one of their many trips to Provence. The crockery was even more floral than the sitting room had been and the granary baguette was served already sliced in a bowl with ‘BOWL’ written around its rim. The knives and forks had faded ivory handles, nicotine yellow in colour.
Annabelle made a great show of clipping up her long blonde-grey hair and putting an apron on before removing a steaming dish of chicken thighs and preserved lemons from the Aga. It was served with mashed potato that still had a few lumps in it and over-boiled broccoli.
‘Red or white?’ Chris asked, proffering bottles of each. ‘The red’s fairly good plonk. The white’s a crisp little Sancerre …’
